Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) (44 page)

Gisella took Stormheart’s reins.
“I’ll watch the horses with Qaliah. Leaving her out here alone doesn’t seem
safe.”

“I can handle myself.” The
fiendling grabbed the reins from Gisella, but the human woman refused to
relinquish her grip.

“Indeed you can, but we don’t
have time to deal with magistrates and misunderstandings. There’s safety in
numbers here.”

Pancras pulled his hammer off his
saddle. “I’ll be fast.”

The harbormaster’s office sat
perched atop a staircase that zig-zagged up the center of the warehouse. The
harbormaster himself was a grey-furred minotaur with upswept, black-flecked,
tawny horns. He sat behind a stained, cracked desk and wiped a glistening nose
on his sleeve as Pancras entered.

“Looking for work? That’s the
line outside. Got a complaint? Not my problem.” His voice was as salty as the
air.

“Seeking a ship to take us and
our horses to Vlorey, as a matter of fact. Myself, a human, and a fiendling.”
He shook his money pouch. “A good, comfortable ship.”

The harbormaster reached under
desk to scratch himself. “There aren’t any ships for just passengers. What can
you do?”

“I’m a wizard and a Bonelord of
Aita.” Pancras laid his maul on the desk so the relief skull faced up, visible
to the harbormaster. “My companions can fight with blades, maybe bows.”

Wiping his nose again, the
harbormaster sniffed. “Wizard, huh? Well, that’s not useless.” He grunted,
pushed himself away from the desk, and clomped over to a shelf in front of the
window that overlooked the docks.

“Had an elf mystic come through
here a few months back. He could talk to trees and sing to birds. Wanted to
hire on a ship to see the sea.” The harbormaster flipped open one of the books
sitting on the shelf and ran his finger across the lines.

“Here she is: the
Maiden of
the High Seas
. Selene’s Pier up at the north end of the harbor.” The harbormaster
pointed out the window to a ship mostly obscured by warehouses. “The captain’s
a Watchman called Eingvar Salt-Wind.”

“Thank you, Harbormaster.”

The minotaur grunted and flipped
shut his book. He stood and stared out the window, offering nothing further.
Pancras descended the stairs and found Gisella and Qaliah waiting with the
horses across the street, ignoring the catcalls and off-color comments the
sailors in line made about them.

“Found a ship. The
Maiden of
the High Seas
at Selene’s Pier at the north end.”

Qaliah regarded Pancras with wide
eyes. “That was easier than I expected.”

Pancras took Stormheart’s reins
from Gisella. “It’s a possibility. We haven’t booked passage yet.”

With a bit of Dolios’s luck and a
few coins, perhaps we can depart this place sooner, rather than later.
“Have
you heard of Eingvar Salt-Wind?”

“Who’s that?” Gisella shook her
head.

“The captain. He’s a Watchman.”

“Many people live in the Four
Watches. I know only a handful. Many of my people on the coasts have ships.”

“Yes, of course. I hoped,
perhaps, you’d heard of him by reputation. No matter.” As they reached the road
that ran along the piers, Pancras noticed each pier was named for a god and
featured a statue of that god at the street corner. The sun hung low on the
horizon by the time they made their way with three horses across the Docks
District to Selene’s Pier.

The
Maiden of the High Seas
bobbed up and down as sailors carried cargo up her gangplanks. A three-masted
sailing vessel, she was fit for a voyage from the south to the northern ports
of Vlorey and beyond. The captain stood on her poop deck and shouted orders to
the rabble hustling about on the main deck. He was a stout man with a wild mane
of blonde hair and a braided beard, which hung down to his chest.

Pancras stopped one of the
sailors loading cargo and inquired how they could book their passage. The
sailor pointed to a wiry man standing at the top of the gangplank.

“The quartermaster handles that.”
The sailor returned to his work as Pancras handed his reins to Qaliah. Gisella
did the same and together they walked up the gangplank. It creaked and bowed
under their weight.

The quartermaster pointed at them
when they neared the top. “Here now! What’s this about?”

“We’re looking to buy passage.”
Pancras stopped at the top of the plank. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Yes, yes. Get out of the way.”
The quartermaster waved them on board. Pancras grabbed the rail to steady
himself as the deck heaved under a wave.

“Now then, we’re not going to
Vlorey. Nearest we go is Port-of-Dogs. It’s about a week overland to Vlorey
from there.”

“I don’t understand. Isn’t Vlorey
a port?” Gisella clung to the rigging to maintain her balance. “The
harbormaster said this ship goes to Vlorey.”

“Yeah, but to make it to Vlorey,
we got to sail up and around Verdant Point and back down the length of it.” The
quartermaster raised his eyebrows. His tone and cadence was similar to that of
a parent speaking to a willful child. “Takes near a month sailing against the
wind. It’s much faster for all to unload at Port-of-Dogs. Only ships from the
Elven Empire or from the west sail into the Bay of Vlorey.”

“Fine then. There are three of us
and our horses.” Pancras gestured down the gangplank at Qaliah.

The quartermaster pursed his
lips. “Livestock is extra. If the womenfolk want privacy, they’ll have to
negotiate with one of the officers for their cabin. One of the women officers
might let them stay with her, but it’s up to you to find a berth.”

He reached over and squeezed
Pancras’s arm. “Minotaurs have strong backs. What work do you do?” He nodded at
Gisella. “And you? The other woman?”

Pancras rubbed his arm where the
quartermaster touched him. The man’s grip was like an iron vise. “I’m Bonelord
of Aita and a wizard.”

“Yeah?” The quartermaster raised
his eyebrows. “Can you control the winds?”

“No.” Pancras shook his head. One
downside of spending most of his life practicing necromancy was that he had
little opportunity to study any sort of elemental magic.

“What about you, girly?”

Gisella pursed her lips. “I am a
slayer of the Arcane University.”

“She fights,” Pancras added in
reply to the quartermaster’s blank stare. “So does the fiendling.”

The quartermaster peered over the
rail at Qaliah and the horses. He grunted. “A hundred and fifty crowns, for the
lot of you. Sleep where you find space, unless you can negotiate something
better and”—he punctuated his statement by poking Pancras in the chest—“expect
to work. This ain’t a pleasure cruise.”

Pancras and Gisella returned to
the dock where Qaliah waited for them. They explained the arrangement to her.

“That seems expensive.” The
fiendling shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted as she regarded the
heaving ship. The seas became rougher as the tides rose and storm clouds moved
in.

“No more than I expected.”
Pancras glanced into his money pouch. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I might be
able to help with your negotiations for private quarters. How are your funds?”

“Not enough for private
quarters.” Qaliah bit her lip and glanced at Gisella. “Blondie might want to
pony up for some privacy though.”

Gisella frowned. “I wish you’d
stop calling me that.”

“Fine.”

They pooled their coin, and
Pancras returned to the quartermaster. He paid the man and listened as he
instructed him on where to take their horses to be loaded. The minotaur
returned to his companions. Within the hour, they were aboard the
Maiden
,
peering over the rails on the forecastle.

He was aware it was likely the
last time he’d step foot on dry land for several months. Pancras turned to
glance at Cliffport. The sailors scurried over the
Maiden
’s decks like
insects, responding to overlapping, shouted instructions from the deck officers
and prepared the ship for launch.

From his vantage point on deck,
Pancras hardly noticed a rise in the tide on the Docks District. The district
was built to withstand the highest tides of a double full moon. At present, the
King waxed while the Queen waned. Neither was visible through the heavy, grey
clouds that moved in over the last few hours.

Enchanted lanterns illuminated
the sea in front of the
Maiden
as she cleared her moorings and navigated
the harbor. The buildings and the land shrank into the distance, and once the
Maiden
passed underneath Nethun’s Arch, Pancras turned to gaze at the sea once more.

The minotaur thought of his
friends, half a continent away in Muncifer and Drak-Anor, and hoped they were
well. Aita was with him, and though he feared he would never see them again, he
acknowledged he was about to embark on a new segment of his life.
A new
life. A new purpose. Onward to Vlorey.

* * *

Kale knelt by the ruined head of
the dragon. The odor was almost unbearable, but he forced himself to tolerate
it. His sister stood behind him, hugging herself. The light from her staff cast
long shadows over the carcass.

“What do we do now, Deli?” Kale
stood and wiped his hands on his legs. “I didn’t even know a Firstborne could
die.”

Delilah rested her hand on her
brother’s shoulder. “She’s too big for us to bury, but we might as well search
around. Maybe there’s something we can take back with us, you know, to settle
this business with the archmage and archduke?”

After sending a boggin message to
Kali and Katka explaining the situation, Delilah and Kale picked their way
through the rubble. This side of the chasm was littered with more fallen and
shattered crystals than the other side.

Kale thought, perhaps, it was
from the earthquake Delilah told them about earlier. He didn’t understand how a
mighty Firstborne dragon, a literal child of a god, could be brought low by
something as mundane as a blow to the head, but he supposed if a crystal the
size of a building landed on Terrakaptis, it would injure him.

“Kale, over here!” Delilah
increased her pace, jumping over a fallen monolith. She skidded to a halt,
flailing her arms at the edge of an area that resembled a crystal eruption.
Small crystals of every shape and color jutted from a larger crystal in a
circular pattern. The crystals formed a ring around a flat, textured area.

The two draks climbed over the
outer ring. The surface of the crystals below them felt almost like pebbles
beneath their feet. Kale found they were much less slick than the other
surfaces in the geode chamber. The surface was still slanted, however, and Kale
flapped his wings to aid his balance.

“Watch out over there.” Delilah
pointed to a dip in the surface of the textured area. Kale shuffled toward it
and noticed it was an area that appeared to have been scooped out. The surface
of the dip was smooth, like an ordinary crystal, but it was concave and sloped
toward one of the cracks that opened over the lava river. He saw an oblong
object perched at the edge of the crack.

“Hold my hand, Deli.” Kale
stretched toward the object. “Don’t let me fall!”

From his position, it was out of
reach, so he lay prone. His fingers brushed the surface of the leathery object,
and the sigil on his chest burned. With a final lunge, he snatched the object
and then scooted away from the edge.

“What is it? Treasure?”

Kale turned the object over in
his hands. It was almost as large as he was, albeit minus arms and legs. Its
surface possessed a pebbly texture and was almost translucent. It seemed to
glow from within, but Kale supposed it might be a trick of the light. The
closer he held it to him, the more the sigil on his chest burned. His own body
was unchanged.

“I think… I think it’s an egg,
Deli.”

His sister whistled. “A dragon
egg.”

He glanced at the scooped area.
“She must have been trying to save it and nearly knocked it into the crack when
she died.”

“We can’t let the archmage know
about this, Kale.” Delilah crouched down, placing a hand on the egg. Kale felt
movement within. He ran his hand along the egg’s surface. Terrakaptis wanted to
wake his siblings and trusted Kale to help with that task, but the Earth
Dragon’s sister was now dead.

“This egg is all that’s left of
Pyraclannaseous.” He furrowed his brow and clenched his jaw. “We need to bring
it to Terrakaptis.”

Delilah placed her hand on top of
his. “We will. We have to deal with Manless, first, and keep this secret.”

Kale nodded. His sister was
right. If they fled for Drak-Anor with the egg, they still needed to worry
about Katka, and if the human returned to Muncifer without them, eventually
Boss Steelhand, the archduke, and Archmage Vilkan would discover that the draks
fled. He pulled the egg close to his chest. The burning was a steady heat, but
not painful. He swore he would guard the egg with his life and find a way to
reunite the life within with its kin.