INTERLUDE 4C: SPEAK TO THE WIND
“Do not expect too much of your idols, and if they fall short do not behave unwisely by rejecting the wisdom they shared when they shone the brightest. Who knows not the lash of spite, the brimming overboiling of needless ceaseless wrath? Who knows not what it is to be submerged in foul temper, drowned in grey mood? Who has not felt the weeds of temptation snared about him, pulling him down, down into the depths where the meaning of a narrow slice of the world is worth more than Everything? I say again: surely in the name of Everything you will permit me Anything.”
– from ‘The Book of Lithiguil’, 7:87-92
“I don’t think we have any other option,” Ibbalat said grimly, looking deep into Redgate’s eyes.
The champion smiled back, aloof, untouchable.
“There’s always another option!” Kani cried desperately. “Please, Ibb, you can just –”
“No, Kani. It’s over.”
Anathta tittered as Ibbalat pushed his remaining cards into the centre of the table.
“All in,” the mage declared, trying not to look at the grinning girl. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Redgate and Anathta turned over their reserves – and when she saw at a glance that they were victorious the rogue gave a little chirp of delight and wrapped her hands around Redgate’s arm, leaning her head against his bicep and squeezing into him.
Ibbalat flicked his eyes away again, busying himself with gathering up the cards, passing them to Kani to shuffle. He hadn’t ever thought that being trapped on a ship with one of the most famous champions of Mund would be a drag, but here he was. Redgate was not only a learned magician, a brave fighter equipped with the powers and lore commensurate with his esteemed position – he was also a rich, cunning young man, clearly possessed of a penchant for seducing impressionable young women… and it was obvious from Anathta’s responses that Redgate had the charm to match his desire.
Other than the mysterious disappearance of one of the crewmen, Pelteron, halfway through the voyage, it’d been plain sailing all the way. They’d played cards a hundred times already, and Ibbalat lost far more than his fair share. How did Redgate always seem to get the best deal? Surely there wasn’t a power for that?
He took the cards back from Kani and went to deal the next round, when a surprisingly-heavy wave struck the ship – the waters had been calm all evening, and Ibbalat was looking forward to a peaceful sleep tonight. The table and the few cards he’d managed to deal went sliding off towards the stern as the ship bucked the wave – then the table came back to meet them as their chairs, burdened by their occupants, were only just starting to scoot across the hold towards it.
Putting on a sigh, he stood and excused himself, heading to the ladder. Secretly, he was just glad to get away from the loved-up couple.
When he got onto the deck he was struck by the cold. They’d long-since left behind the Mundic Sea for Hadhae, the open ocean – but even here in the south, the air was unnaturally dead, still. He was a little shocked to find it was dark already. They had to have been playing cards for longer than he’d realised. He could only just see the sun’s light, burning low and muted yellow along the horizon.
Then he spotted Phanar at the rail, and even without the crew going berserk, shouting and pulling on ropes, the look on the enigmatic warrior’s face was plenty enough to tell the mage that something was wrong.
“Sudden storm,” Phanar reported, nodding up at the starless sky and broken seas ahead of them. “Or worse. It came out of nowhere.”
Ibbalat came to the rail, gripping it as another wave rocked the ship, and frowned. He’d used all but one of his weather-control spells. He always held something back for times of emergency – times like this – but the other workings had been plenty to see them through the last days of sailing. What had changed?
He sighed again. There was no telling. It could be a natural occurrence, even with the spells he’d cast on the Dremmedine, on the sky and the sea…
“Virdut’s craw!” a sallow-skinned sailor muttered, heading past with a coil of rope in his hands.
Ibbalat ignored the man, concentrating. After a moment he lifted one hand from the rail, his fingers forked, and raised his voice in a solemn chant.
The mage’s mind was a line or two ahead of his lips, supplying him with the extra-planar words he’d studied again that morning, the incantation used to shape the forces of reality to fit his desires.
It was his mightiest working: the Storm-Shatterer, beloved by magic-users for centuries, capable of saving whole cities threatened with flooding or freezing. As he released the energies coiling within his song, within his veins, he let go of the rail, drew the griffon feathers from the pouch at his belt, and tossed them overboard to fly free in the wind.
Another wave struck the ship – Phanar’s hand snapped out automatically, taking hold of Ibbalat by the shoulder as the motion threatened to send him sprawling on his backside.
“Thanks,” he gasped, clutching hold of the rail with both hands once more.
“Unless you’ve got something in that demiskin of yours that will let you turn into a fish,” Phanar said, “I’d try to stay on the deck, if I were you.”
Ibbalat’s eyes brightened. “Maybe not a fish – but I’ve got that spell that will turn me into a sea-gull – for all of fourteen minutes…”
Phanar smiled. “We aren’t quite that close to Tirremuir yet, my friend.”
“Tomorrow?”
Phanar nodded. “Late morning, if we are lucky.”
The mage drew in a breath. “If my spells keep working, you mean…”
“What is supposed to happen now?” the warrior asked, gesturing at Ibbalat’s spell-components pouch.
“We wait. The storm dies down. Hopefully it won’t take too long, either.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “Hopefully…”
Ibbalat and Phanar stared out over the waves, which at least didn’t seem to be growing any taller.
“You are never going to get anywhere with her like this, you know,” the warrior said.
Ibbalat looked across at him, startled, and not just a little afraid.
How does he know?
Phanar wasn’t smiling.
“I – you know – didn’t really have anything to do with those vestal virgins – I was just trying to impress Ana – if you just –”
Why did I have to go and leave my wane downstairs?
“Calm down,” the warrior said. “I am not stupid, Ibbalat. What is in your heart for my sister is plain to read upon your face whenever you are together.”
Horror-struck, the mage briefly considered throwing himself overboard, fish-shape or no fish-shape. But if Phanar was talking about it like this… did that mean he didn’t approve of Anathta’s infatuation with the arch-sorcerer?
“Does she…” Ibbalat bit his lip, “does she know?”
Now Phanar smiled. “She could read the intentions of a snail at a hundred paces, and miss your love for her for a thousand years.”
“Must run in the blood,” Ibbalat remarked softly, then chuckled to himself.
“Run in the blood?”
“You know,” Ibbalat felt awkward suddenly, wishing he hadn’t said anything, wishing he had his wane, “in the blood is like, from your ancestors to –”
“I understand the expression,” Phanar cut him off, brow furrowed in thought, “but what do you actually –“
“Wave!” cried one of the sailors, a roar that rippled across the deck –
The two adventurers threw themselves clear of the massive swell that broke over the front of the ship, but Ibbalat saw as two of the crewmen were dragged, kicking and choking, over the edge and down into the vast, black ocean.
It was as though Phanar were the magician, not him – one moment the warrior was staggering for footing, then the next he was fastening a rope around his waist, pressing the other end into Ibbalat’s nerveless fingers, and sprinting across the deck to dive overboard.
Almost too late the young mage came to his senses, running to the edge, tying the rope to the rail in big stupid desperate knots the sailors would surely mock. At the same time he was yelling, to warn the others off or to ask for their aid he wasn’t quite sure – Phanar was gone, over the edge, and –
And then Redgate was there. Masked and robed and half-shadow, a vision of pure power made manifest. He floated six feet above the deck, and seemed to be striding calmly across the air as though he stood suspended upon some invisible tight-rope.
Casually, the champion walked over the rail, angling down at the choppy waters –
“Wave!” came the next cry.
While Ibbalat braced himself using Phanar’s rope, taking a good slap from the wall of sea that broke over the deck, he saw the wave pass unhindered through Redgate as though he were no obstacle to it at all. It was clearly no obstacle to him.
Then all of them were gone.
Anathta came running up. “Why?” she gasped. “What is my brother doing?”
“Sailors…”
Ibbalat gestured, indicating the rope, its other end –
Ana’s fingers were gripping the rail next to his, and she screamed Phanar’s name into the ocean.
“Ana, get below! This might be the end for us…” the mage yelled over the wind, over her screams.
This was it. What Phanar said. He had to say something, before the next wave.
“I – I love you, Ana –”
“Look!” she cried, pointing –
Suddenly the rope went slack, and a dark shape emerged from the swelling and receding surface of the water.
Redgate, holding Phanar by the arm. Both sailors, holding Phanar by the legs.
The champion gently lowered them to the deck, touched down with his own feet, and then tutted as he wrung out his robe. “Now I’m drenched,” he complained.
“What –” Ibbalat’s mind was still scrambled from almost spilling its contents to Ana. “What’s happening?”
Kani, arriving last, rushed to Phanar and cried: “Is it him?”
The mage understood her at once.
Ord Ylon.
Thunder answered, the voice of tearing air bellowing down at them – and Ibbalat quivered, not from the freezing water permeating his clothes, not from the imminent threat of the storm: from the fear. The fear of the dragon.
He raised his voice: “Ord Ylon couldn’t do this, Kani – he’s a druid!”
“What about his wings?”
“Wave!”
Everyone held on tight, clutching ropes, rails, masts. Everyone except Redgate, whose change to a semi-transparent state left him alternately floating above the deck one moment, then floating with his feet and shins extending through the deck in the next moment, as the ship’s angle shifted. The water wasn’t going to touch him.
The rest weren’t so lucky. The wave rose above the prow of the ship like the sea had decided to reach over the rail and smack them with a ten-ton backhand. Ibbalat lost his hold on his rope, but thankfully he was still a few seconds away from being pushed overboard when the wave was spent.
Spluttering, he staggered to his feet, turning to check the others were okay –
He saw Phanar helping Kani stand up; he saw Redgate, flickering with shadow, gently lowering Ana back to the deck – the champion had obviously prioritised her, saved her from the worst of it with his powers…
“Here you are, my love,” the arch-sorcerer murmured to her, the casualness in his voice only reinforcing the fact he was completely unafraid of the situation in which they’d found themselves.
Sometimes, Ibbalat admitted to himself, he kind of hated Redgate.
“C’mon, ye landlubbers!” Ulfathu cried semi-drunkenly from the doorway – finally, he’d awoken. “Get below deck, else She’ll take ye, never t’ be seen again! These be strange and wicked seas!”
The ship was pitching at such angles, getting to the cabin door was a matter of running uphill and downhill almost simultaneously. At one moment the horizon was a hundred percent sea, then at the next a hundred percent sky. Still, Ibbalat made it, his heart pounding.
There was an awkward moment when, rather than rushing straight below-deck like a coward, he tried to hold the door for Ana (and Redgate). But as soon as they got close, the champion simply sank down through the boards with Ana still in his arms, leaving Ibbalat feeling foolish, and –
“Come on, yer clod!” yelled the captain. “Young master!”
“Go!” Phanar roared, taking big strides that the deck seemed to yank out from beneath him, making him sway and falter as, Kani hanging off his arm, he struggled to get to the door.
Ibbalat thrust himself through the opening and half-stumbled, half-fell down the ladder-like stair – it was only the presence of the sailors jammed into the space that stopped him in his tracks. Even in these dire circumstances he couldn’t help but feel a twist of contempt as he spotted Redgate holding Ana close, ignoring the press of bodies to float with her down into the ship’s hold. Then Phanar and Kani crashed into his back, driving the air from his lungs and pressing his bearded face into the dripping coat of the crewman in front of him.
It took another thirty seconds for them to get themselves sorted; in the meantime another wave struck the ship, booming like the sides of the hold were drum-skins being hammered from the outside – Ibbalat could feel the Dremmedine shudder, hear it creak. Water was seeping in through the walls and ceiling. As Ulfathu and the others who actually knew what they were doing started barking orders, sending men scurrying, the adventurers and their hired champion gathered by the hammocks.
“Is it him?” Kani was still panting, shock splashed across her usually-placid features as she clung to her hammock.
“He shouldn’t have access to any elemental magic!” Ibbalat explained, taking his own grip and digging his hand into the pocket of his pack. “We’ve been over this. This is… something else.”
“You’re all so panicky!” Ana said with a snort from her hammock, easily framing her body to accommodate the wild tipping of their orientation. “This isn’t the first time we’ve sailed through a storm.”
“This is the first time Storm-Shatterer failed me!” Ibbalat replied darkly. “That spell’s the reason why we’ve always been okay in storms!”
“You said it might take some time,” Phanar reminded him.
Finally, he found what he’d been looking for. He pinched at least three wane-leaves in his fingertips and withdrew them from the pocket, then shoved them straight in his mouth, swiftly chewing them and sucking their sap out.
Their sour, almost citrus flavour instantly calmed him. It probably helped that he didn’t usually chew more than two at once.
Phanar sighed.
“If it takes much longer –” the young mage began, then –
Boom.
Crack!
Everyone swayed, staggered, fell – except Redgate, who just floated there with his face upturned, as though he were able to see right through the deck to the storm raging above them.
“Master!” Ulfathu yelled from the stair. “Can’t you speak to the wind?”
“The wind isn’t listening tonight!” Ibbalat yelled back. “I sang my head off at it!”
“And you – champion?” The captain regarded Redgate. “Issen there anything you can do, sir?”
“I was brought on board to slay a dragon,” the Mundian replied smoothly, his masked head still upturned. “Not sail a boat. I thought this was your area of expertise, captain? Indeed, is not my life, and the fate of Tirremuir, in your very hands?”
Ibbalat saw Ulfathu throw up those hands then dig his fingers beneath his eyepatch, rubbing at his sightless eye.
“No,” Redgate continued, more softly, so that only the quartet could hear his words. “I think there is a battle taking place.”
With that the champion drifted upwards, and a set of wyvarlinact wings sprouted from his back. Ibbalat stared in awe. The wide, jagged appendages would’ve had a metallic glint, but the same near-transparency that covered him in waves washed over them, casting them into shadow.
Then he went through the ceiling, and was gone.
Thoughts of the bird-form spell started filtering through the slow-burning candle of Ibbalat’s consciousness.
“I could follow,” he muttered, chewing frantically on his wane.
Phanar reached out, waited a moment for the equilibrium of the ship to change, then slapped his hand down on the mage’s shoulder.
“You would die in those winds,” he said plainly. “We will wait.” He turned his eyes to Kani. “Are you okay?”
The redhead nodded. She looked like she was about to be sick – her knuckles were white as she held tightly onto her hammock’s straps, and her face was ashen.
“Can you…?”
“This is not Wythyldwyn’s war,” she grunted. “Wyrda, Goddess of the Sea… I have no power here.”
Wave. Wave. Wave.
Somehow, they clung on. Somehow, the ship didn’t come apart at the seams.
Wave. Wave. Wave.
Were they coming less frequently, less powerfully, now? Or was he just imagining it?
Storm-Shatterer, he thought with some satisfaction. Finally.
A sailor rushed in from the deck, babbling something about demons that Ibbalat couldn’t quite make out.
“What did you say?” Phanar called across the hold.
“I says,” the crewman yelled back, “there’s hunnerds o’ demons around the edge o’ the ship! Flyin’, like! Keepin’ us outta the worse of it! Sommat at the front, too, sommat big!”
Redgate, Ibbalat grumbled.
“Redgate,” Anathta murmured, an odd twang to her voice. She looked panicked in a strange way now that the champion had left them – not panicked by the storm, exactly…
Is she missing him already? Ibbalat wondered. Or is she afraid for him out there?
So, maybe they weren’t going to end up drowning tonight. Maybe he shouldn’t waste his wane. But he wanted more, damn it, and he could always resupply in Tirremuir, supposing they got there.
He wanted to distance himself. Draw into himself, away from Anathta, away from Phanar, away from this whole predicament.
He shoved another three leaves in his mouth.
To the Twelve Hells with it, and Redgate too, good riddance.
It was less than five minutes before the champion returned, sinking through the deck to float again in front of them. He reached up, removed his mask, and showed them his gloating smile.
“Pirates,” he said almost with relish. “The Tirremine navy had a number of wizards at work. I taught them a little lesson in caution. Once I brought them the pirate officers they quickly saw the error of their ways.”
“You didn’t…” Phanar looked up at him enquiringly, but the warrior didn’t seem to know how to finish the question.
‘… eat them?’ Ibbalat said to himself.
“They’re perfectly fine, and were properly apologetic,” Redgate answered, as if knowing full-well what Phanar had been getting at. “We should be able to continue on our way unmolested in the next several minutes. I shall attend the captain with my happy news.”
Ibbalat finished his wane that night, and had none left for when he woke up.
* * *
Tirremuir, capital-city of Chakobar. It wasn’t anywhere near as big as Mund – which had been, by Ibbalat’s reckoning, the size of a small country – nor was it as beautiful from a distance – but neither was it as repulsive up close. Most of the city had been constructed out of a red sandstone, though many of its houses and public buildings were painted white. It was nominally part of the Mundic Realm – its lord sat in the Arrealbord Palace, and its sea-faring forces were strictly for peace-keeping, not conquest – but it had a culture and traditions all of its own. The majority of the native people here had skin the hue of milky tea, close to Ibbalat’s own colouration, and for the most part they had an easy-going lifestyle that suited the young mage down to the ground.
Outside the walls of the inner city were bustling markets, vendors keen to ply their customers with all manner of mildly-intoxicating agents in order to better secure a deal – a set-up the mage was only too-keen to indulge, given his accustomed tolerance for altered states of consciousness. The inner city itself was a sprawl of low, dome-capped structures joined by covered walkways, to better protect the citizens from the sun’s maddening death-rays – so common were these shaded paths that, from above, the centre of the city resembled a single many-winged palace rather than a hundred separate buildings. (He should know – he’d spent more than one morning and evening looking down on the city in bird-form, admiring it while riding the ripples of the warm wind and the wane.) Keeping plants alive and flourishing in this place wasn’t just difficult – it was expensive, such that the only spots of greenery to be found were in those precincts where the merchants-guilds and mage-guilds held sway.
Not that the mage-guilds had been of much use when they’d been seeking a living weapon to use against Ord Ylon. There were a few archmages who’d gone public in Tirremuir, of course – its population might’ve been a few percent of Mund’s, but that made it ginormous by Ibbalat’s earlier estimation, and such a preponderance of people was bound to have some magic-masters amidst its crowds. But they could be counted on two hands, and were men and women of business and trade, crafting and learning, not fighters, not killers. Ibbalat had heard it from their own lips: many of Tirremuir’s archmages had visited Mund, seen the champions with their own eyes… and none of them wanted anything to do with such a life of endless, unremitting peril.
Ibbalat sat on his favourite crate as the sun rose, and when the time came he put aside his spellbook and started his now-familiar chant, beseeching the wind’s service. He watched as the maze of terracotta-coloured archways rose out of the morning mist, welcoming them into the wide cove that served as the harbour. A Tirremine longship, bristling with bolt throwers and catapults, had pulled alongside as they approached – after a brief shouting-match with Ulfathu it turned about, its captain eager to escort the ‘heroes’ into the docks. Bow to stern, their two ships navigated the channels of anchored merchant vessels.
The others came to the foredeck, Ana sitting almost opposite him wearing her distractingly form-fitting black fabrics. The mage did his best to keep his eyes off her.
“Any sighting of Ord Ylon?” Phanar said to the Tirremine vessel from the rail.
“Six nights ago,” a young, helmeted man replied. “Returning to the mountains.”
“Where had he been?”
The soldier shrugged. “We don’t know, my lord.”
“Which direction was he flying?”
“Erm – south?”
Phanar looked back at the others grimly. “He could’ve been spying on us.”
“He would’ve attacked us in the crossing, surely,” Ibbalat retorted.
He noticed that Kani shook her head – she was standing unnaturally erect at the prow, stiff and stern as the Dremmedine’s figurehead. She even looked in the same direction – straight ahead, as if to gaze through the city in front of them, as if to gaze through time, peel away at their future.
She’s even less ready for this than me, he realised. Does she commune with her goddess, or is she paralysed with fear?
“Or he knows that we’ve got back-up now.” Phanar’s gaze moved to the crimson-cloaked, spider-faced champion leaning nonchalantly against the side of a ladder. Redgate’s arms were folded, his long sleeves trailing in the wind.
“You mean… he’s running scared?” Ibbalat didn’t mean for it to come out quite as sarcastically as it did; he turned to the champion, spread his hands in what he hoped was an ameliorating gesture. “I mean – not that Redgate isn’t plenty scary, of course – but –“
“Do not underestimate his cunning.” Kani’s softly-spoken words carried back to them; there was a distance to her voice that wasn’t spatial. “He will prepare for our arrival. It is not his own death he fears.”
“Do you soothsay, madam?” Redgate asked, speaking for the first time since he arrived on deck.
The cleric didn’t reply, still unmoving at the prow.
“Kani?” Phanar asked gently, moving closer, touching her elbow –
She didn’t stir at his touch.
“Last night I dreamed a dream… such a dream…”
“Prophecy?” Ana asked curiously. “I thought I had one of those once.”
“Perhaps. I don’t want to… say too much.” The young priestess turned at last to face the rest of them, and Ibbalat knew all at once that he’d been wrong earlier.
It wasn’t fear in her that was causing the tension he could see.
It was resolution. Determination. A focus that drew all her attention, leaving little aside for the conversation.
“Do we even know why he wanted Nil Sorog’s skull?” she asked in the same detached, unwavering voice.
Phanar frowned, looked across at Ibbalat.
“Well –” the mage floundered “– we never quite got that far, did we? She’s his ‘bride’, isn’t that enough? And that’s why we pulverised their bones, right? Just in case he went back for their remains, and we ended up getting some innocent dragon-skull-collector in a whole world of trouble…”
Deliberately dropping a few hundred tons of stone on top of the first dead dragon was one of the more haunting moments of his adventuring career.
“What do you think you know?” Ana asked her, taking a more direct approach.
Kani turned back to face the city once more.
“I think hers is not the only skull he has gathered.”
The cleric had no more to say on the matter, which pleased Ibbalat. She’d already said enough to distract him from his work, and he almost bumped the war-vessel in front when they docked.
Once they nailed down the gangplank Kanthyre was the first to disembark, and as she set foot on the slippery boards of the quay she rolled her shoulders and strapped her shield, emblazoned with the gold rose of Wythyldwyn, to her arm.
For the first time in his life, Ibbalat felt intimidated in her presence.
* * *
He spent the first few hours ashore wandering the city. His face – the little of it that could be seen between the brim of his hat and the tangles of his whiskers – was fairly well-known in Tirremuir, and more than once he had to stop to field questions. He managed to put on a brave face, but perhaps too little showed because most of the market-goers seemed disheartened afterwards, apologising to him as if he were already dead, or saying teary farewells and turning aside.
At least he had a chance to practice his Chakobese. And he got his wane – got it for free from a wet-eyed old herbalist, and a big bag of it, too. He had a couple of leaves before cramming the rest in his demiskin and heading back into the inner city.
Whether it was just that the wane came from a notably-effective crop, or he was in just the right mood – or from some combination of factors – he found himself walking in a luxurious daze. He strolled by a group of kids playing pebble-shot in an alley, little red rocks in their hands, rats scurrying by. He watched as a heavyset woman shook a grass-green rug from her weed-choked balcony, sending glittering clouds of dust into the white, sunlit air. He listened to the changing of the guard, like he used to in Miserdell, the crisp report of booted feet and clank of spear-butts. Fears and thoughts of dragons and lairs melted away, and he felt that he would remember the sight of pebbles rebounding and dust billowing, the tune of trumpets singing, until the day he died.
Then he saw a young couple, clad in the long black urums with their hoods cast back, holding hands as they sat on a bench beside a canal – his thoughts turned to Ana, and he promptly forgot whatever twaddle he’d been contemplating for the last…
Hours…?
He looked up at the darkening sky – it was late afternoon already. At once he turned about, heading across the temple quarter towards the Sandtrap.
The Sandtrap had been their base of operations in the country since they first arrived. The tavern’s owner, Suremor Salas, had essentially long-term leased them a large suite of rooms for what Ibbalat considered half-price, given the magnificence of the establishment. And the quartet had plenty of cash to waste. It couldn’t all go on master-crafted artefacts of the highest calibre, could it?
Within ten minutes he was there. The Sandtrap was a squat, circular building with a dozen or more white minarets sprouting out of its middle: the ones around the edges were shorter, with the central minarets being the tallest, giving the impression at a distance of a single landscape-dominating structure. Each opulent apartment covered three floors of a tower and had its own internal staircases – the main spiral stair went up the centre of each minaret, so that each storey could be wrapped-around with its own private balconies. The many large windows let in copious amounts of sunlight or starlight, as the occupant desired. Exquisite tapestries were used in place of curtains.
“Your key, young master!” Suremor cried across the lobby as he saw Ibbalat enter.
The skinny, ever-smiling man had a face of creased leather; he’d gone grey at his temples, the corners of his moustaches, and even had white flecks in his eyebrows. He came up to the mage and embraced him warmly, then settled his arm around the mage’s shoulders as he steered them towards the desk for the key.
“It is good to see you! You are well, yes? When I heard the dragon might have followed you out to sea I was afraid! Your friends are in your rooms – they have met with Derezo – the man in the red robe, he is this champion you went to fetch?”
Carried on a rising wave of questions and exclamations, they ascended the southern minaret that housed, well, basically everything Ibbalat couldn’t carry in the demiskin – along with their man in Tirremuir, Derezo. It had been Derezo’s job to keep an eye on things while they were away for almost a month. He’d fought alongside them, saved each of them enough times to have earned their trust a dozen times over. There was no better candidate, even when they’d been bound for Derezo’s homeland.
Ibbalat managed to get rid of Suremor in the doorway before stepping through into the lounge, which in itself was something of a minor miracle. He entered the apartment, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Derezo was pouring drinks; the blond-haired, big-jawed veteran had quite the taste for fine wine these days, and he called a greeting as the mage entered the room. Ibbalat hailed him back, quickly appraising the environment. Phanar and Kani were sitting on one couch, Redgate and Ana on the other. The warrior and cleric sat with a clear three inch gap between them, while Ana was nestled close to the champion.
Ibbalat threw himself down in the seat beside Ana. He couldn’t sit across from them, watch them. Better this way, with just Phanar and Kani opposite him.
As night fell Derezo went over the logistics. The veteran pointed with a calloused fingertip, tapping here and there on the map spread over the low table between the couches. Camels were ready to take them across the corner of the Obarsk Waste, a journey of a little over two days, then, if they were willing to do some climbing, they could be at the supposed lair within a day.
“Ibbalat can help me?” Kani asked, looking over at him as she sipped her lemon-water. She wasn’t a strong climber.
“I can help everyone, where it comes to flying, with some preparation,” he replied. “Only lasts about seven minutes, though. I have to do it with wizardry – I’m still struggling with shifting others’ forms. I’ll have to pick up some more vampire-bat-wings from –“
“Seven minutes?” Derezo cried. “Where’s this spell been all my life? No, seriously, lad,” he continued as he saw Ibbalat’s sceptical eyebrow-raise, “d’you have any idea how far you could get in seven minutes?”
“We might be able to fly directly to the lair from the foot of the mountain?” Phanar asked. “I am loath to expend my boots’ magic.”
Derezo shook his head, tapping again. “You remember what I said about the crevasse?”
“What’s this?” Ibbalat asked, sitting forwards and swallowing his wane with a gulp of wine. His eyes were dry; he couldn’t see well in the lantern-light.
The veteran quickly went back over a few points he’d discussed with the others before Ibbalat returned from the markets, features of geographical interest. In the month they’d been away from Tirremuir, Derezo had (at their considerable expense) ‘persuaded’ a team of local scouts to take a look around the mountain.
Specifically, the crevasse Ord Ylon was thought to have entered.
Given the scouts’ report, to fly inside the sloping crack would be a death sentence – apparently there was a whole city carved into the overhanging side of the slope, a city teeming with kobolds, their windows and balconies crafted so that they might overlook the dragon as it slithered down into the deeper levels.
(Yes, Derezo said, the scouts had unfortunately suffered a run-in with a few hundred of the hairy, scaly creatures. No, none of them had died in their brave escape.
(Yes, they had wanted extra money. No, Derezo hadn’t paid up.)
The presence of several thousand watching eyes made travelling straight down the chasm, by flight-spell or by rope, an exercise in seeing how many arrow-shafts you could comfortably fit inside a human body.
“We can still try it,” Ibbalat said. “Invisibility’s a thing, you know. A pretty awesome thing.”
He wanted to wink at Ana, then realised he couldn’t. Not anymore. Things were no longer the same between them. If he intended an action as flirtatious, but she was with Redgate, wasn’t he breaking some unwritten rule or other?
Not like it mattered. She probably never saw his lame flirtations for what they were anyway, if Phanar was right about her blind-spot. Redgate had just… swooped in…
Someone like the archmage… this walking, talking, living hero out of myth… he wouldn’t understand the knot of anxiety inside Ibbalat. The wink wouldn’t even register as cause for concern. Redgate simply took what he wanted. The mage was less than a gnat to the champion when it came to matters of romance – Ibb wasn’t ever going to be his rival.
“The scouts weren’t spotted,” Derezo was replying in a grim tone to his invisibility suggestion. “They were pretty sure it was some kind of magic – tons of bats, out of nowhere, and then the arrows started. You know there’s kobold magicians – remember the ruins back in the Hintamar Bogs?” His voice took on a musing quality. “What was it called, Ikamax?”
“Ikamax,” Phanar confirmed.
The mage scowled. Derezo was right. You couldn’t account for the shamans and witch-peoples amongst the monstrous races.
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “But what’s the other route?”
Something far less fun, he brooded.
“You go through the kobold city,” Derezo said.
Phanar’s eyes widened and Ibbalat felt the tension in Ana’s body as she leaned forwards. Kani, though, barely reacted, as if this wasn’t news to her…
Perhaps she saw it in her dream? the mage wondered.
As for himself, he just grinned tightly. “At least we’ll get some use out of the potions I bought.”
“Is there anything you need to do before we leave?” Ana asked Redgate.
“Find out the name of this vintage.” Ibbalat tried not to look, but he saw in his peripheral vision as the champion drained his glass with aplomb. “I’m going to order a crate when I get back to Mund. The Ord’s hoard permitting, of course.” The handsome nobleman flicked his gaze over the group.
Derezo laughed good-naturedly; his fellow Mundian’s confidence was infectious. “I’ll get you the documents – upon your return.” He said it like it was a challenge.
“I look forward to it, Derezo, my good man.” Redgate smiled back.
“Why do I think I sense some enthusiasm in our strange new friend?” the veteran asked the others by way of reply, sly eyes twinkling. “I spent part of the morning ensuring there’s going to be a ship in harbour, ready to bring news of your failure to Mund, just in case – yet here you are…”
“I’ve never seen a dragon.” The champion leant forwards to refill his glass – at least he wasn’t the sort to expect someone else to do it for him. “And I’ve never slain one.” He took another mouthful, savoured it, swallowed it, and sat back before concluding, in a teasing tone, “I’ve seen and slain worse, though.”
The lounge erupted into a clamour of disbelief and disapproval. Redgate sniggered as Ana rounded on him – Kani and Derezo were crying out in opposition, while Phanar and Ibbalat sat in silence.
I’m not sure I’d trade Ord Ylon for one of those Incursions, the mage admitted to himself. Perhaps Phanar was thinking the same thing. Derezo, for his part, seemed to have switched sides on his fellow Mundian, swearing blind that no foe could top Ord Ylon.
“So when do we leave?” Ibbalat asked at last, cutting through the noise.
“Sunrise,” Phanar replied, meeting his eyes.
The mage nodded to him. “I’d better get some sleep, then. A lot of packing and spell-making to do in the morning.”
Ana looked at him a little disconsolately as he excused himself, a trace of disappointment or guilt in those alluring smoky eyes of hers. What, did she want to continue teasing him constantly with her closeness to Redgate? He stomped up the short stair to the next floor, then the next, until at last he pulled open the door to his private bedroom and collapsed onto the chilly sheets.
Where did my own enthusiasm go? he asked himself. He’d never felt like this before. Like…
Like we are going to fail.
They’d entered dangerous situations dozens of times, and he’d never before had the jitters. Fighting dragons all over the southern continent, fighting demons in Mund, he’d taken it all in his stride – but now? Knowing that it was coming to a close, that their actions in the coming days would be decisive… it put a strain on Ibbalat’s mind even wane couldn’t shift. He wanted to cast the runes and enter the trance, dream the same dream the cleric had endured – but he didn’t have the guts and he knew it.
At last, fuelled by at least four leaves of the drug, he managed to crawl inside his dreams like a man potholing in narrow caves crawls within the cracks, going deeper into the unknown, into a place from which return becomes increasingly impossible.
Ord Ylon’s cave. His lair. A sunken cathedral of skulls. A hideous ocean of gold. A smiling, sword-toothed face.
Then the dragon’s smile became Anathta’s, frozen in mocking aspect. Not Anathta dead, but Anathta alive – laughing, her arms around Redgate’s neck as he held her in a loving embrace.
Distant screams echoed in the halls of his mind and the young mage awoke too early in the pre-dawn darkness, drenched in sweat, his dream-self heaving out a cry of despair to which his waking-self gave voice as he sat bolt upright.
Hands shaking, he set to retrieving his spellbooks, starting his preparations – leaving the wane well to one side.
What had awoken him hadn’t been the nightmare of the cavern, being trapped in its worm-spaces – even the cruel, inhuman smile on the dragon’s face. On Anathta’s face.
No, what had awoken him had been the sound. The remembered thunder of his voice, clashing down across the town before the slaughter began.
‘The slow death.’
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