Stormwarden (14 page)

* * *

The rain stopped. By sunrise the mist lifted, streaming scarves of rose and gold across skies like mother of pearl. Curled against the stern, Emien hugged his cloak close to his body. A chill prickled the length of his back as daylight brightened, revealing the contours of the land mass so narrowly evaded during the night. The island rose from the sea like a behemoth, ribbed with cliffs and terraced ledges and shadowed by crags which seemed to comb the roof of heaven. Waterfalls unreeled down rocks flecked like ice with flocks of perched gulls. Below, where crescent beaches met the incoming tide, all image of serenity was spoiled. The sea between pinnace and shoreline was slashed into spray by the jagged knuckles of a reef. Emien rummaged in the stern locker for a ship's glass. He surveyed the boiling rush of breakers, horrified to discover how closely the pinnace had skirted disaster in the dark. Carefully as he searched, he saw no safe route to land.

He turned and studied the seaward horizon with the glass. The mist had dispersed, leaving the humped blue outlines of several surrounding islands visible to the southwest. Emien checked his charts, snapped the glass closed, and rose to consult Tathagres.

He found her propped against the mainmast. Her hair was snarled from water and wind, and beneath the tattered shoulders of her blouse the fine skin he had once admired was sun-blistered and cracked. Even closed, her eyes were hollowed with dark circles of exhaustion. Emien hesitated, reluctant to rouse her. A moment later he was grateful for his temerity.

Tathagres spoke without moving. "Boy? If you have something to tell me, speak."

Emien flinched, too startled to note her derisive tone. "Lady, we are anchored off the northeast shore of Skane's Edge. Innishari lies seventeen leagues due north, against an unfavorable wind."

Tathagres' lids flicked open, violet eyes narrowed with annoyance. She said nothing, but her silence struck the boy like a breath of cold.

Emien stiffened, knuckles balanced against the brass bands of the ship's glass. No longer the simple fisherman's boy who had left Imrill Kand, he did not tremble, nor did his uncertainty show. "Lady, I would not trouble you without reason. The casks are empty. Badly as the crewmen need water, I hesitate to consider a landing here. If you would step aft, you'll see the risks."

He offered his hand and helped her rise. Weather and starvation had not robbed Tathagres of grace. She moved like a panther, the slender lines of muscle and bone accentuated all the more by her leanness. Embarrassed to discover he could not repress a thrill of desire, Emien let her go ahead. The deckhands also followed her with eyes like hungry dogs. The boy felt a hot stab of jealousy. That moment, he wished Tathagres would command him to sail to Innishari with the casks still empty. Let the sailors row until they shriveled in the heat, Emien thought, unaware that a scant week past he would never have dared to regard his mistress possessively.

Tathagres paused in the stern, a hand posed on the backstay for balance. She regarded the shores of Skane's Edge with a strange and ruthless intensity. Emien chose a place at her side. Absorbed by the tumble of waves over the reefs, he soon forgot his quarrel with the deckhands. The breeze had freshened out of the north, and sunlight jeweled the spume like sequined lace. Yet to a sailor such beauty clothed murderous hazard; between wind and rocks, no safe landing was possible on this beach. Emien knew he had no choice but to sail on and seek a more favorable harbor. The weight of that conclusion oppressed him. That the oarsmen must suffer fresh hardship now filled him with revulsion; the risk of losing even a single life became not sacrifice but intolerable waste.

Disturbed by his conscience, Emien stared at his hands as if the cracked and blistered skin held answer to the dilemma of command. "Lady," he began. Tathagres turned her face toward him, and he looked up, at first unable to believe what he saw.

His mistress wore an expression of joy. Her eyes glittered with a challenge fiercer than any lust. "You will land the pinnace at once," she said firmly.

Emien's jaw dropped. Fear choked the breath in his throat.

"You heard." Tathagres leaned close and spoke directly into his ear. Though she wore no scent, her proximity unnerved him. "Are you fit to command, or do you yield your will like a nursemaid for the lives of the scum who serve you?"

Emien's jaw clenched. Tathagres mocked him; after Anskiere's storm, she viewed his handling of the pinnace as nothing more than sport to amuse her. Now, like a cat grown bored with teasing a mouse, she sought to slaughter the pride he had gained at the cost of his own sister's life. The jest, at such a price, was too bitter to contemplate.

Emien drew breath, heated by deadly anger. "Lady," he said tersely, "you shall have your landing." And consumed by bitterness which admitted neither regret nor compassion, he yanked the knotted cord from his waist. He strode forward, oblivious to the fact another observed his actions even more keenly than his mistress.

Hunched like a great scavenger bird in the bow, Hearvin sat with his hood thrown back, bald head exposed to the sky. In stiff-lipped silence, he watched Emien drive the sailhands to the benches with the lash. Wind eddied the sound, landing the crack of the cord across flesh an unreal quality, distant and dreamlike as the spool pictures the sorcerer had viewed long ago during Koridan's Grand Ceremony at Landfast. To compel the deckhands' obedience, the boy inspired them to fear him more than death by drowning; the result was disturbingly brutal. Hearvin watched with stony eyes, until Tathagres arrived and perched herself at his side, her cheeks flushed with unnatural exuberance.

"You set that boy up to fail," the sorcerer accused drily.

By the mast, Emien cuffed a recalcitrant oarsman. Wind tossed his black hair like a horse's mane, baring wild eyes and contorted lips. He had channeled his frustrated tangle of passions into violence, and the effect was successful. With curses and wild anger, the boy bullied the crew into submission. Tathagres noted their subservience with satisfaction.

"Why?" said Hearvin softly. "No amount of cruelty will keep this craft clear of the reef. That boy has given you loyalty already. What will you gain by breaking him?"

Delicately Tathagres peeled a torn thumbnail with her teeth. "If he fails me now, won't he extend himself to greater lengths to regain my favor?" She smiled, dropped her hand and suddenly sobered. "His loyalty is not enough. For the purpose I have in mind I need his soul as well. Then I will have the weapon to bring Anskiere to his knees."

If Hearvin replied, his words were buried by the rumble as the men threaded oars onto the rowlocks.

Emien barely waited until the action was complete. "Stroke!" He slashed the nearest back for emphasis, then raced to the bow. Hearvin moved aside as the boy uncleated the anchor line. Close up, the boy reeked of sweat, and his skin radiated a feverish heat. The line whipped free. Emien hauled, adding his weight to the efforts of the oarsmen. The pinnace eased ahead. Chain clanked and the anchor splashed clear of the sea. Emien bent to secure it, shouting orders over his shoulder. The starboard oarsmen reversed stroke. The pinnace swung. Her bowsprit dipped, gracefully as a maid's curtsy, and pointed toward the forbidding shores of Skane's Edge.

"Forward, stroke!" Emien dashed aft and ripped the tiller loose. Braced against the plunging deck, he dragged the helm, brought the bow around to the place he had selected. Ahead the water rushed in a dark, angry vee, fenced by gateposts of rock. Emien would have to steer the pinnace through the gap like a raft on rapids. He grimaced, aware of the difficulties. The men must row faster than the current or he would lose steerage; too fast, and the craft would plunge her bow into a trough and pitchpole. The rocks rushed closer. Waves peaked, crashed, and creamed white off the bow as the pinnace closed with the reef. Surf bashed the keel. Vibrations stung Emien's hands as the rudder slammed against the pins. The sounds of human struggle became obliterated by the thunder of the foam. Drenched by spray, Emien flung hair from his face and wrestled the tiller straight. The gap yawned like jaws off the bow.

"Ship oars!" His shout sounded plaintive as a lost child's. Somehow the men heard.

A wave crashed to port. The pinnace yawed. Emien hauled on the helm. Though the muscles of his shoulders and arms burned with strain, he dragged the pinnace straight. Through salt-splashed eyes, he saw a seaman fumble an oar.

Emien shouted, too late. Rock already loomed above them, a buttress of barnacle-studded granite. The oar struck. Jarred against the rowlock, it smashed the man's ribcage. His scream sawed through the hiss of the foam. The pinnace slewed sideways and punched into the stone. Planking slivered; the gunwale burst with an agonizing crack. Emien dropped the helm. He leaped over the benches, caught Tathagres just as a comber burst like an avalanche over the thwart. Water bashed them overboard. In the last frantic instant before the sea swept Emien under, he clamped his hand in Tathagres' shirt. Then he was tumbled downward. Dark angry waters closed above his head.

Emien struggled to swim. Tossed over and over, he kicked and tried to break free of the current's icy grip. Although Tathagres' thrashing hampered him, he clung tightly to her clothing. He had failed to save Taen; now, with the pinnace wrecked and everything lost except his sworn oath of loyalty, the boy was determined to see his mistress safely ashore.

Water swirled, plunging him deeper. Pressure crackled his eardrums, and his lungs ached. Emien fought, driven by desperate need for air. Suddenly his shoulder scuffed packed sand.

The bottom was shoaling. Relieved to find the current had swept him toward land, the boy pushed away the kelp which twined about his body. He caught Tathagres' hair. She had stopped struggling; fearful she might have lost consciousness, Emien twisted, dug his feet into the sea bottom and shoved off for the surface.

Something sharp grazed his wrist. Stung by unexpected pain, Emien let go. Without warning, Tathagres yanked at the hand still twined in her shirt, forced the boy to release her. Emien broke water, dizzied and starved for air. Foam-webbed water slapped his cheek. In the second before the next wave rolled him under, he glimpsed a reddened gash in the muscle of his lower arm. The wound itself was unmistakable;
Tathagres had knifed him to free herself .

Stunned, Emien mistimed his stroke. The breaker which bore him shoreward surged, lifted, and broke. Current pummeled his flesh, dragging him like a rag doll across the sharpened edges of coral. Clothing and skin tore from his body. Choking, bleeding, and bruised beyond rational thought, Emien sensed the turbulence shift; the wave was ebbing. He flung his good hand down, instinctively sought the bottom. His fingers scrabbled through weed and loose shells, then caught on a rock. He clung until the greedy suck of the undertow relented.

Emien released and kicked hard. His head broke water. He managed a quick breath before the crash of the next comber overtook him. Tossed like a chip in a maelstrom, he was flung head over heels. This time, his knee struck bottom before the wave receded. He stroked with his arms, dragged himself forward, and managed at last to gain the shallows. Around him, the water thinned into a lacy sheet, and slid seaward with a throaty chuckle of sound. Emien crawled, gasping, and collapsed on the damp sand of Skane's Edge. His throat stung. Blood traced patterns across cheek, shoulder, and arm. The flash of wet shells and mica stabbed into his eyes. He closed his lids. Left faint by the sweet rush of air into his lungs, he lay prone, and the boom of the surf masked the sound of footsteps.

He did not notice Tathagres' presence until he opened his eyes. She leaned over him, hair coiled like sodden silk around her collar. Her tunic dripped in his face as she fingered the ornamental dagger Emien had often noticed in the sheath at her belt. Her face seemed neutral.

But when she spoke, her words were edged with anger.

"Boy, I will warn you no more after this. No matter what the circumstances, you will never again lay hands upon me without my express command. Should you repeat your late indiscretion, you will suffer far more than a cut as a penalty.
Am I clear?"

Emien coughed, sickened by the taste of blood on his lips. His arm throbbed, and every inch of abraded skin stung with the fury of the lash. Yet his physical hurts were slight compared with the deeper wound in his spirit. Sprawled where he had fallen on the sand, he voiced an apology. As Tathagres turned on her heel and left, tears mingled with the brine on his face. Once, as a child, he had accidentally fouled a fishnet; his father went over the side to correct the mistake, became tangled, and drowned. Then, Emien had been too small to understand what was happening. Now old enough to act responsibly toward those he loved, he had first failed his sister, then suffered a rejection no reason could console. Motionless on the beach of Skane's Edge, Emien wept for the last time in his life. Henceforth his tears would flow from the eyes of others, he resolved; and the overly sensitive emotions which had always made him vulnerable hardened into a knot of aggressive self-interest never to be released.

The sorcerer Hearvin viewed the scene from an outcrop above the shore, drenched robes flapping in the breeze. His eyes narrowed into slits against the glare as he regarded the boy from Imrill Kand.

"You've misjudged," he said softly, and though Tathagres was not present, she heard. "I fear this time you've scarred the boy too deeply. Who will pay the price?"

Hearvin waited, but Tathagres sent no answer. And because he also was chilled and weary from the sea, he was careless and did not pursue the matter further.