Bruglir rose to his feet, hands clasped behind his back. “And it’s a risk you’ve no compunction demanding of the rest of us, too.” He spread his hands. “It ultimately doesn’t matter what I think. Your writ trumps my authority in this case.” He sighed. Very well, Malus. We’ll follow the plan. But the Dragons take you if it fails.”
Suddenly Tanithra shot to her feet. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “If I lead the ship into the harbour and bring down that chain, I’ll have something in return,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “I’ll have command of the captured ship. I’ll have bought it with blood twice over by that point. And I’ll not ask for any extra hands. I’ll sail her back to Clar Karond and hire my own sailors—”
Bruglir cut her off with a sweep of his hand. “You won’t be leading the raider in, Tani. You’ll lead the landing party, but I’ll have overall command.”
“You?” Tanithra exclaimed.
“Of course,” the captain snapped. “The survival of the entire fleet will depend on the outcome of this raid. Did you think for a moment I wouldn’t take a personal hand in its execution? You’ll have the task of dropping the chain while Malus and I distract the pirate chieftain.”
Tanithra’s face went pale. When she spoke, her voice trembled. “You… you promised me a command. Years ago, during your hakseer-cruise. And I’ve served you faithfully. I let you dally onshore with that sister of yours and never said a thing—”
“The business of the highborn isn’t of any concern to you,” Bruglir said coldly. And don’t presume to remind me of my obligations. You’ll get your command. Perhaps once we put in at Clar Karond. You heard Malus. There will be gold aplenty then.”
Tanithra started to reply, her eye glittering with rage, but abruptly she reined herself in. She took a deep breath and stilled her trembling hands. “Yes, captain. Of course. A little longer then.” The corsair stood straight, her head high. “Will that be all?”
Bruglir studied her for a moment, a flicker of concern in his eyes. “Yes. I believe so. We will make preparations tonight, then I’ll transfer to the raider at dawn and we will set the plan in motion.”
Malus rose to his feet. “Of course, brother. Until then.”
They filed from the captain’s cabin. Tanithra brought up the rear, walking slowly and carefully, as though she’d lost her sea legs since entering the room. Outside the cabin Urial turned and gave Malus a meaningful glance: the endgame approaches, his brass-coloured eyes said. Your move.
The highborn merely nodded and Urial walked away.
Hauclir straightened from his now-habitual spot against the bulkhead, his expression curious. Malus shook his head fractionally then walked away without a word, vanishing around a nearby corner. That left just Malus and Tanithra. When Malus turned to look at her, he was secretly delighted to see the stricken expression on her face.
“Are you about to return to the raider?” Malus asked, feigning casual interest.
Tanithra frowned, looking at Malus as though he’d suddenly grown out of the deck. Her expression hardened. “What else? I have no intention of staying here.”
Malus smiled. “Then I’ll go over with you—if you’ll allow me to get some things from my cabin first?”
A look of weary disgust played across her scarred features, but Tanithra managed a shrug. “As you wish,” she said, motioning him to lead on.
Malus made his way down the cramped corridors to the chart room, offering no other comment until he’d pushed open the door and stepped inside. He reached deep inside a chart bin and held up the last bottle of rum. The highborn drew out the cork with his teeth and offered the bottle to Tanithra, who stood out in the corridor with her arms folded tightly against her chest. “It would appear that Bruglir has decided to redeem himself in his sister’s eyes,” he said quietly.
Tanithra shot Malus an angry glare, but after a moment she stepped inside and took the proffered bottle. “He wouldn’t have had to make the choice in the first place had you not brought her aboard. She’d never set foot on the Harrier before this.”
“How was I to know? It’s not as though Bruglir spoke of you at the Hag. Believe me, had I known about you and my brother I would have left Yasmir at home.” He watched the corsair take a long pull of the fiery liquid and reached for the bottle himself. “Of course, this also provides you with a unique opportunity.”
Tanithra snorted in disgust. “Opportunity?”
“Oh, yes,” Malus assured her, taking a drink of his own. “You now have a chance to split them apart for good.”
“I could split her easily enough on the edge of my sword, but that will just poison Bruglir against me,” she said bitterly.
“Then have Bruglir do the poisoning instead of you.”
Tanithra frowned. “I’m not in the mood for more of your riddles, highborn.”
Malus passed back the bottle. “Let me explain. What if we were to make Yasmir think that Bruglir was going to betray her?”
The corsair’s eyebrow rose. “We?”
Malus paused. “Of course. I don’t have any interest in seeing the two of them together any more than you do. So why not work together? Consider this,” he said, forestalling her reply. “What if Yasmir was to believe that Bruglir was going to sacrifice her to the Skinriders?”
Tanithra paused, the bottle halfway to her lips. “Why in the Dark Mother’s name would she think such a thing?”
“Because we are going to seize her in the dead of night, smuggle her onto the raider and make her think it was Bruglir’s idea,” he replied.
“We’ll let her overhear that Bruglir plans to give her to the Skinriders in order to buy his way into their confidence.”
“What then?”
Malus shrugged. “You’ll be remaining behind with the landing party while the rest of us go and speak to the pirate chieftain. Turn her over to the pirates if you want. Once the attack begins, they’ll throw her in a cell and she’ll be rescued later, but by then the seeds of hatred will be sown in her heart.”
“She’ll try to kill him.”
The highborn nodded. “And Bruglir will be forced to slay her with his own hand. A rather neat conclusion and a fitting way to punish him for his fecklessness.”
Tanithra said nothing, her expression thoughtful. She took another drink from the bottle. “Do you really think we could do such a thing?”
“Of course.” Malus stepped around her and closed the cabin door. “Return to the raider. I’ll stay behind and have my man keep watch on her cabin. Bruglir will likely visit her tonight, so return to the Harrier with a handful of trusted men just past the hour of the wolf. Once Bruglir’s gone back to his quarters we’ll make our move.”
Tanithra regarded him in silence. “You know, I never spent much time in the Six Cities. I was born on a ship off the coast of Lustria and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve spent more than a week ashore. My father was once a captain himself. He told me that betrayal is the coin of the realm in Naggaroth. Until just now I never knew what he was trying to tell me.”
She passed the bottle back to Malus. “Tell me more.”
The ship rocked gently in calm seas, silent at last after many hours of frenzied preparation. Malus reclined on his makeshift bed, the Tome of Ak’zhaal open in his lap. The hour of the wolf was close at hand; from where he sat he could glance through the tiny porthole and track the progress of the twin moons through the night sky. He was far too tense to sleep and thanked the Dark Mother for it.
Malus turned a page of the book with a gloved fingertip. He waited in black robes and an unadorned kheitan that belonged to Hauclir, as well as a shirt of fine mail of the type favoured by the corsairs aboard ship. A glass of watered wine rested on a sheaf of maps on a nearby shelf.
On a whim he’d taken the book from his bag as a way to pass the time. He turned the pages, puzzling over the strange diagrams and sketches, but after a few hours he found that he could understand the spidery script
. He wondered if that was a reflection on how deep the daemon’s taint ran in him, but feared to speculate further.
His finger traced the drawing of a square stone, its surface inscribed with a complicated sigil. The words beneath it were foreign to him, yet they gave up their secrets as his eyes passed over them.
Stone upon stone Eradorius built his tower, but its foundations he laid on darkness eternal, where there are no paths and no sun to mark the seasons. And there he laid passageways where there were none before, each to his own desire and not bound by the ways of the living world. The crooked passage he made straight and the straight he bent back upon itself so that no man knew the way into his sanctum save he.
Yet still Eradorius was afraid, knowing the fate that waited for him. So he made a guardian to watch over the twisting ways and commanded that it let no man pass into his sanctum, but that it should feast upon them and grow in strength. This it did, growing in strength and bestial cunning and its tread was like thunder in the twisting ways and its breath was like the desert wind.
Malus stopped. His heart went cold. “Mother of Night,” he said softly. “I haven’t been dreaming at all.”
“Clever, clever little druchii,” the daemon purred. “You aren’t such a fool after all. That’s reassuring.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Malus cried. “What profit did you gain by tormenting me?”
Tz’arkan laughed, a sound like rattling bones. “That question answers itself, little druchii! Your fear is sweet. Your madness more so.”
“But how can this be? I saw corridors turn back upon themselves! Crossed the threshold from one room and entered it again on the other side! It’s not possible!”
The daemon’s laugh pealed inside his head. “Foolish little ape! The answers are right in front of you, yet you refuse to see them! You refuse to believe in them, because you cannot see past the tree you shelter in. How pitiful you are, Darkblade. What am I to do with you?”
Malus fought with all his will to keep from hurling the ancient book across the small cabin. “You may begin,” he said through clenched teeth, “by giving me some answers!”
“Ask the questions,” Tz’arkan said with a sneer. “I will answer them.”
“Did Eradorius come here to escape the fate of the other four sorcerers?”
“He did.”
“How?”
“By going where I could not.”
“But where?” Malus glowered at the tome. “Wait—you were bound inside the crystal. You were trapped here, in the physical world.”
The daemon said nothing.
“Eradorius fled beyond the physical world to escape you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“But how?”
“I cannot explain it to you,” the daemon said. “Your pitiful brain could not comprehend it. Suffice it to say that he used potent sorcery and leave it at that.”
Malus paused. “Yet he also created this impossible labyrinth to protect him. He still needed to protect himself from intruders, so his tower must still somehow touch upon this world, correct?”
“Indeed,” Tz’arkan said. “Physical form cannot exist in the realms of ether, little druchii. It must be… anchored, if you will, in order to retain its form. So the tower’s foundations still touch upon the physical realm.”
“The tower still exists, then?”
“I do not know for certain,” the daemon replied. “It has been many thousands of years. If the anchor was destroyed the tower and everything inside it would be lost within the ether.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Did I not mention that he fled where I cannot go?” the daemon replied archly.
Malus set the tome aside and swung his legs over the edge of the table. “You’re still not telling me everything you know.”
The highborn could feel the daemon’s wicked smile. “Of course not. You haven’t asked the right questions yet.”
“What do you want from me?” Malus cried angrily. “You lure me into your damnable trap and set my feet on this impossible quest and then you keep me ignorant of the challenges before me! What do you hope to achieve? Is it not enough that you’ve taken my soul? Must you have my sanity as well?” He grabbed the glass of wine and hurled it against the wall. “Answer me! ANSWER ME!”
Silence fell, broken only by the lapping of waves against the hull. It took several moments before Malus realised he wasn’t alone.
He turned to find Hauclir standing in the doorway, his expression impassive. Malus fought down a surge of panic. He searched the retainer’s eyes for signs of suspicion, but could find none. “Yes?” he said at length.
“It’s time, my lord,” Hauclir said, his expression inscrutable.
Malus straightened, running a hand through his dark hair. “Very well,” he said, pulling up a voluminous hood that swallowed his face in shadow. “Let us begin.”
Chapter Twenty-One
THE HOUR OF THE WOLF
“Correct me if I’m wrong, my lord,” Hauclir grumbled as they made their way down the dark, narrow passageways of the Harrier, “but I fail to see how this plan of yours will accomplish anything except getting the two of us killed.”
“Your boundless faith in my skills never ceases to amaze me,” Malus replied. With the hood concealing his face, he was a black-robed apparition, a patch of night gliding among lesser shadows. “I should think it obvious; by the end of the day I intend to see Bruglir and his sea mistress dead and myself in command of the corsair fleet.”
“And you plan to accomplish this by kidnapping your sister?”
A faint chuckle escaped the darkness within the hood. “It will be the spark to the tinder that’s built up between her, Bruglir and Tanithra. Consider how… changed Yasmir has become since she discovered Bruglir’s betrayal. Now imagine how she will react when she thinks he’s betrayed her again—and worse, intends to give her as a gift to the Skinrider chieftain.”
“Except for the fact that she’ll be trussed up like a festival pig and thrown in the bottom of our cargo hold by the time she realises any of this.”
Malus nodded. “That’s where you come in.”
“Ah, yes. I should have guessed.”
“When Bruglir and I go to speak to the Skinrider chieftain you will remain behind, ostensibly to join the landing party that will lower the chain. Before that happens, I want you to go below and free Yasmir. Tell her that Urial learned of her capture and you and I have been trying to find her ever since.”
Hauclir nodded, his expression thoughtful. “She’ll try to kill Tanithra. You know that.”
“I’m counting on it. She was always known as being skilled with those knives of hers, but after seeing the carnage she wrought when we were boarded weeks ago, there’s something almost supernatural in her ability to kill.” The highborn paused, considering his words carefully. “For the first time I’m starting to wonder if perhaps Urial’s obsession with her is motivated more than by simple lust. She might actually possess the touch of the divine.”
“So that’s why you decided to side with her?”
“I’m siding with her because Bruglir must die. Otherwise he’ll certainly kill me as soon as we’ve beaten the Skinriders. And if he dies, Tanithra must die as well, because I can’t afford anyone else vying with me for control of the fleet.”
“And Urial?”
“For the moment we still need one another.” Malus said. “I need him to get inside Eradorius’ tower and he will need me to intercede with Yasmir on his behalf.”
The former guard captain considered the scheme for several moments in silence. “So instead of merely kidnapping the lover of the Vaulkhar’s heir, you’re actually setting a plan in motion that’s guaranteed to unleash a storm of bloodshed on your own allies just hours before a major battle?”
“That’s a rather superficial way of looking at it, but essentially correct.”
Hauclir sighed. “Well, I suppose it could be worse. Though at the moment t
hat’s only a theory, mind.”
“Enough moaning,” Malus said. “What of Urial? Are you certain he’s stopped watching Yasmir?”
“He hasn’t even visited her cabin door since his return and his retainers haven’t been seen either. I expect he’s been busy drafting the charts that will direct the rest of the fleet through that damnable mist.”
“And you gave him my message?”
“I told him just as you said: the time for paying debts is almost at hand. He gave me a nod and disappeared inside his cabin. That’s the last I’ve seen of him.”
“Very well. Maybe that will be enough to keep him out of our way for the next few hours. After that he can do as he pleases.”
Before Hauclir could respond the two druchii turned the corner of an adjoining passage and came upon half a dozen corsairs waiting impatiently just a few feet from Yasmir’s cabin. Like Malus, most of the corsairs were clothed in black and concealed their features with hoods or leather masks. Only Tanithra kept her face uncovered and her expression was nothing short of joyfully murderous. Two of the corsairs carried a rolled-up sheet of sail hide between them, while the rest held black-coloured coshes in their hands.
“You took your time getting here,” Tanithra hissed. “I’ve got men topside loading supplies onto the longboat, but we’ve only got a few minutes before they’re done.”
“Calm down,” Malus said smoothly. “Yasmir is likely asleep by now. We’ll knock her out, roll her up and be gone before anyone knows what’s going on.” He nudged Hauclir, who nodded sheepishly and pulled a black sailor’s scarf over his face. “Do your men know the plan?”
“Aye.”
Malus nodded. “Good. And remember: no one speaks until we’re aboard the raider and no one mentions any names save Bruglir’s in her presence.” He turned to the corsairs. “Let’s go.”
Without waiting for a response, Malus slipped quietly down the passage until he reached Yasmir’s cabin door. The thin wood was literally covered with votive runes and the names of sailors asking for Khaine’s blessing. Here and there the tracks of the carved symbols were coated with dried blood. Malus ran his fingertips over the symbols. A feeling of intense apprehension suddenly gripped his heart, but with an effort he pushed it aside.