The Awakening (41 page)

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Leone.

‘All this time with the First Son and you know nothing?’ the old man said with a scowl. ‘Sit, sit.’ He gestured to his rug. Leone hesitated, and then sat cross-legged opposite Bedi.

‘Why do you think he has a son?’ asked Leone.

‘The line must be maintained,’ said Bedi. ‘It extends back to times before the Empire and it will outlast the Empire.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘The line you people call the First Counsellors is a power that transcends the simple temporal power of any Empire. It dates from the oldest antiquity and it has a purpose that extends beyond the trivial military one.’

‘So you believe all that?’ Leone asked.

Bedi laughed, a harsh cackling sound. ‘Believe it? Do you believe the sun is in the sky?’

Leone scowled. ‘There’s no need to believe what is in front of your eyes.’

‘Indeed, Caldorman Leone, indeed.’

‘Caldorman?’ she asked. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘The same way I know the arox beast that took your arm was not a wild beast, but a trained one.’

‘What are you talking about, old man? No one can train the aroxii. They’re too savage.’

‘The Tribesmen of the north hide many secrets. That’s just one of them.’

Leone was confused. This was not what she wanted to hear. She just wanted the old man to tell her if anything Mayenne had told her was true, not more riddles.

‘Old man,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve heard tales about the Guardian, the Weapon and the Danan. I need you to tell me if they’re true.’

‘What have you heard, Caldorman?’

‘Stop calling me that,’ she said. ‘I have been dismissed in disgrace. I hold no rank.’ Even after all
this time it still cut to acknowledge it. To say it out loud was almost as much as she could bear. With pride she held her head up as she said it.

‘And yet you still carry the Needle,’ said Bedi mildly.

Her hand went instinctively to the scabbard. It was empty. The sadness bit again. Her last link was gone; she was truly cut off.

‘No, old man,’ she said. ‘I don’t carry the Needle. I lost it.’

Bedi reached under his scruffy robe and pulled out a dagger. He handed it to Leone, hilt first. ‘Is this it?’ he asked quietly.

Leone stared at it, recognising her own Needle. ‘How did you…?’ she started to say as she grasped the hilt.

Bedi shook his head. ‘It means so much to you?’ he asked.

Leone nodded. ‘It does.’

‘Even after the Thane dismissed you and cut you so badly?’

Leone was unsure whether Bedi meant the scars on her face or the emotional cut that still pained her. Either way he was right. She nodded.

‘You must believe in the Empire,’ he observed.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Despite what it has done to you?’

‘Done to me? What it has done to me? The Empire trained me, gave me skills, gave me a position, a role, a meaning. It fed me, clothed me and taught me the Way of Purity,’ she said.

‘So why do you come to me to question it?’

‘If the First Counsellors have all this power, why is the Empire the way it is? Why does all this,’ she
waved her arm to encompass the poverty that surrounded them, ‘exist? Can a society that does this, that elevates torture to an art form, be anything but evil?’

‘An evil act does not make something evil.’

‘The power that the First Counsellors have, is that evil?’

Bedi shook his head. ‘It is the choices that the wielders of the power make that determine their evil, not the power that enables them to make the choices.’

‘So the Empire is not evil?’

Bedi shrugged. ‘It is, or it isn’t, but it is not the power of the Guardian that makes it so.’

‘Why does the power exist?’

‘At last you ask a good question, Caldorman.’

‘You’re a very irritating old man, Bedi,’ she said. ‘Just answer the question.’

‘I don’t know the answer, Leone. I wish I did.’

Leone rose to her feet. ‘You’re not irritating, you’re a disappointment.’ She turned to leave.

‘Before you go, Leone, I’ll ask you a question. How did I know your name?’

Without turning Leone said, ‘Shanek told you.’

‘Yes, he did. But ask yourself this. Why did he tell me?’

Leone stopped and turned back. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Is it the Empire you believe in?’

She stared down at him.

‘I’ll tell you one thing about the Weapon, the Guardian and the Danan. They are never alone. They always have a companion. Think about why it
is that the First Counsellors have not married for generations. Not one First Counsellor since Gyran has been married. All First Sons have been born to concubines.’

‘What’s your point, old man?’

‘Leone, you are at an important moment in history. The Weapon is active, the Danan is back and the Guardian is missing. But more importantly for you, you need to decide what side you will be on. If Shanek is dead, as you suggest, you must find his son. If he is not dead, you must find him and ask him the questions you didn’t ask me.’

Officer Manno shaded his eyes against the rising sun. Behind him, Sacchin breathed a curse.

‘Will you look at that?’ he gasped.

‘Big, isn’t it?’ replied Manno.

‘I had no idea,’ said Sacchin, still unable to take his eyes off the sight.

‘No one did. It’s one of our best-kept secrets.’

‘How did you manage to hide it?’

‘Why do you think we always have such a fast turnaround of ships when they come into harbour? This is the first time that the whole fleet has ever been gathered.’

‘But surely…’ his voice trailed off in disbelief.

Manno chuckled. ‘The size of our fleet will hopefully be as big a surprise to Morag as it was to you.’

Sacchin shook his head slowly. ‘How many?’

Manno shrugged. ‘Don’t rightly know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never counted but there are a lot of them, aren’t there?’ He looked at the Raiders’ fleet. ‘And if you allow for our superior weapons, the fight may not be as one-sided as the Children hope.’

‘Will it really come down to a fight?’ asked Sacchin.

Officer Manno nodded. ‘Yes, I think so. It’s been going this way for years now and something has to give eventually. We’ve been dancing around each other for too long.’

‘What about the Priestesses? And this Hwenfayre?’

‘The Priestesses are overrated,’ Manno assured him. ‘We’ve been collecting information about their abilities for a long time and most of their so-called powers are myth and threat. In truth there’s not much they can do.’

‘And Hwenfayre?’

‘A wild card to be sure,’ Officer Manno conceded. ‘But she’s only a girl, and I doubt there’s much more to her power than legend.’ He lit his pipe, puffing heartily. Blue smoke wreathed his head. ‘But I’m not sure,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve seen some strange things in my years at sea, but nothing like her.’

Sacchin looked at Manno with surprise. ‘What is so strange about her?’

‘Not her so much as the way she came aboard.’

Sacchin raised his eyebrows quizzically. Manno did not turn to face the big islander, continuing to stare out at the huge fleet. After a few moments he started to tell the story of Hwenfayre’s unorthodox arrival on the
Misty Seal
. By the time he had finished, Sacchin was wide-eyed.

‘So is she more than just a girl?’ asked Sacchin.

‘Perhaps.’

‘And if she is?’

‘If she is half what the legends say she will kill us all.’

‘But don’t the legends say that she protects the Children?’ protested Sacchin.

‘Not all of them, Sacchin,’ Manno said softly. ‘Not all of them.’

The
Misty Seal
rode the swell easily, spray pluming and sails taut. The rigging hummed as the wind bore them with ever-increasing speed towards the Wrested Archipelago. Hwenfayre stood alone in the prow, the white spray enveloping her in its icy embrace. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the rocks that surged starkly up from the black depths. Spread out around the brutal archipelago was the Southern Raiders’ fleet.

She had not said a word to anyone since they’d begun their mad flight from the Children’s fleet. After Nolin took control of the
Misty Seal
, she and Wyn emerged from the Commander’s cabin. They had not spoken to each other since, nor had they mentioned to anyone what they spoke of while together in the cabin. Their faces, hard yet broken, told their own tales of what had passed between them. Wyn took up duties as befitted a seaman and Hwenfayre took up station in the prow. No one came close enough to hear her song.

Even if they had, none of that vessel would have recognised the words or understood their meaning. Hwenfayre sang from her confusion, her sense of loss and betrayal. She gently called to the Sea to hear her pain.

As she sang, the Sea heard her and felt her pain.

Far to the south, untamed winds, vast currents and awesome surging masses of icy dark water
started to merge, building the watery avatar of Hwenfayre’s aching emptiness.

No one heard, but Wyn watched in pain. He silently ached for the anguish of regret, the words spoken in haste, the voice raised in misunderstanding, the slowness of mind that would not allow him to consider before speaking. Hwenfayre’s words of accusation had cut deeply, leaving him reeling in disbelief.

Left her? How could she have thought that? What lies had Morag told her?

He stood up from his task to stare once more at her rigid back. She stood motionless, staring at the Wrested Archipelago as they raced towards the barren rocks. Already he could see signs of habitation clinging tenaciously in the face of the Sea’s onslaughts. The sheer size of the Raiders’ fleet, the chilling harshness of the Archipelago, the power that he had already seen Hwenfayre wield, the malice of Morag, the duplicity of Declan, all whirled in his struggling mind. He could not see any way out that would not involve death, and once a battle on the seas was joined, there was always death and no way of ever being sure of keeping out of its wake.

With a pain so sharp, so clear he gasped with its clarity, he had a sudden vision of a pale face surrounded by limp, white-blonde hair with lifeless lavender eyes staring up at him out of freezing water. A dagger-thrust of agony was as sudden as it was unexpected and he cried out at its harsh touch. Icy tendrils of terror clasped his heart, leaving him gasping for air. His whole body shook, his eyes blurring as the image of Hwenfayre’s inert body sinking beyond his grasp into the Sea filled his mind.

As if feeling his pain Hwenfayre suddenly turned from her distant regard of the waters to look at him. Wyn was so overwhelmed with the image of her dead body that he was unable even to return her gaze. Instead he went back to his task, all the while cursing his weakness in the eyes of the only woman he had ever loved.

Hwenfayre continued to watch him, her eyes a mystery. By the time she looked away, Morag’s fleet had come into view behind them.

Declan was the first to see the
Misty Seal
. He was having a spell as watchman on the high watch at the top of the mainmast. For the past few days he had found more and more reasons to be away from Morag’s side. She was becoming increasingly distasteful to him. It seemed that everything she did or said jarred with him in some way. Where before he had seen leadership, he now saw manipulation, where he had seen intellect, he now saw deceit and where he had once seen the woman he loved, he now saw betrayal.

There was no mystery in his sudden awakening to new vision; he knew to the moment when his eyes were opened. She had never loved him, never sought him out on the
Two Family Raft
because she saw his potential. No, she had cynically manipulated him, played with his simple emotions, torn him away from one who was as a brother, poisoned his mind against his own people, all with this moment in mind. Today he knew Morag’s triumph would be complete. She had the whole Southern Raiders’ fleet before her and her own fleet would fall upon them like ravening caruda, tearing them apart, scattering the only
opposition to her total command of the seas. His heart sank as he contemplated his lot under her. She would rule with a whimsically iron fist. Everyone on the water would be subject to her every careless fancy. Without the Southern Raiders and their increasingly sophisticated battle strategies to keep her and her loyal warboats in check, no one would be safe. Once again he marvelled at how easily she had achieved total loyalty from the attack fleet’s captains.

His morbid reflections were interrupted by a flicker of something he half-saw. He stared at the horizon beyond the
Misty Seal
.

There it was again. A sail. No
, he thought,
not a sail. A number of sails
. With mounting concern, he looked wider, then wider still.
What the…?

‘Sails!’ he bellowed. ‘Sails!’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Everywhere! They are everywhere!’

Below decks, Morag smiled grimly. She ran her fingers lightly across the strings of her harp. It murmured gently in response. ‘So it has finally come,’ she whispered.

Summoning her concentration she started to relay her instructions to the Priestesses scattered among her fleet. They in turn passed on her instructions by more prosaic methods to the ships around them. Like a school of fish, the whole fleet turned as one in preparation for the battle.

Between the two fleets, the
Misty Seal
with Nolin at the helm strove to join the Raiders before Morag caught her. But the High Priestess had something special planned for her that she had been saving until the rest of the Raiders could see it.

From the first rank of her attack boats, three unfurled new sails. They billowed out, catching the wind, and the three vessels surged forward. With breathtaking speed they easily outpaced the
Misty Seal
, drawing level with her in what seemed like seconds. Behind them Morag grinned at the irony. The additional sail plan had been first designed by Nolin and his own idea would be his undoing.

She watched with building excitement as the three attack boats opened fire with their heavy crossbows and short-range cannon. The bark of the cannon carried clearly across the water as they shot their canisters of hundreds of small pellets. They were designed to cut through rigging, tear sails and pulverise living flesh.

Their canisters ripped through the
Misty Seal
’s rigging and sails leaving tatters in their wake. Across the water Morag heard the cries of injured men. Her breathing quickened as she saw, in her mind’s eye, the wounds inflicted by the jagged, high-speed projectiles. She always enjoyed the opening volley of a battle. With a gentle caress she invoked the soothing melody of her harp. The strings responded to her almost sensuous pleasure with their own song, a song of eagerness that she interpreted as reflecting her own desire for destruction.

It was a song she did not recognise, and for a moment she allowed herself to enjoy its rich, full melody, its subtle counterpoints and its surging energy before reality struck her. With shock she stopped playing and rested her hand on the strings to still their unfettered song. They acquiesced, reluctantly it seemed, and murmured into silence.

Morag, High Priestess of the Children of the Raft, stared in growing wonder at her harp. For years she had been studying the legends of the Danan and her harp, dismissing most of it as superstitious nonsense, but now,
What if a harp carved from bleached driftwood and strung with fibres spun from the gills of the caruda indeed had the powers spoken of? What if she now commanded them?

New vistas of power opened before her. If the powers were not legendary…She stared without seeing the horizon, dotted with more sails than any had expected, contemplating what could now be.

Her expansive contemplations were interrupted by a rude shove. In surprise she spun around to regard the one who dared to touch her.

It was Declan.

‘Call them back!’ he bellowed at her, waving at the battle. ‘Can’t you see what is happening?’

Too confused to be angry, Morag followed the direction of his gesture. To her shock she saw what was left of her three special attack boats. One was already sinking, another was aflame and the third was listing heavily. Even as she watched, the
Misty Seal
fired again, unleashing a brutal storm of hot metal and flaming bolts from her catapults and mangonels.

The sheer destructive capability of just this one ship shocked her. If all the Raiders’ ships were armed like this one, the battle she had spent so long manoeuvring for would be much too close. Even with her Priestesses, the outcome could yet be in doubt.

She was just about to give the order when the two remaining boats slipped beneath the waves.
Something like a sigh eased its way across the whole fleet as the Children contemplated the loss of their fastest vessels.

‘Summon the Navigators and Priestesses at once!’ she snapped. ‘And have the fleet drop back, we need time to plan.’

‘Can’t you…’ Declan started, but his voice died as Morag shot him a glare of pure venom. He nodded and dashed to do her bidding.

Far to the south, the Sea felt pain. The waters heaved and piled up in wild disarray, whitecaps dancing, tendrils of spume trailing in the building winds. Anguish shared is not always halved, sometimes it is doubled. Sadness will sometimes feed upon itself. Fear can rapidly turn to anger.

‘But you saw it!’ said Navigator Lamar, plaintively. ‘If they are all armed like that they will cut us to pieces!’

‘You are supposed to be the greatest seamen who ever sailed. Deal with it!’ screamed Morag.

‘How?’ asked Lind, another Navigator.

‘Perhaps we should focus on our strengths rather than theirs,’ observed Sirran. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. ‘As the only remaining Navigator of the First Rank, I would like to remind everyone here that we have the fastest, most manoeuvrable fleet the Sea has ever borne. We also have a level of command over the winds and the waves. I suggest that these two things, together with the skills of the Children of Dana—sorry,’ he caught himself before finishing the word and nodded in
deference to Morag, ‘Children of the Raft,’ he continued, ‘we should have more than enough advantages to put paid to these pirates.’

Sirran was an old man with hair so bleached by the sun it was white, a face made leathery by the winds and eyes perpetually watery from staring at too many sunrises. He was held in a regard bordering on awe by all Navigators by virtue of his decades of flawless sailing. Despite his age and increasing infirmity, he was still the finest Navigator and the only person who dared question the High Priestess. Even Morag would not challenge him in council for he only ever spoke of the things he knew best, the Sea and navigation. When he gave his direction on any issue to do with the Children’s travel, all listened. As they did now.

‘This is how we can use our advantages,’ he continued. At his gesture a chart was unrolled across the table. It showed the Wrested Archipelago and the surrounding waters in exquisite detail. He rose slowly to his feet and started to give orders. As he spoke, Morag felt her anger subside, to be replaced by relief.