The Dark Defiles (37 page)

“Fucker tagged me,” she said with mild surprise.

“Let me look.” The Dragonbane came around and peered, prodded a couple of times, enough to make her flinch and curse. “Yeah, you’ll live. Couple of nasty scratches is all, looks like the leathers took most of the sting out of it. Get you sewn up, just soon as we take stock of this fucking mess, all right?”

“All right.” She said it absently, staring around at the lizards she’d killed.

Listening to the soft calling of her knives.

hey got Anasharal up through the forward hatch with a lot of grunting and cursing but no real difficulty, then Rakan had the block and tackle moved down the deck and they dragged the Helmsman to where Ringil stood waiting. None of the men really wanted to touch the iron carapace, or get within reaching distance of the crablike legs folded into its underside, so there was an awkward delicacy to the whole operation that took longer than would have been strictly necessary with some other cargo. Ringil said nothing about it. He waited patiently until the Helmsman was upended at his feet and the ropes removed. He waved back the men, saw how they hung about at a short distance, Rakan included, watching in silent fascination to see what might happen next between the dark mage and the iron-imprisoned demon at his feet.

“Hello there, Anasharal,” he said.

“Good day to you, too, Eskiath.” If the Helmsman felt at any disadvantage, it wasn’t letting it show. “Not wearing your much-vaunted Kiriath steel this morning, I see.”

“Don’t need it right now.” Ringil went pointedly to the opened gangway section and peered over the edge. “Do you know how deep the ocean is around here?”

“Helmsman is a poor substitute for the High Kir word it purports to translate. I am not some ship’s pilot. No, I do not know how deep this ocean is.”

“Nor do I,” admitted Gil amiably. “But I’m told it goes down at least a mile. More in some places.”

“How interesting.”

He came back to the Helmsman and put one booted foot on the edge of its upended carapace, rocked its weight judiciously back and forth a couple of times on the iron curve where it touched the deck. His voice hardened.

“You want to go have a look? Find out firsthand?”

“Do you think you’re threatening me, Eskiath?” Amusement, trickling in the edge-of-hysterical avuncular tones.

Ringil shrugged. “I’m not sure. The pearl divers in Hanliagh told me once that the deeper you go in the ocean, the harder it presses on you. It hurts your ears, apparently. Maybe it’ll hurt you, too, a mile down. Maybe it’ll crack you open like a nut. Spill out whatever essence is locked up inside all that metal.”

A longish pause.

“When we were summoned from the void,” the Helmsman said coldly, “there was a reason the Kiriath encased us in iron. I don’t think you’d like me outside of this containment vessel.”

“I don’t like you much inside it. And it’s a long swim back to the surface, so you know what—I think I’ll take my chances.” Ringil dug out his bradawl. “I have some questions for you, Helmsman. You’re going to answer them for me as helpfully as you can, or you’re going to be taking a very close look at the seabed. And just so we know we’re all on the same page …”

He knelt and put a steadying hand on the rim of the carapace. Commenced gouging the most powerful of the Compulsion glyphs into the metal.

“What do you think …” Anasharal’s voice dropped away in midsentence, something Gil had never heard it do before. There was a peculiarly human quality to the way it sounded, something he hoped he could count as weakness. He got the first glyph finished—it was hard going; the carapace barely admitted the faintest of scratches, even from the bradawl’s Kiriath steel point—and started on the second.

Felt the metal under his hand beginning to get warm.

“That sting a bit, does it?” he asked, with a levity he didn’t feel. Hjel had told him he’d need at least a five-character string for this to work on an entity that wasn’t human, and he wasn’t sure Anasharal was going to give him the chance to get that much down.

“You are making a grave mistake, Ringil.”

Third glyph done. The Helmsman’s carapace was hot now, hot enough that it took an effort of will to keep his hand in place. He breathed through the pain, sank himself in concentration on the tracery of the glyphs, kept on gouging. Fourth … glyph … done. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rakan leaning toward him like a frantic hound on a leash, heard his shout only faintly. His hand was scorching, blistering across palm and fingertips, but no matter,
it’s a wound like any other, Gil. Stay on your feet, you win the fight. Still on your feet when it’s done, then all wounds heal well enough in time.
The fifth glyph was the closer, simple enough, no intricacies. Get it done. He made the primary stroke—the first cross—caught the faintest whiff of something suspiciously like crisping pork—the second cross, the curlicue tail … 

And finished.

He snatched back his hand. Came to his feet as Rakan rushed in, voice tortured,
my lord, my lord, your hand!
Gil glanced incuriously at the damage—he’d had worse from the splash of dragon venom in the war—and lifted it to his face. He blew gently on the blistered flesh, glanced sideways at Rakan, allowed the tiniest crimped corner of an acknowledging smile.

“It’s fine, Captain. Thank you. Just bring me some salve and a bandage.”

Rakan hung wordless for a second, staring into his face, then hurried away. Ringil looked bleakly past his splayed and scorched fingers at the Helmsman.

Here we go, then. Moment of truth.

“Cut out the heat, Anasharal. Now.”

And across the curve of the carapace, the glyphs lit in lines of bluish fire, brighter and clearer than the scratches he’d made. The Helmsman gave out a strangled sound.

Ringil gave it a few moments, then stooped, cupped his injured hand, and risked the back of his curled fingers against the carapace.

It was cooling fast.

“Right yourself, if you can.”

A clicking, fingering motion from the Helmsman’s limbs as they flexed out of their recesses. The mushroom-top carapace rocked barely back and forth, less than he’d moved it himself with his boot. He nodded.

“Fine, you can stop trying now. Do you begin to grasp the new relationship we have?”

Sullen silence.

“An answer, please.”

“Yes, then.” It shocked through him. The avuncular accents were gone, stripped away from the underlying tautness of tone. If there’d been any volume to the Helmsman’s voice, it would have been a shriek. As it was, the watching men flinched back from the sound it made. “I understand what you’ve done.”

“Then stop trying to fight it. You’re wasting your time anyway, it can’t be done.” He tossed the lie off casually. Truth was, he had no idea what the limits of his new powers might be. You never fucking did with the
ikinri ‘ska,
until said limitation came and tripped you up, dumped you on your black mage arse. “Talk to me normally, Anasharal. Show me you’ve stopped wriggling.”

“Very well.” Anasharal’s voice regained some of its previous disdainful poise. “So you’ve been back to the wounds between the worlds, then, like the feeding maggot you are. Burrowed deep this time, did you?”

“We’re not talking about me, Helmsman.”

But the levered chunks of memory came crashing down on him all the same.

B
ACK FOR MORE,
I
SEE,
RASPS THE HUSK OF A VOICE OVERHEAD, AND A
shadow moves through the miserly ration of light sifting down from above.
No end to your appetite for suffering, it seems. But then what else should we expect from a
hero?

He freezes where he is, Ravensfriend at a useless guard. Hears the swift scuttle of limbs down the sides of the limestone defile he’s in, senses the bulk of a body hanging suspended at his back. Something sharp touches him on the nape of the neck and then the lower spine. There’s a sound somewhere between a snigger and a sigh, and along the worn smooth walls all the glyphs light up in traceries of blue.

Am I intruding?
he asks, as steadily as he can manage.

A clawed limb creeps up over his shoulder like some living, insectile thing. The claw-tip chucks him under the chin, tilts his head back as if for a knife. He gets the sense that the thing’s own head is snuggled up close behind his other shoulder.

At least he does not deny his title any longer,
the voice whispers in his ear.
A learning curve of sorts, I suppose. But as to intruding, Ringil Eskiath, you’ve been doing that since well before we last met. As I am sure you’re already well aware, so let’s not pretend to a contrition you do not feel, eh?

I’m,
he swallows against the lift of the thing’s clawed finger,
told that I owe you some thanks for my passage through the Dark Gate.

Ah. The little moon-murderers, dabbling again. And what else did they choose to share with you on this occasion?

They said the Talons of the Sun are back in play.

There’s a long pause. The clawed finger stays at his throat. He hears water trickle and drip on the limestone walls, echoing in the narrow confines of the defile.

And you’ve come here to gather force against the day of Reckoning,
the Creature from the Crossroads muses.
As heroes must. Well, it’s certainly not original, but then I suppose the permutations available are somewhat limited. We could not have mended the world otherwise. Not with humans still in it, anyway. So then—let us see how this writes itself out.

The clawed finger eases out from under his chin. The glow in the lines of glyph script fades. Ringil lets his neck relax, lets the point of the Ravensfriend droop and rest on the gently rising slope of the passage floor. He hears a scratch and rustle behind him, like heavy vellum pages turning. The rattle of a throat clearing.

There were times he dreamed that the cage had taken him after all,
the husking voice recites in his ear.
That he made some impassioned speech confessing guilt and repentance on the floor of the Hearings Chamber, and offered himself up for the sentence instead. That the Chancellery law-lords in their enthroning chairs and finery murmured behind their hands, deliberated among themselves for a space, and finally nodded with stern paternal wisdom. That the manacles were unlocked and his wife and children—

My apologies. That is someone else.

Ringil swallows, hard.
Yeah, sounds like it
.

Another hero, another betrayal.
The pages scrape and turn.
It’s sometimes hard to tell them apart.

If you say so.

The echoes and borrowings, you see, the endless piled-up repetition in both truth and tale, the sheer bloody cannibalism of it all. We were learning your myth base as we worked trying to understand who you were as a species even as we stitched your world back into something we thought you might recognize and warm to. Ah—here we are, this is you:

He sits on a dark oak throne, facing the ocean.

No bindings anymore, he’s loose and comfortable in his seat, the wood is worn and scooped from long use, and the scalloped curves fit him perfectly. No serpent-tanged sword trying to gouge its way inside him, no standing stones, no dwenda. The sea is calm, small waves rolling gently in and breaking knee deep. A loose breeze ruffles his hair.

Very nice,
Gil says hoarsely.
I could settle for that.

Ah, yes, well
… Something suddenly oddly evasive in the Creature’s tones.
Moving swiftly along, though
… 
let’s see
… 

The pages turn again. He hears them crackle at his ear.

It’s as if he’s suddenly standing in freezing fog,
the voice husks at him.
Vague, tentacular stripes of darkness reach up around him like riverbed weed caught in a current, or bend away in all directions like leather straps tied tight. Through the mist, he sees the figures of dwenda, locked into postures that he only slowly recognizes as glyph casts, frozen in time. There’s a shivering tension through the air, like lightning undischarged, and he understands that—

The Creature jolts to another abrupt halt.

That a mistake too?
Ringil asks hopefully.

No, it’s definitely you. But, well
… 
it is a Heroic Reckoning, after all. We’d be ill-advised to preempt too much.

There’s a brief, awkward pause, in which neither of them seems to know what to say next.

I don’t know anything about a reckoning,
Ringil lies, experimentally, to see if he can get away with it.
I’m here because I need to free my friends
.

Well, well—what resonance! Perhaps we can do something with that.

I’m sorry?

Don’t be. Though I warn you—you’ll need to smarten up your act if you hope to prevail against the Talons of the Sun. I once handed you as much power as I thought you could bear at the time, Ringil Eskiath, and you still managed to drop most of it. I found your enemies for you, opened a path and delivered you to a final confrontation with them, but you were apparently still not able to finish the job. Despite the merroigai’s good opinion, I find you fragile, hero. Very fragile.

Ringil begins to turn around in the narrow space. A clawed limb grabs his shoulder with biting force, deftly turns him back and holds him there.