Knights of the Crown

Chapter 13

Jemar the fair kept bis broad-brimmed hat on his head with one hand, but nothing could keep the breeze from making its feathers dance madly. A whitecap broke against Windsword’s side, and spray doused his face. He blinked his eyes clear and again counted the ships in the bay.

“I see only four ships.”

The first mate shrugged. “I won’t try to guess, until I see who’s missing. At least nobody seems to be burdened with a prize.”

“Some don’t call that a burden,” Jemar said. “No prizes at all can unsettle men faster than leaving ones they’ve taken.”

The mate shrugged again. Nearing thirty, he still had a boy’s love for the romance of seafaring and not much respect for anyone who merely wanted to make a living on the great waters. He was worth his rations and shares many times over for the inspiration he gave the new recruits, but he needed to be brought down from the clouds every so often.

“Ahoy, the deck!” came the hail from the foretop. “I make out Youris, Geyon, Shilriya, and Zyrub.”

“Good watch,” Jemar shouted. “Double wine for you tonight.”

He turned to the mate. “Much as I expected. Nersha was complaining about that crack in the keel all last summer. I suspect she found she couldn’t really face the open sea in Blaze.”

“She could always have sailed and moved to another prize. A ship wouldn’t have to be much to be more seaworthy than Blaze. Or has she gone on piling up cabin furniture the way she used to? Perhaps she couldn’t find a ship large enough to carry-”

Jemar cleared his throat. “For all we know, that furniture is as precious to her as that set of jeweled earrings is to you.” The mate had the grace to flush slightly. Jemar grinned.

“It hardly matters, anyway. Five ships can give Synsaga enough of a fight to make him prefer talking, unless he’s lost his wits or found an entire dragonarmy.”

“Who knows what’s behind the rumors?” the mate said. “Besides, will all five ships be united?”

Jemar opened his mouth to rip the mate open like a reef tearing at a fishing boat for withholding information. Then he realized that the mate was merely looking on the dark side. He usually did when it came to the intrigues and schemes of a council of captains, which he hated with a holy passion.

“You don’t earn a mate’s rations and shares as a prophet of doom,” Jemar said shortly. “Right now, you earn them by having the longboat swung out and the decks manned for signaling and hospitality.”

“Aye, aye, Jemar,” the mate said. He moved off fast enough to ease the sea barbarian chief’s temper for the moment. However, he would have felt a trifle better if he hadn’t sent the second mate off with Golden Cup. It never hurt a man to know that there was someone to take his place if he opened his mouth too often at the wrong times.

* * * * *

Gerik Ginfrayson was somewhere between wretchedly and horribly uncomfortable on the window ledge. But he would have clung to a branch or even hung from it by his tail (assuming he could grow one) to have as good a view of Fustiar the Renegade at work.

He had indeed seen everything clearly. Fustiar had lowered the dead (or at least senseless) prisoner into a hole in the floor of the tower’s dungeon, until he was out of sight. He had placed a bronze grating over the hole. He had sprinkled the grating with something that smoked like parchment sprinkled with rock oil and set alight.

Fustiar then nearly coughed himself into a fit and drank a good deal of wine (an entire large jug, Gerik judged) to clear his throat. It could not have cleared his head, but at least it did not befuddle it. Potent mages were dangerous enough working magic while sober; Gerik’s curiosity did not extend to being close to one working while manifestly drunk.

Now Fustiar was trotting industriously in circles around the grating. He held his staff crosswise in both hands and chanted as he moved. He was sober enough that the rhythm of his feet and the rhythm of his chant matched, or at least they had so far.

Meanwhile, a blue glow crept up through the grating. It brightened until it illuminated the entire dungeon, and Gerik drew back from the window for a short while. He was uneasy alike about the magic being worked here and about Fustiar’s noticing him as the light increased. Even the most moderate of mages dealt harshly with one who might be called a spy.

The glow continued to brighten until Gerik had to shield his eyes with one hand when he returned to his vantage. Certainly no human eye within the dungeon could any longer spy anything outside it.

If Fustiar’s eye was human.…

The mage was still moving, still chanting. The glow was brighter than ever. But in the middle of the glowing, something more solid, a heavy mist that seemed at once colorless and filled with every color of the rainbow, was curling up from the grating.

Gerik braced himself for the lash of heat on his skin. But as the mist rose like a snake toward the ceiling of the dungeon, he felt something quite different.

He felt as if the snow-laden winds of the southernmost Turbidus Ocean were blowing from the grating, filling the dungeon, and flogging his cheek. He shut his eyes, but the cold fire on his skin grew only more intense.

It began to seem that he had come here to witness the end of Fustiar the Renegade. If the man was still human, he had to be a stiffening corpse in the midst of that swirling ice.

* * * * *

“Habbakuk’s Gift!” was the cry from the boat.

“Board and be welcome,” was the traditional greeting from Windsword’s gangway.

Jemar the Fair looked around his cabin. Youris’s arrival made the council of captains here in Ansenor Bay as complete as it was going to be. The five here could vote for or against their all sailing in aid of Lady Eskaia and her enterprise. They could not bind Nersha, though if she spoke well of the voyage later, Jemar would see that she had a small share of whatever gain it might bring them. He and Nersha had shared too many drinks and occasionally a bed to leave her out entirely.

Youris entered as usual, rather like a mouse visiting a houseful of elderly cats. The appearance was deceptive, also as usual. Youris was undoubtedly the best swordsman of Jemar’s captains, and the most ruthless in looting prizes and ransoming captives. Honest trade came his way but rarely, and at times Jemar wondered if Youris wouldn’t be happier sailing under Synsaga. Somebody was going to slit his throat sooner or later, but on the Crater Gulf it might be later.

The five captains had each brought a servant with their stool of office. Some chiefs handed out maces, or staffs, or ornamented speaking trumpets; Jemar handed out folding stools of plain leather and even plainer wood. There was a time for display, but the serious business of a council of captains was not it.

Jemar’s style of addressing a council was also plain rather than florid. This was not entirely because of his pose of simplicity, though it certainly supported that pose. The simple fact was that Jemar the Fair hated long speeches, both hearing them and giving them; they made his throat dry, his ears hurt, and his temper uncertain.

Those women who shared his bed (and over the years one could have crewed a fair-sized ship with them) knew that he could be eloquent, bawdy, even tender whenever he chose, at any length he and his partner enjoyed. Among his captains and crew, however, he had the reputation of a man who seldom used two words when one would do and often preferred silence to saying anything at all.

He wondered briefly if Lady Eskaia knew that, and that the way he’d spoken to her was a sign of his high regard. He also wondered what a merchant princess of Istar would say to being well regarded by a sea-barbarian chief.

Then he stopped wondering, because Captain Youris was putting his stool in the center of the circle, the request for permission to stand and speak. Jemar swept his eyes around the cabin; the last servants departed as if the deck had caught fire behind them.

It was unusual for a captain to request to speak to the council before hearing what Jemar had to say. It was neither unknown, nor illegal, nor even particularly suspicious. Jemar decided that he would be the suspect one if he insisted on Youris’s silence.

Also, a man speaking often revealed what a man listening could hide.

“Shall Youris speak?” Jemar asked.

“Youris shall speak.” It was a ragged quartet (Jemar had heard better in seaside taverns with all parties three sheets to the wind), but he detected no doubt or dissent in his voice or anyone else’s.

“I shall speak,” Youris replied, accepting the permission as formally as it had been of feed. Some sea barbarian chiefs tolerated both drunken brawls and drunken brawlers in their councils; Jemar had found neither of much use, even as entertainment.

Youris remained armed as he stepped forward, but that was his right and no one so much as blinked at it. His voice was low, rather than the squeak one might expect, and his words came out as steadily as the beat of a galley’s oars at cruising speed.

“I would not care to prejudge our chief’s decisions, but I would be reluctant to do anything at this season except continue our cruises. Istar’s fleet grows by a ship a month, and the Karthayans and Knights of Solamnia have little love for us either. They lack seagoing ships to make their enmity effective, but-”

“Youris, your pardon,” Captain Shilriya said. “But counselor’s talk is not what we need. If you wish to amuse yourself, I have some wine or perhaps even stronger pleasures aboard Winged Fox. But if you wish to amuse us, be brief. Jemar has been courteous. Do return the favor.”

Youris turned to Shilriya and let his eyes linger. Most men did that. Shilriya was a robustly built redhead with a taste for long braids and short, low-cut tunics. It was hard to look at some of her tunics without wondering when she would emerge from them, with spectacular results.

Youris did not seem to be studying Shilriya’s charms, however. He seemed to be trying to silence her with the sheer intensity of his gaze. That was foolish, with Shilriya. Jemar knew her better than most women he’d bedded, and knew she had a will of iron. Youris should know that, too, unless he’d turned witling.

Or unless something had him uneasy, and this lapse of memory was a sign of it.

Jemar met Shilriya’s eyes. Neither of them so much as twitched a finger, but when he looked away, he knew that they were in agreement.

Now for Youris.

“Captain Youris, I, too, must ask you to be brief. If what you want to say bears on my proposal, perhaps it could even wait until after I have spoken. Or is it something momentous, like an apparition of dragons?”

One drop of sweat had time to break out on Youris’s forehead. It had no time to start rolling down toward his nose, before Youris kicked his stool at Jemar and followed up with a furious leap, drawing his sword in midleap.

That midair draw nearly defeated Jemar, for all his speed, alertness, and longer reach. He had nothing but his dagger drawn when Youris closed with him. The stool had struck him in the jaw, tearing skin and jarring his skull.

He still had the speed to dart under Youris’s second slash, but not to thrust the dagger into a vital spot. Or at least an unprotected one-the first thrust met metal. Youris’s extra weight was armor under his tunic.

Not badly planned, thought Jemar, which means accomplices, even if he’s taken them by surprise as well as me. Who?

Jemar abandoned subtlety and gripped Youris’s sword arm. Then he thrust at the man’s throat and at the same time twisted the arm. The thrust caught in the embroidery of the tunic and skittered off the armor beneath. The twist was more successful. For a moment, Youris’s arm was unmoving. For another moment, struggling to free it, he was nearly so.

That was enough time for Shilriya to rise, fold her stool, and swing it hard at Youris’s head. She struck below the green hat that had always reminded Jemar of a badly made pudding. Youris staggered, the hat fell off, and the improvised club descended again.

The wood of the stools being plain did not make it light. It was cut from ironwood, so dense that it would barely float. It now proved harder than Youris’s head. The captain’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he sprawled at Jemar’s feet.

Jemar barely had time to step back when the cabin door burst open. The mate staggered through, blood streaming down one arm. His good hand held a cutlass. He slashed wildly at something Jemar could not see-then Captain Zyrub jumped up.

Zyrub was the largest of the five captains, and long-armed for his height. He didn’t bother folding his stool before he flung it. It hit something with a crunch, which was followed by a thud. Then he reached over the fallen mate and heaved an unconscious man into view.

It was Youris’s servant-Youris’s dead servant, if they could not heal him quickly. It would do the man no good in the long run; the yardarm awaited him regardless. But both he and his captain should not die with the secrets behind their treachery unuttered.

“Keep him alive!” Jemar snapped. “And that one, too,” he added, pointing at Youris. Shilriya looked at Jemar as if he’d asked her to decorate her cabin with piles of manure, then sighed.

“As you wish, O Great Captain.”

Jemar ignored the sarcasm. “Zyrub, you lead a boarding party from your ship and mine to Habbakuk’s Gift. If they resist, fight. If they try to get underway, signal and we’ll pursue.

“If there’s no resistance, don’t hurt anyone. But search Youris’s cabin thoroughly. Don’t let anyone else in there, and if anyone offers information, send them to me. “There will be rumors enough running about the squadron within the hour. I want to overhaul them with the truth.”

Zyrub’s expression said that they would be so lucky when minotaurs played the flute. But he always had a surly way of obeying-and never left Jemar in any doubt about his loyalty when matters grew serious.

Over a time Jemar could never measure, his men came in and removed the two senseless traitors, while bringing their one healer for the mate. Jemar knelt beside the man, as the healer rose and said he could do nothing.

On Jemar’s lips were witling’s words, such as, “I wasn’t that eager to save your pay and rations,” or “I know prophets are seldom honored, but this is ridiculous.”

Instead he held the mate’s hand until it went limp, and closed the dead eyes. He still felt those eyes following him as he went out on deck, and the sense faded slowly.

He did not feel really at ease until he saw the boarding party climbing the side of Habbakuk’s Gift, then the signal for “All well” climbing up to the ship’s masthead.

This half-witted treason had been strangled almost at birth. Half-witted, because if Youris wanted the chieftainship, there was the lawful Captains’ Challenge. Had he killed Jemar in that, all would have been oath-bound to follow him.

For what he had done, he would never have left the cabin alive even if he had killed Jemar. Youris had been desperate. Jemar greatly wished to know why.

* * * * *

As suddenly as it had hurled itself against Gerik Ginfrayson, the freezing mist receded the way it had come. He did not dare open his eyes to see what else it was doing, lest it leap at him again and this time blind him.

As a scream echoed around the dungeon his eyes flew open and every other sense grew as sharp as a sword’s edge. Someone was giving up his life in that scream, with fear or pain or both beyond normal human experience.

Not beyond the experience of the victims of mages, however.

As Gerik clung to his perch, he saw the blue light fade. The icy mist or smoke was contracting into a ball. Fustiar still stood, and as far as Gerik could tell, still lived. There was frost on his robes and hair, but he still chanted as if had not missed a syllable even while the ice-mist had surrounded him.

Then he touched his staff to the ball of ice-mist. It shook like jelly had began to change shape, flattening out and taking on a four-sided shape with one side curved-

An axehead. And from tales that might not have been intended to frighten him but certainly had, Gerik recognized what kind of axehead: an ice barbarian’s Frostreaver. It was the most terrible of all battleaxes, but equally burdensome to make, even for the most potent wizards of the ice barbarians. Therefore, mercifully rare even far to the south, on the glacier-rimmed islands where the ice barbarians squatted in their sealskin huts.

As for one being made here-never. Except that the evidence of Gerik’s eyes told him otherwise. A Frostreaver forged in a land of perpetual damp heat-and not melting on the spot. As far as he could see, not melting at all.

A voice told him that he should wait and see what became of that axehead of shimmering blue ice. If in an hour it was a pallid puddle on the filthy dungeon floor, he would have seen nothing that anyone need fear. Fustiar’s Frostreavers were bound by the same constraints as those of the ice barbarians.

But it was enough and too much that he had seen it made at all. Gerik dropped from his perch, careless of the noise he made, careless of bruises and cuts from stones and twigs. He half slid, half fell to the ground.

When he reached the ground, he ran.

* * * * *

Shilriya tossed back the last of her brandy and bent over Jemar’s table to refill her cup. Her tunic was as low as ever, but looser, and she wore perfume, a heavier scent than Jemar liked but so rare with Shilriya that it almost deserved to be entered in the log.

“So. Are there any doubts left?”

“No, except about whether Youris is fit to be tried and hanged. Only a complete idiot would record his debts to Synsaga without using the simplest cryptograph.”

“That, or one who didn’t want to leave a mystery behind, to confuse and divide us. Instead, he laid it all out neatly, so that when he was gone we could answer the riddle and fear nothing.”

The idea of Youris possessing that sort of nobility was alien to Jemar, but it took more than brandy to make Shilriya talk nonsense. Still, the man had to have been lacking somewhere to go so far in debt to Synsaga-a man who neither forgave nor forgot, without very good reason.

If he had a mage and a dragon at his command now, he would have very good reasons to collect everything that was his due. Power beyond even a king’s dreams might be his for the asking, but even a mage and a dragon together could not make the gold needed to make greedy men share Synsaga’s dream.

Most men were content with their own little dreams, until someone else gave them larger ones, for good or for evil.

Jemar sipped at his own brandy. There was just enough left in his glass to swirl around in his mouth, letting the fumes rise up into his nose. They seemed to fill his head, but cleared his vision rather than clouded it.

One thing he now saw clearly: Shilriya was ready to share his bed. Not insisting, as she did with men as often as not, but definitely willing to listen to his offer.

Which would have been very well, except that when he looked at Shilriya he seemed to be looking through her to see another woman, one a good ten years younger than Shilriya, maybe more. Her image was fair at first glance, more than fair at a second, longer look-and far beyond him, and with no claim on him, and about as foolish a dream as any of Youris’s, for a man in Jemar’s situation.

But the way Eskaia had smiled at him would make him uncomfortable in Shilriya’s bed. That meant staying out of it, because the lady did not stomach insults much better than a goddess!

It also meant seeing Eskaia again, away from that cursed shield-maid of hers, and asking the lady what lay behind that smile.

Jemar drank the last drops of brandy in a silent toast to Lady Eskaia and her mysteries.

* * * * *

Gerik ran he new not where, nor for how long. He knew only that when his right senses had more or less returned, he was out of sight of the tower.

That might not mean much on a night like this. It wasn’t raining, but everything else he had come to loathe about the Crater Gulf weather was present. So was the entire nighttime panoply of the jungle, including insects that whined, buzzed, whistled, shrieked, and made every other sort of unwholesome sound even when they didn’t tickle, sting, or bite, which most of them did.

He had the wits to sit under a good, stout tree that at least protected his back. No doubt it would start dropping nuts on him before long-though this early in the year, few nut-bearing trees bore ripe burdens.

The rough bark soothed itches on his back even as it tangled his hair. He sighed, and stretched his legs out until they encountered a fallen log. He pushed-and the log began to move.

He watched something not quite large enough to be a dragon but larger than he was rise on four splayed, clawed legs, raise a curious, bony frill along its back, and waddle off into the darkness. He could hear bushes crunching and small creatures skittering out of its path for quite a good while.

So. Fustiar was making Frostreavers. He might be making ones that would last. If so, would he and Synsaga sell them? Or would they sell the secret of making them?

One secret. Perhaps the first, but certainly not the last. Synsaga had no scruples that gold could not overcome. Fustiar had no scruples at all. (One could not afford them if one’s magic involved human sacrifice.)

Gerik had scruples, more than he had realized until now. He did not much care for letting Frostreavers and whatever else Fustiar might conjure up loose on the world, to Synsaga’s profit.

What should he do about those scruples?

Something like clarity was returning to Gerik’s mind. He decided that the first thing he should do was wait here under this tree, or maybe up in it, until daylight. Then he could see which way the tower lay. If he could not see the tower, he could go downhill. Downhill meant toward water, and water meant a path to the shore.

But paths were meant to be walked in daylight. A man running about on a night like this could run into something’s jaws, fall over a cliff, or tumble into a pond full of leeches that would drain him in an hour.

Every one of these things had happened to men Gerik had known. He would start his rebellion by avoiding their fate.

He would continue it by returning to the tower. Fustiar might not suspect anything if he returned-particularly if he returned before Fustiar was awake and sober. Fleeing, even back to the camps on the shore, would raise suspicions.

Fustiar could not, after all, do anything worse than use him to make another Frostreaver, and that would end all dilemmas at once. Anything less, and Gerik Ginfrayson might strike a blow or two before he went down.