Shadowmasque (30 page)

She whirled and dashed through the deck house past a surprised Atemor and Enklar, leaped up the steps to the cockpit and came face to face with Jodec just as he was uncorking a leather bottle.

“Later for that, captain,” she said and swiftly outline their predicament. Jodec’s expression went from annoyed to puzzled to panicky in short order.

“This weren’t what I agreed ter,” he said. “Trouble with the river wardens’d bankrupt me! I should drop anchor and wait for them to take you…”

“Come now, Jodec,” she said. “You’re already implicated, so you better put on every scrap of sail and pray that we don’t get captured. Because if we do, we’ll tell them that you’re one of us and have been for years…”

“Mother damn you!” he spluttered.

“Spare me the histrionics,” she said. “Just get us through the gates before they close.”

Leaving Jodec cursing and stamping, she hurried back down to the deckhouse where Inryk was explaining the situation to Dybel, Enklar, Rog and Gillat. The two guards were already donning armour and helms, even as a volley of arrows struck the boat from the south bank, prompting another burst of invective from the captain. As everyone retreated to the wholly-wooden part of the deckhouse, Dybel drew Tashil’s attention back to Hojamar Keep which he was observing through a small, slatted porthole. When she looked and saw that the regal banner had been replaced by several smaller coloured pennons, she groaned and dashed forward to see what was happening at the mouth of the Valewater. And sure enough, the gates were starting to close.

A black sense of angry despair welled up within. Then a couple of arrows clattered on the deck nearby while a third struck the planking an inch from her foot and jutted there, vibrating. Quickly she dived back under cover then craned her head out to look back the way they had come but saw three river warden boats starting out from a jetty 100 yards upriver.

And the gates are less than 100 yards ahead, she thought, and closing fast. We’ll have to turn about — there’s no other choice.

Then a handon her shoulder brought her back in to face Dybel.

“Keep going,” he said, indicating Inryk who was balancing a short spear in one hand, face full of concentration. Tashil stared for a moment, then said, “Cast?”

Dybel smile, and she nodded and hurried aft to the covered cockpit where the captain was cowering on the floor, cursing them all.

“”I’m turning back!” Jodec wailed. “We can’t…”

“You’ll hold this course,” she said menacingly at the fearful young helmsman grasping the tiller. He met her gaze for just a moment before nodding vigorously.

“Good,” she said, then looked round in time to see Inryk standing outside the deckhouse, amidships as he drew back the spear and smoothly threw it straight towards the fortified chain house that sat on the right of the sea gates. Tashil followed its flight, a graceful, undeviating, flat curve through the air. The chains that were hauling on the massive gates were being winched in by a stepped series of huge cogs driven by falling weight mechanisms in two squat towers either side of the gates. She knew that the only vulnerability in the entire assembly was where the great chain passed between two heavy cogs before being wound onto its drum. In the greyness of sundown and the faint mist that was starting to rise, the spear fell into the shadows by the harbour battlements.

Tashil thought she could still see some figures running around the gantries near the cog sheds, and for a moment there was nothing as their riverboat sailed on towards the still-closing gates. Then there was a loud sharp crack which reverberated along the dockside. She had no explanation for it, but she could see that the right hand gate had stopped moving altogether…then her fierce exultation faded as Inryk cried out and slumpd to the deck with an arrow in his shoulder. Tashil had Rog and Gillat venture forth to carry him back to the deckhouse.

“Got it right into one of the chain links,” he said, smiling despite his wound.

“We’ll take care that properly once we’re through,” Tashil said. “We’re a bit busy just now…”

They were less than 50 yards from the ajar gate, and infuriated guards along the wharfs were firing volley after volley of arrows onto the Merry Meddler. They were also in range of the archers along the gates themselves and as they approached they attracted a steady rain of bolts, slingstones and arrows. The distance shrank and when they were less than a dozen away Tashil could at last see that one of the great winch chains had snapped and one of the twin cogs had been wrenched out of its bearings.

Then they were drawing level with the tall, heavy gates themselves, passing through the open one, and out into the darkening bay.

“We did it,” said Dybel said, shaking his head.

“I’m afraid we’re not quite in the clear yet,” Tashil said, peering round the side of the deckhouse at the river warden boat which was just emerging from between the gates. These were small craft driven by three pairs of oarsmen and usually carrying about half a dozen wardens. As it pointed its prow at the Merry Meddler, another three glided out into the encroaching dusk.

“This could get interesing,” Tashil said. “A Firedagger might be enough to discourage them, but if it doesn’t we may need more than I can provide. Do you feel up to lending a hand?”

When Dybel gave no reply, Tashil turned to see him staring forward at the increasingly hazy gloom.

“This mist is curious, don’t you think?” he said.

“Sorry?”

“Well, our sail is still filled with a westerly breeze, but this mist is moving in from the east.” He sniffed the air and breathed in deep. “Don’t like this in the least…”

There was a bright flash and a jagged line of argent struck the deckhouse’s canvas covering and lanced through it to stitch a charred and smoking wound in the woodwork.

“So they’ve brought a mage with them,” Tashil said with gritted teeth. “How clever…”

Suiddenly the riverboat lurched as if it struck something below the waterline. Tashil heard Jodec spit a curse, and then noticed that the boat had come to a complete halt. Atemor and the two guards were readying weapons as Tashil glanced back at their pursuers who also seemed to have faltered in their course. The boat rocked again and a Mogaun battlecry brought Tashil round to see her brother hacking at a drenched-looking man who was in the act of clambering up from the waters. Then there were a dozen pairs of hands lunging up to haul and drag aboard….men who were men no more, only cadavers returned to motion and a ghastly semblance of life.

Horror was writ starkly in the faces of Atemor, Rog and Gillat yet they drew their swords and leaped into the fray. Dybel, his face armoured in an icy calm, raised hands wreathed in tiny crimson flames and sent a pair of bolts into the chests fo two of the boarders. Fire ripped through their torsoes as they were flung back into the waters, but there were others to take their place. The stench of decay was vile.

Tashil called on every last shred of her strength, using the thought-cantos Shock and Ram, striving to clear the deck of these gruesome attackers. While concentrating on the fight she heard other sounds of conflict from further away, and during a brief pause while preparing another spell she chanced to glance to one side. A score of yards away, half visible in the gathering mist, the river wardens were in similar difficulties with one boat sunk, another listing badly and the other two filled with scenes of desperate combat.

Then suddenly the last of the undead had been hacked down, and everyone else was still standing, if bruised, cut or scratched. Once the unnatural life went out of the revenants, however, their cadavers suddenly began disintegrating into a disgusting heap of ichorous flesh and blackened bones, which were hastily tipped over the side with hooks and shovels. Then Tashil noticed that their boat was wallowing in the swell, its sail flapping uselessly, the lines hanging adrift.

“Jodec,” she shouted. “We have to get under way…”

“Captain’s dead,” said someone up in the cockpit, the young helmsman, looking pale and frightened. The other two deck hands were emerging from the aft hatch but before Tashil could start issuing orders she heard her brother Atemor curse behind and she looked round.

Coming through the mist towards them was the tall dark form of a ship, its masts reefed with the tattered remnants of sails that scarcely stirred in the erratic westerly breeze. Yet on it came, steadily, inexorably, its hull and forecastle becoming clearer, blacker, encrusted with barnacles and rotting kelp. And even as Tashil yelled for the Merry Meddler’s sails to be brought round, cadaverous figures began dropping from the ship’s flank into the water to swim towards them.

* * *

When the riverboat was just nearing the centre of Sejeend, Calabos, Dardan and Sounek were hurrying past the high outer wall of Hojamar Keep’s courtyard. All three wore hooded cloaks brought from Murstig and tried to adopt the demeanour of devout pilgrims as Calabos led them towards the Kala and its leafy dale. This was as far as he got on the night of the sorcerous calling, but this time he should be able to track down the lair of their dark adversary without interruption. The memory of that vile invocation was still fresh, seemingly seared into his mind and providing a certain sense of direction.

Past a couple of junctions, they came to a street with a row of prosperous-looking townhouses along the left and a head-height wall along the right. The wall’s coping was decorated with leaves and berries, and tall trees were visible beyond, patches of their foliage illuminated by lamps hanging further down. This was a burial grove and the closer they came to its entrance, the stronger Calabos felt that they were on the right track.

“It’s somewhere near here,” he muttered to the others as they kept walking.

“There are guards watching from these houses,” said Sounek.

“As long as they’re not chasing us or shouting for aid,” Calabos said, “they can watch as much as they like.”

Although sundown was bathing the rest of the city in a rosey glow, an evening gloom already held sway here in the shadow of the cliffs. The lamps in the trees brightened the shadowy paths and tombs while the interleaving branches concealed much of the grove from the guards across the street. As they entered the arched gateway, Calabos immediately felt a change in the air and also in the ground beneath his feet. About 75 years ago, while travelling through northern Yularia, he had chanced upon a long valley whose villagers and steadings had been recently been devastated by an earthquake. Amid the awful quiet he had felt a disturbing sensation from the ground there, hints of instability or deep, unseen blight as if the ancient supports of the world had somehow been dislodged or damaged. It was very similar to what he sensed now, walking through the burial grove, a faint but insistent sign that a violation of the earth had taken place.

The burial grove was bounded by high walls on three sides and the sheer grey face of the cliff itself on the fourth. The closer Calabos strayed towards the cliff, the stronger the feeling of wrongness and the great his wish that the others had heeded his warnings. But all his arguments had proved useless against their companionship and their steadfast sense of loyalty towards him.

Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing,
he thought, his smile hidden within his capacious cowl.

Before long he had traced the dark sorcerous aura to a sepulchre built at the foot of the cliff, a large ornate affair which had been made to resemble a military pallisade. Then he found that a glamour had been cast over a small section of the cliff face behind the sepulchre, which he dispelled to reveal a rusty iron door. Calabos exchanged wary looks with Dardan and Sounek but it was the work of a minute to unlock it.

Inside, a dark, roughly-hewn stairway curved downwards. Dardan produced a small tallow lamp from one of his pouches and by its yellow glow they made their descent. The stairs turned to the left then right then became long and shallow before emerging at one end of an oval chamber. Crude symbols had been daubed on the walls long ago in paint that was faded and flaking, just as a variety of aged wood-and-cloth charms hung on corroded nails, decayed and dessicated, or lay crumbling into dust on the rough floor. Once upon a time, Calabos guessed, this had been the secret shrine from some cult of spirit-worshippers and then fell into disuse until their adversary found a use for it.

Calabos could smell the afterpresence of Wellsource use throughout the chamber, but especially at the centre where a mound of cracked, baked clay several feet wide sat upon the stone floor. Whatever function it had served was not immediately apparent.

“Is this the place?” said Sounek who was hold Dardan’s lamp higher.]’

Calabos shook his head. “There have been some kind of vile rituals conducted here…” With the toe of his boot he nudged a broken skull on the floor, “but the invocation didn’t…emanate from here.”

“There’s another door,” Dardan said from the other end of the chamber. “Didn’t see it till I was right next to it.”

A narrow opening led to a wider passage of strangely smooth, contoured stone surface which gleamed dully in the lamplight. The passage sloped down for a short while then up towards the entrance to another chamber, an uneven doorway that framed a pale radiance. Calabos was in the lead, closely followed by Sounek with Dardan a few yards back. He had just stepped through the doorway when he heard a series of cracks from above and a grinding sound. Without hesitation he turned, grabbed Sounek by the shoulder and hauled him up out of the entrance.

There was a rumbling crash and a spreading cloud of dust. When the rockfall stopped, Calabos and Sounek rose coughing to their feet and surveyed the collapsed doorway and passage, now buried under tons of rubble. Of Dardan there was no sign or sound and shouting his name produced no response, likewise using farspeech. But when they both fell silent, fearing the worst, another menacing voice spoke from the chamber behind them.

“Welcome to your new prison!”

An ominous chill passed through Calabos as he turned to see who addressed them. Sounek let out a startled gasp but Calabos maintained his composure.