Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (17 page)

“I am not your sister. I am not your friend. I seek the sword of the Trueblade to unite all in the love of the Father.”

He gave a small sigh of frustration, shaking his head. “Your World Father is nothing more than a thousand-year-old collection of myth and legend. And if he did exist, his bishops say he hates you for what you are.”

The trembling grew to a shudder, making the sword vibrate in her grip.
One small thrust . . .
She reeled away, stumbling to the ground.

“Come with us, Reva,” he said, imploring.

She scrambled to her feet and began to run, through the shifting dark of the long grass, tears streaming back from her eyes, the sword blade flickering as her arms pumped, stifling a sob as his plaintive call echoed after her. “REVA!”

T
he seed will grow . . .

The itch began the morning after they killed the old man in the temple. Frentis woke with the woman’s naked flesh pressed against him, features serene and content in slumber, locks of dark hair tumbling over her face, stirring a little in her soft, untroubled breath. He wanted very much to strangle her. She had been exultant as she used him, nails digging into his back, her thighs firm around his waist, panting riddles in Volarian as she moved. “We have . . . the whole world now . . . my love . . . Let the Ally play his games . . . Soon I’ll play mine . . . And you . . .” She paused, smiling as she pressed a kiss to his forehead, sweat dripping from her breasts onto his scarred chest. “You will be the piece that wins the whole board.”

Lying there, his body lined with sunlight from the slatted windows, he willed his arms to move, his hands to reach for her throat, forcing every ounce of desire into the command. But his arms stayed at his side, relaxed and unmoving. Even now, lost in sleep and whatever nightmares she thought dreams, still she bound him.

He noticed the itch as he let his eyes wander the ornate ceiling of her inn room. It was a small, faint tickle in his side, just below the rib cage. He assumed it must be one of the numberless bugs that seemed to be everywhere in this corner of the empire, but there was a rhythm to it, a slight but constant scratch too regular to be the nibbling of a bug.

The woman stirred, rolling onto her back, eyes opening, a lazy smile on her lips. “Good morning, beloved.”

Frentis said nothing.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh don’t sulk. That man was singularly undeserving of your noble concern, believe me.” She got out of bed, walking naked to the window, peering through the slats at the street. “Seems we’ve caused a little commotion. Only to be expected. These irrational wretches are bound to react badly when one of their gods fails to stop her own temple burning down.”

She turned away, yawning and ruffling her tangled hair. “Go get dressed. Our list is long and so is the road.”

He went to his own room, drawing a wide-eyed gasp from the serving girl in the hallway. He closed the door on her blushing embarrassment and started to dress. The itch was still there and he was now allowed sufficient freedom to look, fingers probing the flesh under his rib cage. There was nothing, just the thick scar line that ran from his side to his sternum . . . wait. It was only the smallest change, a slight shift in the texture of his damaged flesh, from rough to smooth. He could see no difference but his fingers told another story.
Is it . . . ? Can it be healing?

He recalled the woman’s alarm when she saw the old man’s blood on his face, the way she had bound him, eyes alive for any change in his state, and the old man’s last sputtering words.
The seed will grow . . .

The binding flared with an impatient jab and he finished dressing. Healing or not, she bound him as tight as ever.

◆ ◆ ◆

They went to the docks and booked passage to the Twelve Sisters aboard a compact merchant vessel. The captain was an aged veteran of the seas and eyed Frentis with no small amount of suspicion, saying something to the woman which made her laugh. “He says you look like a Northman,” she said in Volarian then gave the captain an answer in Alpiran which seemed to satisfy him. He pointed them to a spot on the mid-deck amongst a collection of caged chickens and spice barrels. They were gone from the harbour within the hour, sails unfurled to catch the north-westerly winds.

“How I hate seas, ships and sailors,” the woman said, gazing out at the waves with a grimace. “I once sailed the ocean to the Far West, endless weeks sharing a ship with slaves and fools. It was all I could do not to kill them all mid-voyage.”

There was a shout from one of the crew and they turned to see a young sailor pointing off the starboard bow, yelling in excitement. Frentis and the woman joined him at the rail along with a cluster of crewmen, all jabbering in Alpiran. At first he could see nothing to arouse such interest then noticed a thrashing in the waves some two hundred yards distant, a great sail-like tail rising out of the water.
Whale,
Frentis decided. He had seen them before, off the Renfaelin shore, impressive beasts to be sure but hardly an uncommon sight for a sailor.

The thrashing abruptly increased and a flash of red appeared amidst the foam, a great pointed head rising from the spume, jaws widened to reveal rows of bright teeth. It disappeared back into the water, a huge tail rising shortly after, more than forty feet in length, the skin shining in the sun, stripes of pale red on the dark grey topside, the underside milky white. The tail whipped from side to side and was gone. The water soon calmed, the red-slicked surface broken only by the bubbles rising from the depths.

“Red shark,” the woman said. “Unusual for them to come so close to shore.”

The crew dispersed after some happy chatter. It seemed this was a good omen.

“They say Olbiss the sea god gave the shark a whale to sate his hunger so we could sail safely on,” the woman observed, turning her face to the sea to conceal her contemptuous grin. “It’ll take more than a whale to sate mine.”

◆ ◆ ◆

Land hove into view four days later, a great mountain appearing out of the morning mist. It seemed unnaturally dark to Frentis as the wind pushed them closer, but soon he realised it was covered in forest from top to bottom. She had brought him to another jungle.

Their vessel moored up on a narrow jetty reaching out into a natural harbour on the south shore of this island. The woman named it as Ulpenna, easternmost of the Twelve Sisters, the islands that formed the broken bridge between the continents. He followed her along the jetty to a sizeable town of wooden buildings. In contrast to the ramshackle slave market at the Volarian riverbank, this jungle town displayed an elegance and age indicating many years of settled occupation. The houses were mostly two-storey affairs with ornate wooden statues on every veranda, each one different.

“Each house has its own god,” the woman explained, once again reading his thoughts. “Each family its own guardian.”

They stopped at a tavern and ate a meal of heavily spiced chicken stew, the woman striking up a conversation with the man who served them. Frentis’s Alpiran remained poor but he picked out the words “law” and “house” amongst the babble.

“No guards,” the woman commented when they were alone. “A trusting fellow this magistrate. Popular too, by all accounts. Not what you’d expect for a lawmaker.”

They lingered at the tavern until late afternoon then took the only road, a track of dry red clay trailing out of town and upwards into the jungled slopes of the mountain. They followed the road for another hour before the woman led him onto a side track, through the dense jungle until they came to a large house. It was an impressive three-floored structure built on a ledge in the mountainside, shuttered windows open to the evening breeze coming in off the sea.

“Just the magistrate,” the woman told Frentis as he stripped down to his trews, taking off his boots and smearing earth over his exposed flesh. “Apparently there’s a wife and three children, but you don’t have to concern yourself with them.” She tweaked his nose a little. “Isn’t that kind of me? Now off with you, my love.”

The information from the tavern had been correct, there were no guards. A servant tended the small garden at the rear of the house and another lit lamps on the porch. Frentis approached through the thick undergrowth at a crawl, lying still when he got to within twenty feet of the south-facing wall. He lay against the carpet of vegetation until nightfall then crept forward to the wall. It was an easy climb, the ornamentation favoured by house-builders here provided plentiful handholds.

He hauled himself onto the top-floor veranda, finding an open door. Inside a child was sleeping in a large bed, a small dim shape in the bedcovers. He moved through the room on silent feet and into the hallway beyond finding two other rooms on this floor, each occupied by sleeping children, before making his way downstairs. There were two more rooms here, one a book-filled space he took as a study, empty of any readers, the other a bedroom, the covers on the bed neatly pulled back in readiness. He returned to the landing, hearing the sound of voices from the ground floor.

The staircase creaked as he descended to the hallway, but his step was too light to draw any attention. The voices came from a room at the front of the house, a man and a woman talking on the other side of a closed door. Frentis found a shadowed corner, crouched and waited.

He fancied the itch had grown worse today, building steadily to a true irritation. The binding was loose enough to let him scratch at it, although this seemed to have no effect at all, and once again his fingers revealed a change in the texture of the scar, more smooth flesh amongst the damaged tissue . . .

His head snapped up as the door opened, a woman emerging, glancing back to say something, face lit by the glow of the room. She was somewhere past her fortieth year, a handsome woman dressed in pale blue silks with bound-up hair and an easy smile. A male voice came from the open door and she gave a small laugh then turned away, walking to the staircase and ascending, oblivious to Frentis’s presence.

He waited until he heard her enter the bedroom above then went to the door. The woman had left it slightly ajar and he could see the man inside. He was seated at a desk, facing a window affording a fine view of the sea, humming to himself as he read a scroll. He was of middling height, portly and balding, more grey in his hair than black. Frentis wondered what his name was as he pulled the dagger from the sheath at the small of his back.

◆ ◆ ◆

“A single thrust,” the woman said as they made their way up the mountain. They had sat in the jungle until morning, watching the house and waiting for the screams. They began to climb accompanied by the grief-filled cries of the magistrate’s wife, moving away from the road and the town where people were like to start asking questions about new arrivals when news of the murder became known. “Neat and quick,” the woman continued, climbing without any obvious strain. “Aren’t you going to thank me for letting you give him an easy death?”

Frentis kept climbing, saying nothing.

They came to the summit as the sun climbed to its apex, the woman turned towards the west, arms wide. “The Twelve Sisters in all their glory.”

They stretched away into the mist-shrouded distance, a line of eleven jungle-clad islands rising from the sea. “For centuries not even the bravest soul would dare to live here,” the woman went on. “It’s said there was a great cataclysm, great enough to shatter the land-bridge joining our continent with what is now the mainland of the Alpiran Empire. What caused it none can say, though legend offers a thousand explanations. The Alpirans say the gods battled the nameless and their wrath was such the earth shook with enough fury to drown the bridge. The tribes to the south have it that a fiery globe fell from the sky bringing destruction in its wake. There’s even an old story in Volarian about a mighty but foolish sorcerer who summoned something he couldn’t control, something that ravaged the land before dragging him screaming back to the void. Whatever it was, when it was done the land-bridge had become what you see now, twelve islands. Wild stories abounded of the great evils and magics still lurking here in the aftermath of the shattering, beasts that could talk like men, men that were more like beasts. It must have been a shock to the first Alpiran explorers who dared to come ashore, finding nothing but stinking jungle.”

She started down the western slope. “No time to enjoy the view, beloved. We’d best be off this rock by nightfall. You
can
swim, can’t you?”

◆ ◆ ◆

The channel between Ulpenna and its nearest neighbour was at least five miles wide at it narrowest point. The woman had him fashion a small raft for their pack from the light wood that littered the beach, lashed together with vines hacked from the jungle. He pushed it ahead of him with both arms, legs pumping. He had always been a strong swimmer, but that had been in the stretch of the Brinewash curving around the walls of the Order House. This was very different, the ceaseless swell of the sea and the darkness of the water as the sun began to descend conjured fresh images of the great red-striped shark as it devoured the whale.

The woman laughed, turning onto her back, leg kicking lazily in the water, completely at ease. “Don’t worry. We’re far too meagre a meal for a red shark to bother with. He does have smaller cousins though.” She laughed again and swam ahead as his fear lurched to an even higher pitch.

They made it to the far shore without undue incident, though Frentis could swear something rough and scaly had brushed his leg beneath the waves. He gathered driftwood and stacked it in a crude cone. The woman held her hand to it, grunting in pain and delight as the flame lashed out to ignite the timber, a line of blood appearing beneath her nose almost immediately. She wiped it away with a casual flick of her thumb, but he took note of the way she flexed her hand as the flames subsided, and the shudder of suppressed agony in her shoulders.
There’s always a price to pay, my love.