Swordmistress of Chaos (9 page)

When Raven asked him what he had done, Spellbinder smiled, dismissing it.

‘They fear shadows,’ he said. ‘I simply persuaded them of their foolishness.’

He would not be drawn further, and when Raven attempted to press him, he changed the subject with an adroitness that led their conversation away into other channels before she realised what was happening.

They sailed swiftly westwards, a benevolent wind filling the triangular sail until it cracked and strained against the central mast. There was little privacy on board, for the vessel was designed for swift trawlings of the coastal waters rather than ocean crossings, and the deck was open except for the canopy spread across the raised stern. There, Raven and Spellbinder slept, the hands occupying the boards of the deck. The narrow hold was designed for storing the catch, and its darkness was redolent of fish. Yet it was a trim vessel, lean-prowed and clean to handle, responding eagerly to the stern-mounted tiller.

For seven days the wind blew fair, the sea remaining calm as a mill pond. The fishing boat skimmed over a surface of translucent blue, so still that they appeared to slide upon it, rather than cut through it. It was unnatural, and Raven wondered if Spellbinder had woven some magic to speed their passage; she resisted the temptation to ask him: he remained obdurately silent where such matters were concerned. Instead, she concentrated on enjoying the journey. Apart from the brief coastal voyage with Argor, she had never been in a boat before, and this silent travelling was a strange and wondrous experience. They had packed rations before embarking, and the lines they dropped overboard yielded a rich haul of fish, so that they ate well. Dewfall cups were mounted around the boat, and they had no shortage of water for drinking, even wine from hold-stored flagons.

It was, oddly, given the urgency of their mission, an idyll she came to enjoy.

On the ninth day it changed.

The sun rose gold and silver above the western edge of Worldheart, and its rays struck bright beams of dazzling iridescence from the ripples shaking the sea. Raven watched them, entranced by the play of light upon the water. Then realised that she had never seen the ocean this way before. For eight full days and nights it had remained still; now it trembled as a nervous animal trembles, sensing something amiss. She called Spellbinder to her side, pointing to the disturbance and the warrior reached down to plunge a hand into the brine.

For long-moments he hung over the side of the boat, then grunted, coming upright.

Ignoring Raven, he called for the seamen to reef in the sail to half its size, and took the steer-oar himself. He appeared caught in a reverie, his mouth moving swiftly to form unheard words, his eyes fixed upon some distant point beyond the far horizon.

Gradually, the rippling increased, the gentle undulation of the sea growing fiercer. The ripples became small waves, streamers of foam flecking from the over-curves. The wind grew stronger, shifting around to blow from the north, turning the waves to strike the boat along its length, rather than from ahead.

The azure sky shaded a darker blue, and that grew darker still, until it was the colour of old armour, all fusty grey struck through with shades of black. Clouds formed, billowing huge and menacing until their darkness shut out the sun and darts of lightning played between them.

Soon, the lightning was the only illumination, for the clouds seemed to billow across the lowering heavens until they shut out all other light, closing the ocean within a night-black curtain. Thunder bellowed sonorously across the sky, and the waves grew larger. Combers of foaming white, shimmering beneath the lightning, marked their edges, like teeth glinting in the jaws of a predatory beast. High as the boat, they rose, lashing the gunwales with a mounting, supernatural fury. The wind got up and whipped the sail, driving salt spray over the deck, blinding the occupants so that they stumbled to their duties, clutching hurriedly-set ropes to keep their footing on the pitching deck.

The wind became a banshee screech that lashed at them like a flail, seeking to tear them from their precarious holds and toss them to the ravening waves. The waves, too, appeared to seek them out, tongues of stinging salt spilling over the timbers, drenching them, smarting where they splashed over eyes and exposed skin. Cold was the water, and angry the ocean. The sky remained black, now a total blackness near as dark as the subterranean passage of the Stone Temple, so that the men fumbled over the deck, their only illumination the bolts of darting lightning. As the arrows of some angry god might be hurled at the earth, so struck that lightning.

Now it was a great curtain of white fire that fell across the sky, lighting the roiling sea with a brilliance that threatened to sear the eyes, as though the core of the sun itself glared upon them. Now it became tongues of fire, lancing down in vivid, sharp-edged trails of searing fury. The sea boiled where it struck, great clouds of steam gusting upwards to the noisesome heavens. The stink of sulphur filled the air, the pungency adding to the discomfort of salt-smart and wind-whip. Now it became a thousand balls of dancing fire, leaping from wave-tip to wave-tip, prancing over halyards and deck rails, sparking flame from soaking rope and wind-frayed sail.

A ball leaped from the masthead towards a sailor as he stared with open, terror-struck mouth at the descending fireball. It engulfed him so that he stood, for a moment, with head and chest contained within the shimmering, blue-silver orb. His arms waved madly as a smell of singeing pervaded the deck. Then the odour was driven away by the howling wind, and the lightning spun off into the blackness. A great sheet of white fire spread across the sky, and the sailor stood exposed to the horrified gaze of his companions. His hair and shirt were gone, in their place, black flesh from which sparkled tendrils of flame. His face was a screaming deathmask, sightless holes where his eyes had been, the flesh burned and puckered. The wind whipped his screaming away, and he followed it over the side, plunging into the tumultuous sea.

As he hit the water, a great hole appeared to open, as though the ocean gaped a mouth to suck him down. Raven saw him go, and turned to Spellbinder, yelling above the demonic raving of thunder, wind, and water.

‘Is this how Kharwhan defends itself? Do the ghost-priests kill so glibly?’

‘No!’ Spellbinder’s shout was anguished as her own. ‘The mist hides them. That should be enough. I think we have, perhaps, sailed into some battle.’

He shouted something else, but the wind took his words away and a wave, greater than the others, turned the boat so that Raven was forced to grasp the railing or be swept away to join the lightning-struck sailor.

The vessel turned, the sheer force of the wave ripping the tiller from Spellbinder’s grip. It spun stern-on to the pounding sea, and as the warrior struggled to bring it back to face the fury of the waters, a great wave rose up behind them. A full mast higher than the boat, it was; a wall of roiling water that came at them like some angry sea beast, or some sea god’s fist come to pluck them down into the depths.

It rose black and sleek, its inner surface curving up to a crest that spilled steaming foam that glimmered white in the lightning. Shadows played over the inner face of the wave, and its foam was ripped onwards by the wind. High, it lifted, higher than the mast, then higher still, rushing down upon them as a mountain, shifted from its foundations in the earth, might rush down upon the unwary.

Raven wrapped both her arms around the railing of the stern, saw Spellbinder lock his grip over the tiller.

There was a great silence, as though the wave blocked out the screaming of the wind, the bellowing of the thunder, with its own awful majesty. Up and up, it rose, reaching high above the helpless vessel. Spray like a salt rain fell from its inner reaches, and there was a sibilation as of a thousand snakes that rang from its black-sheening sides.

Then it curled and came down and struck.

Raven felt a mighty blow smash her against the planking of the sterndeck. The air was blasted from her lungs and when she tried to breath, there was only water, salt and deadly, to fill her lungs. She briefly glimpsed Spellbinder, tumbling from the rudder, and then there was nothing but the roaring of stinging, sightless pain all around her. And a great hurting that faded into darkness.

She felt her hands torn from their grip, and knew that she was drowning. She cursed, snarling her hatred of the wave, of the storm, of Kharwhan.

Then there was nothing.

‘In the event of a chosen plan being disrupted, it is important that alternatives are made available.’

The Books of Kharwhan

Soft was the breeze, and gentle the swaying beneath her. She opened her eyes, as yet too dazed to be surprised that she still lived, accepting the fact as an animal accepts it, reacting on pure instinct to the fact of the matter, seeing only that which was before her without any inward reaching for reasons or explanations.

The fishing boat floated still, though it was unlikely to sail again. The mast was gone, only a splintered stump, broken off close to the deck, showing where it had once stood. The tiller mounting was a jumble of broken timber, the steering-oar itself gone beneath the waves, and all along the deck, broken planking and shattered rails evidenced the fury of the great wave. There was a soft slapping sound close by her head, and when she turned, she saw the surface of the ocean almost level with the ruptured deck. Although still afloat, the vessel was settled low in the water, its planks almost awash. Its rigging was gone, taken by the storm’s fury, so that it drifted helplessly, prey to the vagaries of wind and wave.

Weary, conscious of aches and bruises, she lifted to her knees. Farther down the clean-swept deck, there was a huddled bundle of salt-washed black armour that stirred and groaned even as she watched. Too weak to move herself, she waited for the shape to thrust up on out-stretched arms, smiling as Spellbinder turned dazed eyes in her direction.

‘So, we live.’ He sounded almost cheerful. ‘What of the others?’

Raven cast her gaze over the deck. There was no sign of the boat’s master, nor his remaining sailor. Should they have fallen into the shallow hold, they would be drowned by now, but she guessed they had gone overboard when the wave hit.

‘We are alone, then,’ said Spellbinder, lifting to his feet, ‘and adrift by the look of it.’

‘Can you man the boat?’ Raven knew nothing of seafaring, so optimism overruled common sense. ‘Shall we rig a sail?’

Spellbinder chuckled, a bitter sound that contrasted with the calm morning, the tranquil wash of the gentle sea.

‘There is no sail. Nor any rudder.’ He glanced over the riven deck. ‘Not even wood enough to fashion a raft. We’re lost, Raven, drifting until this hulk goes down.’

‘Then what?’ she asked, afraid of the answer she knew must come.

‘We swim.’

‘To where?’

Spellbinder shrugged, looking up at the sun, and pointed away over the blueness. ‘Kharwhan should rest in that direction. There’s nothing else we’ll find here.’

They stripped to their underclothing, bundling armour and weapons in two packs in readiness for the swim. Then they stretched upon the deck, drowsing as the warm sun lulled relief into strained muscles, gathering their strength for the ordeal ahead. The provisions stowed in the hold were tainted with salt water, and those left on deck were long gone into the fury of the storm. They were hungry, their struggling against the elements having depleted their store of energy; worse, they were thirsty. And the sun was hot.

As the waterlogged boat drifted helplessly, it began to settle deeper in the water. Its movement, already sluggish, became slower still, until it seemed as though they hung motionless on the surface of the calm sea. Gradually, the quiet lapping of the softly stirring surface began to overtop the deck’s rim, drifting a shallow sheet of brine over the planking. So imperceptible was the advance that neither of them noticed it as the lower decking slid beneath the water. The boat began to sink, settling through the blue ocean to raise the water level up the short spread of stairs separating stern from deck. It rose, inexorably, until it topped the highest step, then crept like some cautious thief across the timbers of the stern.

Spellbinder felt the coolness enwrap his legs, and stirred in his sleep. He turned, dropping one out-thrust hand into the water. Abruptly, he woke, and shook Raven into awareness of their predicament.

‘Quick,’ he warned, ‘we must be ready to swim, lest the boat sucks us down with her.’

‘Wait!’ Raven’s voice was commanding, and Spellbinder paused. ‘Look.’

She pointed up to where a dim speck hung against the emptiness of the sky. Small, almost too small to see against the brilliance, it appeared to swoop down, growing larger as it descended the thermal currents. It paused for a moment, riding the updraught of air, and they saw wide-spread wings, stark against the azure, then the wings folded and the shape plummetted seawards. Like a falling star it came, hurtling towards them as though bent on driving itself through their foundering craft. Abruptly, dangerously close to the washing deck, it hoisted dark pinions wide to check its fall, swooping away to one side. Once, twice, it circled them, ivory beak spread wide as it croaked a triumphant call. Then it was gone, beating against the breeze as it skimmed the ocean in a westerly direction.

‘It was the bird,’ said Raven, her voice hoarse as its cry from lack of water. ‘What does it mean?’

‘That something is near.’ Spellbinder’s throat was parched as hers. ‘Though what, I cannot guess.’

‘Surely,’ Raven asked, ‘it will bring help.’

‘Most like,’ answered the man. ‘We’ll wait as long as we can. If no help comes, we swim to the west.’

He looked around, estimating the time they had before the fishing boat went down into the depths, hoping the bird would bring rescue.

They were crouched at the farthest point of the sterndeck when the bird returned. The sea lapped hungrily about their knees, and they carried their bundled armour ready to pitch it overboard before the vessel went out from under them. The bird circled, screaming as if it called to someone. They climbed to their feet, peering away into the blue-hazed distance in the direction from which the bird had come.