Lodestone Book One: The Sea of Storms (42 page)

Keris had an expression of rapt
attention. “Intriguing.” Then she added, “A pity we couldn’t
actually do it.”

Shann felt instantly deflated.
“Why not?”

Lyall cut in.
“I’m afraid I’d have to agree with Keris. Your idea is fine in
theory, Shann. Unfortunately though, a ship, even a relatively
small ship, weighs
a
lot
. It would take a lot of lodestone to
push it–far more than we could possibly lay our hands on. If we had
unlimited time and resources then maybe it would be possible, but
we don’t. Still,” he beamed at her warmly, “it was a great
suggestion.”

Basking in his smile of approval,
she felt herself blossom once more. However, the fact remained that
they were no further forward.

Boxx was still enjoying the fruit
and seemed not to be paying any attention. Suddenly it raised its
head. Juice was running from the corners of its mouth, lending it a
comical appearance. “It Is A Boundary.”

Lyall had a bemused expression.
“In a way, yes.”

“A Boundary Between Here And
There.”

“Boxx is right,” Lyall declared.
“Any boundary can be crossed. We just need to figure out a way.” He
pursed his lips for a moment. “All right, let’s approach this from
a different angle. Is there any instance of anyone ever
successfully traversing the Barrier? ”

“I know of one.” It was
Alondo.

“You
do?”
Keris asked
incredulously.

Alondo nodded, “Uh-huh. Captain
Arval is said to have crossed it once.”

“Captain
Arval?”
Keris turned away dismissively.
“You mean one of those ridiculous stories.”

“Stories are a part of Kelanni
culture,” Alondo maintained. “They also happen to be a valuable
source of inspiration for songs, so I always pay attention to them.
I have found that in among the exaggerated claims, there is more
often than not, a grain of truth.”

Lyall leaned forward on his
stool. “Go ahead, Alondo. Tell us the story.”

Alondo glanced in Keris’
direction. “The legend says that Arval was offered a great sum of
money by the Lord of Kalath-Kar to determine what lay beyond the
Barrier. He travelled to the Isle of Panna. There he captured and
tamed three giant perridons. He tethered them to the bow of his
ship and used them to pull it through the tempests.”

Shann was intrigued. “What
happened? ”

“Well this is where the account
starts to get a little strange. It says they were ‘brought forth
into a land of darkest dark, where the sky is bright but there are
no suns.’”

“What does that mean?” Shann
asked.

Alondo shook
his head. “I have no idea. However, it goes on to tell of how the
crew of the Calandra were terrified and on the brink of mutiny.
Arval was forced to take them back across the divide. Afterwards,
some of them were said to have gone mad. Others never took to sea
again. ” He paused for a reaction but everyone seemed lost in their
own thoughts.
Surely it could not be true.
Annata would not send them to such a terrible place.

“What I found interesting, ”
Alondo continued, “is that this one is quite unlike the other
stories surrounding the good Captain, where he is portrayed as the
all conquering hero. He came close to losing his ship and crew.
”

“It’s nothing more than a
legend,” Keris reminded them.

Lyall had a faraway look.
“Perhaps. But it’s given me an idea. I think there might be a way
to combine Shann’s rather inventive notion of using lodestone with
Arval’s fanciful tale. It’s risky, but I think we may just have
found a way to cross the Great Barrier.

“How?” Alondo asked
eagerly.

Lyall’s eyes
sparkled. “First things first.
We are
going to need a ship
. ”

~

Shann stood with her back to the
wall of the shipwright’s office, watching the world go by. Opposite
her, a hodgepodge of buildings large and small, boarding houses,
moneylenders, traders of every description. Carts drawn by striped
graylesh trundled past along the cobbled street, conveying goods
from the docks and back again. As she watched, an argument broke
out between a round faced, hook nosed merchant and what she took to
be a customer. The round faced man seemed to be demanding money.
Over on the street corner, the tall figure of an Asoli, in
distinctive green jacket and feathered headgear watched over the
altercation, ready to intervene. The sky was overcast and a warm
drizzle had begun, spattering on the round cobblestones and
trickling down the back of her neck.

Shann felt like a fifth wheel.
Alondo and Boxx were back at the Calandra. Alondo had had expressed
the idea that if he could discover what type of energy the machine
used, they might be able to power it from this end, so Lyall
suggested that he stay behind with the Chandara and work on it. He
would take her and Keris into town. Then they would all meet up at
the Calandra later that evening. Lyall had been rather cagey about
his plan for them to cross the Barrier. All he had really said was
that it would be necessary to arrange to modify a ship.

“Why am I coming along? ” Shann
had asked as they headed uphill towards the commercial
district.

“Well, I thought it would be more
interesting for you than just sitting around at the inn,” Lyall had
explained. Now he and Keris were ensconced in the shipwrights,
discussing the finer points of maritime vessel construction, and
she was left outside in the street. Just waiting. In the
rain.

She wrapped the
simple russet coloured robe tighter around her neck and felt a
jingle in one of the folds. Lyall had given her half an astria. To
the orphan kitchen hand in Corte, it would have been a fabulous sum
of money and she would have been consumed by thoughts of how she
could possibly spend it. Now though, standing here on a street in a
city filled with more wonders and temptations than she had ever
seen, she found that there was nothing she wanted. At least,
nothing that money could buy.
You are not
the same person who left Corte–
that was
what Lyall had said. More and more, she was coming to realise that
was true.

She was debating whether or not
to enter the shipwright’s to ask how much longer they were going to
be, when the door opened and Keris stepped out into the street,
closely followed by Lyall.

Lyall was contrite. “Sorry it
took so long, Shann. ” He looked up at the sky and the gathering
rain. “We’ve agreed on the modifications that will be needed. The
chief artisan was curious, but fortunately, this is a town where
people don’t ask too many questions so long as you have the money
to pay. Our next task is to secure a suitable ship so that he can
start work. We will also need someone to sail it, plus a certain
quantity of lodestone. That last one may prove a bit difficult.” He
began leading the way back down to the docks. “The other thing is
that the alterations will take a while–ten to twelve days, he
reckons. That can’t be avoided.”

They reached
the corner where the Asoli was standing watch.
A blur of movement
. A dark figure
shot past them. Shann swivelled on her heel to see the back of a
dark blue coat disappearing into the rain. Behind her she heard
Lyall ’s shout, tinged with frustration and anger. “The money
pouch–
it’s gone
.”

Chapter
27

Keris was already pulling her
flying cloak out of her pack. “You haven’t brought yours, have
you?” It was a rebuke, rather than a question. She fastened the
neck clasps. “You are the Door; I am the Dagger,” she addressed
Lyall. “River and Dam. Try not to lose sight of him.” She turned
and sprinted up the street.

“Remember
Keris,
no violence,
” she heard Lyall call after her.
Does stomping on his head count?
She
shoved one lumbering pedestrian to one side, clipping a basket with
her elbow. There was an angry shout as red and yellow fruits rolled
across the cobbles. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the
green uniformed Asoli on the corner was headed in her direction.
She was attracting too much attention. And the thief was getting
away. She cursed to herself and pounded away through the
rain.

Keris blipped the upper lodestone
layer of her cloak as she ran, seeking any natural lodestone that
might lie beneath the old city. She needed to gain height, both to
evade the Asoli and to track the criminal. The only deposits she
could detect seemed to be fairly weak, but she managed to leap from
one and immediately push against another, sailing up through the
air to land on an adjacent roof. She dashed across the eaves,
drawing stares and shouts from the street below.

The thief would
be working to a definite plan–he was probably not operating alone.
An accomplice had no doubt been keeping watch over the shipwright’s
office while they were inside. It was even possible that they had
been targeted at the Calandra and followed here. She had tried to
warn the others about the dangers of this place and had urged them
to keep a low profile but as usual, Lyall had overruled her in his
cavalier fashion. Now, once again, they were in a life-threatening
situation.
This is not a
game
.

Rain was falling steadily now;
her boots felt slick against the smooth stone slates. She had to be
careful not to lose her footing. Reaching the gable end, she hauled
herself up onto the next building, then scaled the ridge. Standing
on the apex, with one foot planted firmly on each slope, Keris had
a bird’s eye view of the port city.

Irregular roofs jutted into the
air like a row of jagged peaks. Below her, a knot of curiosity
seekers were running and pointing, following her progress. The tall
Asoli in his distinctive green was visible in the centre of the
throng. She peered through the curtain of rain up the length of the
bustling street. After a moment, she spied Lyall and Shann racing
away in pursuit of the thief, unmolested. Serendipity. Her
clumsiness had diverted attention from the real chase. All she had
to do now was lose her spectators and then execute the
strategy.

The first was childishly simple.
She ducked down the opposite slope and moved rapidly along the
roof, out of sight of the crowd. She followed a course roughly
parallel to that of Lyall and Shann. Thanks to her rooftop survey,
Keris now had a map in her head of the streets in the immediate
area. There was a fork in the road, ahead of Lyall and Shann’s
position. Assuming the thief did not turn and face them that left
him two choices. Whichever road he took, one of them would give
chase and the other would follow the remaining route. Hopefully,
Lyall would have explained the strategy to Shann as they ran
together. If nothing else, the girl was quick. She would get the
idea.

River and Dam. River–channel the
enemy down a single path. Dam–close it off, trapping him in front
and behind. Keris darted across the uneven roofs, hopping over the
gaps between narrow alleyways. She moved with the grace of a dagan,
as if she had been born to this rooftop world. There were fewer
people in the street on this side, and most were too preoccupied
with finding shelter from the downpour to look up.

She was near the point where the
road forked in two. Keris clambered up to a chimney breast and
spotted Lyall pursuing blue-coat down the right hand street. Shann
had taken the left fork, with the intention of cutting right at the
first intersection, narrowing the thief’s options.

They had to run him down quickly.
Street thieves usually had a number of bolt holes at various points
around the city, leading to underground or sewer networks. If he
reached one before they could catch him, he would no doubt
disappear like smoke. For all she had come to detest the Prophet’s
form of oppression, at least crime in Chalimar was virtually
unheard of. No-one wanted to fall foul of the Keltar or end up as
‘tribute.’ At least there, she didn’t have to deal with this kind
of vermin.

Blue-coat ducked right down a
passage between two low buildings. Keris slid down the right side
of the high roof and scuttled along the eaves until she detected a
deposit under the street below. She stepped off the overhang, using
the lodestone to slow her descent. She touched down, cloak
outstretched, in front of a thin, balding man in a stained apron.
He was pushing a handcart laden with fish. The man gawped so that
he looked like one of his charges.

“Pardon me.” Keris loped away,
leapt into the air and disappeared over the rooftops of the street
opposite. It seemed to be a warehousing area, of newer construction
than the shops and offices. The roof area was lower and more even.
She swept across her private world, high up over the city, until
she reached the opposite end of the alley into which the
blue-coated thief had vanished. Lying flat against the tiles, she
waited, like a vara-cat, ready to pounce. Moments later, the thief
appeared. He allowed himself the luxury of a glance behind him, to
check for signs of pursuit. In that instant, Keris rose up and
sailed through the air, alighting right in front of him. The man
barely had time to turn his head back and register shock before
Keris had an arm around his throat. She did not have a weapon, but
against a worm such as this, she didn’t need one.