“Not the Nordra. The Andeis Sea. Straight to the Murkle Mountains.”
Zared looked up, wondering if hope did still exist.
DareWing drew in a sharp breath. “How long to get a force to the Murkle Mountains from Nordmuth?” the Strike Leader asked.
“Six days.”
Theod stared at Goldman, thinking it would take him at least three weeks, if not four, to ride that far north.
“When can those ships be ready to sail?” he asked.
“We’ve had them ready for weeks, sir Duke,” Goldman said. “I owed it to the Acharites to have some form of escape at hand.”
Zared winced. “If you find the twenty thousand,” he said, “you could sail many of them straight south for Coroleas. Carlon certainly cannot hold that many, and I profess myself rather sick of waiting for Drago’s Sanctuary to emerge from the grey sorceries that hang about us. Goldman, how many could your fleet hold?”
“Twenty thousand, sire.”
Everyone in the room relaxed. The Andeis would be horribly treacherous this time of year, and normally would never be considered, but better the threat of a sea storm than the maddening dangers of the plains of Tencendor.
Zared rose. “Good, Master Goldman. Again Achar owes you its thanks. Theod. I wish you every last remaining speck of luck in this land of ours.”
Theod nodded, took Zared’s hand, then turned for the door.
“Theod.” Zared’s soft voice halted him. “Theod, I hope you find Gwendylyr and your two boys safe and well.”
Theod nodded again, and then he, DareWing and Goldman were gone, and Zared sank down into his chair.
WolfStar sat in pitch blackness in an ancient conduit deep within the waterways. His fingers idly stroked the warm skin of the girl child in his lap, his wings drooped behind him, his eyes stared unfocused into the dark.
His thoughts consumed him.
Where were the Demons now? Well on their way to the Lake of Life, no doubt, but not close enough for WolfStar’s liking. He’d arrived at this site close to the chambers beneath the Lake many days ago—and now he must needs wait, wait, wait for the Demons to take their own sweet time traversing the plains above.
More than anything WolfStar itched to throw the girl into the next power trap and infuse her body with breath and another spurt of growth, but he couldn’t find the ancient site without the Demons to show the way.
And so now here he must linger. And hope that he could escape the Demons’ attention at the Lake of Life as easily as he had at Cauldron Lake.
WolfStar’s fingers continued to stroke the warmth of the child. Back and forth, back and forth, but driven by impatience now, rather than love.
In WolfStar’s constantly shifting, plotting mind, Niah had become a tool rather than an object of love or even of desire.
His eyes sharpened, and he grinned into the darkness.
34
Poor, Useless Fool
Drago was drowsing, lulled by the rhythmic swaying of Belaguez’s gait, when the shadow swept over his face. His eyes jerked open instantly, and he drew his breath sharply in horror.
His slid a hand down to where Faraday’s hands were clasped loosely about his waist.
She was heavy against his back, fully asleep, and unaware of the danger.
“Faraday!” he whispered fiercely.
She stirred.
“Faraday…”
“Mmm?”
“Whatever happens next, take my lead. Do you hear me? Take my lead!”
“But—”
“Where’s the lizard?”
“Against my back. Why?”
“Make sure your cloak is covering him, and pray to the gods he doesn’t move!”
“But—”
Faraday broke off as she saw what was circling down from the sky. “Oh, dear gods!” she whispered.
Drago’s hand tightened briefly about hers. “Just follow my lead, Faraday, please.”
There was no time to say more. Belaguez sighed and halted, stopped by the dozen or so Hawkchilds now crouched in a semi-circle across the snow-swept path.
Belaguez’s head drooped, his eyes closed, and he was asleep within a heartbeat.
The central Hawkchild, a small, black-eyed boy, took several hops forward and spoke with whispery accusation. “You were dead. We ate of your flesh. Why do you now walk, Drago?”
Drago gave a high-pitched giggle, as if nervous—which, in truth, was a reaction he did not have to feign. “I don’t know…I felt the…Questors…tear me apart, use me for the leap…and then I woke up in the Star Gate Chamber.”
The Hawkchild tilted his head to one side, and regarded Drago silently. Drago suddenly realised that everything it saw and heard was being relayed directly back to the Demons.
“You were a sack of bones,” it said, and its head tilted back the other way.
Drago arranged his face into a sullen expression. “They said they would give me back my Icarii power, and they didn’t.”
The semi-circle of Hawkchilds edged closer, whispering, their heads tilting as one, first to this side, and then to that.
Several of them were flexing their hands at the tips of their wings.
“Who is that with you?” one asked.
“This?” Drago shrugged disinterestedly. “A woman. She keeps me warm at night. I have not thought to ask her name.”
He sighed. “She is not StarLaughter, but at least she is not dead.”
“You wander unsheltered through the barren plains, Drago. How is it that you keep your minds?”
“I have no idea how I have kept my mind. As for her, well, she lost hers a hundred leagues to the south. I mean, look at her!”
The Hawkchilds peered closely at Faraday’s face.
It was slack-jawed and vacant. A thin drool of saliva hung from lower lip to chin. Her eyes were closed. Not even Faraday could have hidden either the fear or the intelligence in them.
One of the Hawkchilds stepped closer and lifted one of its wings. The fingers of the hand at its tip ran down Faraday’s face. One of the hardest things Faraday had ever had to do in her life, as hard as keeping her sanity while wrapped in Gorgrael’s talons, was to keep her face slack and relaxed at that moment.
“Do you want her?” Drago asked. “She’s useful enough at night, but a bother to feed and keep moderately clean.”
The Hawkchild lifted its wing and stroked Faraday’s face again. Its head tilted curiously to one side, and a pink tongue glistened momentarily in its beak.
“You can have her if you want,” Drago said, “although I’d have the bother of finding another one.”
The Hawkchild switched its gaze to him, and it suddenly snarled. “You should be dead.”
“Don’t kill me!” Drago gibbered. “Don’t kill me!”
The Hawkchild drew back its wings, and its head began a long, low sweeping movement…back and forth…back and forth…as if seeking the best spot to attack first.
The others drew closer until Belaguez—still contentedly asleep—was completely ringed by rustling, whispering black-feathered Hawkchilds.
“Take her!” Drago screamed, and grabbed Faraday’s arm as if he meant to hurl her from the horse. “Take her, but not me.” The Hawkchilds drew closer.
“Take her! Take her! Please, please don’t kill me!”
“The poor, useless fool,” StarLaughter said. “Perhaps we should kill him and have done with it. Although…”
“Although?” Sheol said, arching an eyebrow at her.
“It might be fun to play with him a little,” StarLaughter said, and grinned. “And her.”
“I don’t know that we should—” Rox began, and then every one of the Demons swivelled south-west and snarled.
“The magicians!” Barzula cried. “I can feel them.”
StarLaughter watched her companions, puzzled…and then they thought to share with her what they saw and felt. Far away, somewhere just south of the Western Ranges, stood two white-clad figures stari
ng north-east towards the Demons.
Power radiated off them in concentric ripples.
“Destroy them!” Sheol cried, and she was not meaning Faraday and Drago.
Drago didn’t know what else he could do. He’d hoped to fool the Hawkchilds, and the Demons, into just letting himself and Faraday go (what else could he do?) with his act, but it wasn’t working.
The Hawkchilds were drawing their net about the horse, their beaks snapping, their hands reaching, and then, just as Drago thought he’d have to try and defend them both with his staff…they leapt into the air, circled once, then sped south.
As they disappeared, he relaxed. “Faraday?”
“What did you mean,” she hissed, “by asking, ‘Do you want her’? What would you have done if they’d said, ‘Why, yes, thank you’?”
“Faraday,” he said, “I honestly have no idea.”
When the Hawkchilds, by dint of effort, and a good deal of power lent them by the Demons, arrived at the spot where the magicians had spied their way north-east, all they found was a herd of deranged cattle with two white donkeys running in their midst.
Hissing with disappointment, the Hawkchilds veered east, and then further south, trying to find the elusive magicians.
They, as the Demons, had totally forgotten about poor, useless Drago and his equally useless woman.
35
Andeis Voyagers
The voyage north through the Andeis Sea was frightful beyond anything Theod had ever experienced. True, as a youth he’d sailed the Azle River and the upper reaches of Murkle Bay during the summer calm, but that now seemed an experience of another world, and could hardly equip him for this monstrous voyage.
The Andeis Sea was treacherous in the best of seasons, and in the late winter was…beyond the furthest reaches of any nurse’s nightmarish midnight tale.
The forty merchantmen sailed north in two fleets of twenty vessels each, separated by more than a half-day’s sailing. Theod, his two thousand, their horses, and the Strike Force sailed in the leading fleet, and spent the time rolling about the three-quarters empty holds of the ships, hanging on to whatever they could, cursing every god, fish and lord of the wind that they could remember.
The merchantmen were built to hold as much cargo as they could, not provide smooth sailing for landlubber tastes. They were great heavy vessels with bellies built rounder than the most gravid whale, and with little in their holds to stabilise them they rolled from side to side like drunken parrots. Their motion was worsened by the fact they were sailing due north, and the crews had to tack across the prevailing northerly and norwesterly winds.
“It will be kinder sailing south,” Goldman said, clinging to the side of his bunk but actually looking reasonably at ease. He had spent much of his youth sailing these waters as an apprentice whaler, until he’d decided his true skills lay in the courteous but deadly cut-and-thrust of trading diplomacy. “The wind will be directly behind us then.”
Theod grunted, and eyed the bucket just beyond the end of his bunk. It was sliding about the floor, to and fro, to and fro, and its grating across the floorboards made Theod think of the horrible moaning that gripped Gwendylyr during childbirth.
His stomach cramped and then roiled violently, and Theod did not begrudge his wife a single moan. He lunged for the bucket and retched into it, his fair hair hanging in damp strings over his face.
Gods!
He sat for a few minutes until he thought his stomach had finally emptied itself of everything he’d eaten over the past six weeks, then pushed it away and struggled back to his bunk, wiping his mouth.
“I wish I could get some fresh air,” he muttered.
Goldman glanced up at the prism set into the deck above them. “Nay, sir Duke. ’Tis still dark night. Terror clings to every mast and railing, and slides down the sails, seeking entrance below decks.”
Theod lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes, pretending he might be able to sleep. He had hoped—they had all hoped—that the Demons’ influence might not extend over the sea, but although the grey hazes seemed slightly diluted, they were still powerful enough to drag any caught in them deep into the bowels of madness. Everyone had to spend the Demonic Hours trapped below deck. Theod had worried that the ships might strike rocks, or whales, or whatever sea monsters lurked beneath the rolling grey waves, but the master of the ship, Hervitius, had said the ships’ helms were roped and locked onto course, and there wasn’t much the ships could strike in this weather.
“All monsters will have dived deep,” Hervitius had soothed the previous afternoon, “for they dislike the slap of the rolling waves as much as we.”
If the sea monsters couldn’t stand it, thought Theod, wishing sleep would come steal him away from this horror, then how can we cope with it?
“Sir Duke?”
Theod repressed a sigh and opened his eyes.
DareWing had entered, and was standing as easily on the rolling deck as if he stood in the sunlit audience chamber of a Queen’s palace.
“Gods, DareWing,” Theod whispered. “How do you manage?”
DareWing raised a black eyebrow in feigned surprise, although in truth he was rather enjoying the predicament of the majority of Acharites. Once the Icarii had contemptuously referred to them as Groundwalkers. Now DareWing wondered, although not unkindly, if they should resurrect that as Waveretchers.
“This?” DareWing said, and looked about the cabin as if it were indeed a pleasant audience chamber in some pastel, scented palace. “’Tis nothing compared to the turbulence of a summer thunder thermal.”
Theod tried to glare at the Strike Leader, but managed only a slight frown.
Holding his breath against the demands of his stomach to retch yet again, he rolled slowly over and sat up.
“What is it?”
“Dawn lights the eastern horizon. Another hour, and we can emerge from this wooden coffin.”
“Good.” Theod managed to stand up, clinging white-knuckled to the bunk support. “Does Hervitius have any idea where we are?”
DareWing nodded, and generously placed a hand under Theod’s elbow. “The first light reveals the coastline, some two leagues to the east. Peaks…mountains.”
Theod’s face brightened. “The Murkle Mountains?”
“Aye,” DareWing said. “We should be in the Bay by this afternoon.”
“The gods be praised!” Goldman said, standing up himself. He slapped his belly. “Has breakfast been laid on?”
DareWing looked disgusted. “Sailor food, Goldman. Fried whale blubber. In oil. With cold salted herring.”
Theod groaned, bent over, and surrendered to the howling of his stomach.
By noon the ships had tacked into the relative calm of Murkle Bay. The waters were clearer now than they had been for generations. With the destruction along the lower reaches of the Azle during the battle between Timozel’s and Axis’ forces, the tanneries that had once poured their thick pollutants into the bay had disappeared, and neither Theod nor Zared had wanted to rebuild them. During summer, Murkle Bay had become something of a summer retreat for many of the wealthier Tencendorians, and several small houses had been built along its shores.
The mountains themselves rose tall, grim and silent about half a league inland from the gritty beach. Theod had never been able to understand the attraction Murkle Bay had for the rich and idle, but supposed a summer weekend spent here constituted the closest many of them would ever come to adventure.
Well, now he supposed that a good many of them were lining the mines of the mountains, embroiled in an adventure they would never have willingly paid for in a thousand lifetimes.
“The beaches are deserted,” DareWing muttered by Theod’s side, his eyesight far keener than that of the Acharite.
Theod nodded, keeping his own eyes slitted against the cold, salty wind. “If they had scouts posted, and if they had spotted us, then it is doubtful that any would actually want to leave the safety of the mines.”
> He squinted at the leaden sky, searching out the brightness of the sun behind its layered greyness. “We have but an hour to go before mid—”
The ship suddenly keeled over to starboard, and Theod slipped and would have fallen had not DareWing, half in the air, grabbed him.
“What’s wrong?” Theod said, echoing a half-dozen shouts behind him from crew and soldiers alike.
The ship lurched again, and this time it felt as if it were being bodily lifted out of the waves. Theod clung to the deck railing, and peered over the side. They were being lifted out of the waters! He could see exposed barnacles on timbers normally hidden, and below them…below them…something glistening grey and purple.
Something scaly.
“DareWing,” Theod shouted, “get the Strike Force into the air!”
DareWing was already airborne and shouting orders himself.
Theod, struggling on the damp decks, managed to look back to the other ships.
At least a third of them were in a similar predicament to his vessel, rolling alarmingly on the backs of…of some kind of sea creatures, and raised at least the height of a man, perhaps two, out of the waters.
On all of the ships men scurried, seizing weapons, some tying themselves to railings and masts, while members of the Strike Force rose into the air, fitting arrows to their bows.
Theod looked back along the deck of his own vessel. “Hervitius,” he yelled at the master, clinging grimly to the useless helm.
Hervitius shook his head. I don’t know what it is!
Theod looked about. “Goldman!”
The Master of the Guilds, for once pale-faced, struggled along the deck towards him.
“No-one knows what they are, Theod,” he gasped, forgetting all formalities amid his fear. “I can’t tell if—”
The ship lurched again, and threatened to founder completely. Theod glanced over the side—sweet gods, they had been raised more than the height of a house above the waters!—and then lunged for a pike from a rack attached to the forward mast.
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