Blood of the Fold

Chapter 26

Sheets of rain raked the deck of the ship. The barefoot men crouched, tense and ready, their bulging muscles glistening in the faint yellow lamplight as they watched the distance close, and then, with a sudden burst of effort, they leapt into the darkness. After they landed, they sprang up to catch the lead-weighted fists at the ends of light heaving lines lofted across die murky chasm after them. Hand over hand, the men hauled across the heavy docking lines attached to the heaving lines.

Moving with swift efficiency, they looped the wrist-thick dock lines around the massive pilings, planted their feet, and bent their backs against the drag, using the pilings for purchase. Wet wood creaked and groaned as the lines took up the tension. The rows of men straining against the burden gave ground until they brought the slow but seemingly inexorable headway of the Lady Sefa to a halt. Grunting in unison, they began taking back the ground they had yielded, and the ship slowly drew toward the rain-slicked pier as men aboard dropped bundled rope fenders over the side to protect the hull.

Sister Ulicia, bunched together with Sisters Tovi, Cecilia, Armina, Nicci, and Merissa under a tarp drumming in the pelting rain, watched as Captain Blake paced the deck, angrily shouting orders at men running to see them carried out. He hadn’t wanted to bring the Lady Sefa into the narrow wharf in such weather, to say nothing of the dark, but instead to anchor in the harbor and bring the women ashore in the longboat. Ulicia was in no mood to be drenched as they were rowed a half mile to shore, and had summarily dismissed his pleas about having to launch all the boats to tow die ship in with the sweeps. One glare had cut off his reiteration of the dangers, and sent him tight-lipped to the task.

The captain snatched his sodden hat from his head as he stopped before them. “We’ll have you ashore shortly, ladies.”

“It didn’t appear as difficult as you made it out to be, Captain,” Ulicia said.

He wrung his hat. “We got her in. Though why you’d want to come way down the coast to Grafan Harbor is beyond me. Getting back to Tanimura over land from this forsaken army outpost is not going to be the ease it would have been had you let us take you straight there by sea.”

He left unsaid that it would have had them off his ship days sooner, which was undoubtedly the reason he had offered, with effusive graciousness, to take them straight back to Tanimura as they had originally wanted. Ulicia would have liked nothing better, but she had had no choice in the matter. She had done as she was ordered.

She peered up, beyond the wharf, to where she knew he waited. Her companions’ eyes, too, stared into the same darkness.

The hills overlooking the harbor were visible only in the crackling flashes of lightning, appearing suddenly out of the void, and except when the lightning sporadically revealed the lay of the high ground, the feeble glow of lights coming from the massive stone fortress hunkered high on a distant hill appeared to be floating in the inky sky. Only in the brief illumination could she see the bleak, rain-slicked stone walls.

Jagang was there.

Being before him in the dream was one thing—she could eventually wake—bui being before him in the flesh was quite another. There would be no waking, now. She clutched the link tighter to herself. For Jagang, there was going to be no waking either. Her true Master would have him, and make him pay.

“Looks like you’re expected.”

Ulicia snatched herself from her thoughts and redirected her attention to the captain. “What?”

He pointed with his hat. “That coach must be for you ladies; there sure enough isn’t anyone else about but all those soldiers.”

Staring off into the gloom, she finally saw the black coach, with its team of six huge geldings, waiting on the road at the top of the wall above the wharf. Its door stood open. Uficia had to remind herself to let the breath go from her lungs.

It would be over soon. Jagang would pay. They had only to see it through.

Once her eyes had recognized the still, dark shapes, she was able to begin picking out soldiers. They were everywhere. Fires dotted the closer hills all about the harbor, and she knew that for every fire that managed to bum in the pouring rain, there were twenty or thirty that wouldn’t catch flame. Without counting the fires she could see, she could easily tell there were hundreds.

The gangway rumbled across the deck as the sailors slid it out through the opening in the bulwark. With a dull thud, one end dropped on the dock. As soon as it touched down, sailors trotted down the plank with the Sisters’ baggage and headed up the pier toward the coach.

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Sister,” Captain Blake lied. He fumbled with his hat as he waited for them to be on their way. He turned to the men on the lines. “Stand ready to slip the lines, lads! We don’t want to lose the tide!”

No cheer went up, but only because they feared the result were they to show their happiness to be rid of their passengers. On their sea voyage back to the Old World it had been necessary to measure out a few more lessons in discipline—lessons not one of them would ever forget.

As they waited silently for the order to cast off, none of the sailors so much as glanced at the six women. At the end of the gangway four men stood in readiness, eyes fixed on the ground, each gripping a pole supporting the corner of a canvas tarp to hold over the Sisters’ heads to keep them from being drenched.

With as much power as was crackling around Ulicia and her five companions, she could easily have used the Han to shield herself and her five Sisters from the rain, but she didn’t want to use the link until it was time; she didn’t want to take a chance by giving Jagang any warning. Besides, it pleased her to make these insignificant worms carry the tarp over their heads. They were all lucky she didn’t want to reveal the link, or she would have slaughtered the lot of them. Slowly.

As Ulicia started moving, she could feel each of her Sisters move, too. Each of them had not only the gift they were born with, the female Han, but each had been through the ritual, and each also possessed its opposite: the male Han they had appropriated from young wizards. Besides the Additive gift they were born with, each also possessed its opposite: Subtractive Magic.

And now it was all linked.

Ulicia had not been sure it would work; Sisters of the Dark, and beyond that Sisters of the Dark who had also succeeded in absorbing the male Han, had never before attempted to link their power. It had been a dangerous risk, but the alternative was unacceptable. That it worked had given them all a heady flush of relief. That it had worked beyond their wildest hopes left Ulicia intoxicated with the swift and violent flux of magic coursing through her.

She had never suspected such awesome power could be gathered. Short of the Creator or the Keeper, there was no power on the face of the earth that could approach what they now controlled.

Ulicia was the link’s dominant node, and the one who would command and direct the force. It was all she could do to contain the inner blaze of Han. Wherever her gaze settled, it howled to be released. Soon enough, it would be.

Linked as they were, the female and male Han, the Additive and Subtractive Magic, they had enough destructive force to make wizard’s fire seem a candle by comparison. With a mere thought, she could level the hill atop which sat the fortress. With a mere thought, she could instantly level everything in the range of her sight, and possibly beyond.

If she could be sure Jagang was in the fortress, she would have already unleashed the cataclysmic fury, but if he wasn’t, and they failed to find and kill him before they fell asleep again, then he would have them. First they must face him, to be sure he was there, and then she would release such power as had never been seen in this world, and turn Jagang to dust before he could blink. Her Master would have his soul, then, and see to it that Jagang’s punishment went on without end.

At the end of the gangway the four sailors moved around them, sheltering them from the rain. Ulicia could feel the muscles in each of her Sisters flex as they moved up the pier. Through the link, she could feel each little ache, or pain, or pleasure they felt. In her mind, they were one. In her mind, they were of one thought, one need: to rid themselves of this leech of a man.

Soon enough, Sisters, soon enough.

And then we go after the Seeker?

Yes, Sisters, and then we go after the Seeker.

As they marched up the pier, a squad of grisly-looking soldiers trotted past in the opposite direction, their weapons clanging as they went. They ran up the slippery gangway without pause. The squad’s corporal came to a halt before the blustering ship’s captain. She couldn’t hear the soldier’s words, but she saw Captain Blake throw his arms up and she could hear him scream, “What!” The captain angrily threw down his hat and started a flurry of objections she couldn’t make out. Had she extended the link, she would be able to, but she didn’t dare risk it, yet. The soldiers drew steel. Captain Blake planted his fists on his hips and after a short pause turned to the men on the dock.

“Make the lines fast, boys,” he yelled down at them. “We’re not leaving tonight.”

When Ulicia reached the coach, a soldier held his hand out, commanding them to enter. Ulicia let the others climb in first. She could feel the comfort of the weight coming off the legs of the two older women as they sat on the thinly padded leather seat. The soldier ordered the four sailors that had accompanied them to stand to the side and wait. As she stepped in and pulled the door closed, Ulicia saw the soldiers on the ship herding all the sailors from the Lady Sefa down the gangway.

Emperor Jagang probably intended to kill them to eliminate any witnesses to connect him with Sisters of the Dark. Jagang was doing her a favor. He would not get the chance to kill the ship’s crew, of course, but since the sailors were not beinp allowed to leave, she would. She smiled at her Sisters. Through the link, they each knew her thoughts. Each of the other five returned a satisfied smile. Their sea voyage had been miserable; the sailors would pay.

On the stow ride to the fortress, as they gained a rise, Ulicia was surprised to see, when the lightning flashed, the extent of the army Jagang had gathered. Every time the lightning thundered through the hills, she could see tents as far as there was land. They covered the rolling hills like blades of grass in spring. Their numbers made the city of Tanimura seem a village. She had not known there were this many men at arms in the whole of the Old World. Well, perhaps they, too, would be useful.

When the forks of lightning ripped under the boiling clouds and shook the ground, she could see, too, the grim fortress where Jagang waited. Through the link, she could see the fortress through their eyes, too, and could feel their fear. They all wanted to blast that hilltop into oblivion, but every one of them knew that they couldn’t, not yet.

There would be no mistaking Jagang when they saw him—none of them could fail to recognize that smirking face—but they had to see him first, to be certain.

When we see him, Sisters, and know he is there, then he will die.

Ulicia wanted to see fear in that man’s eyes, the kind of fear he had put in their hearts, but she dared not risk giving him any indication of what they were about to do. Ulicia didn’t know what he was capable of; they had, after all, never before been visited in the dream that was not a dream by any but their Master, the Keeper, and she was not about to take the slightest chance by giving him any warning, just for the satisfaction of seeing him quake.

She had deliberately waited until they were sailing into Grafan Harbor before she revealed her plan to her Sisters, just to be safe. Their Master would see to Jagang’s punishment. It was their job to simply deliver his soul to the underworld and into the Keeper’s grasp.

The Keeper would be more than pleased when they restored his power in this world, and would reward them with a view of Jagang’s torment, should they wish it. And they would wish it.

The coach lurched to a halt before the imposing maw of the fortress. The women were ordered out of the coach by a burly soldier wearing a hide mantle and enough weapons to single-handedly slaughter a good-sized army. The six of them marched silently through the rain and mud and in under the barreled roof beyond the iron portcullis. They were led into a dark entryway where they were told to stand and wait, as if any of them had any intention of sitting on the filthy, cold, stone floor.

They were, after all, wearing their finest dresses: Tovi in a dark dress slimming to her size; Cecilia, her brushed and neat gray hair complementing her deep green dress banded with lace at the collar; Nicci in a simple dress, black, as her dresses always were, laced at the bodice in a way that accented the shape of her bosom; Merissa in a red dress, a color she favored, and with good reason, the way it set off her thick mane of dark hair, to say nothing of exhibiting her exquisite form; Armina in a dark blue dress that revealed her reasonably shapely figure and went well with her sky blue eyes; and Ulicia in her own becoming attire, a shade of blue much lighter than Armina’s and trimmed with tasteful ruffles at her cleavage and wrists, and unadorned at the waist so as not to hide her well-formed hips.

They all wanted to look their best when they killed Jagang.

The block stone walls of the room were bare of everything but two hissing torches in brackets. As they waited, Ulicia could feel the anger of each of the others rising, along with hers and, too, their collective apprehension.

When the sailors, surrounded by soldiers, came through the portcullis, one of the two guards in the stone room opened the inner door into the fortress and with a rude tilt of his head ordered the Sisters through. The corridors were as austere as the entry room had been; this was an armed fortress, not a palace, after all, and it made no pretension of comfort. As they followed their guards, Ulicia saw no more than crude wooden benches and torches set in rusty iron brackets. Doors were rough planks with iron strap hinges, and there was not so much a single oil lamp to be seen as they worked their way into the heart of the stronghold. It appeared little more than barracks for troops.

The guards came to a large double door and turned their backs to the stone at each side after opening the doors. One of them pompously lifted a thumb, ordering them into the greatroom beyond. Ulicia vowed to her Sisters that she would remember his face, and he would pay the price for his arrogance. Ulicia led the other five women in as the sailors came up the hall behind, accompanied by the echo of boots on stone and the clatter of the weapons of the men guarding them.

The room was huge. Windows without glass high up on the walls revealed the lightning outside, and let the rain run down the dark stone in glistening rivulets. A pit to each side of the floor held roaring fires. Their sparks and churning smoke ascended to billow out the open windows, but still left a reeking haze to hang in the air. In a ring of rusted brackets around the room, torches spit and hissed, adding the smell of pitch to the stink of sweat. Everything in the dim room flickered in the firelight.

Between the twin crackling fires they could see, in the gloom beyond, a massive plank table set with a wealth of food. Only one man sat at the table, on the opposite side, casually watching them as he sawed off a chunk of roasted suckling pig.

In the murky, flickering light, it was hard to be sure. They had to be sure.

Behind the table, against the wall, stood a row of people who were obviously not soldiers. The men wore white trousers and nothing else. The women wore baggy-legged garments running from ankle to neck to wrist and cinched at the waist with a white cord. Except for the cord, the outfits were so sheer that the barefoot women might as well have been naked.

The man raised his hand and waggled his first two fingers, ordering them forward. The six women advanced across the cavernous room, that because of its dark stone that swallowed the firelight, seemed to close in about them. On an enormous bearskin before the table sat two more of the absurdly clad slaves. The women behind the table, against the wall, stood hands at their sides, bodies stiff and unmoving. Each of the young women had a gold ring pierced through the center of her lower lip.

The fires behind them popped and snapped as the six Sisters advanced into the gloom. One of the men in white trousers poured wine into a mug for the man when he held it out to his side. None of the slaves looked at the six women. Their attention was on the man sitting alone at the table.

Ulicia and her Sisters all recognized him, now.

Jagang.

He was of average height, but stout, with massive arms and chest. His bare shoulders bulged from a fur vest opened in the middle, displaying a few dozen gold and jeweled chains lying against the hair in the deep cleft between his prodigious chest muscles. The chains and jewels looked to have once belonged to kings and queens. Silver bands encircled his arms above bulky biceps. Each of his thick fingers bore a gold or silver ring.

Each of the Sisters knew well the pain those powerful fingers could inflict.

His shaved head gleamed in the fluttering firelight. It matched his brawn. Ulicia couldn’t imagine him with hair atop his head; it could only diminish his menace. His neck looked like it belonged to a bull. A gold ring in the flare of his left nostril held a thin gold chain running to another ring at midheight in his left ear. He was clean-shaven except for a two-inch braid of mustache growing only above the corners of his smirk, and another braid in the center under his lower lip.

His eyes, though, were what riveted anyone upon whom they settled. There were no whites to them at all. They were a murky gray, clouded over with sullen, dusky shapes that shifted in a field of inky obscurity, yet the there was no doubt whatsoever as to when he was looking at you.

They were twin windows into nightmare.

The smirk departed, leaving in its place a treacherous glare. “You’re late,” he said in a deep, grating voice that they each recognized as readily as his nightmare eyes. Ulicia wasted no time with a reply, nor did she betray any indication of what she was about to do. Twisting the flow of Han, she even controlled their hatred, allowing only one facet of their feelings—fear—to touch their faces, lest they give him any warning of their confidence, and betray a reason for it.

Ulicia committed to obliterating everything from her toes outward—for the next twenty miles.

With violent and unceremonious abruptness, she yanked the restraining blocks from the furious force bottled behind it. As quick as thought, with thundering fury, the Additive and Subtractive Magic exploded outward in a murderous blast. The very air howled as it burned. The room ignited with a blinding flash of twin magics—opposites that twisted in a deafening discharge of wrath.

Even Ulicia was stunned at what she had unleased.

The fabric of reality seemed to rip.

Her last thought was that surely, she had destroyed the entire world.