“God save us, what is that horrible noise?” Cadrach wailed. He lost his balance and tumbled to his knees.
Clenching her teeth, Miriamele put her head down and forced herself to inch away from the forecastle steps toward the rail. Her very bones seemed to rattle. She grabbed at the monk’s sleeve and pulled him with her, dragging him like a sledge across the slippery planks. “It’s Gan Itai,” she gasped, fighting against the stunning power of the Niskie’s song. “We’re too close.”
The velvety darkness, lit only by the yellow-streaming lanterns, suddenly went stark blue and white. The rail before her, Cadrach’s hand in hers, the empty blackness of the sea beyond both—all were seared on her eyes in an explosive instant. A heartbeat later the lightning flared again, and Miriamele saw, imprisoned in the flash, a smooth round head poking up above the portside rail. As the lightning faded and thunder double-cracked, another half-dozen loose-jointed shapes came swarming onto the ship, slick and gleaming in the dim lantern light. Realization struck, hard as a physical blow; Miriamele turned, stumbling and sliding, then plunged toward the starboard side of the ship, dragging Cadrach after her.
“What is happening?” he shouted.
“It’s Gan Itai!” Ahead of her sailors ran back and forth like ants from a scattered nest, but it was no longer the Eadne Cloud’s crew she feared. “It is the Niskie!” Her mouth filled with rainwater and she spat. “She is singing the kilpa up!”
“Aedon save us!” Cadrach shrieked. “Aedon save us!”
Lightning glared again, revealing a host of gray, froglike bodies slithering over the starboard rail. As the kilpa flopped down onto the deck, they swung their gape-mouthed faces from side to side, staring like pilgrims who had finally reached a great shrine. One of them threw out a thin arm and caught a reeling crewman, then seemed to fold around him, dragging the screaming man down into darkness as the thunder bayed. Sickened, Miriamele turned and hurried along the length of the ship toward the spot where the landing boat hung. Water tugged at her feet and ankles. As in a nightmare, she felt that she could not run, that she was going slower and slower. The gray things continued to spill over the side, like ghouls from a childhood tale swarming out of an unhallowed grave. Behind her Cadrach was shouting incoherently. The Niskie’s maddening song hung over all, making the very night pulse like a mighty heart.
The kilpa seemed to be everywhere, moving with a terrible, lurching suddenness. Even through the noise of the storm and Gan Itai’s singing, the deck echoed with despairing cries from the beleaguered crewmen. Aspitis and two of his officers were backed against one of the masts, holding off a half-dozen of the sea beasts; their swords were little more than thin glints of light, darting, flashing. One of the kilpa tottered backward, clutching at an arm that was no longer attached to its body. The creature let the limb fall to the deck, then hunched over it, gills puffing. Black blood fountained from the stump.
“Oh, merciful Aedon!” Ahead, Miriamele could finally see the dark shadow that was the boat. Even as she dragged Cadrach toward it, one of the lamps burst against the crosstree overhead, raining burning oil down onto the watery deck. Gouts of steam leaped up all around and a smoldering spark caught on Miriamele’s sleeve. As she hastily beat out the flame, the night erupted into orange light. She looked up into a blinding torrent of raindrops. A sail had caught fire, despite the storm, and the mast was rapidly becoming a torch.
“The knots, Cadrach!” she shouted. Nearby, someone’s choking scream was buried in the rumble of thunder. She grabbed at the rain-slicked rope and struggled, feeling one of her fingernails tear as she tried to loose the swollen rope. At last it slipped free and she turned to the one beside it. The landing boat swung with the roll of the ship, bumping her away from her task, but she hung on. Nearby, Cadrach, pale as a corpse, struggled with another of the four ropes that held the windlass over the deck of the Eadne Cloud.
She felt a wave of cold even before the thing touched her. She whirled, slipping and falling back against the hull of the landing boat, but the kilpa took a step closer and caught her trailing sleeve in its web-fingered hand. Its eyes were black pools that glowed with the flames of the burning sail. The mouth opened and then shut, opened and shut. Miriamele screamed as it dragged her nearer.
There was a sudden rush of movement from out of the shadows behind her. The kilpa fell back but retained its grip on her arm, dragging her down after it so that her outflung hand smacked the slippery resilience of its belly. She gasped and tried to rip herself loose, but the webbed hand gripped her too tightly. Its stench enwrapped her, brine and mud and rotting fish.
“Run, Lady!” Cadrach’s face appeared behind the creature’s shoulder. He had pulled his chain taut around its throat, but even as he tightened the strangling hold, Miriamele saw the gills on the kilpa’s neck pulsing in the half-light, translucent wings of delicate gray flesh, pink at the edges. She realized with a numbing sense of defeat that the beast did not need its throat to breathe: Cadrach had the chain too high. Even as he strained, the kilpa was drawing her in toward the other reaching arm, toward its slack mouth and gelid eyes.
Gan Itai’s song ended abruptly, although its echo seemed to linger for long moments. The only sounds that rose above the wind now were screams of fear and the dull hoots of the swarming sea-demons.
Miriamele had been fumbling at her belt, but at last her hand closed around Aspitis’ hawk-knife. Her heart skipped as the hilt caught in a fold of her sodden robe, but with a tug it came free. She shook it hard to knock loose the sheath, then slashed at the gray arm that held her. The knife bit, freeing a line of inky blood, but failed to loosen the creature’s grip.
“Ah, God help us!” Cadrach screeched.
The kilpa rounded its mouth but made no sound, only pulled her closer until she could see the rain beading on its shiny skin and the soft, pale wetness behind its lips. With a cry of disgusted rage, Miriamele threw herself forward, plunging the knife into the thing’s gummy midsection. Now it did make a sound, a soft, surprised whistle. Blood bubbled out over Miriamele’s hand and she felt the creature’s grasp weaken. She stabbed again, then again. The kilpa spasmed and kicked for what seemed an eternity, then at last fell limp. She rolled away. Then, shuddering, she plunged her hands down into cleansing water. Cadrach’s chain was still wrapped about the thing’s neck, making a grisly tableau for the next flash of lightning. The monk’s eyes were wide, his face stark white.
“Let it go,” Miriamele gasped. “It’s dead.” Thunder echoed her.
Cadrach kicked the thing, then crawled on his hands and knees toward the landing boat, struggling for breath. Within moments he had recovered enough to fumble open his two knots, then he helped Miriamele, whose hands were shaking uncontrollably, to finish hers. With one of the oars they swung the scaffolding out from the side of the ship, guiding it until it was perpendicular to the deck and only one tie held the boat suspended from the windlass over the dark, surging water.
Miriamele turned to look back across the ship. The mast was burning like an Yrmansol tree, a pillar of flame whipped by the winds. There were pockets of struggling men and kilpa scattered across the deck, but there also seemed to be a relatively clear line between the landing boat and the forecastle.
“Stay here,” she said, pulling her hood down to obscure her face. “I must find Gan Itai.”
Cadrach’s look of astonishment quickly turned to rage. “Are you mad? Goirach cilagh! You will find your death!”
Miriamele did not bother to argue. “Stay here. Use the oar to protect yourself. If I don’t come back soon, drop the boat and follow it. I will swim to you if I can.” She turned and trotted back across the deck with the knife clutched in her fist.
Pretty Eadne Cloud had become a hell-ship—something that might have been crafted by the devil’s boatwrights to torment sinners on the deepest seas of damnation. Water covered much of the deck, and the fire from the central mast had spread to some of the other sails. Burning rags rode the winds li
ke demons. The few bloodied sailors who still remained topside had the crushed, brutalized look of prisoners punished far past what any crime could warrant. Many kilpa had been slaughtered, too—a pile of their corpses lay near the mast where Aspitis and his officers had fought, although at least one human leg protruded from the heap—and quite a few more of the sea creatures seemed to have seized a meal and leaped back overboard, but others still hopped and slid after survivors.
Miriamele waded to the foredeck without being set upon, although she had to pass much closer than she wished to several groups of feeding kilpa. A part of her was amazed to find that she could look on such things without being overcome by terror. Her heart, it seemed, had hardened: a year before, any one of these atrocities would have had her weeping and searching for a place to hide. Now she felt that if she had to, she could walk through fire.
She reached the stairs and made her way swiftly up to the forecastle. The Niskie had not stopped singing altogether: a thin drone of melody still hung over the foredeck, a thin shadow of the power that had outstormed even the wind. The sea watcher sat cross-legged on the deck, bent forward so that her face nearly touched the planks.
“Gan Itai,” Miriamele said. “The boat is ready! Come!”
At first the Niskie did not respond. Then, when she sat up, Miriamele gasped. She had never seen such wretchedness on the face of a living creature.
“Ah, no!” the Niskie croaked. “By the Uncharted, go away! Go!” She waved her hand feebly. “I have done this for your freedom. Do not make the crime pointless by failing your escape!”
“But aren’t you going to come?!”
The Niskie moaned. Her face seemed to have aged a hundred years. Her eyes were sunken deep into her head, their luster burned away. “I cannot leave. I am the ship’s only hope to survive. It will not change my guilt, but it will ease my ruined heart. May Ruyan forgive me—it is an evil world that has brought me to this!” She threw back her head and gave out a groan of misery that brought Miriamele to tears. “Go!” the Niskie wailed. “Go! I beg you!”
Miriamele tried again to plead with her, but Gan Itai lowered her face to the deck once more. After a long silence, she at last resumed her weak, mournful song. The rain eased for a moment as the wind changed direction. Miriamele saw that only a few figures still moved on the firelit deck below. She stared at the huddled Niskie, then made the sign of the Tree and went down the stairs. She would think later. Later she would wonder why. Later.
It was a wounded sailor, not a kilpa, who grabbed at Miriamele on her return. When she slashed at his hand the crewman let go and collapsed back onto the sloshing deck. A few steps farther along she waded past the body of Thures, the earl’s young page. There were no signs of violence upon him. The boy’s dead face was peaceful beneath the shallow water, his hair undulating like seaweed.
Cadrach was so happy to see her he did not utter a single word of reproach or ask any questions about her solitary return. Miriamele stared at where the last windlass-rope was tied, then reached out with the dagger and sawed through it, leaning back as the cut end whipped free. The winding-drum spun and the landing boat plummeted down. A fountain of white spray sprang up as it hit the waves.
Cadrach handed her the oar he had been clutching. “Here, Miriamele. You’re tired. It will help you float.”
“Me?” she said, surprised almost into a smile.
A third voice interrupted them. “There you are, my darling.”
She whirled to see a ghastly figure limping toward them. Aspitis had been slashed bloody in a dozen places, and a long cut that snaked down his cheek had closed one eye and flecked his golden locks with gore, but he still held his long sword. He was still as beautiful and terrifying as a stalking leopard.
“You were going to leave me?” he asked mockingly. “Not stay and help clean up after our …” he grinned, a dreadful sight, and gestured toward him, “… our wedding guests?” He took another step forward, waving the sword slowly from side to side. It glinted in the light of burning sails like a whisker of red-hot iron. It was strangely fascinating to watch it pass back and forth … back and forth. …
Miriamele shook her head and stood up straighter. “Go to hell.”
Aspitis’ smile dropped away. He leveled the tip of the sword toward her eye. Cadrach, who stood behind her, cursed helplessly. “Should I kill you,” the earl mused, “or will you still be useful?” His eyes were as inhuman as a kilpa’s.
“Go ahead and kill me. I would die before I let you have me again.” She stared at him. “You are paying the Fire Dancers, aren’t you? For Pryrates?”
Aspitis shook his head. “Some only. Those who are not … firm believers. But they are all useful.” He frowned. “I do not wish to talk of such unimportant things. You are mine. I must decide …”
“I have something that is yours,” she said, and raised the dagger before her. Aspitis smiled oddly, but lifted his sword-blade to fend off a sudden throw. Instead, Miriamele tossed the knife into the water at his feet. His dreaming eye caught its glitter and followed it down. As his head dipped, ever so slightly, Miriamele thrust the oar handle into his gut. He gasped for breath and took a staggering step backward, his sword jabbing blindly like the sting of an injured bee. Miriamele brought the oar up again with both hands, then swung it with all the might of her arms and back, sweeping it around in a great arc that ended with a crunch of bone. Aspitis shrieked and fell to the deck holding his face. Blood spurted from between his fingers.
“Hah!” Cadrach shouted with exultant relief. “Look at you, you devil! Now, you will have to find something else to bait your woman-trap with!”
Miriamele fell to her knees, then pushed the oar across the slippery deck to Cadrach. “Go,” she panted. “Take this and jump.”
The monk stood in confusion for a moment, as if he could not remember where he was, then staggered to the side of the ship. He closed his eyes and muttered some words, then plunged overboard. Miriamele rose and took a last look at the earl, who was bubbling red froth out onto the deck, then scrambled over the railing and pushed herself out into emptiness. For a moment she was falling, flying through the dark. When the water closed on her like a cold fist, she wondered if she would ever come back up, or if instead she would just continue downward into the ultimate depths, into blackness and quiet. …
She did come up. When she had reached the boat and helped Cadrach to clamber aboard, they fitted the oars and began to row away from the wounded ship. The storm still hovered overhead, but it was diminishing. Eadne Cloud grew smaller behind them until it was only a point of burning light on the black horizon, a tiny flame like a dying star.
7
Storm King’s Anvil
At the nothernmost edge of the world the mountain stood, an upthrusting fang of icy stone that shadowed the entire landscape, towering high above even the other peaks. For long weeks the smokes and steams and vapors had crept from vents in the mountain’s side. Now they wreathed Stormspike’s crown, spinning in the awesome winds that circled the mountain, gathering and darkening as though they sucked the very substance of ultimate night from between the stars.
The storm grew and spread. The few scattered folk who still lived within sight of the terrible mountain huddled in their longhouses as the beams creaked and the wind howled. What seemed an unceasing blizzard of snow piled above their walls and onto their roofs, until all that remained were white mounds like so many grave barrows, marked as dwellings of the living only by the thin pennants of smoke that fluttered above the chimney-holes.
The vast expanse of open lands known as the Frostmarch was also engulfed by driving snows. Only a few years before, the vast plain had been dotted with small hamlets, thriving towns and settlements fed by the traffic of the Wealdhelm and Frostmarch roads. After half a dozen seasons of continuous snow, with crops long dead and virtually all the animals fled or eaten, the land had become a desolate waste. Those who huddled in the foothills along its border or in the sheltering
forests knew it as the home only of wolves and wandering ghosts, and had come to call the Frostmarch by a new name—the Storm King’s Anvil. Now an even greater storm, a dreadful hammer of frost and cold, was pounding on that anvil once more.
The storm’s long hand reached out even beyond Erkynland to the south, sending gusts of freezing wind across the open grasslands, turning the Thrithings bone-white for the first time in memory. And snow returned to Perdruin and Nabban—the second time in a season, but only the third time in five centuries, so that those who had once scoffed at the Fire Dancers and their dire warnings now felt a squeeze of fear on their hearts, a fear much more chilling than the powdery snow sifting down onto the domes of the two Sancellans.
Like a tide moving toward some unimaginable high water mark, the storm spread farther than ever before, bringing frost to southern lands that had never felt its touch and draping a great cold shroud over all of Osten Ard. It was a storm that numbed hearts and crushed spirits.
“That way!” the leading rider shouted, pointing to the left. “Á prenteiz, men—up and after!” He spurred forward so swiftly that his clouded breath was left hanging in the air behind him. Snow spouted from beneath his horse’s hooves.
He bore down on the empty space between two tumbledown, snow-covered dwellings, his mount slashing through the drifts as effortlessly as through fog. A dark shape bolted out into the open from behind one of the buildings and dashed away, bounding erratically across the flat. The leading pursuer vaulted a low, snow-buried fence, landed, and followed close after. The horse’s pounding strides obliterated the smaller prints of its fleeing quarry, but there was no need now for tracking: the end was in sight. Half a dozen other riders came hurtling from between the houses and spread out like an opening fan, surrounding the quarry like a riverman’s fishing net. A moment to draw the net closed—the riders reining in as a narrowing circle—then the hunt was over. One of the men who had ridden the wing leaned down until his lance touched the captive’s heaving side. The leader dismounted and took a step forward.