‘I will tell you in a moment, and Belatiel, for you will both be part of it.’
He slowed as they reached a small guard chamber beside the outer door, where Gullaine was waiting, another key in the massive, bronze-bound lock, but not yet turned, and the two bars above and below still in place. ‘We will pause here a moment. Gather round.
‘When we go out, the Islet lies to our left, some three hundred and fifty paces away, the last hundred across a causeway that will be a little awash, the tide being on the ebb but not yet low. The path is marked by large stones; stay within them. Now, I am going to draw the spell of unseeing off Clariel and Belatiel, for it is you two who will go to Marral’s hut, looking for bright fish –’
‘Bel is to accompany me?’ asked Clariel. ‘But Roban is my guard.’
‘We will need Roban to help if the creature does come forth in its full strength,’ said Kargrin. ‘If it does, you and Bel should withdraw and observe. If we are overcome, you must retreat, back to the main South Gate, not this postern. The guards there are with us, and will protect you. Get under the aqueduct, for this will also lessen the creature’s power.’
‘You mean we just back off and leave you, Roban and Gullaine to fight it?’ asked Bel. ‘I didn’t come along to flee at the first –’
‘Belatiel, you promised to follow orders,’ said Gullaine, in a voice that brooked no opposition.
Bel opened his mouth, and raised one hand falteringly, then lowered that hand and shut his mouth.
‘Good,’ said Kargrin. ‘Now. As I have said, Clariel and Bel will go first, and will be seen. There will be people about on the Islet. Ask them where Marral’s hut is, though so you know, it is the furthest hovel on the northern side, set somewhat apart. It has a kind of curtain made of shark teeth in its doorway. We will follow, unseen. When you get to Marral’s hut, do not go in. Ask him to come out. If, as I suspect, the creature is within Marral, it will reveal something of itself to Clariel.’
He paused and bent his head to look directly at Clariel, speaking with measured force.
‘You may feel it in your mind, Clariel, or see something that wasn’t there beforehand. As soon as you do, call out and back away. We will either bind it quickly, or if not, you will soon see the way matters go. If they go ill, as I have said, run for the South Gate. Run as fast as you can, and do not look back. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Clariel and Bel together.
‘Gullaine, Roban, you know the spells we discussed?’ asked Kargrin. Both nodded. ‘All of us should also ready arrow wards and spells to deal with mortal enemies. Such a creature as we seek can easily dominate folk who do not have the Charter mark. Also, given Kilp’s possible involvement, there is much that can simply be bought with gold from the inhabitants of the Islet. There are known murderers and others of such ilk there.’
‘I can’t remember the marks for an arrow ward,’ said Clariel. ‘But I can duck.’
‘I can cover us both,’ said Bel. ‘I’ve been practising.’
‘I trust it won’t be necessary,’ said Kargrin. ‘Stand together, you two.’
Clariel and Bel stood close. Kargrin reached across, above their heads, and with the same two fingers he’d used before, began to draw in the almost invisible threads of the concealment spell. Watching him, Clariel saw the lines of tiny marks being drawn in as a fisherman might haul on his ropes. The threads of the net broke into many scattered marks as they left Clariel and Bel, only to reform as they joined the other marks that still hung suspended over the other three.
When the last of the marks left, Clariel felt a sudden dizziness. She blinked, and her hand went to the falchion at her side, for she saw three strangers suddenly appear, strangers that she found it hard to look at, her eyes sliding off them …
‘You’ll find it easier to look away,’ said Kargrin’s familiar voice, though Clariel couldn’t tell where it came from. ‘Go out the door. We will be close behind. Don’t stop suddenly!’
‘Yes,’ said Clariel. She looked directly at the door, and found it was easier. ‘You ready, Bel?’
‘Yes,’ said Bel, for once not embellishing his answer.
Clariel lifted the bars, first the bottom and then the top, and turned the key in the lock, the mechanism clicking three times, the sound to her unpleasantly like some portent of doom.
It’s only a hunt, Clariel thought. I’ve hunted dangerous animals scores of times. It’s only a hunt …
But then she had never before been called upon to be the bait.
The postern gate opened out into a ditch, which had once been much deeper and clean-cut, but lacking repair had fallen in on itself to a great degree. Clariel clambered over some fallen stones and found a broken series of steps on the opposite side. Climbing up into the open air, she felt her moment of doubt fade. The sky above was much brighter, and just being able to see its great expanse, unhampered by walls and buildings, lifted her heart.
They had come out near the corner of the wall, and the sea was close, the crash of the waves loud in Clariel’s ears and the scent of salt and weed strong on the breeze. She glanced eastwards to the bridge over the ditch that led into the South Gate, but there was no one watching, and no one was on the road. It was probably still an hour until the gate opened.
Climbing over the lip of the ditch, she saw the sea and the causeway to the Islet. The rocky island was smaller than she had expected. It looked to be not much more than three hundred paces across, in all directions, and though it rose out of the water to twice her height, it was much lower than she’d imagined it to be. In a storm, surely the dozen or so shanties and huts that clustered on it would be swept away?
‘Keep going,’ whispered Bel. ‘They’re right behind me.’
Clariel started forward, not realising that she had completely stopped. The ground fell away quite rapidly towards the narrow beach that led to the causeway, and up ahead there was a well-trodden path that joined up with the road behind them. She strode over to it, and started down.
Despite the hour, there were already a few beachcombers following the tideline, looking for flotsam. The closest was a woman, bent and old, clad in a raw woollen dress hitched up very high on her bare thighs and tied around her waist with a fraying rope. She had a sack in her hand and was wriggling her feet in the sand. A moment later she lifted one foot with a long worm caught in the grip of her toes, expertly transferring it to her sack without needing to use her hands.
As Clariel and Bel trod closer across the sand, the old woman turned towards them, and bowed her head.
‘We’re looking for Old Marral,’ said Clariel. ‘Can you direct us to his … his hut?’
‘Take you there for a two squid,’ said the old woman. ‘What do you want with Marral?’
‘Business,’ said Clariel. She reached into the small change pocket inside her tunic and drew out one of the large copper coins that in Estwael were called simply rounds, and in Belisaere were called squids, apparently because some long ago issue had featured something supposed to represent magic streamers and had been misinterpreted as a squid’s tentacles. ‘One squid.’
The old woman’s mouth quirked, but she shrugged and took the offered money.
‘Follow me,’ she said, swinging the sack to her back. ‘Stay inside the rock markers, or the sea’ll take you.’
They followed the old woman along the beach to a point where a broad black rock emerged from the sand, the visible part of some greater mass below. It was like a great stone doormat marking the entrance to the causeway. The old woman stepped onto its worn surface and went straight out into the wash of the sea. Clariel and Bel followed, both letting out a slight gasp as the cool water splashed around their legs, the wavelets coming around the Islet sometimes washing up as high as their thighs.
Looking down through the swirling water Clariel saw that they were standing on a kind of bridge of stone that was at least a foot higher than the surrounding sand. At the lowest tide, it would be completely dry,
but judging from the tidemarks on the beach and the green stain on the city wall some hundred paces away, at the flood the Islet would be cut off by deep water. It would certainly be well over Clariel’s head, and the tidewash would be powerful.
As both Kargrin and the old woman had said, there were stones marking the sides of the causeway, which was about twenty paces wide. Roughly pyramidal, the markers were obviously man-made, but had been worn long in the sea. They were covered in green weed and the purple-grey shells of lippets, shellfish that could be eaten or used as bait for fish, though neither humans nor fish were particularly fond of the strong-tasting bivalve.
‘Good defence against the Dead,’ said Bel quietly to Clariel when they were about halfway across. A bigger wavelet had just swept past them, drenching them up to their waists. ‘Sea currents and waves are as effective as a strong river flow.’
‘But the sea doesn’t stop whatever this Free Magic thing is,’ said Clariel, keeping her voice low, so the old woman ahead couldn’t hear them.
Bel shrugged. ‘Maybe it crosses when the causeway is dry.’
‘The aqueducts don’t dry up,’ said Clariel. ‘And apparently it passes under them as well.’
‘Yes, there is that,’ replied Bel. ‘Look, I’m not going to run if we do find this creature. No matter what.’
‘Then you’re an idiot,’ said Clariel.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Bel. ‘I’m an Abhorsen, this is what we do –’
Clariel stopped, and turned to face the young man, both of them briefly rising up on tiptoe as another wavelet washed past them.
‘I don’t care if you get yourself killed. But don’t mess things up. My parents keep going on about opportunities for me in Belisaere. This represents an opportunity for me to get out of Belisaere and it might be my only one, so don’t spoil it!’
Bel looked surprised. Before he could answer, Clariel waded ahead, catching up to the old woman, who had kept plodding on. She was so bent the water was almost up to her chest, but she paid it no attention, just cricking her head back whenever a wave threatened to reach her mouth.
Clariel glanced back to make sure Bel was following. Behind him, about a dozen paces further back, she saw three typical inhabitants of the Islet. But her eyes skittered away from them, and she felt dizzy again as her thinking mind knew they must be Kargrin and the two guardsmen, but some subconscious part insisted they were just beachcombers and not worth looking at.
Two-thirds of the way across, the causeway started to slope upwards, and soon the sea was merely knee-deep and then just a foamy wash around their ankles. The Islet seemed taller than it had from the beach. There were steps cut into the rock face immediately in front of them. The old woman began to climb these, pausing halfway up to beckon to Clariel and Bel.
‘This way, this way,’ she said. ‘Another squid when we get there, I think you said?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Clariel.
‘I might have forgotten which is Marral’s house,’ said the woman.
‘Then I’ll ask at every one,’ said Clariel. ‘Maybe I should do that anyway.’
‘Can’t blame a body for trying,’ grumbled their guide. ‘It’s easy enough to spot, anyway. Got a door made of shark teeth. Over there, take the second left.’
‘Second left what?’ asked Clariel, as she climbed to the top step, and then added, ‘Ah.’
The Islet had appeared to be one big rock from a distance, but now she saw that it was made up of about twenty stone hillocks thrusting up like pimples out of the huge plate of black stone below. There were channels between the hillocks, most of them high enough to be dry, but some cut deeper and so open to the sea. A broad channel lay straight ahead, almost cutting the island in two, with many lesser branches running off to either side.
All of the hovels and shelters were built upon the hillocks, some joined by bridges of driftwood across the channels. Others had steps cut into the stone to reach them, or ladders lashed together from whatever the sea had brought the builders.
‘Follow the second channel on the left, go as far as you can, there are steps up,’ said the woman. ‘I’m going back to the worms.’
Clariel nodded, and started down the steps on the other side, into the main channel. Bel followed her warily, looking around as he did so.
‘Easy place to be ambushed,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ agreed Clariel. She was also thinking that it would be a difficult place to leave quickly, if they had to get away.
There were no people moving around. A few of the huts had smoke coming out of them, usually through a hole in the roof rather than a proper chimney, but it was otherwise impossible to tell if they were inhabited. It was very quiet, save for the regular crash of the waves against the island, and the sound of their own footsteps on the rock.
The second left channel was narrow, not even wide enough to stretch out both arms, and the rock above rose higher, easily twice Clariel’s height. She kept glancing up as they moved cautiously along, thinking about some attack from above. But there was no sound of movement, and they passed two hillocks without event, before reaching the end of the channel and a series of steps cut into the mount ahead.
Clariel loosened the falchion at her side again. Bel did the same with his sword, and took out his pipes.
‘Do you feel anything?’ asked Clariel. ‘Smell anything?’
Bel shook his head. ‘I can smell only the salt from the sea, and the deaths are old and long-ago. Drowning, and murder from behind, but I can sense no Dead here. Too much swift water.’
Clariel started up the steps, comforted by the knowledge that Kargrin and the guards must be close behind. For the first time in any hunt, she felt less than confident. She didn’t like not knowing what to do, or what might happen.
On top of the rocky mount, there was a hut made of driftwood, canvas and odds and ends, a fish-drying rack with no fish hanging from it, and a firepit built into a natural depression that had been smoothed into a bowl shape. Wood was laid there, ready for a fire. The doorway of the hut was closed by a curtain made of hundreds and hundreds of shark teeth tied to a heavy, close-meshed fishing net, so it was impossible to see inside.
Out of the shadowed channel, the sun was now fully visible just above the horizon, and its warmth was welcome, particularly since they were both sodden from the waist down. Clariel thought of sitting down to empty her boots of seawater, but decided it would be too risky, and there was no point. They would be crossing back soon enough, or so she hoped.
‘I suppose we should call out to Marral,’ she whispered to Bel. But he was looking around them anxiously and didn’t immediately answer.
‘I can’t see the others,’ he whispered back after a long pause.
‘You’re not supposed to be able to see –’ Clariel started to say, then stopped. Of course, they should be able to see something, even if their minds wanted to accept it as part of the background. Kargrin and the others should look like beachcombers or fishermen or something …
‘Even if they are there, how can they surround the hut? There’s not enough space up here and there’s no point being down in the channels.’
Clariel drew her falchion. Bel drew his sword, and they instinctively stood back to back.
‘They were behind us on the causeway,’ said Bel.
‘Well, they’re not any more,’ answered Clariel.
chapter eleven
out of the bottle
‘Maybe we should shout out,’ said Bel nervously. ‘Call them.’
‘I can’t see anyone at all,’ said Clariel. She was slowly looking from left to right, watching for any movement outside the huts on their higher outcrops of stone, or perhaps the glimpse of a head in one of the channels. ‘Nothing, no … there!’
She pointed at a sudden movement as someone leaned around the corner of a hut some fifty paces away, there was a flash of sunlight on metal –
‘Down!’ shouted Clariel.
She grabbed Bel
as she threw herself into the firepit. But she was a moment too slow, and with a hideous thumping sound a quarrel suddenly flowered in Bel’s shoulder and he screamed in shock and surprise and then both of them were in the firepit, the prepared wood scattered everywhere.
‘Spelled quarrel,’ gasped Bel, as he rolled onto his back and gripped the shaft, which was wreathed in acrid white smoke. Aided by Free Magic, the quarrel had gone straight through his armoured coat, breaking the protective spells and boring a neat hole through one of the gethre plates. Clariel measured the distance from his shoulder with her fingers together.
‘Three fingers under your shoulder bone,’ she said. ‘Not fatal, unless the magic is … is like poison.’
‘N … no,’ said Bel, getting the word out through a grimace of pain. ‘I don’t think so, just some sort of power to cut through Charter-spelled armour … Can you break off the shaft, close as you can?’
‘Yes,’ said Clariel. She knew not to pull it out, because that would make the bleeding worse, but breaking off the shaft would make it easier for Bel to move around. If he could. Shock would be setting in soon. ‘I’ll do it in a minute.’
She said that, but broke it off immediately, holding it as tightly as she could against his chest so not to move the embedded point around. Bel screamed again, and fainted.
‘Roban! Kargrin!’ shouted Clariel. ‘Gullaine!’
She heard several shouts in reply, but couldn’t tell where they came from, or what they were saying. They sounded distant, as if the others were right over the far side of the Islet. Maybe down in one of the channels and not on a hillock. The sound was strangely faint, and difficult to locate.
Clariel risked propping up on her elbows to have a look, but there was still no sign of life around the other huts, and she couldn’t see anything where the sun had reflected off the quarrel before. It had been a murderer’s shot, a sudden attack from hiding. She’d been lucky to see the slight movement before the assassin fired.
‘See anything?’ croaked Bel muzzily. ‘Kargrin?’
‘No,’ said Clariel.