Dread returned as a pair of soldiers stripped Alec and washed him down with buckets of cold seawater. When he was clean, they thrust him into a soft robe and turned him back to Tildus, who led him below to a spacious cabin in the stern.
To his amazement, he found Mardus, Ashnazai, Thero, Irtuk Beshar, and the silent, grey-bearded necromancer, Harid, reclining on cushions around a low table. A young serving boy placed another cup on the table, motioning for Alec to be seated.
“Come, Alec, join us,” Mardus said, patting an empty cushion between himself and the dyrmagnos. He and the others had also changed clothes and cleansed away all traces of the murders he’d just witnessed.
It’s as if none of that happened, he thought numbly, too shocked to protest as Tildus steered him to his place and pushed him down.
Thero sat on Irtuk Beshar’s left. At her nod, he raised his cup mechanically to his lips. Wine dribbled down through his beard as he drank, his eyes locked on some distant point.
The sight filled Alec with a strange guilt, as if he’d spied on something unseemly. Looking away, he fixed his attention on his cup as the servant filled it with pale yellow wine.
“Come now, dear boy, why so shy?” Mardus coaxed, the mask of gentlemanly solicitude in place once more. “It’s an excellent wine. Perhaps it will put some color back in those wan cheeks of yours.”
“Strong emotion does so spoil a young man’s beauty,” Irtuk Beshar added, her coquettish tone as incongruous with her cracked, blackened face as her robes and veil.
The entire situation had such a surreal quality that Alec found himself replying, “I don’t care for any, thank you,” as if he were Sir Alec of Ivywell dissembling at some noble’s banquet with Seregil.
“Such pretty manners, too,” Ashnazai noted. “I am beginning to see your point, my lord. It will be a pity to kill him. He would ornament any gentleman’s household.”
Alec’s sense of dreamlike detachment increased as the grisly conversation flowed around him in polite salon tones. If this was the onset of madness, then he welcomed it as a gift of Illior. Whatever the case, he suddenly felt a giddy lightness coming over him. He’d experienced this before, though never so intensely. When death was your only option, it made you feel very free indeed.
“My lord,” he began. “What is this all about? The wooden disk, the crown? I know you’re going to kill me as part of it, so I’d just like to understand.”
Mardus smiled expansively. “I would expect no less of a person of your intelligence. As I have said, you and all your misguided friends have been instrumental in a grand and sacred quest. At first even I didn’t perceive the significance of it, but Seriamaius has revealed how you were all simply instruments of his divine will.”
Mardus raised his cup to Alec in a mocking salute. “You can’t imagine the trouble you saved us, bringing so many parts of the Helm together for us to reclaim with a single brief stroke. Not to mention the damage we were able to inflict upon the Orëska in the process. Why, in one night we managed to accomplish what might otherwise have taken months, even years. And we do not have years, or even weeks, now.”
“A helm?” Alec asked, seizing on this new reference.
Mardus turned to his companions, shaking his head. “Imagine! This Nysander, great and compassionate wizard that he is, had his closest friends carry out his thievery without the least hint of what they were being embroiled in. Why, he regarded Seregil and poor young Alec and Thero here almost as sons.
“Yes, Alec, the Helm. The Great Helm of Seriamaius. The coin, as you so amusingly refer to it, the cup, and the crown are all elements of a greater design. When brought together with the other fragments at the proper time, they will rejoin to form the Helm revealed to our ancestors by Seriamaius more than six centuries ago.”
“It is the ultimate artifact of necromantic power,” Irtuk Beshar told him. “He who wears it becomes the Vatharna, the living embodiment of Seriamaius.”
“The legends from the Great War. Armies of walking dead,” Alec said softly, thinking of the ancient journal he and Seregil had discovered in the Orëska library.
“Perhaps we have underestimated this child,” the dyrmagnos observed, cocking her head to regard Alec more closely. “There may be depths within him still to be sounded.”
Alec shuddered inwardly under the greediness of her scrutiny.
“Yet these tales of yours said nothing of the Helm?” Mardus continued. “I am not surprised. At the end of that war we were betrayed. Aided by traitors, fawning Aurënfaie wizards, and a pack of ragged drysians, the wizards of the Second Orëska managed to capture and dismantle the Helm before its full power could be invoked. Fortunately, they could not destroy the individual pieces. Our necromancers managed to recapture a few of them; the rest were carried off and hidden. For six centuries my predecessors have hunted for them, and one by one, they have been recovered.”
“That’s what you were doing in Wolde,” Alec said slowly. “You’d been to the Fens, that village Mi—”
“Micum Cavish?” Ashnazai smiled as he broke off suddenly. “Don’t trouble yourself. You screamed that name out to us already, just as you did all the rest of it.”
Mardus paused as the serving boy brought in platters of roasted doves and vegetables.
“Do try to eat something,” he said, serving Alec himself.
Surprised at his own hunger, Alec obliged.
“Now, where was I?” Mardus asked, spearing a dove for himself. “Ah yes. The three fragments guarded by Nysander were the last, and of those, the bowl was the most gratifying discovery. We knew of the others, you see, both stolen from under our very noses by your friend Seregil, as it turns out. But all trace of the bowl had been lost until the two of you led us to it with the theft of the Eye. And only just in time, too. As it is, we’ve only just enough time to complete the ritual preparations.”
“The—sacrifices, you mean?” asked Alec.
“Yes.” Mardus sat forward as the servant brought in a course of roasted pork. “Each soul taken, each libation of heart’s blood, brings us closer to Seriamaius, to his great power. No man could be a vessel for such power, but through the Helm we may partake of some small portion of it. By ‘small portion’ you must understand I am speaking in relative terms. Once restored, the Helm will increase in power as more lives are fed to it until a single thought by the wearer can level whole cities, control thousands. And you, Alec, you and Thero, I am holding in reserve for the final sacrifice of the reconstruction ceremony. A hundred people will have perished before you, allowing you the privilege of watching every death until your own turns come, two last, perfect sacrifices. The blood is to a great extent merely symbolic of the life force given up to the god. The younger the victim, the more years taken, the richer the sacrifice.”
Irtuk Beshar patted Alec and Thero on the shoulders. “A young Orëska wizard and a half ’faie boy—the youth of our greatest enemies! What could be more pleasing to our god than that?”
Alec regarded them a moment in stunned silence, trying to take it all in.
No, he thought numbly. No, I will not be a part of that.
“Thank you,” he said finally. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”
There were no guards in the room now. No spells or chains held him. Forcing himself to give no leading hint of his intentions, Alec suddenly lashed out across the table and snatched up a carving knife lying next to the platter of fowl. Clutching it in both hands, he drove the blade at his own ribs, praying for a quick kill.
To his horror and astonishment, however, he twisted around instead and plunged the blade into the chest of the young servant. The boy let out a single startled cry and collapsed.
“Really, Alec, where are your manners tonight?” Mardus exclaimed regretfully. “I’ve owned him since he was a child.”
Alec stared down at the body, horror-struck at what he had done.
“Did you think us so lacking in imagination that we would not anticipate su
ch a noble action on your part?” Irtuk chided. “You forget how intimately I know you, Alec. One of the first wards I placed upon you was one to guard against such ridiculous heroics. Anytime you try to hurt yourself, you shall only end up hurting another, like this poor innocent.”
“O Illior!” Alec groaned, covering his face with his hands.
“Perhaps I am somewhat to blame,” Mardus sighed. “My explanation may have given the boy the impression that he and Thero are necessary for the final realization of our plans.”
Mardus’ hands closed over Alec’s, squeezing painfully as he pulled them aside to fix Alec with a look of sardonic pleasure.
“Understand this. The presence or absence of either one of you will not make the slightest difference to the god. It merely pleases me, and Vargûl Ashnazai as well, I am certain, that the two of you should be the final victims. Just imagine, dear Alec—watching all those others die, and you quite helpless to save them. And then, as your chest is split and your heart pulled free, your final thought will be that after all your meddling, all that extraordinary effort, it is your life bringing the Helm back into being! I’m only sorry that your friends will not be there to share in your reward. Now do try to eat something more. You’re looking quite pale again.”
42
LANDFALL
Seregil woke drenched in sweat, still caught in the nightmare’s grip. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to hang on to the images of the dream, but as usual could recall nothing but the vague memory of a tall figure towering over him and the terrible sensation of drowning.
Micum had already gone above. Seregil lay a moment longer, half dozing as the first faint light of dawn brightened the cabin’s single window. Was Alec awake, seeing that same light? he wondered, as he’d wondered every morning of the voyage. Was Alec alive at all? Would he be when the sun set?
He rubbed at his eyelids and felt the wetness seeping through his lashes. Early morning was the worst. During the day he could keep busy, bury his fear in the semblance of doing something useful. At night he simply closed his eyes and escaped into dreams and nightmares.
But here, in the half world of dawn, he had no defenses, no diversion. The longing for Alec’s presence, the guilt and remorse at having brought him to this, the shame at never having told the boy how much he cared for him—it was all as raw as a wound that refused to heal.
And there was nothing to do but go on to the end. Rolling out of the bunk, he threw on a surcoat over his shirt and went above without bothering to fasten it up.
On deck he turned his face to the wind and spread his arms. The cold salt breeze lifted his hair from his neck and blew his coat open, whipping his shirt against his ribs. Tilting his head back, he inhaled deeply, trying to cleanse away the sense of oppression. As he did so, he noticed a new scent on the wind, the smell of land.
Going to the starboard rail, he saw a dark, uneven line of mountains looming through the morning mist like a promise just out of reach. His sail-changing ploy had worked. They’d sailed within sight of Plenimar’s northwestern coastline without challenge.
Rhal called out sharply somewhere to stern and Skywake barked an order. Looking around the deck for Micum, Seregil spotted him sitting on the forward bulkhead. He had a small mirror propped on one knee and was shaving his chin with the aid of a knife and a cup of water.
Micum looked up as he approached, then frowned. “Another bad night, eh?”
“Worst yet.” Seregil combed his fingers back through his windblown hair. “It feels like someone’s trying to tell me the most important thing in the world in a language I can’t understand.”
“Maybe Nysander can make something of it when he gets here.”
“If he gets here,” Seregil replied listlessly. He felt as if they’d been on this ship for years instead of weeks; Rhíminee, Nysander, Alec, the deaths they’d left behind, perhaps it was just all part of the same bad dream.
Micum gestured with his knife at a lonely peak to the north. “Rhal says that’s Mount Kythes there. He thinks we can put ashore tonight. There’s a—Bilairy’s Balls, you’re bleeding!”
Setting his knife and cup aside, he stood and tugged at the loose ties of Seregil’s shirt.
“Damnation, it’s that scar. It’s opened up again,” he whispered, touching a finger to Seregil’s chest and showing him the blood.
Using Micum’s shaving mirror, Seregil inspected the small trickle of blood oozing from the raised outline of the scar. He could even make out the faint whorls left by the disk, and the small square mark of the hole at its center. He also caught a glimpse of his own face, looking sallow and hollow-eyed in the early light. Pulling his coat shut, he fastened the top buttons.
“What does it mean?” Micum asked.
“Don’t you remember what the date is today?” Seregil replied grimly.
Micum’s jaw dropped. “By the Flame, I’d lost track being on a ship so long.”
“The fifteenth of Lithion,” Seregil said, nodding. “If Leiteus and Nysander were right in their calculations, Rendel’s Spear should be in the sky tonight.”
Seregil saw awe and concern mingle in his friend’s eyes as Micum took a last look at the blood on his fingers before wiping them on his coat.
“You know I came along on this trip mostly to look out for you, don’t you?” Micum said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Well, I just want you to know that as of now, I’m beginning to be a believer. Whatever it was that left its mark on you there, it’s working on us now. I just hope Nysander is right about Illior being the immortal who’s leading us around.”
Seregil grasped his friend’s shoulder. “After all these years, maybe I’ll finally make an Illioran out of you.”
“Not if it means waking up looking like you do this morning,” Micum countered.
“Still no dreams?” Seregil asked, still puzzled by the fact that of the four of them, Micum was the only one who hadn’t had a premonition of some sort.
Micum shrugged. “Not one. Like I’ve always told you, I do my fighting when I’m awake.”
The mountain loomed steadily larger ahead of them as they followed the coast north through the day. From a distance it seemed to rise directly up from the sea itself, its summit lost in a mantle of cloud.
“Pillar of the Sky, eh?” Rhal remarked, standing with Seregil and Micum at the rail that afternoon. “Well, they sure named it rightly. How in hell are you going to find this temple of yours on something that big?”
“It’s somewhere along the water,” Seregil replied softly, rubbing unconsciously at the front of his coat; Micum had tied a wadded bit of linen over the raw circle of skin. Oddly enough, the wound hardly hurt at all.
“Well, it’ll take some doing to put you ashore.” Rhal shaded his eyes, peering landward. The weather had remained clear through the day but a wind was blowing up out of the west, piling up the waves and lashing the foam from their white crests. “I see breakers against the rocks all up and down there. Most of it’s cliff and ledge. You’ll just have to coast along until you see a likely landing place.”
“Is the boat ready?” asked Seregil.
Rhal nodded, his gaze still on the distant coastline. “Water, food, all that you asked for. I saw to it myself. We can cast you off as soon as you’ve packed in your gear.”
“We’d best get at it then,” Micum said. “It’s been a while since either of us has sailed. I don’t want to try this sea without some daylight ahead of us.”
When the final pack and cask had been lashed into the Lady’s starboard longboat, Seregil and Micum took leave of Rhal.
“Good luck to you,” the captain said solemnly, clasping hands with them. “Whatever it is the two of you are up to over there, give those Plenimaran bastards merry hell for me.”
“Nothing will make me any happier,” Micum assured him.
“Lay off the coast as long as you can,” said Seregil. “If we’re not back in four or five days, or if you get run off yo
urself, head north and put in at the first friendly port you find.”
Rhal gripped Seregil’s hand a moment longer. “By the Old Sailor, when this whole thing is over, I’d like to hear the tale of it. You look out for yourselves, and find that boy of yours.”
“We will,” Seregil promised, climbing into the boat. Crouching down beside Micum, he wrapped his hands around one of the ropes securing the boat’s small mast.
“Hold tight!” Rhal called as his men set to work lowering it over the side. “Wait until we’re well away before you put up your sail. Good luck, friends!”
The little boat swung precariously from the halyards as it was lowered down the side of the pitching ship. Waves slapped at it as they neared the water, then rolled in over the side. Clinging on as best they could, Seregil and Micum waited until they’d cleared the Lady, then unfurled the triangular sail.
The little boat yawed sharply, catching another wave over the side. Micum took the tiller and turned her into the wind while Seregil hauled on the spar rope. As soon as they got her headed properly into the waves, he looped the spar rope over a cleat and set about bailing the craft out.
“You’re the Guide,” Micum said, shrugging out of his sodden cloak and settling himself more comfortably at the tiller. “What do we do now?”
Seregil gazed toward the distant shore. “Like Rhal said, get in close and coast along until we spot a landing place.”
“There’s a lot of coast there, Seregil. We could end up miles from wherever this temple of yours is.”
Seregil went back to his bailing. “If I am the Guide of Nysander’s prophecy, maybe I’ll know the right place when I see it.”
The words sounded weak and half-convinced even to him, but he didn’t know what else to say. This certainly didn’t seem like the proper moment to confess that except for a few fragmentary dreams and the bleeding scar on his chest, he was painfully unaware of any feelings of divine guidance.