The Diamond Isle

27

‘Talk to me, paladin, or get ready to swim the rest of the way!’ Caldason had Praltor Mahaganis by the scruff of his neck up against the brig’s guardrail.

Serrah barged between them. ‘Reeth! Calm down.’

‘Out of the way.’

‘You know you don’t mean it.’

‘Don’t I? Take a look at my face and say that again.’

‘Let him be.’ Her tone was deliberate and threatening.

‘No,’ Mahaganis declared, ‘Reeth’s right. I should never have held anything back.’

They ignored him.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Reeth,’ Serrah said, ‘we have a fucking enormous enemy fleet threatening to block our path!’

On their starboard side an apparently limitless number of ships were approaching. They were some distance away, but the leaders had enough of a lead to cut off the brig, and soon.

‘This isn’t exactly the time for a history lesson,’ she added.

‘It might be the only time we have left,’ Caldason told her.

‘He’s right,’ Mahaganis said, a weary, resigned edge to his voice. ‘You should know everything.’

Kutch and Wendah came running. The skipper, Rad Cheross, and a couple of crewmen were close behind.

‘What’s all the fuss?’ Kutch panted.

‘What are you doing to him?’ the girl demanded angrily. From the look on her flushed face she was ready to pitch in.

‘It’s all right, Wendah,’ Mahaganis assured her. ‘No one’s trying to hurt me.’

‘He is.’ She scowled at Caldason.

‘No he’s not,’ Kutch said. ‘Reeth wouldn’t do that.’

‘Wouldn’t he? He’s a killer, isn’t he?’

Caldason let go of the old man.

Serrah placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Kutch is telling you the truth, Wendah. Nobody’s going to be harmed. Now let’s all just be calm, shall we?’

Cheross stepped forward. ‘You might like to take this somewhere private. You’re in our way.’ He nodded towards the closing fleet.

‘Is there anything we can do?’ Serrah asked.

‘Not unless you’ve sailing skills you haven’t told me about. The best thing you can do is to leave us to it. Get yourselves to the mess, you’ll not be disturbed there.’

‘Can we outrun them?’

‘We’ve a fair chance. But I’m making no promises. Be ready to defend the ship if I have to give the order.’

‘Against all those?’ Kutch blurted.

‘It won’t come to that,’ Serrah promised. ‘We’re stopping Rad doing his job. Let’s go.’

She led them away. Wendah took the old man’s arm and guided him, with Kutch at her side. Caldason trailed behind. The deck was slick with spray, and a stiff wind blew constantly. They were glad to pile into the ship’s largest cabin, and took seats at the long oak table it housed.

Kutch said, ‘What is going on, Reeth?’

‘You know what Praltor said about me having Founder blood. You can’t make a statement like that then refuse to elaborate. I need to hear the rest, and now, while there’s still time.’

Wendah’s eyes widened. ‘Before we die, you mean?’

‘Reeth means in the time left before we get to the island,’ Serrah lied, flashing him a hard look. ‘Don’t you, Reeth?’

‘That’s right,’ he replied after a pause. ‘I should have said.’ He turned to Mahaganis. ‘Tell me what you meant about Founder blood. Please.’

‘Yes. Hmm, a drink first, if someone would be so kind.’ Wendah poured him watered wine from a jug. He smiled. ‘Thank you, child.’ Finding her hand, he squeezed it, then drank, finally thumping down the cup with resolve. ‘What I told you, Reeth,’ he stated, ‘was no lie. Founder blood flows in your veins.’

‘How can that be?’ Kutch wanted to know. ‘The Founders died out millennia ago.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

‘Are you mocking us?’ Caldason said. ‘Or is senility addling your brain?’

‘Neither,’ Mahaganis replied. ‘I was never more serious.’

Serrah raised a mollifying hand. ‘This is just plain confusing, Praltor. Start at the beginning, can’t you?’

‘All right.’ He took another sip of wine and composed himself. ‘Nobody knows how or why the Founders lost their dominance. All we do know is that they had a remarkable civilisation, most of whose achievements are beyond our comprehension. The Founders were once the undisputed rulers of the world, then fell from grace, or were toppled, and their kind became extinct. At least, that’s what most people think.’

‘You’re saying otherwise?’

‘Oh, yes. Whatever cataclysm brought down the Founders, it didn’t wipe out all of them. I don’t know how many survived, or whether their descendants are disparate individuals or organised in some way. I suspect the latter. I think they exist as some kind of secret society, perhaps in a far land, away from prying eyes and-’

‘You know this for a fact?’ Serrah couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice.

‘Where and who they are can only be supposition, but I do know they exist because I was protecting Reeth against them. However they dispose themselves, they’re powerful enough to imperil anyone else who stands in their way.’

Caldason fixed him with a level gaze. ‘You say I have their blood. So why would I need protecting from them?’

‘Preserving the purity of their race is one of their highest ideals. You were the first example of a half-breed, or at least the first who lived that I heard of. Their blood courses in your veins, but that doesn’t make you one of them. It makes you something obscene in their eyes, something to be destroyed.’

Caldason said nothing.

Serrah asked, ‘How did Reeth come to have this mixed parentage?’

‘As the result of a union between his Qalochian mother and a Founder-descended man. I don’t know if love was involved on either side or whether it was just a dalliance. I don’t know if your mother knew her lover was a Founder. I do know that he broke one of the strictest Founder taboos in laying with her. She died in childbirth, as you know, quite possibly because their race and ours weren’t meant to interbreed. But her death wasn’t enough for them. Reeth had to be eliminated too, as an abomination in their reckoning.’

‘You were there at my birth,’ Caldason remembered. ‘I saw it in a vision.’

‘Yes. I’d freshly deserted the paladins. The corruption had eaten deep into the clans and I was one of those who got out. I stood with the Qaloch, as others did, to oppose the persecution and injustice your people faced. As much of the maltreatment came from the paladins, from my blood, my duty lay in trying to rectify that wrong.’

‘You knew about these Founder offspring by then?’

‘Only because of my association with your people. As the native inhabitants of Bhealfa, their lineage was age old, and their path had crossed with the Founders’ many times in the past. In fact, I suspect Qalochians were used as a pool by the Founders. There were wise folk in your tribes who knew the truth. No one believed them, and they grew to be circumspect.’

‘A pool?’ Serrah queried.

‘I think that, now and again, Qaloch women were used to pleasure Founder males. As they’ve always been subject to bigotry, and widely feared because of their martial reputation, Qalochians were a good choice. Very few cared what happened to them, and even fewer would have listened to their grievances.’

‘What an awful way to exploit people. These Founders sound complete shits.’

‘It must have been a very convenient arrangement for them,’ Caldason said, a cold wrath barely restrained. ‘What happened to change things?’

‘It came to a head with your mother’s pregnancy,’ Mahaganis replied. ‘I believe that was an extreme rarity, unprecedented, perhaps. As I said, our races were not intended to procreate. That was when the clans were contracted to wipe out the Qaloch, to be sure of killing you. It took no great leap of imagination to realise that Founder descendants were the clients. The paladins, to their shame, didn’t know or didn’t care where the money came from.’

Caldason, as a rule so hard to read, was visibly shaken. ‘They wanted my death so badly they’d massacre my entire race?’

‘That’s how jealously they defend their blood. I know it’s hard to take, and how easy it must be for you to feel guilty about your people’s fate, but it’s not your fault, boy. You have to get that through your stubborn head if nothing else.’

‘But why should it be so important to them?’ Serrah wondered. ‘Why did Reeth have to die? It seems such a harsh punishment for breaking a taboo. There has to be more to it.’

‘All cultures have their prohibitions, including ours,’ the old man reminded her, ‘and some of the empires’ punishments are pretty draconian.’

‘Maybe…’ Wendah muttered in a small, uncertain voice, then stopped, looking uncomfortable.

They were all surprised to hear her speak. ‘Go on, dear,’ Mahaganis cajoled. ‘What did you want to say?’

‘Only that…well, it might not be just about some rule being broken.’ She gave Caldason a wary sidelong glance. ‘Perhaps they hate him because they fear him.’

‘The same thing occurred to me,’ Kutch threw in.

‘What’s your meaning?’ Mahaganis said.

‘Is it because Reeth’s half Founder that he’s lived so long?’

‘It must be. In the same way that the Source has prolonged my own life.’

‘And like Phoenix.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone we know,’ Serrah explained, ‘who’s also lived beyond his time through Founder magic. Sorry, Kutch; make your point.’

‘I was going to say, what does it mean to have Founder blood? Apart from living longer.’

‘It would explain Reeth’s visions,’ Mahaganis told him, ‘and the apparent link he has with the warlord, Zerreiss. Though I’ve no idea why.’

‘They seem like symptoms,’ Kutch reasoned. ‘I was wondering whether, if you share their blood, do you share their powers?’

‘The Founders weren’t human. Some scholars think they might have been like us once, long ago, but developed into something beyond our state. Who knows what breeding with them means?’

‘Suppose it gives some magical power or ability they don’t want to share? Something that might be dangerous to them.’

‘I can…see something in Reeth,’ Wendah contributed, adding unnecessarily, ‘with my talent.’

‘What can you see?’ Caldason asked, less than kindly.

She blinked at him, as though trying to penetrate a haze. ‘I can’t explain. Something I’ve never seen before.’

‘You haven’t had contact with that many people,’ Serrah reminded her.

‘That’s true. But it still feels strange.’

‘What about you, Kutch?’ Serrah asked.

‘I gave up spotter training because I couldn’t cope with what I was picking up from Reeth, remember. So I suppose that kind of confirms it.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Caldason objected. ‘You’re all making a hell of a lot of assumptions about me. What about the alternative?’

‘What alternative?’ Mahaganis said.

‘That whatever ails me has nothing to do with Founder magic.’

‘What else could it be?’

‘I don’t know…a curse laid on me by an enemy perhaps, or-’

‘A curse unlike any ever seen before? Oh, come on.’ Mahaganis grimaced. ‘You’re looking for explanations when the truth’s staring you in the face. Nobody can blame you for not wanting to accept any of this, but whatever troubles you was inherited from your father, and he was of the Founder race.’

‘What knowledge do you have of him? Did you ever meet?’

‘No, and I’ve no idea what became of him. Perhaps he suffered the ultimate punishment. We don’t know how they’d treat one of their own in this kind of situation. But…’

‘What?’

‘I have no proof but, having learnt how the Founder descendants operate, and from what I gathered from Qalochians who survived the great massacre…’

‘Don’t start being coy with me again, old man.’

‘I think he was the one who tried to kill you.’

There was a knock on the mess door. Rad Cheross entered. ‘We’ve outpaced the enemy fleets, just, and there’s no sign of pirates. I guess they’re keeping clear for obvious reasons. Barring mishaps, we’ll reach the Diamond Isle in an hour or two, just ahead of the empires. Be ready to disembark fast.’ He didn’t wait for comments.

Caldason got to his feet.

Serrah was anxious for him. ‘Reeth?’

‘I need some air.’

He headed for the door and she followed. Understanding their need for privacy, the others stayed where they were.

On deck, Caldason went to the rail and gazed at the colossal armada that glowed on the horizon. The sky had grown darker.

Serrah slipped an arm around his waist. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’ve learnt that my mother died birthing me, my father tried to kill me and my race was all but exterminated because of me. What would you think my feelings were?’

‘Complicated?’

He smiled despite himself. ‘I can always rely on you for a little gibbet humour.’

‘Sometimes it’s all we’ve got.’ Her features hardened. ‘You know, I’m sceptical about some of what Praltor said in there.’

‘Such as?’

‘Mainly, this idea that the Founders are still around as some kind of secret society. I’m not sure I buy it. He said himself that it was supposition. I never came across a hint of it during my time with the CIS, and dealing with covert groups was my job.’

‘There was a lot the CIS kept from you.’

‘Yes. But if there’s some kind of truth here, I don’t think Praltor knows all of it.’

‘Are you also sceptical about whether I’ve got some malign Founder canker inside me?’

‘I…don’t know, Reeth. But I’m inclined to think that in that respect the old man could be right.’

‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

She shrugged. ‘Actually, most of this is academic. Don’t look at me that way. It’s academic in the sense that it doesn’t help us now, does it? I mean, take a look at what’s coming.’ She nodded in the direction of the invasion fleet. ‘What does any of this matter when the chances are we’re sailing to our graves?’