The Tower of Bones (20 page)

‘What’s going on?’

‘A storm approaches. The strangest storm you ever witnessed!’ Siam’s dark eyes were wide and liquidly glinting in the reflection of the nearby oil-lamp that shook and rattled on its hook on the foremast.

‘Ainé?’

‘It may be no more than a natural turn of the weather,’ the Kyra responded, shaking her head.

But Siam would have none of it. He was unable to stand still, his restless hands twisting and squeezing the battered pilgrim’s hat he normally wore. Standing with his legs widely spaced for balance on a deck that had grown increasingly unsteady he growled: ‘Do you landlubbers imagine that I, Siam, do not know the sea? I who have sailed it even in my mother’s womb. Look about you. An agitation has taken hold of the elements. But this is no nor’easterly blow such as might carry down the cold of the Whitestar Mountains. A nor’easterly is heralded by thunderheads. You witness no such portents. Look! See the sky – is it not starry and bright above us? Yet feel the very air, which harbours a different message.’

Siam was right. The night sky was pellucid and calm, with starry constellations however alien to a son of Earth twinkling and visible. Alan found himself rubbing at the backs of his hands, where the tiny hairs were freezing into minuscule needles of ice.

Several Aides approached, moving noiselessly over the shadowed deck, apparently at some unseen signal from the Kyra. Ainé’s order was a simple one. ‘Some heated grog for all. Something calculated to lift the spirits.’

‘It will take more than a swig of mulled ale to lift my spirits,’ snorted Siam. ‘I fear a tempest that approaches without cloud or change of wind. This is no normal storm. I fear an enchantment.’

Siam’s words shook Alan, reminding him of his conversation with Mark. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you both about,’ Alan spoke softly, confining his words to the two leaders. He explained his conversation with Mark, going on to tell them about Mark’s plans for the Temple Ship.

‘This is madness heaped on madness!’ Siam exclaimed. ‘What is to become of the sailors who presently man and serve her?’

‘I didn’t think to ask him. But I guess that he expects everybody to abandon ship when we move onto land.’ Alan blew into his cupped hands to warm them. ‘What do you think about this, Ainé?’

‘What is the nature of this ghost you speak of?’

‘I don’t know what’s become of Mark any more.’

‘But surely you attempted to dissuade him?’

‘Of course I did. And I shouldn’t really call him a ghost. At the very least, his soul spirit is alive. I need to talk with Qwenqwo about this.’

‘Aye – that you do!’

As if responding to the mention of his name, the dwarf mage joined their company in the prow, his pupils somewhat dilated and his step a little unsteady from ale. Alan nodded in greeting to Qwenqwo. ‘Then you heard what I’ve been telling Siam and Ainé about Mark?’

The dwarf mage scowled. ‘I did.’

‘I tried to talk him out of his idea. But he wasn’t of a mind to listen. He might be more prepared to listen to you.’

‘But I can’t speak to a soul spirit – my runestone is not capable of this.’

Alan shook his head. ‘I think I understand what he might be going through. He wants his life back.’

‘But what of everybody else – what of Mo, Kate?’

‘We all owe him everything. Yet we live and he doesn’t. We can hardly imagine what he’s going through.’ He hesitated, thinking carefully about Mark’s words. ‘I don’t know if what he’s thinking is even possible.’

The Kyra took several seconds to consider the situation. ‘Your friend Mark brought about the transformation of the Temple Ship to the raptor form that entered Dromenon to save you. Then, once more, he brought about the transformation that made it thus.’ Her eyes swept over the heaving deck around them. ‘Whatever manner of being he has become, we know that he is immensely powerful when one with the Ship. Does he not carry the oraculum of the Third Power in his brow? Whether we agree with him or we don’t, if he finds a way to leave this world there will be nothing we can do to stop him. Our best course would be one of cooperation. We should accept his offer of assistance to the point of his departure. We would still have the rest of the expeditionary fleet.’

Siam slapped his hat against the rail. But like Alan, he knew the Kyra was right. There was no way any of them could oppose Mark, if he remained determined.

Alan accepted a mug of spiced ale from the returning Aides, folding his hands about its warming surface. He
sipped at the refreshing drink, recalling the desperation of his friend. But desperation made for poor logic.

Turkeya’s voice fell onto the decks from the crow’s nest. ‘Harken – the mist!’

Alan peered over the rail at a rising mist that was creeping up out of the ocean. It appeared to be unnaturally drawn to the Ship. Qwenqwo’s tangled eyebrows lifted. ‘I awoke in my bed with the premonition that an evil had fallen upon the Ship. When I looked out of my porthole it was as if the sea was writhing in agony even before I felt the first draught of icy cold on my face.’

Alan glanced at the Kyra, noticing the rapid pulsation in the oraculum in her brow. ‘What do you make of it, Ainé?’

Ainé’s leonine face wrinkled in a frown. ‘We must take care not to allow ourselves to be distracted by every whim of the weather.’

‘I don’t agree,’ growled Qwenqwo. ‘I sense the presence of malice.’

‘What about you, Siam?’

‘I agree with the dwarf mage. There is danger here. A malengin, I fear, though of a kind I do not recognise. We appear to be the focus of a powerful malice.’

At the same moment Qwenqwo brought the tankard from his mouth and pointed, ‘Above you – in the sails!’

Alan followed the dwarf mage’s gaze up into the rigging that thrummed and hissed about the three great masts with their billowing sails. Qwenqwo was right. Whatever
cold and mist they were experiencing on the open deck was multiplied tenfold above them in the sails. The lines and rigging were shrouded by freezing vapour, and its chilly presence was beading the ratlines. The cold seemed to intensify from moment to moment. Alan heard crackling sounds from overhead. He stared up into the foresail, amazed to see waves of frost creeping over the canvas and rigging.

Even the sea appeared to churn with resentment, its waters violent and foaming angrily over the prow, where the spray now rose a good thirty feet into the air.

Siam growled: ‘Look higher – to the very sky!’

Alan followed the direction of his pointing finger to where a star he had never seen before, a red star, bigger and more lurid than all the others, pulsated amid a bloodtinged shimmering halo.

Qwenqwo shook his head. ‘It is no star I recognise. It is surely an eye – a monstrous red eye.’

‘An eye, indeed!’ Siam’s roar shattered the peace of the night-time decks, waking all who slept, and alerting the Shee on board to full battle readiness. ‘A red eye,’ he murmured, ‘but faceted like that of a fly.’

‘It would appear,’ mused Qwenqwo, ‘that the Witch has found us.’

Alan stared up into the mist-shrouded heavens. ‘Surely the Witch can’t attack us from such a distance?’

‘This we are about to discover.’

Alan probed the giant red eye but his power discovered
no focus there for attack. Instead he encountered something akin to a pocket of cold and emptiness, devoid of feeling. Then it changed and he sensed a presence, even more foul than the tormentor, the proximity of enormous power coupled with a matching malice.

Alan disconnected his oraculum from the red star. He had to lean over the icy rail to vomit back the mulled ale.

Qwenqwo was by his side, his arm supporting him. ‘Do not allow the Witch to work upon your will. It is but an illusion.’

Alan heard the Kyra’s voice, heavy with disgust. ‘You are allowing emotion to rule you. This friend is your weakness – and your enemies know it.’

How could the Kyra be so indifferent to Kate’s suffering? Alan wondered if she still resented his sacrilegious intrusion into her sacred rites of confirmation. Even though the Kyral lineages meant that the daughter-sister was a clone of the mother-sister, maybe differences could still arise. He wondered if this young and inexperienced Kyra was arriving at conclusions very different from what the former Kyra, with her greater depth of experience, would have arrived at. That worried him, causing him to shake his head to Qwenqwo. ‘No – the Kyra is wrong. Something is very wrong. Qwenqwo, what’s going wrong? Why can’t I communicate with Kate any more?’

Qwenqwo’s voice was calm, reassuring. ‘There could be many reasons.’

‘One of which being she might be dead?’

‘Did you sense her death?’

Alan shook his head.

‘Do you not think that, through the power of your oraculum, you would sense the death of one of the chosen?’

‘I don’t know what to think any more.’

‘Loath as I am to agree with her, the Kyra could be right. We may be dealing with a deceit,’ Qwenqwo cautioned. ‘Do not allow despair to take control of your heart. That’s what the Witch desires. Do not allow her malice to conquer your spirit even before we set foot on her accursed heartlands.’

Climbing onto her tottering legs, using the fragments of spidersweb to cover what was left of her dignity, Kate announced somewhat redundantly: ‘I’m coming out now, you … you – whatever you are!’

She had to kick the fragments of shells and stones out of her way, stumbling barefoot over the fallen whale bones of the ruined entrance, her eyes narrowed against the full glare of the noon sun. Her tormentor was hiding behind a large black rock that protruded from the sand like a huge rotten tooth. Kate’s voice was husky with fright. ‘I can see you – so you might as well come out and face me.’

An eye was peering at her from beyond the left margin of the rock. Its crescent pupil expanded to fill the entire eye. ‘Fish ’n’ spider!’ the voice squawked. ‘Mmmmm! Tasty fishy!’

‘What did you say?’

‘Spider fishy … talks?’

‘Of course I can talk. But surprisingly, it seems, so can you. So why don’t you come out and show yourself!’

The eye contracted to the crescent slit and then expanded again. And then it did that peculiar thing, in which she heard the patter of clawed feet on the stony ground, and the eye moved to the other side of the rock, accompanied by the same enormous thud, fierce enough to judder the ground.

‘Spider fishy thing – break shiny things!’

Kate hesitated. ‘I’m sorry I did that. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that you frightened me, with all that parrot talk.’

The enormous thud sounded out again.

‘Please stop doing that.’

But of course it did exactly that.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m certain that you’re not a parrot.’

Bits and pieces of the creature appeared on either side of the rock, stretching and easing in a series of slow fanning exercises, and all covered in gossamer scales that changed from moment to moment in brilliant flashes of colour.

Kate stared at the display with amazement. ‘You’re a shiny thing yourself. Why don’t you just come and let me have a proper look at you?’

But one eye merely came back to the left side of the rock and peered at her. With a start, Kate recalled the two purses that Granny Dew had given her. But only one of the purses was left. The explosion had blown away the nut-like tidbits of food. At least she still had the purse of seeds.

‘I have one or two tricks up my own sleeve,’ she called out, grimacing at the fact that she didn’t really have anything resembling sleeves. Pinching a snuff of seeds from the purse, she tapped them out into the palm of her hand and blew gently over them, scattering them like a puff of smoke over the barren ground between her and the creature’s hiding place. In moments, the ground cracked open and sprouted. Tiny shoots of green appeared, filling myriad cracks and crevices, until grass and flowers and even shrubby bushes blossomed. The eyes darted with incredible rapidity from one side of the rock to another, the crescent pupils expanding and contracting, and the creature squawking.

‘Spider fishy thing! Thief!’

A realisation struck her with a tremendous shock:

‘Oh, my – you’re just a baby!’

‘Not!’

‘Yes you are. I’m truly sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am. I never meant to break your shiny things.’

‘Liar!’

‘Look! I’ll show you what a mess I really am.’ Kate walked out in front of the rock and she stood there, chewing on her lip, and pulling with one hand on the bedraggled mess of her hair.

With a tentative glide, the creature emerged from behind the stone, first the green-glinting head, which was heavy and triangular, and then the neck, which was a bright yellow, ringed by golden barbs. Her jaw dropping
with surprise, Kate’s eyes roamed over the elongated, sinewy body, which was covered by multicoloured scales that jangled and tinkled as it moved, and then, as long again as the body, an enormous scaly crescent of tail. All the while she was sizing it up those great orange eyes were doing the same to her. And now that each was done, those huge orange spheres were fixed on Kate’s green eyes, each blinking back at the other in astonishment.

There was something about the creature that reminded her of a crocodile, though the head wasn’t as long as a crocodile’s, being relatively wider and prism-shaped, and the teeth, what she could see of them, were much finer. There was also no doubt that it was male. Why – it was more curious than terrifying. And all the while it was looking at her with those huge intelligent eyes.

‘What are you?’

‘What is you?’

‘My name is Kate – Kate Shaunessy. I’m a girl.’ She paused, struggling to recover her wits. ‘It’s you that’s the puzzle. I mean, for goodness sake – I just can’t believe … No, I don’t even dare to believe … Ah, forget it – you’re surely not a dragon?’

‘Kate Shaunessy – girl-thing!’ Big circular nostrils flared open in the snout and it sniffed in her direction. ‘Fishy spidery girl-thing. Yum yum!’

Kate clutched at the fragments of spidersweb she had very nearly allowed to fall around her ankles. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you suggesting what I think you
are? You – the most forlorn excuse for a dragon anybody could meet. Why, except for your eyes – the rest of you could pass for a spindly old piece of driftwood.’