by Ember Lane
“Are we talking about Billy Long Thumb?” Melinka asked.
“One and the same,” I said emphatically.
“Well, that is one unfortunate story.”
A shiver ran through me—just a blink, a hint of recognition. I scrambled back, away from my spot, shrinking into a crevice in the rock.
“What?” Melinka asked but knew the answer. “Really? They found you here?”
“No,” I replied. “No, no I don’t think so. They skipped right over me, like a searchlight—a lighthouse’s beacon, I mean.”
“Only one thing for it,” Vassal said.
“What?” Melinka asked.
“If they’re covering all the land, we need to go by sea.”
“Sea,” I repeated, shimmying back farther. “Sounds good.”
Chapter Five
Joss the Nine
Morning came. Morning went. It passed in a blur of granite walls and underground streams. Vassal pressed the horses hard. We soon left the main route behind, taking a smaller fork and rushing down it as if he himself had the priests on his tail and not me.
Maybe an hour later, the horse’s breath misting the air, he slowed up, bringing us back to a walk. I heard that sound then—an echo like we were in a seashell, and the rock changed to a dirty gray, its strata-like shelves, its surface clammy. Vassal jumped down, bidding us to do the same as light streamed in from ahead, and the sounds shed their bashfulness and became the powerful roar of the sea.
We emerged into a vast cave the shape of a mouth, where we were in the throat, with a tranquil sea forming its tongue, and stalagmites and stalactites making up its teeth, and just enough room between those fangs to sneak a boat through.
It was a smuggler’s haven at the end of a path that joined a smuggler’s trail, and it somehow suited this dual land of chivalry and felony.
A wharf embraced the bay, several boats moored were moored and wooden dwellings spanned across it, though these looked to be simple affairs, easy to abandon if a roving eye were to turn to this place. Vassal traded the horses in return for passage to Kyrie and a night in a bed—neither Melinka nor I argued.
It was a quiet place—not a hideout for pirates and brigands, no bawdy nights or endless dances like Frederico Falpian the Third had shown us during our stay on the Five Isles. The inn had no name that I could see and just a dozen or so tables, most half full. Our rooms were above, with only single beds and a walk space beside. We stayed in the bar for as long as we could.
“So Billy Long Thumb—why does he interest you?” Melinka asked me, and I told her he gave me my first quest—I double-checked my board to make sure it was still there.
Seek out the Legend of Billy Long Thumb. Status: Incomplete. Reward: Unknown.
“It is my job to judge him—to decide if he was mostly good or mostly bad.”
She nodded, understanding. “And this was your first quest?”
I told her, “Yes.”
“So it is important. Perhaps you should have solved that first?”
“But I couldn’t—couldn’t get out of Mandrake.”
She cocked her head. “I would say that it’s more likely that you could have, should have, and then things may have been a little clearer.”
“But it was just a crazy quest given to me by a skeleton with a feather in his ear.”
“Do you think that?” She tossed her head back, looking down her nose at me. “No quest is ever given lightly—all have meaning.” She signaled for more beer, a side of meat, and some bread. “What quality does the boatman have that none other enjoy?” Her gaze fell upon me.
“He judges the dead.”
“And is Mandrake the only place where folks die?”
It was a curious question…at first, but once I saw behind its simplistic veil, I gasped. “No.”
“So what can Billy do that no others can?”
“Travel under the mists.”
She laughed at my answer as did Vassal. “Again, you overestimate the importance of Mandrake. Mandrake is just a—”
“A backwater,” I replied, my mind racing with possibility.
Could Billy get us back to Mandrake?
That was the first and yet the most stupid.
Billy linked every land.
He linked every ship.
“What is his story?”
“Who, Billy’s?” Melinka asked. She had an infuriating way.
“Yes, Billy’s!”
“Don’t snap.” She took a swig of her ale, meeting my gaze all the while. “It is rumored that Billy Long Thumb was born of Ruse, that he sailed those violent coasts, their rugged black, during his earlier years. Now one thing you need to know about Ruse is that diamonds litter its soot-stained slopes, huge chunks of emerald, ruby, and sapphire, just waiting to be gathered. You see, there is no sun in Ruse; the place is ever night, so such things as gems are little worth.”
“So he gathered up the gems and sailed here?”
“He did better than that. He traveled all the lands, barring Mandrake because—”
“It was such a backwater,” I completed for her.
“Exactly. So Billy would buy ebony from Trappas Shyl and trade it with powders made in Zhang Zhou. He’d smuggle animals out of Variant and trade them for marble or coal in Cendrullia. With each and every trade, Billy would enhance his reputation with his own overblown stories. And so he told everybody he heralded from Striker Bay—that he was the scourge of that place.”
“And he wasn’t?”
Melinka brought out a pipe, priming it, and puffing away while she gathered her story. “Was Billy Long Thumb the scourge of Striker Bay?” She looked up as if searching for inspiration. “Probably, possibly, who really knows? Billy lied so much, the truth became irrelevant. Then, one trip, he began talking about a boy called Zender and how this kid had united the tribes under Cer Wallum. He foretold the rise of Ruse, and you know what?”
“Everyone ignored him,” I said, my voice hushed.
“Yes,” she told me. “Not a single soul took any notice. Ruse was nothing—a black stain to the south—a land of barbarians, of shadow stalkers, and larva walkers. So no one took any notice of him, of Billy Long Thumb, as he accepted Ruse’s fortune and supplied anything and everything it required.”
“So Billy Long Thumb—”
“Created Ruse—turned it from nothing into what it is today, and for that, Billy died a rich man.”
“How?”
“He became superfluous. Ruse became powerful enough to take what it wanted rather than buy it. Billy took exception to it and did the unthinkable.”
“Which was?”
“He traveled to Ruse, moored at the port of Tabularasa and sought out the boy, Zender, at Ruse’s capitol, deep in the Raging Hills. Billy never returned, and ShadowDancer was born.” She leveled her gaze like a sniper looking through his sights. “They say Billy Long Thumb was Zender’s first real kill, that in murdering him, he shed his youth and went over some invisible barrier—a point of no return. It was all very strange.”
“Why?”
“Because the boy, Zender, should never have been able to kill Billy. He couldn’t be as powerful as Billy—as one so seasoned as him. Zender couldn’t herald from Ruse, yet he understood the place like the back of his hand.”
“Where did he come from?”
She took my hand. “That’s just it—nowhere. Zender just was—just is—like he was here before the world existed, and yet he’s just a boy. The boy just appeared in Ruse one day, and that was that.”
Our glorious journey to Kyrie took place scrunched between casks of smuggled tea and salted lobster, both indirectly destined for the courts of that castle after they’d passed through several sets of hands, each getting a feudal piece of the feudal pie.
The hands that were profiting from this leg belonged to our captain and steersman, a particularly unlikeable man who spent the whole journey making lewd comments as he eyed Melinka up and down. Apparently, I was a bag of bones and not wo
rthy of his consideration.
Valkyrie’s coastline was one of gray cliffs topped with a green fringe or dips to sweeping bays where forests nigh tumbled into the sea, and estuaries sat like gaping, gray maws. Our conversation was muted, hardly more than clipped responses, none of us trusting the tongue of the boat’s captain to do anything but betray us for coin, nor his sullen crew, for that matter.
Wedged in its shallow keel, seawater swilling around, it became one of my most miserable of days in the land, so I got to the business of mana harvesting once more. Overnight my shadowmana had risen to 10,856. Melinka was right, it did accumulate but painfully slowly. The shadows, the clefts and crags, however, were limited aboard our little clipper.
So I came to look at my lighter mana, at the bubbly counterpart to my already limitless shadowmana. I dove into myself, a process that was coming easier to me every time I did it. My mana was hard to contain. Where my shadowmana erred to shades of gray, this was a kaleidoscope of colored speckles, of vibrant greens, vivid reds, rich blues, and regal purples all vying for my attention, all jostling for my eye.
It came to me that, in color terms, shadowmana was a congealed amalgam of all colors, and mana was the result of freedom, of bursting out of that black to create life and joy through its energy. In this line of thinking, black would be an absence of all colors as if the colors had broken free and left a void behind. Yet I knew this not to be true—black was the greed of shadowmana, its hogging of all the power and refusal to let any from its shady embrace.
That accepted, what was this light mana? So I went up on deck to see its light.
I looked upon a gull sitting on the boat’s gunwale, staring at me as its head jerked in tiny arcs. Was light mana the opposite of what you’d think? Was shadowmana the ordered one and its counterpart chaos?
There was every chance.
Chaos would have no order—it could be an effervescing of color. Chaos would always have more energy than order. Satisfied I was on the right track, I wondered how to capture it, how to lead it into me. The gull squawked at me. I thought of a whale swimming through the ocean, mouth agape, grazing on the plankton then discounted that, not wanting to run around slack jawed.
I held out my hand, peppering it with some crumbs left over from my lunchtime loaf. The gull hopped onto my hand, pecking away. I smiled as I watched it, and I felt a small surge. It finished up and flew away, and I studied its every turn as it sought out updrafts while it circled our clipper. I stayed like that, held tilted upward, mind now blank, and I drew in the sun, drank it in like it was an elixir, and I had an endless thirst.
And just like that, my limit vanished, and my mana grew. All it wanted was some appreciation, and all my body needed was some respite.
Yet I knew the task wasn’t done. I had to learn to harvest my manas on the fly, when I was fighting, when I was sleeping.
It was late in the afternoon that Kyrie itself came into view. It was a magnificent castle sitting atop a rock: defiant, huge. Where Horn’s Isle was unkempt, Kyrie was polished—no signs of siege stained her white-rock walls.
According to Vassal, a port served it, but on the other side of its bluff, and it was not one we could dock in. Our route lay up the last estuary before Castle Kyrie—between its mudflats and marshes. Our captain struck a lantern as the sun began to set and lowered our sail to half, cruising upriver on the inward tide.
As we closed in on the shore, I saw the combinium tower rearing its head from behind the castle. It was the color of coal and shaped like a chess queen—a black queen, an evil queen. Its trunk thinned as it rose up then fattening when it reached its crown. Flaming, amber eyes punctured its widest part before the building peaked to a point, completing the dread structure.
It was a tower—the combinium's tower, and its blackness stained Kyrie, Valkyrie, and Barakdor.
And it was hunting for me.
I snapped my eyes away, pushing myself farther into the crack I occupied. I sought anonymity, immunity from that roving eye.
Vassal dumped a tarp over me, more than likely a futile gesture but one I welcomed, hugging its shade. A small spy hole gave me just a glimpse of the coast as the estuary finally swallowed us.
It was shades of brown and drab green—khaki water—coffee-colored mudflats belching above and tired-looking reeds bent by an inland breeze. Even the woods that lined the sad-looking coast showed little enthusiasm, hanging low, knotty roots clinging to sticky loam. Not even the sunset could brush this place to beauty.
Our captain barked and our boat tacked, and I lost sight of the bank, staring out at the sea again. I heard the sails drop, the anchor weighed, and we drifted to a halt, a small snap telling of the captain’s prowess.
They then got to the business of smuggling.
From nowhere, from the forest, out rowed a scurry of boats, cutting a fast pace, soon alongside. The lobster crates were loaded first, Vassal, Melinka, and I second, then the tea, and we powered back into the shades of the drab woodland.
We were rowed up a small tributary, unnaturally straight, parts clad with rotting wharfs. A few hundred yards in, we were told to get out, to follow a path away.
Valkyrie may be feudal, but its chivalry was long dead.
Vassal started to run. Melinka glanced at me then broke into a run herself. I followed. He soon turned off the path, twisting through the sodden forest in some random directions, until we came to a narrow cut in a rocky outcrop. He rested flat against one side, gasping his breaths back.
“Two minutes, then we go again. Word is out—they’ll be selling our souls by now.”
“So much for honor among thieves.”
“What isn’t honorable? They gave us ten minutes; it was all we could reasonably expect.”
I scoffed, “We should have cut their throats.”
“Why?” He held up a sheet of parchment. “We have a letter of introduction and a place to stay, though I would say that I have discharged my task once I get you to this place.”
Before we had a chance to answer, he kicked himself away from the ledge and was off and running. Melinka gave me a knowing look.
“He ain’t going anywhere.”
“Why not?” I asked. It was obvious we were in trouble, and it would only get worse the closer we got to Kyrie.
Melinka shrugged. “How else is he going to meet Mezzerain? The man who frees him from Ruse will never buy an ale again.”
It made sense.
The land dried as it rose away from the tidal estuary. Vassal took a diagonal route away from Castle Kyrie, but keeping it close too, until we were almost directly inland from it. Soon after, he raised his hand, crouched, and then waved us down.
“Road,” he hissed, though I had already spied it.
“Main road,” I muttered.
“Yep, and the exact route they expect us to be on.” He brought his fingers to his lips as the sharp rap of hooves on stone became audible.
I shrank farther back into the woods. If we came under the combinium's scrutiny now, we’d be done for. Raising my hood, I equipped a knife and held, tempering my breath, waiting.
Easy conversation flowed from the patrol, talk of ales to come, women to romance, villains to find. They passed close, too close, but the wood’s shadows did their job, covered us, kept us anonymous. Vassal waited, his hand raised again, then he dropped it and scurried across the cobbled road, diving into the black beyond.
He kept tight to the road, loping along like a stalking wolf, until the lights of Castle Kyrie came into view, far off, high up, and I heard the sea as it crashed against the castle’s rock pedestal as it lapped against its stony shore.
Vassal turned away up a small mud track speckled with flint that glinted in the moonlight. A small dwelling sat at its end, and opposite, another, though more a cairn with a sloped, wood hatch.
“Master of the ice,” Vassal mumbled, knocking softly on the dwelling’s sole door.
A curtain shifted, a nose poking through, a beady eye
right by it. One bolt, two bolts, then a third, and the door creaked open. “From?” a voice growled, with all the promise of a caged lion.
“I have a note.”
“From?”
Vassal glanced at us then back to the crack in the door. “Joss the Nine.”
Melinka feigned a light cough, just to let Vassal know she’d spotted the lie.
“Joss the Nine is dead, had his throat cut,” the shadowy stranger growled.
“Nevertheless.”
The door creaked open. “Hurry. Ruse has many heads, and many heads have many eyes.”
We slipped in, one after the other, into a dwelling of stone walls and timber-beamed ceilings. A lone, guttering candle threw its light to a sole table, a small upward staircase, an inglenook, and a resting chair. Over in one corner, an iron stove told of this place’s luxury.
“House rules,” the man said. “I don’t want names, not interested in stories. I know nothing, and you know less. For your coin, you get a meal, some wine, a room—of sorts—and I’ll smuggle you into the castle. Coin I’ve yet to see.”
“Price?” Melinka asked.
“Gold each, and one more for the inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience?”
“Only supposed to be two, yet the third seems to be stayin’.”
“Four gold is…”
“Is for the cause,” the man said firmly.
“I’ve got gold,” I said.
Melinka flashed me a look. “Not the right kind, dear.” She paid.
“Master of the ice, Ice Man, Old Frosty—them I’ll answer to, none other.” He got up, shuffling over to the stove, putting on a pair of gloves, and picking up some tongs. “If it’s crab stew you’re after, you’re in luck.”
Something about Iceman wasn’t right. His stoop seemed forced, and his clothes fitted too well. Master of Ice or not, his manner was higher. Vassal sat at the table twiddling his thumbs. Iceman carried an iron pot over to the table, its steam was mouthwatering, surprisingly so. He dealt some plates, spoons too, then returned to the stove and stabbed a loaf, dumping that on the table.