Storms of Destiny (53 page)

“Not much left,” she said, looking down at it. “What shall I write?”

Khith told her, and she obeyed. The charcoal ran out in mid-word.

“It will have to do,” Khith said. “Now, we must have a source of flame …”

Thia held up her candle stub. “But they took my firestriker.”

“That does not matter,” Khith reassured her. Using the tip of one taloned forefinger, the Hthras carefully pried open one of the scallop shells. Inside the shell was a fine, purplish powder. Khith picked up the little tube, then, with two loud sniffs, inhaled some of the powder into first one flat nostril, then the other. The Hthras sat there, hand over its eyes, head bent. Thia could hear it breathing.

Finally it raised its head and stared at the candle stub.

Without warning, the wick flared with bright yellow flame.

Thia yelped, so startled she nearly dropped the candle.

“You did it!” Eregard exclaimed.

“That was the easy part,” Khith said slowly, its voice thicker, deeper.
Drugged,
Thia thought, and felt a surge of fear. She tried to reassure herself that Master Khith surely knew what it was doing.

“Now for you, Eregard. We must strengthen that invisible cord, so your minds can meet,” Khith said. Carefully, it opened one of the other scallop shells, and there was a grayish powder inside. “This will be difficult,” Khith murmured.

“If only I had my laboratory instruments.” With a quick twist, it took the cap off one of the acorns and handed it to Thia. She held it, seeing a pinch of dark brown powder within. “When the gray powder melts,” Khith told her, “pour the brown powder into the scallop shell.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she said, gripping the acorn.

With exacting care it took Eregard’s two coins and the bandanna, then inserted one of the flattened flanges of the scallop shell between the two coins until it was stable. Using a fold of the dirty bandanna, it held the two coins tightly together and moved the scallop shell until it was nearly touching the flame. “This powder will melt, my Prince,” it said, “and it will do so suddenly. When it is melted, Thia will add the brown powder. The mixture will then turn red. You must be prepared to take the shell and swallow its contents before the mixture can solidify. You will have only a handful of seconds before the mixture begins to harden. Understand?”

“Yes,” Eregard said apprehensively. He caught Thia’s eye and squared his shoulders. “I understand.”

The three crouched over the candle flame, staring at the powder. The flame burned, and hot wax dripped down over Thia’s fingers. She did not move; her training in Boq’urak’s temple stood her in good stead. Staring at the powder, she gripped the candle and the little acorn, scarcely daring to blink.

For what seemed like many minutes, nothing happened.

The candle was shrinking at an alarming rate.
What if it
goes out?

Just as she decided that Master Khith had made a mistake about the powder, it happened. As the Hthras had predicted,

the change was sudden. One moment the grayish power lay there, inert, the next the powder had darkened around the edges … and by her next breath it was all dark, an iron gray now, plainly liquid.

Biting her lip with concentration, Thia tipped the contents of the hollowed out acorn into the scallop shell. The brown powder lay there for a second, then Khith carefully tilted the little shell to mix the contents.

Red blossomed like a wound against pale flesh. Even as Khith said, “Now!” Eregard was already snatching the scallop shell. He hissed at the heat, but then his head was bent over it and he tipped it up, pouring the hot contents onto his tongue. He gagged, but mastered the reflex. Thia saw his throat move as he swallowed.

Hastily, Thia blew out the candle flame. They might need light later on.

Eregard moaned and raised his scorched fingers to his mouth. “By all the hells!” he whispered.

Khith grabbed his shoulders and turned him to face the map. “Concentrate!” the Hthras hissed. “See her face!”

Eregard faced the white sheet. Khith inched forward so it was behind Eregard and rested its furred, taloned hands on the Prince’s shoulders. The Hthras leaned over and pressed its face against the back of Eregard’s neck. “Concentrate!”

Thia sat in silence, watching, afraid to move. For long minutes nothing happened. Then, slowly, Eregard’s breathing changed, became deeper, slower. His eyes closed.

She looked over at Khith and could see tension in every line of the Hthras’s small body. Softly, the doctor began to whisper a chant. The words were nonsense syllables to Thia.

Khith’s voice strengthened, grew deeper, slower. Eregard twitched, shuddered, then began to whisper “Ulandra” over and over.

It’s happening,
Thia thought.
Khith is doing it!

More minutes passed as the two figures crouched together next to the narrow bunk. Khith chanted, Eregard muttered, and time crawled by. Thia sat still, forcing herself not to squirm.

Without warning, Eregard moved, pulling away from Khith’s half embrace. The Prince slid forward and began tracing the words she’d written on the sheet in Pelanese, muttering the words as he did so. “This is Eregard, alive, off the northeast coast. Kerezau’s troops will invade within hours or days.” He looked up. “I need to tell her more!”

“Here!” Thia cried. “Here, finish!” Grabbing Khith’s limp hand, she raked the Hthras’s talon across her palm. Blood welled up, pooled in her palm. She held her hand out to Eregard. He dipped his finger in the blood and began writing again, “Tell Salesin! Tell my father! I am held captive on ship,” he said as he wrote, and painted a hasty red X on the map with his finger. “Send help. Send help …”

His hand trembled and then dropped as Khith quietly slumped over, unconscious. Thia gave a muffled cry and reached over to feel the doctor’s pulse. Eregard slumped against the wall of their prison and regarded her dazedly. “Is Khith all right?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Khith is breathing, its pulse is strong. My guess is that the doctor fainted from the strain.”

Eregard nodded, then stared at the blood-and charcoal-splotched sheet. “I can’t believe it worked,” he whispered. “I was really there, inside her mind. I was in the palace. Goddess!” He buried his face in his hands. “My brother was there, somewhere close. He had just …” He glanced up, then trailed off. “He has not been a kind husband.”

Thia watched him. “Surely your brother will be glad to know you are alive?”

He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “I doubt it. He’ll probably send the Royal Navy to sink us to the bottom. But he’s not stupid. He’ll muster the troops.”

At her feet, Khith mumbled something, and then its breathing grew deeper. Thia looked at the Hthras. “Sound asleep.”

“I’m not surprised. I could feel the effort it cost to open that link. I could sense the strain. I’m tired myself.”

He inched over to the sheet, pulled it down off the wall and, turning it over so the message did not show, used it to cover the Hthras. “Let the doctor sleep. How is your hand?”

Thia had forgotten about it. She held it out, seeing that the bleeding had mostly stopped. Eregard used the cleanest corner of the bandanna to wipe away the blood.

Khith continued to sleep as the rest of the day passed.

They were fed by the taciturn guard, who replaced their chamber pot with a more utilitarian bucket.

Eregard fell asleep soon after they had eaten their meager allotment of food. Thia read for a while, till the light faded from the porthole, then she, too, fell asleep.

She was awakened abruptly, in total darkness, when the
Pride
suddenly wallowed like a sow in a fresh mudhole. The deck rose beneath her feet as she sat up with an exclamation, then dropped away with sickening abruptness. Outside, she could hear the howl of wind, the lash of rain.

Khith’s promised storm had arrived.

When Jezzil opened his eyes to utter blackness, his first thought was that he’d been buried alive. He was lying on his side, on something damp and unyielding, and couldn’t seem to breathe.

Moments passed, and then he felt movement beneath him.

Not a grave, then. Graves didn’t move.

The fight with Boq’urak
, he thought.
I’m in the wagon …

but why are there no stars?

He remembered that Thia had been there, with him, cradling his head in her lap as the wagon bumped along, and reached out for her. His groping hand encountered only boards, damp boards.

He lay there, fighting to breathe, then managed to turn his head to look up through slitted eyes.
Where are the stars?

The boards beneath him heaved gently, not sharply like the jouncing of a wagon.

“Thia?” The name was only a ghost of a whisper, so soft and distorted that he could barely hear himself. He tried again. “Thia?”

There was no answer, and he realized he was alone.

It was a struggle to breathe. His entire face hurt. He tried

to open his eyes all the way, but could not. He realized that his face was swollen, and that the center of the pain was his nose.

But Boq’urak didn’t hurt my face … he broke my leg …

hurt me inside …

He tried to move his head, but the pain was so intense that he stopped immediately.
Think. Where are you? What
happened?

Slowly, memories began to trickle back. He remembered Khith. Remembered walking on crutches. Remembered shadowing the two Chonao, overhearing them plotting to betray Kata. Remembered boarding a ship …

He let out a grunt as the rest of the memories surged back.

Barus! Barus in command of a ship!

Jezzil remembered his joy at seeing his best friend, remembered approaching him, but nothing after that.
What
happened to me?

With an effort that left him sweating and wrenched forth a groan, he rolled onto his back. Slowly, cautiously, he raised his hand and touched his face. His eyes, swollen nearly shut.

His nose, the pain was so excruciating that even the slightest touch of his fingertips made him gasp. His nose was broken, badly. He’d been hit in the face. With his other hand, he touched his side, and found more pain.

Nose is broken, and ribs, too. Or possibly ribs just
cracked … Barus. Must have been Barus. But why?

The thought brought a wave of betrayal, anger, then, almost as quickly, the anger subsided, replaced by guilt.
Of
course he hit me. I’m a deserter. How could I have forgotten?

But he
had
forgotten, for that crucial second. He’d been so glad to see Barus, to realize that his friend was still alive!

And now he was in solitary confinement, awaiting the fate meted out to a deserter. Chonao hangings were slow, and cruel. There was no scaffold, no “drop” to dispatch the con-demned quickly. When Chonao hung someone, they put a rope around his neck, then hoisted him up, slowly, an inch at a time, until he strangled. It could take several minutes before the victim lost consciousness, even longer to die.

This is it,
he thought.
I ran away from my fate, but you
can’t escape destiny. I should have died at m’Banak with my
comrades. I deserve to die.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to just lie quietly until they came to get him. It would be a relief, he told himself, to have it over and done with. He would pay for his crime with his death, and then he would not have to suffer the guilt that had plagued him ever since that terrible day. He should have died. Everyone else had died, after all.

Except Barus. How could he be alive? Did he abandon
our comrades, too? Even so, he didn’t desert.

He willed himself not to remember. What did it matter now?
Soon it will be over.

Even as he tried to relax, faces filled his mind’s eye.

“Thia,” he mumbled. “Khith, Talis, Eregard …”

What would happen to them? Would Barus realize that they had been traveling in the company of a deserter? Jezzil groaned softly. Of course he would realize! He knew as surely as if he’d seen it that his friends had betrayed themselves when he’d been struck down. Barus might even be planning to execute them, too!

There’s nothing I can do to help them,
he thought.
I can’t
help them, or myself. I deserve to die, but they don’t …

He thought of how terrible it would be to see Thia or Talis or Eregard hanged. Barus had a mean streak. He might well force him to watch his friends hang first, knowing that would cause greater torment. For some reason, Jezzil found that he wasn’t as concerned about Khith. He’d seen enough during their lessons to make him fairly confident that the little mage could take care of itself. Could Khith possibly help the others escape?

He tried to raise his head, but the pain was so great that he subsided, sick and dizzy. His mouth was dry and tasted of old blood. Was there water in this cell? Where was he? In the bowels of the ship, most likely.

Jezzil resolved to face his execution with as much courage as he could. He would offer no explanation, make no plea