Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (31 page)

“It’s in my belly,” Dorin said, panting with the pain. “Been aching for several days now. Thought I needed to take a good shit. But it’s something else. Something’s wrong.”

Connor reached out tentatively to poke Dorin gently in the
abdomen. It was a gentle press, barely depressing the skin, but Dorin stiffened and cried out. “Can’t stand no pressure there. Had to take off my belt because it pressed too hard. Oh gods, I think I’m dying.”

From the look on Engraham’s face, it was clear that he thought Dorin’s prediction might be true. Engraham reached into a pouch inside his shirt and withdrew a small bottle. He took out the stopper. “Open your mouth,” he said to Dorin. Dorin complied, and Engraham jostled a few drops of a dark liquid onto Dorin’s tongue.

“What is that—poison? Oh gods, you’re trying to kill me.”

“It’s laudanum, you fool,” Engraham said quietly. “Bitter as Raka, but it should do something for the pain. I don’t have much, but it doesn’t take a lot.”

Within minutes, Dorin’s features had relaxed, and his body was no longer rigid with pain. When it appeared that he had fallen asleep, Engraham motioned for Connor to move a few paces away to talk. With the pitching sea and the crowded hold, that was a challenge. “What do you think is wrong?” Connor asked.

“I’m no healer, but I’ve seen my share of bar fights,” Engraham replied. “He acts like someone who’s been punched hard in the gut, hard enough to break something inside. When that happens, it goes bad quickly, and it’s an awful way to die. They take fever, and then the sickness goes to the blood. The chirurgeons can’t do much unless there’s a full healer available.”

“He hasn’t been in a bar fight,” Connor argued.

Engraham shrugged. “I’ve heard tell that something can break inside without being hit. Different cause, but same outcome.”

“So he’s going to die?”

“Unless we get to Edgeland soon and their healers still have magic, it’s likely.” Engraham grimaced. “Then again, with this storm, our odds might not be much better.”

He nodded toward the rivulets of water that were pouring down through the grating from the upper deck. “Remember what we talked about, the way ships used magic? I’ve been keeping an eye out, especially when we’re allowed on deck. The
Prowess
is an older ship. It’s seen a lot of wear. Transporting convicts made a captain and crew decent money, but not like ships that transported goods from the Far Shores.”

“Not as long a voyage, either,” Connor noted.

“Agreed—and a cargo of prisoners doesn’t draw pirates like a hold full of spices or gold might. But the point is, Captain Olaf didn’t have a lot of money to spend on the ship. Wouldn’t be surprised if he cut a few corners, now and again, with something mages could patch. But with the magic gone—”

“So are the patches.”

Engraham nodded. “We’ve weathered several storms, and each one put strain on the ship. Be ready, because if the ship runs into trouble, we might have to get out quickly.”

And go where?
Connor thought. The idea of setting out the ship’s dinghy at night with no hope of dawn did not appeal to him. As if he could read Connor’s mind, Engraham gave a mirthless smile. “Don’t worry, in water this cold we’ll barely have time to worry about it. There are worse ways to go. At least we didn’t burn.”

“What about Dorin?”

Engraham looked back to where Dorin slept restlessly. “Pray to Charrot that we don’t have to worry about it.”

They took their seats beside Dorin. Connor listened to the wooden timbers creak as the
Prowess
lumbered through the storm. Above them, through the grating, they heard the angry
shouts of the sailors on deck and heard running footsteps as men hurried to follow orders. Below them, Connor swore he could hear the ballast shift when the ship moved sharply.

A sound like thunder and a man’s scream on the other side of the bulkhead brought Connor and Engraham to their feet. “What in the name of Torven was that?”

From the other compartment, they heard shouts and then a dull rumble that made the deck vibrate beneath their boots. “I’m pretty sure the hold next to us is for cargo,” Engraham replied. “We’ve eaten through the food and drunk the grog, but I don’t know what other cargo our good captain was carrying when we set sail. By the sound of it, the cargo shifted and some poor sap got hit by whatever moved.”

They sat back down. Connor cast a nervous glance toward Dorin. The laudanum had done its work. Dorin’s face was no longer creased with pain, though his breath was shallow and his fever had not broken.
He’s probably not even conscious
, Connor thought.
The rest of us are dying a thousand times over, waiting for something to happen. If it does, Dorin won’t even know. For him, it might be a mercy.

Connor had faced what seemed like certain death in the bell tower the night Donderath fell. He and Geddy had gotten out unhurt except for a few bruises and scrapes. He had escaped the firestorm in Castle Reach without singeing a hair.
Perhaps I tempted the gods by getting aboard a ship. Or maybe it’s Yadin that doesn’t care for me. Did I show poor faith in Esthrane and her land gods by taking to the sea? Sweet Vessa—if I’ve given offense, I promise to make it right. I don’t want to drown.

At the memory of Vessa’s name, Connor remembered the mural in King Merrill’s library. Stealing the map seemed like a lifetime ago. Throughout everything, the map remained sealed in its wooden box under his shirt, along with the obsidian
pendant. Neither item had stirred since that first night. Restless, Connor tried to remember all the names of his household gods, the deities of garden and hearth, of wells and trees to whom his mother had regularly made offerings and given thanks, but their memory eluded him.

Did the gods perish with the magic? And if they didn’t, without magic are they still gods?
Connor had a moment of fear that perhaps the gods would hear his musings and strike him down, and an equal fear that perhaps there was no one left to hear his prayers and perhaps never had been.
Is it worse to be abandoned by the gods, or to think that there never were gods to begin with?
He listened to the prayers and chants of his fellow passengers with a stab of jealousy.

A palpable fear had taken root in the hold. Unlike the other storms, even the terrible flight from their ruined kingdom, tonight the fear of death clung to his fellow refugees. Men fingered smooth rune stones and women caressed prayer beads. Crazy Benna, the seer, had made black streaks on her face and arms with the lampblack, a mark of mourning or contrition. She had managed to light a bundle of sage from one of the lanterns, and its sweet, smoky scent fought with the stench of unwashed bodies.

As the ship was suddenly swept skyward, Connor’s stomach lurched. The ship came down hard, with a terrible crunch and the crack of breaking beams against something much more solid than water. There was a sickening moment of silence, when the world itself seemed to hold its breath, and then the
Prowess
listed hard to port, crashing against whatever it was that had stopped the ship’s forward motion.

Portholes shattered, and icy seawater began to stream in. People screamed and scrambled to keep their footing. Connor hauled Dorin to his feet and shouldered under his arm. Hazy
with the drug, Dorin opened his eyes and stared at Connor as if trying to place him.

“What’s going on?” Dorin slurred.

“We’re sinking.”

Already, the seams along the port hull were giving way, and wood splintered under the weight of the ship and the sea waves. “Get to the stairs!” Engraham shouted above the screams and cries. Connor wrapped one arm around Dorin’s waist and was attempting to make his way through the crowd when the ship shifted beneath his feet. It felt to Connor as if Yadin himself had lifted the ship in the palm of his hand and thrown it into the air once more.

Awkward and heavy, the beleaguered ship could not hold together. Connor watched in horror as boards peeled away from the ribs of the ship, and the deck above him separated with a loud snap. The portion of the deck connected to the stairs collapsed, trapping those who had nearly made it to the questionable safety above. The ship trembled, and Connor heard a mighty crack that reverberated through every board as the keel of the
Prowess
snapped. The whole forward section ripped away from the aft, and the ship tumbled back to the ocean, spilling its fragile cargo into the black waves.

All around Connor, bodies plummeted through the air. He was pelted with fragments of wood, and with the fractured contents of the hold. He still had a hold of Dorin when the deck dropped out from beneath his feet, but as he fell, Dorin’s dead weight tore out of his grip, and Connor tumbled into the sea.

Connor screamed, but he knew enough not to flail his arms and to hit the water’s surface as cleanly as he could. He gulped a lungful of frigid air before his body knifed beneath the waves. A few powerful strokes of his arms brought him to the surface,
but he ducked beneath the water just as quickly to avoid the bodies and debris that came raining down all around him. Screams echoed in the strange dim glow of a perpetual night that was blacker than twilight but not true dark.

A large barrel floated by, and Connor grabbed at it, hoisting himself mostly over it. He immediately reconsidered as the air began to freeze his clothing to his skin. The sea was a bone-chilling cold, and Connor had no illusions about how long they would stay alive. For an instant, he envied Dorin, who had likely drowned or been killed upon impact.

“Connor!”

Certain he was hallucinating, Connor tried to maintain his grip on the barrel and look around. In the near darkness, he could barely make out the shadows of people and flotsam. Only a few of the body-shaped silhouettes were upright. Most floated on the water, a sea of corpses, amid the wreckage of the
Prowess
.

“Connor! Over here!”

Connor followed the sound, willing his shivering arms to propel him toward Engraham’s voice. He found the tavern master clinging to a section of hull that was almost raft-size.

“Where’s Dorin?”

Connor shook his head. “I lost him. When we fell, I couldn’t hold him—”

“Probably for the best,” Engraham said. “I didn’t think you’d have approved, but it crossed my mind to just give him the rest of the laudanum and let him drift off in his sleep.”

“Might have been a kindness,” Connor agreed through chattering teeth.

Engraham had thrown a couple of mid-length boards atop his section of hull. “We’re not far from shore,” Engraham said, and pointed. Connor could make out a solid line of darkness in the twilight, and farther away, the glow of lights.

“I think we can paddle ashore.” Engraham hauled himself atop the makeshift raft, threw a length of salvaged rope to Connor, and pulled him close enough to help him onto the raft. He handed him a broken board. “The storm’s dying down, but we’ve only got a few minutes before we’re too cold to think straight. When that happens, we’ll die. We might still freeze on shore, but I’d rather die with dry ground under my feet.”

Together, they rowed toward the dark shore of Edgeland. The winds had lessened, but the water was still rough. Connor kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, willing himself not to see the corpses that floated on the water, not to think about the ship that had once been assembled out of the bits of broken wood scattered across the ocean. He heard the shouts and cries of the other passengers who bobbed in the water, and he could make out their dark shapes swimming toward the shore or clinging to larger debris. His whole body was trembling violently, and his teeth hit against each other hard enough that Connor was sure he would break a tooth. His hands were clenched around the board, but he was cold enough that he doubted he could have forced his frozen fingers to let go.

As the shoreline loomed, the raft scraped against the rocky shallows. Connor toppled onto his hands and knees. The rocks may have split open his skin, but he was too cold to know or care. Together, he and Engraham staggered the last few feet out of the water and collapsed on the brushy shore.

Connor fought to remain conscious. He thought he heard voices, but dismissed it as the visions of the dying. He heard the sound again: unfamiliar voices, shouting something he couldn’t quite make out. There were footsteps, and then someone grasped Connor by the shoulders and rolled him onto his back.

“This one’s alive!” the stranger’s voice shouted. “What about yours?”

“So’s this one, but they won’t be for long in this cold.”

Connor heard a groan and recognized Engraham’s voice. “Take us—” Engraham struggled to say.

“Don’t fret yourself,” the stranger said. “Whatever it is, you can tell us later.”

Connor’s rescuer lifted him and carried him a few paces to a wagon. He set Connor down and wrapped him in a rough blanket. Another man wrestled Engraham’s lanky frame into the wagon, tucking the blanket around him when it was clear Engraham was shivering too badly to do it for himself.

“Don’t know where you thought you were going, but you’re in Edgeland, if you wondered,” one of their rescuers said. “We saw the ship from the lookout tower, and when we lost sight of you in the storm, we feared the worst.”

Several other men walked up to the wagon. “Did you find anyone else?” Connor’s rescuer asked.

“Maybe a dozen or so alive,” the voice answered. “Otherwise, just corpses.”

Connor’s rescuer nodded. “All right, then. Let’s get the survivors back to town and into dry clothes. We can scavenge the wreck tomorrow.”

Engraham grabbed at the man’s sleeve. “Take us—” he struggled to say, but the seawater in his throat choked him.

“Where do you think we can take you?” the man asked. “You’re at the end of the world.” He paused. “Is there someone here you know? Is that it?”

Engraham nodded his head. “I have a friend here,” he managed to whisper. “Take us to Lord Blaine McFadden.”