The River of Shadows (22 page)

In the Jaws of Masalym

24 Ilbrin 941

Hunger, thirst, loss of blood: such was Dr. Rain’s diagnosis. Fortunately the bleeding proved easy to control; the prince’s wounds were ugly but not deep. A cabin was readied with lightning speed, the bed salvaged from the ample store of first-class wreckage, a new mattress stitched and stuffed, a coal stove mounted on the floor and its chimney pipe routed out through the porthole. “I’m not cold,” the prince mumbled, waking briefly, but Rose took no more chances. He brought his own feather pillows for the invalid, and plumped them as the prince was carried in. Thasha watched his efforts with grim amusement. The captain didn’t mean to be executed at their first port of call.

But was the man truly who he claimed? The other two dlömu certainly thought so. Ibjen said he knew the prince’s face from coins, and even Bolutu declared that he recognized the features of the ruling family.

Olik did wake again, heavy-lidded and weak, but only long enough to seize the captain’s arm and speak a warning. “Hug the shore, as tightly as you dare. That will keep you out of the rip tide. And you must also manufacture a flag in great haste—a leopard leaping a red sun, both on black—or the Masalym cliff batteries will rain down enough iron to sink this ship by weight alone.”

“That is your banner … Sire?” asked Rose.

Olik nodded wearily. “And when you pass safe under those guns, perhaps you will consider yourself repaid for the Karyskans’ assault. Go to Masalym, Captain. Only there can you safely repair your ship. Now, I think—”

He plummeted again into sleep. This time it was profound, and Rose ordered the cabin off-limits to all save Fulbreech and Rain.

About the time of the prince’s collapse a great smoke began to rise in the south. It spread quickly (or they were swept quickly toward it), low and black and boiling over land and water. Beneath the lid of smoke the dark hulks, the weird shimmer of the armada came and went, licked now and then by flashes of fire. Thasha aimed her father’s telescope at the melee. It was still too distant—fortunately—for her to make out individual ships, but even blurred and indistinct the scene was terrifying. Wood and stone, steel and serpent-flesh, water and city and ships: they were all in collision, blending and bleeding together in a haze of fire.
Nandirag:
that was what Prince Olik had called the city. What would it be called after today, and who would be left to name it?

By nightfall the
Chathrand
had drawn within a league of the shore. From this distance one could see the effects of the rip tide with the naked eye: a powerful leeway, a slippage, as though the ship were a man walking across a rug while a dozen hands pulled it sideways.
How far did it carry us?
wondered Thasha, studying the shore through her father’s telescope.
How long before it sweeps us right into the fray?

Nearer to the
Chathrand
, the coast was a line of high, rocky hills, silver-gray and crevassed like the hide of an elephant, crowned with shaggy meadowlands. In the last minutes of daylight Thasha saw dark boulders and sharp solitary trees, a wall of fieldstones that might have marked some pasture’s edge, and here and there an immense clinging vine dangling garlands of fire-red flowers over the sea. Among the flowers, winged creatures, tiny birds or great insects or something else altogether, rose and settled in clouds.

Darkness was falling when they cleared the rip tide. It was unmistakable: a line of churning water and disordered waves, a sudden heaving swell to starboard, a rise in the apparent wind. A scramble ensued: Rose actually spread sail, driving them another half-league shoreward in a matter of minutes. Then he brought the ship about to the north and ordered nearly all the canvas taken in. Until dawn they would creep northward, following a narrow, safe path between the current and the cliffs.

Thasha watched the ship wheel northward and felt a chill. It was happening. They were doing exactly what they had said they must
never
do: taking the Nilstone straight to evil hands. Was there any doubt that Masalym was evil? It was a part of Bali Adro, the Empire that was even now destroying the city at their backs, that Nandirag. But was there any other choice? The ship was sinking. Without repairs she could neither run nor fight well enough to keep the Nilstone safe much longer. And there was the small matter of food.

Neeps and Marila had gone to sleep on the floor of the brig, next to Pazel’s cell. Thasha wanted to go to them, ached to do so, could not. She went to Fulbreech and kissed him long and deep, her arms over his shoulders, her back against the doorway of his cabinette. His hands gripping her hips, two fingers grazing her skin beneath the shirt. He tried to coax her into his chamber but she shook her head, breathless and shivering; it was not yet time. She left him, ran blind across the lower gun deck, pounded up the Silver Stair and through the magic wall. She flung open Hercól’s cabin door and flew at him and struck him with both fists in the chest. Hercól kicked the door shut. In the room adjacent Bolutu heard her curses and her sobs, and the warrior’s answering voice, low and intimate and stern.

Sergeant Haddismal tossed and turned in his cabin. When he managed to sleep, the same object rose persistently in his dreams. An arm, pulsating, yellow-gray, somehow both dead and alive, groping through the ship on a mission of its own.

It was the Shaggat’s arm, and his dream was hardly stranger than the reality that had prompted it. He had inspected the Shaggat that very evening: first with his naked eye, then with a tape measure. Impossibly, the cracks that were threatening the statue had stopped growing, and even—very slightly, but unmistakably, for Haddismal was a meticulous record keeper
—shortened
. The mad king was not just alive inside his stone curse. He was healing.

Many others shared the Turach’s restlessness. All night Lady Oggosk sat awake in the forecastle house, irritating the other prisoners, mumbling Thasha’s name. All night Rose paced the quarterdeck, listening to his ship, pretending not to heed the taunts and whispers of the ghosts who walked at his side. All night the chain-pumps clattered, and the men sang songs from the far side of Alifros, pouring out the sea as it poured in through the ship’s hidden wound.

The cliffs were higher at daybreak, the vegetation atop them more lush and green. Now Rose took the prince’s advice and brought them closer, barely a mile off the rocks. There were grazing animals (not quite goats, not quite sheep) upon a windy hillside, and a dlömic herdsman with two dogs that sprinted in circles around the beasts. When he saw the
Chathrand
the dlömu goaded his animals into a run. They swept over the hill and disappeared.

The day was bright, the water clear to eight fathoms. Nonetheless it was tricky sailing, for the winds were erratic, and for all Rose’s fury his men were clumsy and slow. They were weakening with hunger, distracted by fear. Rumors passed like foul vapors through the ship: the ixchel were planning executions. Dlömic attackers were still at large in the hold. Arunis was stalking the topdeck by moonlight. Pazel and his friends were fighting because one of them had gone over to the sorcerer’s side.

Late morning they came suddenly upon a tiny cove, high-walled and round as a saucer. The remains of a few stone buildings crouched just above the waves, roofless and forlorn. And there were stairs—long, steep flights of them carved into the rock, beginning at the ruins and snaking back and forth up a cleft in the wall. Five hundred feet overhead they reached the sunny clifftops. There the sailors saw with delight the shapes of fruit trees—three fruit trees, their branches laden with bright yellow globes.

“Apples!” declared someone, starting excited chatter.

“I wonder,” said Hercól.

Thasha glanced briefly at her tutor. He was right to be doubtful, she thought. Hercól was
always
right; you could almost hate him for the trait. But Thasha quickly rejected the thought, and flushed with shame.

Bolutu appeared on deck and warned aloud that there were many fruits in Bali Adro, some fit only for wild creatures. But the men were not listening. They had found an orchard, and the trees were groaning with apples. Their days of hunger were at an end.

Rose summoned his officers to his day-cabin. Taliktrum, uninvited, joined the conference. The sailors paced, beside themselves, devouring the shore with their eyes. But they did not have long to wait. Ten minutes later the door flew open and the captain strode out among the waiting men. There was a bottle in his hand: fine Quezan rum.

“We will launch the short pinnace,” he said. Then, shouting above their cheers: “Not for apples—they are secondary, and we may even forgo them, should danger arise. What we seek above all is tactical information. We need a glance at this country before we sail into an unknown harbor on the word of a stowaway, and—”

“We must be very fast,” Taliktrum broke in. “Who knows how many eyes are watching us from the clifftops, even now?”

The sailors were gasping: no one interrupted the Red Beast. Rose himself looked tempted to smack Taliktrum into the sea. But breathing hard, he continued:

“I need someone who can take those stairs at a run. The apple-pickers will follow at our signal, if that man finds no danger. His will be the first foot to touch the Southern mainland, and there is great honor in such a deed. Tell me now: who is strong, who is bold? Who wants to make history today?”

Many hands went up, including Thasha’s and Hercól’s, but the captain chose a tall Emledrian sailor named Hastan. Thasha smiled at the choice. She liked Hastan, a quiet topman who was usually too abashed to speak in her presence, but who had danced with her on the topdeck when Mr. Druffle played his fiddle.

Rose passed him the bottle of rum. “Drink deep!” he said. “That’ll give you strength and courage both.”

Hastan took a giddy swallow, smacked his lips. “You’re a gentleman, Captain.”

Rose took the bottle back, glaring at him: “Chew the apples thoroughly. Don’t let me see you gulping food like a hog.”

Minutes later the boat was in the water, with six rowers, two ixchel observers (“I trust our eyes more than theirs,” said Taliktrum) and baskets large as the sailors’ hopes. Every eye followed her progress, her glide into the sheltered cove, Hastan’s leap into the surf and wallow up the shingle, his running assault on the stairs. Rose had chosen well: Hastan was as nimble as a mountain goat. He had climbed a hundred feet before the others had the pinnace out of the waves.

The five basket-carriers huddled near the ruins, awaiting
Chathrand
’s signal that it was safe to climb. The men with telescopes watched Hastan, still running as he neared the top. Only on the last flight did he pause for breath. Then he marched up the last steps and moved in among the trees.

There he stood, leaning against a trunk, gazing at an unknown world. He was motionless for a surprising time. When at last he turned to look at the
Chathrand
his face was full of wonder. Slowly he waved his raised palm to the sky: the all-clear signal. Then he picked an apple, sniffed it and took a bite.

Breathless anticipation: Hastan chewed, considered, swallowed. Then he tossed the apple in the air, caught it and set about devouring it with a will. The men on the topdeck roared.

“Quiet, you silly apes!” hissed Fiffengurt, though he was as happy as the rest. The signalman waved his flag, and the basket carriers started to climb.

Hastan finished the apple and tossed away the core. “Glutton,” said Rose.

The men reached the summit and set about stripping the trees. They worked quickly, and soon had taken all the fruit in easy reach. But there were eight hundred men awaiting apples, so one by one they moved away from the cliff’s edge, seeking more. Thasha watched them go through her telescope, thinking,
Perhaps it is an orchard, at that
.

But the men did not return. Five minutes passed, then ten. “Damn the fools!” cried Taliktrum. “They’re gorging themselves like brats in a sweet shop! You giants can’t be trusted with the simplest task!”

Twenty minutes. Not a branch stirred on the clifftop. The men looked at one another with growing alarm. Then Thasha saw Hercól do a startling thing: he touched Rose’s elbow, drew the captain back from the rail and whispered in his ear.

At first Rose showed no reaction to Hercól’s words. Then he shook the warrior off, walked to the quarterdeck rail and leaned over his crew. “No shouts, no cheering,” he said in a low and scathing rumble. “Haddismal, ready your Turachs. Alyash, I want a hundred sailors backing them up. Blades, helmets, shields—empty the armory if need be. Fiffengurt, clear the eighty-footers for immediate launch. We are going to get our men.”

Instantly the crowd splintered, every man racing to his job. Eager, approving looks passed among them: they were afraid, but waiting helplessly was worse. An assault! Whoever had seized their shipmates had no idea what they were in for.

“Rose is guilty of a million sins,” said Fiffengurt softly to Thasha, “but leaving crew behind ain’t among them.”

The hands swarmed around the longboat and the eighty-foot launch, freeing them to be hoisted into the gulf. Turachs were assembling, strapping on breastplates and chain collars, feeling their longbows for cracks. They worked in an eerie hush, as Rose had ordered—until the lookout’s cry shattered everything.

“Sail! Three ships from the armada, Captain! Breaking our way!”

Rose’s telescope snapped up to portside. Thasha raised her own and swept the coast. It was true: three frightful vessels had broken away from the warring mass. All three belched fire, and shimmered in that strange, unsettling way. And their bows were clearly aimed at the
Chathrand
.

“Captain,” she said, “how fast do you think—”

But the captain was already twenty feet up the mizzenmast. Thasha had seen before how Rose handled himself aloft. He moved like a younger man, confidence and fury making up for stiffness and girth. In minutes he had reached the topgallant lookout, snatched the man’s bigger telescope and raised it to his eye.