The Art of Hunting (33 page)

Suddenly from the knot there came a great cataclysm of electrical bolts: blazing forks of light in all directions, illuminating the ocean for miles around. For an instant this alien brilliance
bleached the gaping façades of Carhen Doma.

Paulus shouted, ‘It is Otiansel Mestra!’

Duke Cyr gazed at the scene with awe. ‘Fiorel has opened his first domain?’

As the lightning continued to spread across the skies, Ianthe began to perceive shapes within it.
Winged creatures?
Initially she thought she was looking at dragons, but as the things
detached themselves from that crackling mass of light she was able to perceive them more clearly.

They were similar to dragons, but smaller. Each of them possessed two sets of wings – wings that, like their lithe bodies, necks and tails, appeared to be entirely composed of energy. Pale
fire rippled across their spines and streamed behind them; white flames jumped and flickered with each beat of their wings. They were ethereal, beautiful, terrible. Their heads were smaller in
proportion to their bodies than those of dragons, their muzzles more akin to beaks and yet filled with needlelike teeth. They had no discernible eyes.

This did not appear to hinder them.

The black dragon had climbed high above their ship and now banked to face this strange new aerial threat. A cluster of three electric beasts hovered momentarily, as though assessing this
flesh-and-blood foe. And then they swooped on the serpent with terrifying speed.

But the dragon had by now produced in its glands sufficient venom to create more flames. And, as its foes drew near, it disgorged a torrent of liquid fire against them.

The electric creatures passed through this inferno as though it did not exist. They attacked the dragon from three sides, their wings flaming like wraiths against the dark of the storm. In
moments they had ripped the serpent apart.

It fell in pieces into the boiling brine.

Its companions fared no better. The brown dragon burst from the base of a thunderhead, diving hard with its ragged wings outstretched, and fell upon a solitary wraith creature. Teeth and claws
met pure energy. The creature emitted a furious burst of lightning, and the dragon’s scorched carcass crashed into the Mare Verdant.

A few wraiths had by now reached the roofless spaces and temples of Doma and they swept inside, destroying nesting mothers and their young, while others of their kind converged on the site.
Ghostlights flickered far across the dark ocean as lightning coursed the heavens and thunder boomed. And scores of dragons rose from those mouldering halls to meet the threat. They must have known
they were going to their deaths and yet they did so without hesitation. They clashed with the electric foes and were slaughtered.

Ianthe spotted the blue, flying high to starboard. Six of the wraith creatures were converging on it, mere wisps of light in the ever-deepening gloom. The dragon hesitated for a moment, thumping
its great wings as it hovered. And then it turned away from its enemies and folded back its wings and dived, fixing its murderous eyes upon the Haurstaf warship.

‘Cyr!’ Paulus yelled.

‘I see it.’

The duke snatched up the heavy iron rings from the deck and then struck them together above his head. Around him bloomed a plasma sphere, scorching the deck. His brow furrowed with concentration
and the sphere grew suddenly large once more, enveloping the whole ship.

Again Ianthe felt a wave of hideous energy flow through her host body and then through her own body in the cabin down below. She no longer knew or cared whose mind she inhabited. But she looked
up in time to see that blue serpent bearing down on them in a reckless, suicidal dive. It meant to use its own massive weight as a missile against the ship.

She realized this a heartbeat before the dragon struck the top of Cyr’s sorcerous sphere with sickening force. It felt as if the warship had been struck by a hammer blow from the gods
themselves. Masts shattered. Timbers snapped. The whole ship lurched and appeared to
buckle
. Cyr’s sphere fizzed and crackled with tremendous fury, but it held. And as the serpent
plunged within that bubble of spitting energy, it burned – dissolving into ten million points of light.

Ianthe watched the dragon’s remains scatter like so many embers.

But she knew something was wrong. The ship had not righted itself after the attack, but was now listing to port at a shallow angle. She saw crewmen race to the port gunwales and peer over the
side. Their expressions of concern and alarm terrified her.

Howlish came striding forward. ‘How bad is it?’

One of his men replied, ‘Looks like her spine is broken.’

‘The amplifier,’ Cyr muttered, ‘pushed the force through to the keel.’

Howlish singled out members of his crew, barking orders as he strode the deck. ‘All teams to the bilge pumps,’ he cried. ‘Raise the mainsail. Get us to Doma if you
can.’

‘Can we make it?’ Cyr said.

Howlish glanced across to where the temples of Carhen Doma stood above the fuming seas, less than half a mile away. ‘We’ll make it,’ he said. ‘But this ship is
lost.’

The figure had been encased in molten lead and yet was still alive. Maskelyne’s crew stood in silence, struck dumb as it heaved itself out of the coffin and fell upon the
deck, its skin and clothes still obscured by a film of grey metal. Liquid metal sloshed across the wooden boards. The figure began to convulse.

‘Bring helmic acid,’ Maskelyne said. ‘We need to dissolve the lead, flush it out of his lungs before it cools.’

‘That’ll kill him,’ Howlish remarked.

‘One would have expected immersion in molten metal to have accomplished
that
feat,’ Maskelyne replied sardonically. ‘This situation, by all appearances, lies beyond
our expectations.’ He nodded to Mellor. ‘Get the acid, and plenty of water too.’

His crewmen returned with a barrel of the caustic solution they used to clean marine deposits from trove, along with another barrel of purified seawater. Helmic acid would have taken the skin
off a normal man. Yet clearly this was no normal man. They doused him with it and watched in silent awe as his flesh steamed. He bore the agony of it without a sound. It was not a quick process.
But after the acid had been applied several times, enough of the dissolved lead had washed away to reveal something of the man beneath. He was stout and dark skinned with heavily muscled shoulders
and arms and a neck like a bull’s. He was completely bald, and where his skin showed through the lead it was covered in tattoos.

And then suddenly he thrust his arms out, fists clenched, and gave a terrible cry of rage. White light flickered furiously across his skin, accompanied by a ferocious crackling sound. In an
instant, the rest of the lead and acid had boiled away.

Maskelyne’s crewmen gasped.

The man sat there naked, breathing heavily, as smoke uncurled from skin that looked as hard as old mahogany. His eyes remained closed. Every inch of his body had been inked with the sort of
geometric designs favoured by Unmer Brutalist sorcerers.

And that was an enigma.

Maskelyne had just watched the man decreate a film of lead and acid from the surface of his body – an innate power that only the Unmer possessed. But this man was clearly not Unmer. He had
the racial features of a Bahrethro Islander: his broad flat nose and strong jaw were as far removed from the Unmer’s waifish looks as one could imagine between any two men. Maskelyne had
never heard of another race possessing the Unmer’s gift of decreation. Yet here he sat, not only able to vanish matter from the cosmos, but also with his body inked in geometries that
indicated allegiance to the Brutalist school of sorcery.

Evidently, the Unmer had trained him. And the Unmer
never
trained outsiders.

His eyes remained closed, but he held out a hand and said a word that sounded like
chirfa.
Maskelyne did not recognize the language, and yet he imagined it to be a dialect of Bahrethro.
Still, it was clear enough what the man desired.

‘Give him water,’ Maskelyne said to his crew.

A crewman placed a ladle of fresh water into the sorcerer’s outstretched hand, which he downed at once and held out his hand for more. ‘
Chirfa, chirfa
.’

‘Jashu kaval Unmer?’ Maskelyne asked.

The man exhaled deeply, then sniffed and opened his eyes. He regarded Maskelyne with fierce curiosity, then shook his head and replied in perfect Anean. ‘I’d rather think of myself
as a bastard.’

‘You’re Bahrethroan, then?’ Maskelyne said.

He nodded. ‘Half so,’ he replied. He stood up suddenly and cast his gaze around at the ship and crew. He was a head shorter than Maskelyne, indeed shorter even than most of the men
present. And yet his powerful frame looked to be twice as heavy as any of them. His gaze finally rested on the coffin from which he’d come. He looked at it with marked distaste, then cricked
his neck and extended one huge hand towards Maskelyne. ‘The name’s Cobul.’

The metaphysicist shook his hand. ‘Ethan Maskelyne,’ he said. ‘And this is my ship, the
Lamp
. We are currently seventy degrees south in the Mare Lux confluxes. Welcome
aboard, Cobul.’

He nodded. ‘May I ask, where did you find me?’

‘A samal was using you as a hot-water bottle.’

Cobul nodded, as if this merely confirmed what he already knew. ‘I owe you a great deal,’ he said. ‘I thank you, Ethan Maskelyne, and your crew, for coming to my
aid.’

‘My pleasure,’ Maskelyne said. ‘May I ask how you came to find yourself in such a . . . eh . . . predicament?’

‘I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.’

‘And what was that?’

‘A murder.’

‘You were imprisoned inside that for—’ He broke off. ‘How long
have
you been in there?’ It had to have been decades at the very least, he thought, since
that’s how long the Drowned had been bringing him keys.

‘What year is it?’

‘1447 Imperial,’ Maskelyne said.

Cobul made a mental calculation. ‘Then I have been in the box for close to three hundred years.’

Maskelyne raised his eyebrows. ‘Three hundred years of . . .’ He glanced at the box. ‘I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say
severe discomfort
, merely for
witnessing a crime. One would have thought it would have been kinder just to kill you.’

‘Indeed.’

‘May I ask who this scoundrel is?’

‘A god named Fiorel.’

‘The shape-shifter,’ Maskelyne exclaimed. ‘Cauldrons and what not, isn’t that his thing? Who did you see him murder?’

Cobul studied him a moment. ‘Knowing that would put you at great risk.’

‘Because Fiorel has assumed their form?’

‘It was during the dragon wars,’ Cobul said. ‘After we realized the Haurstaf would defeat us, when all hope had been lost. I was a unit sorcerer with King Jonas’s Third
Division. We were fleeing Losoto into the Anean foothills when our party came upon Fiorel. He appeared as a faceless man walking the trail. Jonas spoke with him all night and most of the next day.
They made some kind of a deal. Fiorel gave the king the means to create ichusae. He saved our race from the Haurstaf.’

‘And do you know what Fiorel wanted in return?’

‘No, but I can guess,’ Cobul said.

‘Argusto Conquillas?’

Cobul nodded. ‘The man who killed his daughter, Duna.’

‘Something went amiss, I take it?’

‘I do not know,’ Cobul admitted. ‘King Jonas consulted with the god and then sent our last bonded dragon west, presumably to deliver a message to Conquillas and Aria in Awl.
That is all I know of their scheme. Later that evening I happened, by sheer chance, to witness Fiorel’s villainy.’

Maskelyne tapped his fingers against his chin. ‘I’m guessing he murdered someone close to the king?’ he said. ‘Someone in the royal party? After all, it would do Fiorel
little good to assume the form of the camp cook. He must have . . .’ Suddenly he stopped. ‘If a shape-shifter could replace anyone he chooses, then the most logical candidate would be
King Jonas himself.’ He looked at Cobul.

He nodded.

‘But Jonas vanished. He boarded the prison ship in Losoto, but never made it to the dungeons in Awl. The Haurstaf claimed he jumped overboard.’

Cobul pondered this. ‘I saw Fiorel murder the king and assume his physical form,’ he said. ‘And it was in that disguise that he had me confined in that coffin and dropped into
the mouth of a samal. If he vanished on the voyage to Awl, then he has clearly assumed another form and escaped. I imagine he went after Conquillas.’

‘Well,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Evidently something went wrong with his plan, because Conquillas is still alive.’

Cobul frowned. ‘Alive? Are you sure?’

Maskelyne nodded. ‘And as jovial as ever.’

Cobul was thinking. ‘Then he has delayed his revenge for some reason. You must fill me in on all that has happened these last few centuries.’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ Maskelyne said. ‘But answer me one last question, please.’

The sorcerer nodded.

‘Why on earth,’ Maskelyne said, ‘did the Drowned want me to come and get you? How did you convince them? What sort of deal did you make with them that their rotting minds could
possibly understand?’

Cobul had a grim expression on his face. ‘I made no deal,’ he said. ‘Until this moment I did not even know that the Drowned had acted in my interests. I imagine the truth is
that they simply wanted me gone from their domain.’

‘Why?’

The sorcerer looked embarrassed. ‘Presumably my screaming made them uncomfortable.’

Captain Howlish managed, against all the odds, to run the
Irillian Herald
aground in shallow waters beneath the ruins of a huge stone hall. The landing had smashed her
hull beyond repair and now each wave pitched her further against vicious rocks and threatened to tear her apart entirely. Howlish ordered the corbuses lowered and the lifeboat unlashed and dropped,
and Cyr organized a hurried evacuation and soon they had decamped most of their provisions onto a broad ledge above the darkly surging waters.