City of Jade

49

ELVENSHIP

MID AUTUMN, 6E9

Blustery dawn came dismal.

Long Tom looked up at the flying wind pennants atop the masts and the glowering sky above, and then he turned his attention toward the swaying forest canopy in the near distance. “We be in f’r a blow, Oi think, Oi do,” he said to no one in particular.

“Aye,” replied Nikolai, raising his voice to be heard above the flapping of the luffing staysails. “You t’ink we be go lost city today?”

“Aye. The cap’n, he says y’ be, j’st as soon as th’ warband finish briakin’ their fast.”

Noddy came topside, a glum look on his face.

“Oy, naow, Noddy, y’ be all chapfallen, y’ be,” said Long Tom, when the bosun came up the stern ladder.

“Oi wanted t’ go to th’ city with th’ others,” replied Noddy.

“Wull, y’ can’t, what wi’ James all wounded and such. Oi mean, we can’t leave th’ ship wi’ no bosun.”

Nikolai nodded in agreement with Long Tom’s words, but Noddy said, “Ar, they ain’t no enemies left, what with the Mage and Trolls bein’ deaders, and the livin’ Foul Folk all run away.”

Nikolai shook his head. “Lady Aylis, last night she say she t’ink bad Mage might be Knight of Sword. If right, King of Sword still enemy. Ship might need sail.”

“Wull, that’s easy f’r you to say, Nick,” Noddy dolefully said, “ ’cause you get t’ go, while me ’n’ Long Tom have t’ stay j’st in case some runaway Rucks ’r th’ like show up ’n’ th’ ship has t’ be moved. ’N’ wot ’r th’ chances o’ that, eh? Nought, I say. Nought.”

Nikolai smiled and said, “I tell ever’ting we see.”

“Won’t be th’ same,” grumped Noddy.

Long Tom sighed his concurrence.

As Aravan and Aylis came out onto the main deck, Aylis said, “You will need my ‹sight›. Besides, with scouts running ahead and your blue stone amulet and the warband about, I will have forewarning as well as protection should peril be nigh.”

Nikolai leaned over to Long Tom and whispered, “Cap’n, he no win this battle.”

“Aye, he won’t,” murmured Long Tom in reply.

Aravan looked long at the jungle ahead, and then at Aylis, and then the jungle again. Finally, he said, “Fetch thy weaponry.”

Aylis smiled and said, “They’re already adeck.” She gestured to one of the crewmen, and he stepped forward to hand Aylis her bow and a full quiver of green-fletched arrows.

“I don’t think we’ll need climbing gear,” said Binkton, looking back downward as he reached the top of the ladder up from the main hold.

“We might,” came Pipper’s voice from below. “I mean, Bink, who knows what lies past that col the Foul Folk were camped in? There might be cliffs and-”

“All right. All right,” said Binkton, clambering on out. “Bring it if you wish. But, me, I just think it’s extra weight.”

Moments later Pipper emerged, a backpack strapped on. Just as his cousin did, Pipper also bore a small horn to signal the band, should there be a need.

“You’ve got your sling and plenty of bullets, right?” asked Binkton, he himself well armed with bow and arrows.

“Right,” said Pipper, patting a pocket and touching a bullet case affixed to his belt.

“Can’t be too careful, you know,” said Binkton. “As Uncle Arley says, ‘Be prepared.’ ”

“That’s why I’m bringing climbing gear,” said Pipper, a superior smile upon his face.

“Argh!” growled Binkton, shaking his head.

Brekk and Dokan and the warband emerged, twenty of whom were going on the march, while the remainder of the Dwarves would stand watch on the Eroean , all but the two wounded below.

A squad of nine armed sailors made ready to march with the warband as well-cargo handlers and other such, for they would make estimates as to hauling and lading in the event they all came upon something the captain would have them eventually stow in the holds.

“Where’s Liss?” asked Pipper, looking about.

“She and her fox have gone ahead,” said Fat Jim. “They left just a wee while ago.”

“That little sneak!” burst out Binkton. “Come on, Pip, let’s go. I don’t care if her fox is faster than us; we’ll show her what Warrow scouts can do.”

“Hold,” commanded Aravan.

As the buccen swung about, Aravan said, “I would have ye two no more than three hundred of your paces ahead of the main body. Stay alert, for we know not what lies to the fore.”

“Three hun-?” Binkton started to protest, but Pipper said, “You heard the captain. Three hundred it is.” Then he saluted and said, “Aye-aye, sir.”

And so, as the warband and sailors assembled, along with Aravan and Aylis, Binkton and Pipper started down the gangplank, Binkton grumbling, Pipper whistling a merry tune.

“One-two-three,” growled Binkton.

“What are you doing?” asked Pipper.

“Counting off three hundred bloody paces,” snapped Binkton. “Don’t want to get too far ahead, you know. Where was-? Oh, how about six-seven-eight-”

And on they went: Binkton stubbornly counting, Pipper sighing at his cousin’s unseemly behavior.

When Binkton reached the three-hundred mark, he stopped, Pipper stuttering a few steps before stopping as well. Binkton looked back toward the ship through the swaying foliage, the plants rocking in the wind. “Huah! I can see the top of the masts, but nothing else,” said Binkton. “You know, it’s quite far away.”

“Well,” said Pipper, “give me a boost and I’ll see if the warband is following.”

Binkton cupped his hands, and Pipper stepped into the finger stirrup and looked back. “Ah, they’re just now starting. And you’re right: it is quite far we’ve come.”

He turned and looked the other way. “The trees are just ahead.”

“Time to go in caution,” said Binkton, as Pipper stepped back down. Binkton lowered his voice and added, “Spread wide, but keep the path in sight.”

Binkton slipped left of the overgrown path as Pipper moved off rightward. And into the canopied forest they went. All about them, giants of the rain forest reared upward, their trunks buttressed with flanges. Banyan trees, too, huge and many-trunked, added to the interlace overhead. But the forest was not silent, for the wind caused wood to creak and vines to swing and the leaves above to whisper shssh .

Neither Pipper nor Binkton could see or hear the other, with Binkton somewhere off to the left and Pipper off to the right, and they moved stealthily onward, now and again making certain they had not strayed too far from the overgrown path.

Far behind came the warband and sailors. And Aylis said, “Even with my ‹sight› invoked I cannot see the Warrows.”

“They are stealthy, my love,” said Aravan. “I think neither of us will espy them unless they deliberately make themselves visible.”

“Do you think they will remain within three hundred paces?”

Aravan laughed. “Mayhap not. Yet I gave them that command so that they would not run off completely willy-nilly.”

“Think you they would do so?”

“Pipper sometimes strikes me as impulsive, but I also would not put it past Binkton to do so just to show Lissa that he and his cousin are scouts as well.”

“Are they scouts or not?”

“I deem someday they will be very good at the task, yet I think them more valuable as two who can get into places others cannot.”

“Lock picking and acts of stealth and guile, you mean?”

“Aye. After all, they were taught by one of the best.”

Binkton froze in place, for, in spite of the wind in the forest, he heard quiet movement ahead. He nocked an arrow to his bow and silently stepped behind the bole of a tree.

The stealthy movement continued to advance toward him, and Binkton envisioned a monstrous snake or dreadful jungle cat sneaking upon him. He listened, and as it drew closer he knew this was no snake, for it did not slither but stepped softly instead.

And he waited. .

And on it came. .

Until. .

It paused on the opposite side of the trunk.

And then a voice said, “Don’t shoot. It’s just me.”

Binkton exhaled the breath he had been holding. “Lissa?”

“Of course.”

Binkton stepped ’round the tree to see the Pysk and fox. “How did you know it was-?”

“Vex told me.”

“Ah. . yes.”

“Where’s Pipper?”

Binkton waved off to the right. “The other side of the path. Somewhere yon.”

“I’ll find him.-Or, rather, Vex will,” said Lissa.

“To tell him what?” asked Binkton. “For that matter, why are you here instead of out there?” He gestured upslope toward the hills.

“I came back to say the way ahead is clear. No one lurks in the col, though there be Troll scat and other Ruptish dung and filth. The stench is quite strong, especially to Vex. And the city lies a bit beyond.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Not in the city. Just to within sight of it. Vex seems uneasy, but just why she cannot tell me. Whatever it is, it’s not Spaunen.”

“Well, then, if there’s nothing ahead in the way of Rucks and such, is there any need for stealth?”

“Not until you reach the city, and mayhap not even then.”

“What do you intend to do, Liss?”

“Find Pipper and tell him what I told you, then report back to the warband. Where are they, by the bye?”

Binkton gestured behind and growled, “About three hundred bloody paces back along the trace.”

“All right, then. I’ll see Pipper and then report to Aravan.”

“Tell Pip to meet me in the path. We’ll go on ahead to the city.”

Lissa frowned and started to say something, but Binkton said, “We’ll be all right.” And so she and Vex darted off toward the opposite side of the overgrown trail, while Binkton followed more slowly. When he reached the weedy way, he waited.

Some long moments later, Pipper appeared, uphill of where Binkton stood. Binkton trudged up to Pipper, and then together they went east through the dimness under the swaying forest canopy, a swirling wind below, a glum sky high above.

“And Binkton and Pipper?”

“They went on ahead, Captain,” said Lissa. “The trail is clear of Rupt: no ambushes, no squads, or lone assassins. I think it safe, though Vex senses something ominous about the city, yet what it might be she cannot say.”

“Sniff strange smell?” asked Nikolai.

“The fact the city be dead?” asked Wilfard, one of the cargo chiefs.

Lissa frowned and shook her head. “No. It’s more like the time we went ashore at that set of islands ringing ’round the blue hole. Vex just seems uneasy.”

Aravan turned to Brekk. “Remain alert, Armsmaster.”

Brekk grunted an assent.

Aravan then glanced at Aylis.

“My ‹sight› is invoked,” she said, without being asked.

“Then let us catch up to our wandering Waerlinga,” said Aravan.

“Would you have me try to overtake them ere they reach the city, Captain? Vex is quite swift.”

Aravan shook his head. “I deem they have enough caution to be the scouts they fancy themselves to be.”

With Pipper whistling snatches of a merry melody and singing a few words between, he and Binkton strolled out from under the jungle canopy to come to the edge of a forsaken place. Pipper’s tune came to an abrupt stop, and only the groan of the wind broke the stillness.

“Whoa,” said Binkton. “Would you look at that.”

Spread out before them lay the ruins of an abandoned city, with some buildings yet standing while others lay in shambles. Cracked pave made up the streets winding among dwellings and establishments and a temple or two, and all of the structures were made of stones of various hues. Vines twined among the rock and cascaded down the sides of walls, the leaves fluttering in the moaning wind as of green waterfalls tumbling. Here and there trees had taken hold and throughout the long eras had become huge, their massive roots snaking across the streets and diving into the earth, to fracture and tilt the pavement upward, splitting the stone with an inexorable, steadily increasing pressure as the trees had grown.

“Hoy, there,” said Pipper, pointing.

Dwarfing the other structures, in the near distance ahead in what appeared to be the city center stood five towers: a central one hemmed in by four.

“The middle one looks like Lady Aylis’s statuette,” said Binkton.

“Other way about,” said Pipper.

“What now?” asked Binkton.

“It’s the other way about,” said Pipper. “Lady Aylis’s statuette looks like the tower.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“No, Bink, you said it just backwards.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

Bickering, in among the ruins they went, heading for the towers, while dark sky roiled above and the wind keened across stone and over walls and ’round corners, wailing as would a thousand ghosts lost in the cracks of time.

“Jade,” said Brekk. “This stone, all of it is jade.”

Aravan and Aylis, along with Lissa and the warband and sailors, had reached the edge of the ruins.

“The entire city is jade?” asked Lissa, even as she leaned forward and ran a hand along Vex’s neck, trying to soothe the vixen, who yet indicated that they should leave, even though she didn’t know why.

“At least this part of it is,” replied Brekk.

“But not all green,” objected Nikolai.

“Jade comes in many colors,” said Aylis. “Green, yellow, white, grey, black, orange, and even in pale violet.”

Brekk nodded his agreement.

“Speak of green,” said Nikolai, pointing.

“The tower,” breathed Lissa.

“I suspect that’s where we will find Binkton and Pipper,” said Aravan. He looked at Lissa and said, “Take point.”

As the Pysk and reluctant fox trotted ahead, Brekk gestured left and right, and Dwarves moved to flanking positions, and all set out, war hammers, crossbows, bows, or falchions in hand, though Aravan bore a spear.

With the moaning wind whipping his shoulder-length hair about his face, “It has no door,” said Pipper, as he and Binkton finished circling the midmost tower, central to four others close-set in a square, there in the heart of the city plaza.

“No doors, Pip? You noticed, eh?” said Binkton. Then he grinned and added, “Well spotted, bucco.”

Pipper looked up at the smooth, virtually seamless stone. “Wull, then, how does anyone ever get inside?”

“Mayhap they weren’t meant to,” said Binkton.

Pipper stroked his fingers across the pale green, almost translucent surface. “I don’t even think our climbing gear will be of any use.”

“I told you it would just be extra weight,” said Binkton smugly.

Pipper looked at an adjacent tower. “That one has a door.-Say, maybe there’s a secret passage from that to this.”

Binkton sighed and said, “Let’s just wait for-Oh, here comes Liss now.”

“There you are,” said Lissa. “I don’t think the captain is very pleased that you didn’t wait.”

“Oops,” said Pipper, glancing at Binkton.

“Well, that’s all water under the bridge now,” said Binkton. He looked back in the direction Lissa had come. “Where is the captain?”

“He and the others are on their way,” said Lissa, gesturing hindward.

Vex whined.

Lissa petted the fox along the neck. “It’ll be all right, Vex.”

“What’s the matter with her?” asked Pipper.

“As I told you back along the trail,” replied Lissa, “there’s something about the city that seems to bother her.”

“Perhaps she scents something we cannot smell,” said Pipper.

“No, it’s not an odor,” said Lissa. “But something else that she cannot make me understand.”

Pipper looked about as if seeking hidden foes, and Binkton said, “Perhaps it’s this blasted wind, shrieking among the stone as it is. That or the darkness in the middle of the day. I mean, we’re in for a storm, and Vex knows it.”

“Arm hair,” blurted Pipper.

“What in the world-” began Binkton, but Pipper said, “What I mean is, sometimes when a storm is coming, the hairs on my arms stand straight up. Then there is a flash and a boom, and lightning streaks the sky.”

Binkton turned toward Pipper. “And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, Vex is hair all over, and-”

“I don’t think that’s it, Pip,” said Lissa.

“Oh,” said Pipper, then added, “Why don’t we wait here till the others arrive?”

Lissa turned the vixen. “I’ll tell the captain where you are.”

As Pysk and fox trotted away, Pipper and Binkton sat down on blocks of dark green jade, Pipper again looking about for. . what? He did not know.

Amid the warband and sailors, Lissa and Aylis and Aravan entered the city square. At Aravan’s side, Brekk growled, “There they are,” gesturing toward the buccen, even as Pipper stood and began trotting toward the group, while Binkton followed at a more leisurely pace.

In that very same moment, as Aravan’s stone of warding grew icily chill, Aylis looked up at the pale green central tower and gasped in alarm. “Aravan, something, a thing dark to my ‹sight›, just flashed into-”

Before she finished saying what she ‹saw›, a great blast of aethyric energy exploded out through the openings high above, and, shielding her eyes, Aylis jerked her face to the side, just as a vast cloud of darkness boiled out from the top of the tower and swooped down toward them. “Chakka shok, Chakka c-” called Brekk, even as Aylis cried, “Oh, Adon, it’s not ali-” and Aravan hefted his spear, shouting, “ ’Ware-”

And then the darkness clenched them all-all Dwarves, all sailors, Aravan, Aylis, Lissa, Vex, and, at the far edge, Pipper.

And they fell to their knees and toppled sideways and began to scream in unendurable agony.

Yet within that seethe of anguish, though engulfed in unbearable pain as he lay upon the tiles, Aravan managed to reach out and take Aylis’s hand ere the torment o’erwhelmed him.

And even as Binkton ran toward fallen Pipper, to his Warrow sight he saw dreadful roiling within the darkness, and it seemed as if a monstrous twist of blackness descended upon one of the sailors, and the man screamed and screamed and writhed as if the life were being sucked out of him, and the darkness itself grew.

Binkton reached for Pipper-“Ahh!” he yelled in pain-as his hand entered the shadow. He jerked back. Yet Pipper shrieked in anguish. And, gritting his teeth, Binkton reached into the shade again. Screaming in dire hurt, still Binkton grabbed Pipper’s ankle, and gripping tightly and bawling, he fell backward while yet hanging on. Jerking, hauling, he dragged Pipper free of the thing . And then he sat sobbing, as Humans and Dwarves and a Pysk and her fox and a Seeress and an Elf thrashed in torment beyond bearing.

And the twist of blackness within rose up from the sailor and moved to another, the one left behind unmoving. And once again it coiled about its victim and began sucking away his life essence.

Binkton grabbed Pipper and began shaking him. “Come on, Pip. Come on. It’s killing them all.”

Pipper groggily opened his eyes-“Wha-wha-?”-and then snapped awake. “What is it?”

Binkton jerked Pipper about. “Look! Oh, Adon, look!”

“Oh, oh, oh no, oh no,” cried Pipper. He got to his feet and started toward the fallen. But Binkton grabbed him and hauled him back, shouting, “We can’t go into the darkness! It’s deadly!”

“Deadly?”

“It had you, Pip. It had you. Watch, watch the thing inside.”

Pipper turned and looked and cried out, “Oh, Elwydd, what is it? Adon! Adon! It’s killing them, killing them!”

“What’ll we do, Pip? What’ll we do?”

The knot of darkness released a now-dead sailor, and it descended upon a Dwarf.

“We can’t let this go on,” shouted Pipper. “What is it? Where did it come from?”

Binkton slued about, and his Warrow vision followed a dark, twisted, ropy strand of the thing back up to the top of the central tower. “There!” he cried. “Pip, it’s from there.”

“We’ve got to get to the top,” cried Pipper. “Perhaps we can somehow stop it.”

“But how? There is no door,” shouted Binkton above the wail of a strengthening wind and the screams of agony.

Pipper whipped the pack off his back and dragged out the rope and grapnel. “It’s too high,” wailed Binkton.

“We’re going to the other tower,” shouted Pipper, “the one with the door.”

The twist inside the darkness moved from the Dwarf to another sailor and embraced the man, and again began sucking away the life. Yet at the same time, lo! Kalor, a descendent of Brega, Bekki’s son, stirred upon the tiles, and, screaming in pain, levered himself up to one knee. And he took his war hammer in hand and, yelling in agony, he swung at the knot of blackness, but the hammer passed through without effect. And the thing turned upon its assailant and took all his essence from him.

Pipper and Binkton ran to the tower with the door. Binkton tried the handle. “Locked!” he spat, and reached for the wire in his belt.

And wind howled among the streets of the City of Jade, wailing about corners and screaming over walls and sobbing through broken windows.

The thing within the void now sucked upon another Dwarf, while all about the creature its victims-to-be shrieked, all unknowing, all unthinking, all unseeing. . unable to do ought but shrill.

“Hurry, Bink. Hurry!”

“Shut up, shut up!” snarled Binkton, and he bent the tip of the wire at a different angle and probed again.

Another Dwarf died ere Binkton succeeded. But at last the lock fell to his skills, and he and Pipper, grunting and shoving, managed to wedge the stone panel open.

They found the insides completely hollow, but for a spiral stair winding upward.

“Come on,” shouted Pipper, and up they ran, turning, winding, ascending. At the very top they came to a jade trapdoor. And together and straining, with stone grating, they managed to lift it and throw it back.

They climbed onto a flat roof, a low parapet running about. They ran to the lip closest to the taller central tower; four openings could they see-the nearest fifty feet away.

“I can’t throw that far,” said Pipper.

“Give it to me,” said Binkton.

And as the wind howled, and darkness roiled in the sky, and a thing below sucked the life out from another Dwarf, Binkton whirled the grapnel at a short length of line, while Pipper held the far end, the rope coiled so as not to impede the flight.

Binkton threw.

The grapnel fell short.

Swiftly he recovered the line and hook, and whirled and threw again.

It clanked into the side of the tower and dropped.

Once again Binkton whirled and threw, and this time the hook flew through the opening.

Pipper pulled the line taut and looked about, and only a runoff slot at the far side did he see. “Oh, Adon, there’s nought to tie this end to.”

“Yes, there is,” shouted Binkton above the shriek of the wind. And he took the line and wrapped it about his waist thrice and lay down with his back to the roof and his feet against the parapet, the rope taut. He looked at Pipper and said, “I hope I can hold this.”

“Remember, Bink, your card, the one you drew for Lady Aylis, it was Strength.”

“Oh, Pip, the wind, it’s-”

“And mine was the Naif,” shouted Pipper, stepping to the parapet. “A decision to be made, and I’ve made it.”

And gauging the force of the swirling wind, Pipper stepped onto the line.

And as the rope took Pipper’s weight, Binkton grunted and gritted his teeth and held on with all his might, his legs trembling with the strain.

Across the line, sloping slightly upward, Pipper ran, praying to Elwydd and Adon that Uncle Arley’s training in the pines would see him through. Don’t place a foot wrong, don’t place a foot wrong, Pip! And the howling wind tore at him, as of a creature seeking to hurl him to his death on the jade stone far beneath.

And the swirl of darkness within the thing below moved on to another sailor. Just beyond writhed screaming Lissa, yowling Vex twisting at her side.

Pipper lost his balance just as he reached the arched opening, yet with a final lunge he managed to grasp the sill and pull himself in.

He jumped to the floor and looked about, and did not see the shadowy grey form slumped against the far wall, an astral being who had spent too much power loosing the deadly creature, a thing that had just finished sucking the life from a Human and now descended upon a Pysk.

But up above in the tall tower, Pipper could see an urn at rest on a high pedestal. Yet, what did that have to do with-? But then with his Warrow sight he saw the twisted rope of darkness extending from the footed vase and leading out and down to the plaza below.

As Pipper loaded a bullet into his sling, he did not see the astral form that struggled to its feet and limped to that same opening, nor did he hear the frantic aethyrial shout.

And the blackness below sucked up into a ball and flew toward the arched opening high above.

With a whirl and a snap, Pipper loosed the bullet, just as he was engulfed by darkness and hideous pain once again.

Yet the missile flew true, and it shattered the delicate, rune-marked vase, scattering the ashes of a deadly wraith.

And the howling wind whirled up those ashes and hurtled them out from the tower, scattering them wide, spinning the motes spiralling away like the long-dead dust they were, the wraith mewling even as its unnatural life bled away on the storm.

And Pipper fell unconscious, released from unbearable agony.

And even as an astral being fled toward a far-distant mountain fastness, the skies opened and a torrential rain thundered down and down on the long-lost City of Jade.