The clouds of smoke swirled and danced, buffeted by the inconstant sea winds. Hector could see the black shadows of his friends moving silently in the haze, raking the ashes over, tossing driftwood onto the pyres.
On the docks a shade that must have been Anais beckoned to him.
Hector walked through the acidic mist, his eyes stinging from the smoke, to the end of the pier where his childhood friend waited and stood beside him, staring off into the lapping sea and the impenetrable fog. It was a ritual they both had observed many times since the Second Fleet had departed, this silent vigil. In standing there, together, as they had stood on that horrific day when together they bound over their wives and children into the hands of MacQuieth for safekeeping, for a moment there was a connection, a link back in Time, to the last place where life still held meaning for them.
“I no longer dream of them,” Anais said, gazing into the steam. His voice was muffled by the whine of the wind.
“No?”
“No. You?”
Hector inhaled deeply, breathing in the salt and the heavy scent of ash, thinking of Talthea and their son, and their unborn child. “Yes. Each night.” He broke his gaze away and looked down through the mist at the waves cresting under the pier. “Of nothing else.” It was the only thing that made the day bearable, the knowledge that the night would come, bringing such dreams.
Anais nodded thoughtfully. “When awake, I can summon their faces if I try,” he said, “but at night I dream of the World Tree.”
Hector blinked and turned to face his friend. “Sagia?”
Anais nodded again. “And the forest Yliessan where I was born.”
In the heat of the afternoon sun, Hector felt suddenly cold at his friend’s mention of the great tree; it was the sacred entity of Anais’s people, the Lirin, the children of the sky. Sagia was one of the five birthplaces of Time, where the element of Ether was born, and its power was the heart’sblood of the Island.
“What do you see in these dreams, Anais?”
Anais inclined his head as if to facilitate recall of the vision. “I am standing in Yliessan at the base of the Tree, staring up its massive trunk to the lowest limbs that stretch out over the canopy of the other trees in the forest. Its silver bark is gleaming. Around the Tree are lines of Lirin of all strains, Lirindarc, the forest dwellers; Lirinved, the In-between, the nomads who live in both forest and field, making their home in neither; the Lirinpan from the cities—they are all waiting. The Liringlas, my own people, the skysingers, are at the end of the line, weaving flower garlands as they wait.
“One by one, they climb into the lowest branches, then higher, building shelters of sorts, nests, for lack of a better word. The Liringlas are adorning the trunk of Sagia with the floral garlands.” Anais closed his eyes, concentrating on the vision. “They are singing. The Lirin are taking refuge in Sagia, awaiting the end in Her arms.”
Sevirym’s voice shattered the stillness of the docks.
“Hector! Hector! Ship! A ship is coming into port!”
The men at the dock’s end turned in surprise and stared harder into the mist.
At the outer reaches of their vision they could see it after a moment, sails spilling wind as it approached the lower landing at the southern tip of the main jetty. Hector ran back down the pier, followed a moment later by Anais, where they met up with the other three.
Jarmon was shaking his head. “Fools,” he muttered, watching the vessel as it disappeared into the steam rising off the seawall. “Must be lost. Can’t be a ship’s captain in the world who doesn’t know the peril at this point.”
Cantha shook her head too. “Not lost. Deliberate in its movements.”
“Hoay!” Sevirym called, jogging toward the jetty and waving his arm in the swirls of floating black ash from the bonfires. “Hoay! Here!”
Nothing but the sea wind answered them.
They stood in the heavy mist for what seemed a half hour or more, until finally Anais spotted a dim light making its way over the waves in their direction, bobbing up and down near the water’s surface.
“They’ve launched a longboat,” he said, pointing out the approaching glow. “A lantern lights its prow, low to the water.”
“The ship’s a two- or three-masted schooner,” Jarmon reported. “Brigantine, mayhap—I can’t make it out. Big monster, she is. Must have dropped anchor just outside the seawall. Can’t say as I blame her. Wouldn’t want to navigate this harbor in the fog now that the light towers have gone dark.”
“Sevirym, light a brand and wave it,” Hector called as he walked to the end of the jetty. He strained to see through the smoke and mist, but caught only occasional sight of the tiny lantern that bobbed nearer on the wide bay.
“Madness,” Jarmon muttered under his breath as Sevirym climbed to the top of the massive wall of sandbags that they had erected along the coastline and held the firebrand aloft for light. “It has been more than two full turns of the moon since the last one—why is a ship coming now? Can they not see the rising steam? It must reach well into the sky; how can they miss that from the open sea?”
“Perhaps they have the same sort of eyes as Sevirym,” Anais suggested. “Let us wait and see.”
They watched in impatient silence for a long while, then simultaneously made their way down the long pier through the brightness of the fog that had swallowed Hector, who waited at its end.
The light from the lantern on the longboat’s prow was now in close sight, its radiance diffused by the glow of the sun in the steam that blanketed the coast. Over the sound of the waves slapping the pier they heard a ragged voice calling.
“Hoay!”
Farther out in the harbor, a score of voices picked up the hoarse cry.
“Hoay! Anyone there? Hoay!”
Before the eyes of the five companions, twinkling lights appeared, spread in an arrowpoint formation behind the first beacon. A longboat guided by a boatswain and steered by four rowers emerged from the fog, followed a moment later by five others that followed it.
In the first boat a man was standing; they could see his shadow begin to take on form and definition as the longboat neared the pier.
“Hoay! I am looking for Sir Hector Monodiere! Be any of you he?”
“I am he,” Hector said, grasping the pylon and leaning out over the end of the pier to get a better look at the man in the longboat through the hazy light. “Why have you come here?”
The man shielded his eyes. “I am Petaris Flynt, captain of theStormrider , sailing under the flag of Marincaer. I bear news; toss me a line.”
Jarmon and Anais set about mooring the lead longboat, while Cantha went back to assist Sevirym in guiding the remaining ones to the pier with the firebrand. Hector offered the captain his hand and discovered upon pulling the man onto the dock how weak his grip had become, how much flesh had been lost from his arm.
The captain was a burly man, stout and barrel-chested, with a full gray beard and eyes as black as the depths of the sea. He looked up at Hector, half a head taller, then allowed his eyes to wander to the others and beyond to the empty wharf. He shook his head and sighed.
“Who could ever have imagined the great light tower of Kingston would go dark in my lifetime?” he mused. “I had thought the rising of the sun was more in doubt than the presence of that beacon. Alas and alack.” He signaled to the sailors in the longboat to be at ease, then met Hector’s eye again.
“We are here to take one last load, Sir Hector—whatever stragglers remain, whoever may have missed the last ship out—this trulyis the final chance they will have. The sea above the Northern Isles is roiling in the heat; the bilge in any ship now boils within ten leagues of Balatron. We don’t know if we will make it out ourselves—we sail with the tide at sunset, heading southwest as fast as the wind will carry us until we hit the Icefields, then looping back to the north. Anyone on board at sunset can come with us. All others remain—no exceptions.”
“May God the One, the All,
forgive my ingratitude, but why did you come here?” Hector asked incredulously. “The shipping lanes have been closed to this place for more than two months now. The exodus was completed three months before that; the Third Fleet left in midspring. There is no one left to save—everyone who was willing to leave is already gone.”
Flynt’s brow furrowed. “I came by the order of the king of Marincaer, who was asked to send me by Stephastion, one of the barons of Manosse.”
“Manosse?” Hector glanced at Jarmon and Anais, who shrugged. Manosse was a great nation half a world away on the eastern coast of the Northern Continent, far from the lands to which the refugees who had refused to sail with the Fleets had fled.
“Aye,” said Flynt. “It is from Manosse that the news comes as well. Your father’s fleet landed there.”
“In Manosse?” Hector asked in concern. “Why? What happened? That is not to where they were bound.”
“Apparently they were beset by a great storm,” Flynt replied, speaking rapidly. “Sundered at the Prime Meridian. Many ships were lost. Part of the surviving flotilla landed at Gaematria, the Isle of the Sea Mages, though it is a forbidden place to most. Your father led the remainder of the fleet back to Manosse, probably because he knew the weakened ships would not survive the rest of the voyage east to the Wyrmlands, where they were originally headed. They plan to stay there, I’m told.”
Hector nodded. “What of the First Fleet? And the Third?”
The captain shook his head. “No word. But if they were going to the Wyrmlands, I fear there will never be word from them again. That place is not part of the Known World for a reason.” He glanced around nervously.
“Do you have word of my family?” Hector asked.
“I am told your wife and son are safe in Manosse. And your daughter as well—your child has been born, safe and healthy, I am to tell you.”
“Do you know what name she was given?”
“No, but your wife apparently said that you do.”
“And my father—he is well? And his ship?”
Flynt looked away. “He survived the trip. His ship remained intact, I am told.”
Hector and Anais exchanged a glance of relief; the news boded well for Anais’s family, who had traveled with Hector’s, though it was clear the captain was leaving something out.
“Tell me of my father, whatever it is you have not said,” Hector asked. “Is he ill?”
“Not to my knowledge.” The sea captain gestured nervously to the crew of his longboat, who took up oars and rowed toward the shore, then turned his attention back to the young man.
“Your father stands vigil in the sea, Sir Hector. Once what remained of the Second Fleet was docked, and his duty discharged, he went to the peninsula of Sithgraid, the southernmost tip of Manosse, and waded into the surf. It is said that he stands there, night into day into night again, refusing sustenance and company from any but your wife and son. When the baron asked your wife what he is doing, she merely said that he is waiting.”
Hector absorbed the words in silence, gazing off to the eastern horizon. “Thank you.”
Impatience won its battle for control of the sea captain. “All right, then, Sir Hector; I’ve delivered my news. As I have told you, I have come to take the last souls who wish to leave before the Island succumbs. Gather them.”
As if hearing the words for the first time, Hector turned and looked intently at Flynt, then nodded.
“Very well.”
“Open the gate, Sevirym.”
The young soldier looked doubtful as his gaze ran up the massive entranceway to the empty guard towers on either side. He stared at the wall that encircled the Gated City, and, noting no one walking atop it, grasped hold of the rusted handle and pulled with all his strength.
The heavy wooden gate, bound in brass, swung open silently.
“Would you look at that,” Jarmon muttered bitterly. “For four hundred years it took three men to spring those brass locks, seven to open that gate into this nest of thieves. Now it swings open like my mother’s kitchen door. Truly I have lived too long.”
Hector stepped through the entranceway past the thick walls reinforced internally with iron bars, trying to absorb the sight beyond them.
The Gated City was empty.
Or perhaps it only appeared that way. From every street corner, every boarded window and alleyway, he could sense the presence of shadows, could feel the weight of eyes on him, even though there was no one visible.
Through the silent thoroughfares they walked, stepping over the detritus of the bazaar that littered the streets, shreds of cloth and broken market carts, sparkling glass fragments and streaks of soot from long-cold roasting fires. At each street corner Hector stopped and peered into the recesses of the Outer Ring, but saw nothing; called, but received no answer.
Finally they came to the great well at the center of the Gated City, a place that a revered historian had described in his writings as the “upspout of a warren of Downworlders, people who lived entirely in the darkness beneath city streets, in lairs with more tunnels that a queendom of ants.” Hector didn’t know if he believed the lore of those mythical human rats, and didn’t care; he only knew that sound in the well would reverberate throughout the city. He leaned over the edge and shouted.
“Hullo! Come out now, all you within the sound of my voice! I command you, in the name of Gwylliam, High King of Serendair, quit this place at once! The last ship that will ever come waits in the harbor, and sails with the tide at sunset. Come! The Sleeping Child rises in the northwest—save yourselves!”
His words resounded off the stones of the alleyways, echoed down the well and through the streets. Hector waited.
There was no answer.
“Anais,” Hector said without turning, maintaining his watch on the streets and alleys before him, “go back to the gate and ring the Market Day bell.”
“Are you certain it is there still?” Anais asked doubtfully. “Most of Kingston’s bells were melted down for ship fittings when the exodus began.”
“That bell was within the Gated City, which was overlooked in the planning of the exodus. It was too large to be taken by those who have already scurried out of here through whatever holes there may be in the walls. Keep ringing it until the walls start to give way.”
Unconsciously the other three moved into a circle with their backs to Hector, watching at the compass points for signs of response. Aside from a shifting of shadows and a flutter here and there in the darkness, there were none.
They stood thus, crossbows nocked but pointed at the cobblestones, still as those stones, even as the great bell sounded loudly from atop the wall at the gate.
Waves of harsh brass sound rippled through the empty streets as Anais struck again and again. A wild flapping rose from the eaves of a boarded mudbrick building near the well; a flock of roosting pigeons started and took to the sky, squawking angrily.
For fifteen long minutes the great bell kept sounding, the clanging trailing off into silence after a few sustained moments, only to resume in its earsplitting furor again and again. Hector continued to stare into the darkened alleyways, enduring the cacophony without wincing, until finally a dark outline of a man appeared at the end of a street near the well. The man waited until Anais paused in his pounding of the bell, then shouted down the empty street.
“Have him stop immediately, or I will order him shot.”
“It would be an unwise order to give,” Hector shouted back, as the three who surrounded him leveled their crossbows, “and your last.”
A ragged chuckle came from the bony figure, and the man at the alley’s end came forward, limping slightly into the afternoon light as the bell began to crash once more.
“Hold, Anais,” Hector yelled as the thin man stepped into the square the same moment the ringing paused again. He watched impatiently as the man leaned on his walking stick and turned his head to the south to scan the distant wall. The others did not lower their weapons.
“What, pray tell, do you think you are doing?” the ragged man asked in a mixture of annoyance and inquisitiveness. “Besides disturbing the pigeons and my afternoon nap.”
“A final rescue ship has come into the harbor. I am here to make one last attempt to save what remains of the king’s people.”
The bony man broke into a wide smile graced intermittently by teeth.
“Ah,” he said smugly, running a thin hand over the gray stubble on his face. “Now the source of our misunderstanding is clear. You are merely confused.” His tone turned conciliatory, with a hint of exaggerated condescension, as if he were speaking to children. “You see, these are not the king’s people; they never were. The king forgot about this place long ago, just as his father and his grandfather before him did. I am king of this place now—well, they call me the Despot, actually—now that anyone with actual power has long ago left. These aremy people.I say whether they come or go, live or die.” He leaned forward on his walking stick, his patchy smile growing brighter. “And I say they are staying. So go about your business, sir knight; run along and board your ship. We do thank you for your kind offer, but respectfully, as king of those who remain, I decline.”