The Wide World's End (27 page)

“. . . not if you expect to amount to anything in the Arbitrate!” she concluded forcefully as Aloê came up to them.

“Arbiter Ulvana,” said Aloê, “I am sorry to leave you with my work to do, but I must move like a riptide if I am to have a chance of catching this killer.”

“Say what you need, Guardian. I'm ashamed to say we haven't been much use to you up until now.”

“Can you find someone to put a stasis over both these bodies, and put a guard over them until I send further word?”

“Easily. Is that really all, my friend?”

Aloê was so lonely, trapped within her thoughts and suspicions like a beast swimming in an empty sea, that the last word stabbed right through her. She seized Ulvana's hand and said, “I'm glad we're friends. It's my fault we haven't been for the last hundred years. But it won't be my fault if we're not for the next hundred.”

“Good hunting, Aloê,” Ulvana said, smiling. “And you, Gyllen, mind what I said.”

Aloê mounted her horse and Gyllen climbed unskillfully onto the Arbiter's. At her motion, he led the way out of town, southward on the Road.

The murder scene was at the first milestone they came to. Gyllen dismounted there and pointed sullenly at a patch of grass behind the stone.

Aloê dismounted and got a coldlight from her bag. She tapped it against the milestone and it sprang into luminous life. She looked closely at the patch of ground.

Yes: someone had bled deeply here. The imprint of the body was clear in the deep, dry grass. And . . . and. . . .

She bent down and scooped up what she saw glittering there next to the bloodstain.

A spell-anchor. Like the spell-anchors she and Denynê had recovered from Earno's body—Denynê who had taken those anchors with her—Denynê who was now missing.

Was this truly one of those seven anchors? Or just one that looked like them? Had it fallen here by accident or been left here by design? More damn questions. She was sick of them.

It didn't look like the murderer had gone away through the grass on the side of the Road. Why should they? The murderer had no doubt stepped away from Oluma's corpse and walked or ridden wherever they chose along the Road.

If Aloê was right, her next stop was A Thousand Towers: to find out who had the knowledge of when Earno was passing this way. Somehow she thought the killer was down there, too. Predatory beasts hide in deep waters after a kill. Murderers would hide in a city.

“Gyllen, I am done with you,” she said. “If you are lucky, we won't meet again.”

“What difference does a death or two make?” Gyllen said sullenly. “The world is ending, and soon we'll all die. We should be making ships to cross the Sea of Worlds, not looking for bloody footprints.”

“The next bloody footprint you see,” said Aloê, “will be mine—across your face.”

She mounted her palfrey and rode away southward.

The poor beast couldn't travel much farther tonight, but she didn't want to return to Big Rock. She would sleep beside the Road. She would add to her arsenal of questions. And when she got to A Thousand Towers, she would damned well find some answers.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

The Sea Road to Grarby

“I object to water for its wetness, which is really its worst quality.” Deor would have gone on, but Morlock, weary of his incessant complaints, took a handful of water from the drinking barrel on deck, formed it into a ball, and threw it at him.

While Deor sputtered and the rowers cheered and laughed, Kelat stared in open-mouthed astonishment. “How did you do that?”

Morlock silently mimed the actions of throwing something.

“No, no: I mean the water. It held together like a snowball.”

“I convinced it to.”

“How?”

“Water is quite gullible, in small amounts,” the crooked man said.

Kelat reflected on this for a moment and said, “And in larger amounts?”

From the steering bench Lady Ambrosia said, “Moody. Dangerous. Usually beautiful, but always unpredictable. Sounds like your wife, Morlock, eh?”

Kelat was thinking that it sounded like Lady Ambrosia, but he didn't think it right to say so. Somehow Morlock had convinced her to bring him along on this journey; he didn't want to wreck anything, the way he usually managed to do.

Deor, quenched in more ways than one, came back to sit by Morlock. “
Harven
, have I been getting tiresome?” he asked quietly.

Morlock opened one hand, closed it.

Evidently Deor knew what that meant and said, “Sorry.”

“Eh. Don't let it worry you.”

It was the second night of their travels, and by dead reckoning they were fairly near their destination, the settlement of Gray Folk on the northeast coast of the Sea of Storms. Kelat had never been on a sea voyage that long, and he loved it. He stood by whenever Morlock and Ambrosia took the bearings of true-east and true-north with the seastone and plotted their progress on the map. He took turns at the oars. He took turns spelling the drummer who helped the rowers keep time. He stood watches as lookout. He spent time watching the different techniques of the steersman (or steerswoman, in Ambrosia's case). He wished the journey would never end.

He turned to look past the prow and sang out, “Fire on the horizon.” There was a dim red spark there, where the darkness of the sky met the darkness of the sea.

“Where? What? How?” Deor demanded.

“Dead ahead,” Kelat said, pointing. “Something burning. I don't know how.”

“I see it,” Ambrosia said grimly. “That's where Grarby ought to be. Any thoughts, Morlock?”

“Get closer,” he said.

“Boat's made of wood, Morlock,” Ambrosia observed. “Wood burns.”

“It burns?” Morlock looked around in surprise. “Why?”

“Because. . . . Because. . . . Shut your stupid face!”

Morlock shrugged. “Closer.”

“So we go closer,” Ambrosia said. “But listen to me, Master Drummer and all you oarsmen! Be prepared to go to half speed.”

They drove on into the dark water, and the red bud on the horizon grew into a bright, burning flower.

“Lady,” said the captain, “we can beach the ship north of Grarby and march with you.”

“Vornon, you're a giant,” said Ambrosia easily, “but it can't be. This ship and crew must return intact to the fleet to help defend our fishing waters.”

The flower grew. Its red light spread toward them, like bright petals cast on the dark water. Ambrosia ordered half speed.

She called the rowers to halt when they could actually see individual buildings on fire in Grarby.

“Haul out the skiff,” she said.

The oarsman stood and moved their benches. They reached down into the innards of the hull and drew out a narrow little skiff on ropes. Morlock came over to help them lower it over the prow into the water.

“What is that?” Deor asked, in real distress.

Ambrosia stood up from the steering bench, stretched luxuriously (causing several sailors to stare wildly—including Kelat, he feared) and leaped forward to clap Deor on the shoulder. “That's the last boat to Grarby, Deortheorn! Climb aboard!”

“It'll sink.”

“Then we'll swim. Get your stuff and come on!”

Deor glumly grabbed his pack and Morlock's; Kelat ran back to fetch his own and heard Ambrosia say quietly to Vornon, “You're in command now. Get this ship back and put it at the Vice-Regent's disposal. Stand by him, Vornon. It will be a long, hard year, and that brings out the traitor in weak-minded men.”

“You'll be gone for a year?” Vornon said.

“I'll be back as soon as I can, but I don't know how soon that will be. Carry out my orders, soldier.”

“Yes, Lady Ambrosia!”

Kelat brought Ambrosia's pack along with his and handed it to her. She grinned at him, and he felt like he'd been punched. Where was the distant, cold, often angry Lady Ambrosia he'd known all his life?

Ambrosia danced across the benches and jumped over the side, landing neatly in the skiff. “Come on!” she called.

If the skiff had been the jaws of a sea monster, Kelat would have done exactly as he did: run past the benches, leap over the side, and land right in front of her. He lost his footing and his pack almost went over the side, but she seized it and him and no disaster occurred. He hoped he wasn't gaping at her, but he couldn't stop looking at her as she turned toward the warship and called, “Come on, you two! Grarby is burning and, for all we know, the sun is not. There's no time to lose.”

“That thing will sink if all four of us get into it,” Deor said, not in a joking way but as if he believed it. Kelat turned to look back at him, not because he wanted to, but because he was embarrassed to keep staring at Ambrosia.

Morlock didn't reply to Deor, but he made his way somewhat unhandily down the side of the ship by way of the ropes. Once he was in the skiff he looked up to Deor and opened his hands.

Deor shrugged. “Catch!” he said, and tossed down first his pack then Morlock's. At last he followed Morlock down the ropes into the skiff.

“I think we can trust you two landsmen to row—” Ambrosia began.

“I am not a man. Madam.”

“Your pardon, Deor. If you'll take one set of oars, I see Morlock is already shipping the others. Kelat, you're lookout. I'll steer.”

They cast off the ropes. Ambrosia bid Vornon and his crew farewell, and they cheered the skiff on its way. Deor and Morlock got fairly soon into a rhythm with the oars and they pulled away from the warship. When the skiff was well away, they heard Vornon calling out orders, and the warship's oars began to dip and sweep. It made a long turn south, then west, back home to the cold camps of the Vraids on the northern coast of the Sea of Stones.

“This tub is going to sink,” Deor muttered.

“Probably,” Morlock agreed.

“
Absit omen!
” Ambrosia snapped. (Kelat didn't understand that, exactly, except it seemed to be meant to ward off bad luck.) “You should know better, Morlock.”

“Every ship or boat I've ever been in has sunk, unless Aloê was in it, too,” Morlock observed.

“That's not funny, brother.”

“No,” he agreed flatly.

“Er. Really? You mean it? Well, we all know how to swim—I hope?”

No one said her nay, and they rowed onward over the dark water toward the burning town.

The glittering red water was broken by the black-and-white furrow of a wake. “Something coming toward us in the water,” Kelat called back to the others.

“A ship?” Ambrosia asked calmly.

“Something under the water.”

The oars stopped rowing. Harsh ringing music: Morlock was drawing his sword. Kelat scrabbled about for his spear—where was it? Back on the warship?

The thing in the water: he could see it now. Sort of see it. It had a circular maw, ringed with knife-teeth that lifted from the water—

Morlock brushed past him and leaped off the prow of the boat, sword in hand, directly at the beast in the water.

Kelat shouted something, he never remembered what.

Morlock landed atop the scaly back of the beast. He stabbed the dark sword deep into it—there was no head—there was no neck—there was just the place behind the maw, and that's where Morlock struck. His blade went all the way into the monster until the hilts were pressed against the scaly back.

The knivish ring of teeth clenched and champed. The beast screamed and rolled in the water. Morlock disappeared.

Deor cried out and Ambrosia called out, “Steady! Ware the waves!”

It was excellent advice. The fish-beast kept on thrashing and bucking in the water. Morlock came into sight betimes, hanging desperately onto the grip of his sword, still anchored in something—the beast's spine, perhaps. Whenever he came into sight, he was already going out of sight as the fish-beast spun again and again in the water, arching its body and swinging its great finned tail.

The turmoil of the sea threatened to overturn the skiff, but it was the fish-beast's tail that destroyed it, shattering the side of the boat so that the dark sea poured in.

Kelat tottered and fell from the prow, and in the chaos of foam and bitter cold water and blood and broken wood he knew nothing for a time except the struggle to stay near the surface and breathing.

The tumult in the waters slowed, ended. The fish beast drifted in the water, as dead as their boat. Morlock was nowhere in sight.

Ambrosia snarled, “Death and Justice! If he's dead, I'll bash his damn brains in!” Her dark shape dove beneath the dead beast and returned in a moment with a choking, water-spewing Morlock.

Kelat paddled over to help but Ambrosia snarled, “Don't strain yourself. The danger's over.”

“Don't
you
strain yourself,
harven
,” said Deor. He thrashed his way over, their packs in tow . . . somehow all floating on the surface of the water. Their weapons were bound to the packs.