Dark Magic (15 page)

“As well we have a pilot,” Katya murmured. “Unguided, we might well have foundered.”

Her observation was confirmed by an abrupt quickening of the wind. It tattered the obscuring grey curtain,
admitting sufficient burgeoning light that momentary glimpses of the headland they navigated were revealed, the level of the turned tide exposing jagged rocks.

“As well you found a remedy for my seasickness,” Bracht responded, clutching at a stay as the warboat heeled hard over.

Calandryll in turn found a handhold, seeing in dreamlike snatches that they emerged from the cleft holding Vishat’yi into the main channel of the Yst, tide and wind both strengthening, the oarsmen working harder to hold their course. The fog was banked out here, hanging in great clouds at some points, riven in others by the draft. Rock walls loomed close to starboard, what little sky was visible above them brightening further with the approach of dawn. From ahead he heard the sullen thunder of the open sea, magnified by the channel, as if some great beast lurked there, awaiting their arrival.

Then, ghostly, he thought he saw a shape off the port bow, a second close by. He was uncertain—in such poor light, with the fog still coiling and clouding in smoky billows, it was difficult to be sure. He turned to his companions, gesturing.

“Do my eyes play tricks? Or does something lie ahead?”

Katya and Bracht looked to where he pointed. The Kern, whose sight was perhaps the keenest, shook his head. “I see nothing.” Then, as the wind rolled back the curtaining mist a moment: “No—wait! Is that a boat?”

“Best alert the pilot,” Katya said, and sprang from the foredeck to the central aisle, striding surefooted to the stern.

“Fishermen?” Calandryll wondered as the brume shifted again, obscuring the shapes. “Or do the rebels come? Does Sathoman attack Vishat’yi?”

“That was no warboat,” Bracht grunted.

The wind contrived to skirl then, twisting back on itself so that the fog performed an ethereal dance and
cleared awhile, and with its parting Calandryll saw more clearly that a pair of lean, low cutters rode the tide to port.

“There’s more,” Bracht snapped.

Calandryll followed the freesword’s outflung arm, seeing three similar craft to starboard. “Nor are they fishing boats,” he muttered.

“Does Sathoman mount a raid?” asked Bracht. “Look to sneak in?”

“With dawn approaching and the tide against them?” Calandryll shook his head. “It seems, rather, that they wait.”

Bracht braced himself against the warboat’s pitching, right hand fastening on the hilt of his falchion.

“Neither corsair vessels. Whose then? And do they wait for us?”

Calandryll felt apprehension grow as he gauged the numbers each boat might carry. Their masts were lowered and they rode close to the waterline, rakish, the dim light rendering assessment difficult. It seemed to him that they mounted six, perhaps eight, oars to a side, with more men clustered between the thwarts.

“I think there’s no other craft abroad.”

Bracht’s voice was grim; Calandryll loosened his sword.

“The pilot says likely they’re returning fisherfolk.”

Both men spun round as Katya rejoined them. Bracht grunted, “Ahrd knows, I’m no mariner, but I doubt such craft belong to fish catchers.”

From the stern, Tekkan called an order: the warboat slowed.

“No!” Calandryll shouted, suddenly aware that he could see the stern. “Faster! Run them down!”

Katya stared at the cutters. Then echoed Calandryll’s warning in her own language. The oarsmen faltered, their stroke confused by the countermanding shouts. There was a flurry of desperate activity as the Vanu archers sought their bows, wrapped in oilskins against the penetrating damp.
Had they been ready the cutters would have stood little chance: the warboat rode higher, her bulk easily capable of ramming and sinking any one of the smaller vessels, while her archers might have picked off the crews before they drew close.

But fog and time were against them: the cutters were close now and no longer held station but drove forward, converging like a wolf pack as the warboat wallowed, indecisive.

“They attack!” Bracht yelled. “Ahrd curse them!”

Calandryll saw men all wrapped in concealing grey, cloth shrouding their faces so that only the eyes showed, crowding the boats. He risked a glance stern-ward, in time to see Kalim ek’Barre draw a cudgel from beneath his sheepskin and swing the club at Tekkan’s head. The boatmaster staggered, still holding his tiller with one hand, the other raised against the second blow. He fell at that, slumping to the deck, the Vanu boat heeling over as his weight turned the rudder.

Then the cutters were alongside and the grey-clad figures were swarming over the sweeps with simian agility, surprise and weight of numbers in their favor. Calandryll realized the straightsword was in his hand; heard Bracht shout, “Back to back! Hold them off!”

The Kern’s falchion flickered like a serpent’s tongue toward the hooded head the showed above the forecastle and the attacker gasped, grey painted with red as he fell down between the warboat and a cutter. Calandryll slashed at another, driving him back; saw Katya carve a bloody swath across a chest. He feinted as three masked shapes came close, turning his blade to hack viciously against an arm, and felt the steel meet mail beneath the concealing sleeve. He kicked at the man and swung the straightsword round, over another’s belly. This one wore no armor beneath his tunic and Calandryll experienced a savage satisfaction as the man screamed, his cry rising shrill above the clamor.

It seemed the warboat was overrun: the masked
men disgorged from the cutters with such speed that few among the peaceful Vanu folk had time to reach their weapons. They fell beneath the onslaught, victims of ek’Barre’s betrayal, and Calandryll mouthed a furious curse, determined that if he was to die now he would sell himself dear.

He was prepared for that; not for the realization that none among the raiders carried blades. There were no swords, nor knives nor cutlasses, in their hands. Instead, they carried such weapons as might disable or stun without killing: cudgels and flails, metal-shod staves, mail gloves. And nets, he saw, in the instant a fine web rose before his startled eyes and dropped to entangle him.

There was not enough space to escape it. It fell upon his head and shoulders, trapping him, dragging down his sword arm. At his back, he heard Bracht cry out, the Kern’s weight landing against him as the net drew them together. Katya, too, was caught; all of them like fish hauled in by a skein. He lost his balance, his comrades falling with him to the deck.

And a flash of pain exploded in his skull, its brilliance like the rising sun, followed on the instant by overwhelming darkness.

H
IS
first instinct was to groan at the throbbing of his head, his second to vomit. It was irresistible and he felt bile rise, turning his face to disgorge the contents of his stomach into a pool of brackish water. His belly emptied, he sought to wipe his mouth and found he could not: his hands were lashed securely behind his back, cords dragging elbows achingly tight, his wrists held by a loop around his waist. Likewise his legs were fastened at knees and ankles, bent by the short cord linked to the engirdling rope: all movement save that of his head was denied him. He opened his eyes on darkness and through the stink of his own sickness smelled oily canvas. Panic gripped him and he struggled to sit up, fresh needles driving through his
skull as it struck wood. He cried out and on his lips and tongue tasted tar. He forced the panic away, fighting paranoia to tell himself he lived still and therefore might still hope, ordering his thoughts to a semblance of calm. It was hard-won and harder held, but through the involuntary trembling of his pinioned limbs and the dreadful aching of his head he assessed his situation. He was tied beneath a canvas, supine in a pool of salty water; wood surrounded him and it rocked with the undulating rhythm of a moving boat. Concentrating, he heard the steady splash of oars sweeping water, the alternating cadence of waves on prow. So: the cutters had come out of the fog in marine ambush; Kalim ek’Barre had downed Tekkan; grey-shrouded figures had attacked; held him now in a boat.

Hope dissolved like ice tossed in fire as certainty dawned: they were Chaipaku!

His stomach churned afresh, filled with new and awful dread: they could be only Chaipaku. Had he not already voided his belly, he would have spewed again; as it was, he began to shiver, his teeth rattling like the tiny finger-cymbals dancing girls employed. He was taken by the Chaipaku!

Worse, he was taken alive. They had attacked without intent to kill—why? Answer followed question as lightning links with thunder: because they planned no swift death at sword’s point, but something slower; something doubtless drawn out, long and agonizing.

He tasted blood as his chattering teeth met about the tip of his tongue and a numbing bitterness joined his dread. Where was the power Menelian had claimed to see in him? Where was that occult talent that had driven Katya back, turned the canoes of Gash, aided him before against the Brotherhood? Unleashed only by Rhythamun’s stone, it seemed, for it had failed him now—left him helpless. He laughed, close to hysteria, the sound sour as the taste in his mouth, the filth in which he lay. Power? There was
no power in him, no talent save that of running blindly into danger. He spat blood and bile, terror and resentment fading as hope leeched out, replaced by numbing enervation. The end was settled now: he would meet whatever hideous fate the assassins had planned for him and Rhythamun would go on to raise the Mad God unhindered. Thanks to his brother’s blind ambition Tharn would once more walk the world; thanks to Tobias all that men deemed civilized would be thrown down into chaos, trampled under the heel of an insane god. It was almost—obscenely—amusing that it should end this way, the fate of the world decided by his brother’s pointless fear.

His laughter choked off. Had his bonds allowed, he might have curled in a fetal ball; as it was, he closed his eyes, weary now, and gave himself up to despair and a kind of sleep.

How long it lasted he could not tell, for when next he opened his eyes the boat still rocked beneath him, the oars still swept and the waves still splashed, though beneath the edges of the canvas shroud he discerned faint light, and it seemed the tempo of the water had changed. He groaned, for a little while seeking to immerse himself once more in the refuge of oblivion; but that was denied him and for want of occupation other than contemplation of his fate, he sought to define what he could about his immediate circumstances.

He thought then of Bracht and Katya, presumably in similar condition, though whether with him in this cutter, or held in others, he could not know; only that neither had escaped the net. And Tekkan—the Vanu folk on the warboat and the vessel itself—what of them? The traitorous ek’Barre had clubbed the helmsman down, not slain him; at least not as best Calandryll could tell. Nor were the cutters of a size to hold all the crew—so, did they sail free? It seemed likely, for surely the Brotherhood of Assassins had neither commission nor quarrel with them, only with him—on Tobias’s contracting—and with his comrades
for the slaying of Mehemmed, Xanthese, and the rest. He wondered what the Vanu folk would do. Return to Vishat’yi, perhaps, to seek help of Menelian; or not, for fear of seizure when word came down from Nhur-jabal. And did they, could Menelian aid them now? It seemed unlikely: more probable that Tekkan would sail on, to Aldarin or back to Vanu. Perhaps the holy men of that unknown land would send out some other quester, but in time to deny Rhythamun his victory? What time was left?

He pushed those thoughts aside, concentrating on physical matters. The canvas beneath which he rested was not tied down; by shifting wormlike he was able to raise an edge enough that sunlight and fresher, mightily welcome, air intruded. Close to his face he saw felt boots, presumably those of an oarsman, and from the different rhythm of the craft on the water he guessed they traveled upstream, along the flow of the Yst. Past Vishat’yi, then, to some place farther inland.

The sunlight was strong enough to suggest the day was well advanced. Likely, therefore, they had slipped past the city in the concealing fog and now toiled up-river to . . . With great reluctance he made himself review all he had read of the Chaipaku, that once they had been dissident worshippers of Burash, a sect deplored for their bloody sacrifices, schism isolating them from the orthodox church. Still they maintained temples—he remembered mention of that in Sarnium, or Medith, no longer sure which historian was the more detailed—and in those temples—this with horrible certainty—they retained the practice of human sacrifice. He clenched his teeth as they threatened to clatter anew: death at sword’s point he could face—had faced!—but to think that he should go bound, helpless, into Dera’s arms was another thing entirely. Nor, it came to him, could he be certain of finding the goddess. Did the Chaipaku sacrifice him to Burash, would he be taken by that god? Or wander for eternity in limbo, claimed by none? He steeled himself against such theological doubts—of more immediate
relevance was his physical fate, and all he could do toward preparation for passage from this world to the next was hope that he should be claimed by his own goddess. He whispered a near-forgotten prayer and sought to nudge the canvas higher.

A curse greeted his effort, and a boot that might have shattered teeth had the user not been more intent on his oarwork. As it was, the boot pressed down on the canvas, sealing him again, locking him back in the reeking darkness. He cursed in turn, but made no further attempt to shift the oily cover.

Slow time passed before he felt the cutter change direction, water slapping louder now against the flanks than the bow. Then the craft juddered and he heard the grating of planks on gravel, shouts, and the splashing of feet in water. He was rocked as the boat was hauled ashore, and then the canvas was thrown back and he was hauled roughly from the bilge, dragged unceremoniously to a narrow strand of dark yellow sand, and let fall. Boots went by his face, sinking in the grit, each footstep filling swiftly with water, the inundation and the shells that littered the place suggestive of a tidal cove. He guessed they were not overly far from the sea and lifted his head, looking around.