Call Of The Flame (Book 1) (2 page)

Kyric hadn’t thought of that.  Only a few kandars lay in his
purse; he had been planning to sleep under a hedge in Aeva.

So he agreed.  And when Constable Parfas had given him the
keys and had ridden away, Kyric found the jailer’s cot and fell asleep thinking
of roasted hens.

The hens turned out to be pigeons, but the meal was good and
enough for three men.  He kept calling to the madman to wake up and eat, but he
never stirred, and now Kyric stood at the door to the cell and watched Aiyan
where he lay on a straw pallet.  He hadn’t moved since they brought him in. 
His breathing was shallow.

The summer sun had set and Kyric took the lantern down from
its hook.  Don’t be an idiot, he told himself as he fumbled with the keys, he
might be faking sickness just for the chance to throttle you.  The only firearm
Parfas had left him was the blunderbuss Aiyan had taken, but Kyric had never
fired a gun and wasn’t even sure how to cock it properly.  Then he remembered
that the madman’s sword had been placed in a cabinet by the front door.

When he took the sword out and drew it, Kyric saw at once
that it was a work of art as well as a weapon.  The blade was heavy and forged
with strong clean lines, yet inscribed with delicate ancient glyphs and finely
polished, catching the lantern light and throwing it back upon itself.  The
hilt was no more than a simple steel guard and a handle wrapped in leather, as
with a sword one would take to battle.  Holding it, Kyric felt foolish and
unworthy, like the time in his youth when he sneaked into the temple and
handled the sacred dreamstone.  And look what
that
had done to him.

He shook his head.  It was only a sword.  But he returned it
to its scabbard and found a piece of firewood that would serve as a cudgel. 
Entering the cell cautiously, he held it ready, but there was no need.  And
when he brought the light close to the man’s face, he saw dark green veins
creeping up the side of his neck from under his collar.

Kyric wiped the remaining make-up away just to be sure of
Aiyan’s color.  He shook him and shouted, but it did no good, so he went to
find the town‘s doctor.  Not surprisingly, the doctor was away — gone to the games. 
After knocking at empty houses until his knuckles hurt, Kyric was at last
directed to a shack where an elderly midwife named Galadne lived.

Galadne was short and plump with tangled grey hair and a big
nose.  She simply nodded at his request, and they walked in silence to the jail,
she with a pronounced limp.

“That looks bad,” she said when she looked close at Aiyan. 
“Here, unlace his vest for me.”

Once they got his shirt off, she found a festering wound
beneath his armpit, but it was only the latest of a collection.  His torso lay
covered with scars.  He had been cut and stabbed and shot over a dozen times,
one of the scars running in a deep pinched seam from his navel to his collarbone.

As she examined the wound Kyric said, “He told me that he
had been poisoned.”

Galadne nodded, prying open one of his eyes and holding the
lamp high, “Aye, its poison to be sure.  Arccor’s Bane by the look of it.”

“Arccor is the Baskillian word for bear.”

“Some call it Bear’s Bane.  Grows in Baskillia,” she said,
searching through her bag of tinctures and ointments, “takes a skilled
alchemist to refine it down like this, deadly strong and sticky enough to cling
to a sword’s point.”

“Is there a cure?”

“It can be drawn out fairly easy, but I’m afraid some of it
has got into his brains.  He has a fever in his head.”  She looked down at his
scars.  “But I’ve a feeling this fellow has a way of pulling through.”

“They say he’s some sort of lunatic, supposed to be a cousin
of Senator Lekon, but I don’t know.”

She shrugged.  “Lunatic he may be, but anyone’s apt to rave
a little with that kind of fever.  Still, if he’s wanted by the Senator, the
like of you or me best not question it, else we’ll end up in this cell with
him.”

She made a poultice of herbs mixed with a foul-smelling
jelly and placed it over the wound.  Then she fished in her huge canvas bag,
more of a sack really, for a tobacco pipe.  Filling it with what looked like
dried lichens and crushed insects, she lit it with a taper, puffing it to life
and blowing clouds of smoke into Aiyan’s ear, all the while humming a weird
little tune.  The smell was like burning garbage.

“Now,” she said, “we have to wait a bit and see if it
takes.”

Kyric gave her the only chair in the room and sat himself on
the floor against the wall, the stones cool in the warmth of the summer night. 
Galadne took some unfinished embroidery out of her bag and stitched at it
absentmindedly. 

“Have you ever heard of a place called Esaiya?” he asked
her.

“You mean Castle Island?  Sure I have, but haven’t heard
that name for it since I was girl.”  She nodded toward the man in the cell. 
“You don’t think he’s one of
them
, do you?”

“One of who?”

“Some sort of religious sect, all men.  They call themselves
knights ’cause they once was an old-time fighting order, but they’re scholars
now, I hear.  Anyway, they all live together like monks in that old castle. 
You know the one I mean.”

He shook his head.

She looked at him more closely.  “You weren’t born in these
parts, were you?”

“No.”

“You’re from the Highland Lakes.”

“My mother always said that I was born in Sevdin.”

“Maybe so,” she said, never looking at her fingers as she
sewed, “but both your parents were from the Highland Lakes, weren’t they? 
That’s the only place you see black hair and blue eyes like yours.  Sevdin folk
are all brown-eyed.”

“I don’t know.  I never knew my father.”

They fell silent then, Galadne stitching deftly but lost in
thought.  Kyric dozed by fits and starts.  About midnight Galadne looked at the
prisoner’s wound.  The green veins had visibly receded.

“The poison is drawing out nicely,” she said.  “I’ll fix a
fresh poultice before I go home.  He should be able to rise and take food by
tomorrow evening.”

“I forgot,” said Kyric as he walked her to the door.  “How
much do I owe you?”

“Not to worry, I’ll get it from the constable.  If he wakes
in the morning give him water.  If he gets worse come and get me.”  She turned
and limped away

Kyric thought about dragging the cot out of the jailer’s
cell so he would be awakened should the madman stir, but only a minute after Galadne
left, Aiyan sat up and locked his estranged eyes upon Kyric, wanting to know
how he had come to be in a cell.  Kyric told him.

“Yes, of course,” Aiyan said, nodding slowly.  “I
understand.  It’s my fault.  I shouldn’t have taken you with me.  And I
shouldn’t have told you all that I did last night — I’ve just made it worse for
both of us.”  Suddenly he looked down at his own bare chest.  “I had a locket,
and a sword.”

“They’re safely put away,” Kyric said.

Aiyan slipped into his shirt and vest, peeling away the ridiculous
pantaloons to reveal a pair of common breeches underneath.  Without the
costume, makeup, and sword, he looked rather ordinary.  His face was the common
sort, the face of a blacksmith or a stone mason, with chestnut hair and a thin,
closely-cropped beard and moustache.  He wobbled to his feet and faced Kyric
through the iron bars.

“I know what you think of me — a criminal and a madman, but
you must believe me when I tell you that you are in grave danger.”

“So you told me last night.”

“But it’s far worse now.  I was so drugged by the Arccor’s Bane
I told you where I hid the rudders.  If you go now while you can he might not
come looking for you, but if Morae finds you here he’ll ask you questions.  And
believe me, before long you will tell him what you know.  Then, when he knows
where the rudders are hidden, he will kill us both so that no one knows they
have them.”

“What are rudders?”

“A book of nautical charts and observations.  Sea captains
use them to find their way across distant oceans.  But the one I took from
Senator Lekon is very special indeed.”

“The constable said that you had stolen a valuable book.” 

Aiyan almost smiled.  “Valuable?  That’s putting it mildly. 
What I took is nothing less than the holy quest of the merchant princes:  The
rudders to the Spice Islands themselves.  A book to make empires rise and
fall.  And a secret so dangerous that these men will commit any murder to
protect it.”

Kyric watched him closely as he spoke, looking for one of
the signs of the liar.  It was his mother’s legacy, his knowing the signs, for
she had skillfully told him every kind of lie that ever was, and by the age of
ten nobody could give him the lie.  Not that it did him any good.  It had only
made her final lie all the more painful.

But he didn’t see any of them with this man.  Still, a
deranged fellow would believe he was speaking the truth.

“So you’re not really Senator Lekon’s cousin?”

“Is that what they told you?” Aiyan said.  “Very clever of
them really.  They can’t afford a public hearing.  This way they can bundle me
off and torture me at their leisure.  I can hear it now:  ’Our poor mad cousin,
he knows not what he does.  We must take him home and put him away where he
will never harm anyone again.’”

Aiyan seemed calm and reasonable now, nothing like the night
before.  Kyric didn’t know what to think.  What if Aiyan was telling the truth
and Kyric had got himself involved in a power game of the ruling elite?

“Alright,” Kyric said, “tell me what is really happening. 
Tell me all of it — what are these rudders to you, and who are you working
for?”

“I’ll tell you as much as I can without compounding your
peril.”

“I thought it couldn’t get any worse than it is now.”

Gravely, Aiyan shook his head.  “No.  It can be worse.”

He sat down cross-legged on the floor like a storyteller. 
“Briefly then,” he said.  “A few years ago Lekon was an unknown merchant.  He’s
risen swiftly to political power on the wealth of the Baskillian spice trade.  This
alone is cause for suspicion.  The Baskillian Empire requires special licensing
before a Western merchant can deal with a spice trader, and Lekon received the
first new license issued in over a decade. 

“Now his spice galleon comes in a few weeks ago with a
record tonnage of cinnamon and instead of going into dry-dock for repairs, they
sail her up the coast and careen her on a private beach.  They even posted
guards to keep gawkers away, but I managed get a close look — her hull was
eaten up with shipworm.  Do you know what means?”

“No.”

“It means they didn’t go to Baskillia.  They’ve been sailing
in tropical waters — that’s the only way to get shipworm.  But more disturbing
than that, they brought back a new spice, something not known in the West since
before the Long Winter.”

Aiyan leaned forward expectantly.  Clearly this was supposed
to mean something.

“Do you see?  Lekon was not only given the location of
Cinnamon Island, he’s discovered one of the
lost
Spice Islands.  He’s
found a way to cross the line and return.”

“The line?”

“The equator,” said Aiyan.  “The line that divides the world
into north and south.  The line beyond which ships cannot steer by the stars. 
The two known Spice Islands lie above the line, but legend has it that seven
more lie much farther south, below the line.  So I had to know if Lekon was
simply an enterprising fellow with a brilliant captain in his service, or if he
was being used.

“I contrived to see him by posing as an independent trader. 
One of my masters arranged a letter of introduction from a captain in the South
Sea Trade Company, and I was able to secure an informal meeting at a
coffeehouse.  I offered the Senator yet another set of sought-after charts —
the location of Shark’s Bank and the black pearl beds — all for a healthy share
of the returns, of course.  The day before yesterday we concluded the deal at
his estate near the outskirts of Aeva.  After examining my charts in his study
he locked them in a heavy oak cabinet.  There was only one other book of
rudders in there, the one I wanted to get a look at.

“Then he placed the opportunity in my lap.  He invited me to
a party the next night there at the estate, a masquerade ball to celebrate the
beginning of the games.  I came costumed as Captain Bombasto — you know, from
the Commedia.”

“I’ve never seen the Commedia.”

Aiyan cocked his head in surprise.  “Where were you raised,
in a cave?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, Bombasto always has a big stuffed belly.  I cut a
slit into it from inside the jacket and carved out a place for the book.  The
jacket matched those pantaloons.  I was quite an eyesore.”

“That’s why you were wearing make-up,” Kyric said.

“Yes.  A mask narrows your field of vision and can slip at
the wrong moment.”

“Apparently you had a very wrong moment indeed.  Did they
catch you in the act?”

 Yes, but I had already slipped the rudders into my jacket. 
Morae nicked me as I went over the wall.  They pursued on horseback and caught
up with me near Karta, so I ducked into the ruins, forcing them to dismount. 
At one point they were all around me and the only way out was to descend the
cliff face behind the agora.  Even without the jacket I didn’t think I could
make it with the rudders, not in the dark, so I stuffed them both behind a
stone in a wall.  I climbed down, took to the woods, and you know the rest.”

“You didn’t say who you work for, who your masters are.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aiyan said.  “What matters is that you
realize I’m not Senator Lekon’s insane cousin, and that you are embroiled in a
plot that will surely take your life if you do not get away.  Please, take your
things and go.  Go at once.”

“I suppose you want me to free you before I take my leave,”
said Kyric with just a bit of a sneer.

“Well,” Aiyan said, “they might not hunt you down if you let
me go, but I don’t think you should take the chance.”