CHAPTER TWO
The rising sun chased the moons out of the sky, sending bronze and gold glitters skipping along the risers of the Passwater as they rubbed gently against the Atremoënse’s transom. For the third time, Captain Nolus measured the distance to the town-crowded northern coast. Nodding to himself, he finally let some of the crew go back to their hammocks. All accounts agreed that once the black swells around Dasgal’s Mantle dropped out of sight, a ship was once again in waters that had never been frequented by the Kraken or any other reputed cryptigants. The other measure of reaching safety was being able to spy the tower-tops of Shadowmere. Glittering in the dawn, they had just begun to peek over the low bluffs that were the city’s wind-brake.
When he was done sorting out the revised watches, the captain turned toward Druadaen and his companions. “You were wise not to flee,” he observed soberly.
“Flee?” Druadaen asked. “Where would we have fled?”
Nolus shrugged. “After spying the Kraken, there’s many that have taken their chances in small boats when their ships slowed.”
“Hard to believe there are such foolish people in the world,” Elweyr sighed.
“I’ll grant you this,” the captain rejoined, “nothing brings out more panic and stupidity in land-lovers than trouble a-sea. So maybe I’ve seen them at their worst.”
“Still,” Umkhira asserted, “we would not have fled. You agreed to carry us if we swore to help protect your ship from any dangers that might arise during the journey. We are our word… or we are nothing.”
“Speak for yourself,” S’ythreni muttered, looking away.
Umkhira glanced at her; in earlier times, she would have frowned at such a comment, but now she merely smiled ruefully. “You have never once failed to stand with us in the face of death. Not once.”
S’ythreni shrugged diffidently. “All that proves is that I’m too stupid to learn from my mistakes.”
But Nolus was shaking his head. “I agree with your ur zhog companion, Mistress Iava. I’ve seen cowards aplenty in my time. You are not cut from that cloth.” He glanced around the group. “None of you are. Although some of you are damnably loud at times.” He did not look at Ahearn, but he hardly needed to.
The swordsman rolled his eyes, but this time with a smile. “Aye, I tend not to be a retiring sort, Captain.”
Now Nolus looked at him. “I have noticed that.” It might have been serious or it might have been ironic; there was no telling with the Corrovani mariner.
Ahearn elected to interpret it congenially. “Well, then, Captain, you’ll not be surprised that I’ve a question: When do we get to the docks and debark?”
“Those are two different questions, Master Swordsman. And both are subject to considerable uncertainty.”
“Such as?” S’ythreni’s murmur had a discernible edge. The Corrovani tendencies toward both seriousness and literalism rarely failed to chaff her.
The captain shrugged. “If word reaches the harbor mistress that the Kraken’s been sighted, she might close the gates. No way of knowing how long until she reopens them. Or how many hulls will be in the queue before us, either. And I’m not going to tie up at the north slips.”
“The what?” asked Umkhira.
“Berths outside the city walls. Well, outside the moat.”
Umkhira squinted at his correction. “This city has a moat, but no walls?”
“Shadowmere doesn’t need walls, Mistress Lightstrider,” he said, using the common name for her people, who lived above- rather than below-ground. “Not given what lives in its moat.”
“And what would that be?” S’ythreni asked through what might have been a real—or feigned—yawn.
“Very likely the Kraken itself. And its brood.”
“What?” Umkhira said with a start. “It swims out so far as we saw? And how does it get past the harbor gates?”
S’ythreni was grinning at her friend’s gullibility until Elweyr shook his head. “It doesn’t have to. As the captain mentioned, it’s rumored that parts of the Passwater connect to passages under the island. Some are said to run all the way out to the ocean on the far side.”
When incredulous eyes turned toward Nolus, he simply shrugged. “So say those who’ve sailed these waters all their lives.”
Ahearn was tapping his toe impatiently. “Good captain, I shall rephrase my original question: Can we hope to feel land under our feet by sunset?”
Nolus thought, then nodded. “I can think of no reason why that should not be the case. Well before, in fact. But I reiterate my warning: it is unlikely that I shall be able to tie up near the tower that the Lady of the Mirror calls home.”
S’ythreni shrugged. “No matter. I should like to stretch my legs a bit before climbing the stairs of any tower.”
The captain’s brow furrowed. “Just so you’re aware, Mistress Iava: its actual name is not the Lady’s Tower, but Moorax Tower.”
She looked at Druadaen, then Elweyr. “Is nothing straightforward in this accursed city?”
Druadaen smiled. “Perhaps,” he said to Nolus, “you would be so kind as to tell us why it is not named for the Lady who presides over it?”
“Because the tower is defined not by any one of the Ladies—or occasionally, Lords—who’ve overseen it, but the Mirror for which it’s famous.”
“Then why isn’t it called the Tower of the Mirror?” An edge of exasperation was growing in Ahearn’s voice.
“Well, in fact, some do.”
Druadaen frowned. “But you just told us it was called Moorax Tower. Why?”
S’ythreni stared at him. “You had to ask.” She tapped her forehead with her forefinger. “Wait, of course you did, because you can’t ignore a mystery—or shorten the tedium as we wait for you to solve it.”
If Nolus noticed the half-serious asperity in S’ythreni’s voice, he elected not to show it. “The legend is that long ago, when the city’s defenders were on the verge of being overthrown by a powerful mantic, the leader of the Galspearrean Guild—a fellow named Dakon—was mortally wounded. He asked his honor guard to prop him up and he hurled his axe into the bay and instructed that wheresoever it fell, they should build a great tower.”
“Wait.” Elweyr, who was typically quiet and even cautious, sounded impatient. “Are you telling us that Moorax Tower got its name because… well, because it’s moored to an axe?”
Nolus frowned, as if the question was too obvious to warrant asking. “Aye. Of course. Well, maybe not literally moored to it.”
“Oh, well,” S’ythreni exclaimed with a painfully bright smile, “that makes much more sense.” Anyone who knew her well would have known that her reasonable tone indicated she was being savagely facetious.
Druadaen hoped to fill in the silence before the captain detected that undercurrent. “Thank you. We shall bear those distinctions in mind when we go in search of it.”
“Well, it’s not hard to find. It’s at the north end of the protected docks. It is the highest tower in the city but also one of the most slender. Now, I’ve a ship to run and a pilot to chasten.” With a nod, he marched up the stairs to the quarterdeck.
Druadaen meant to follow the captain’s upward progress, but his gaze lingered on the glittering waters behind them, as it so often did. While the others wandered away from the gunwale, Druadaen scanned aft; no silhouettes marred the shining, swell-ripped expanse or troubled the perfect line of the horizon.
“No sign of them astern,” Ahearn murmured from behind; he’d not kept up with rest of their company.
“I know,” Druadaen murmured back.
“You should. That’s at least the fifth time you’ve checked since the start of the afternoon watch yesterday.” Ahearn glanced down at the bracer-shaped velene on his friend’s arm. “And nothing from the silver beastie? No dreams or visions of where they might be?”
Druadaen shook his head. “Nothing. Not since Tharêdæath left us at Ereolant.”
Ahearn sucked his teeth. “Convenient how that Iavan ship just happened to be waiting there, bound back north to Dunarra.” He stared sideways at Druadaen.
Druadaen shrugged. “The Iavarain—but particularly the Uulamantre—have a sense for where others of their kind are located. That’s how S’ythreni led us to Tharêdæath in the first place.”
Ahearn raised an eyebrow. “Even so, that ship being in just the right port at just the right time? ’Twas too lucky for it to be ‘luck.’”
Druadaen shook his head. “Maybe so, maybe not. Ereolant has a large population of Iavarain, mostly aeostu. And it’s home to more Uulamantrene hulls than anywhere else on Arrdanc, save Mirroskye.”
Ahearn stared aft, his chin out. “Say what you will, Philosopher, but where Uulamantre go, mancery seems to follow—or is already there waiting for them.”
Druadaen smiled. “Well, we’re in agreement on that, at least.”
Ahearn nodded, glanced sideways. “So, are you finally going to attend to that scribbling you’ve been putting off?”
Druadaen felt his stomach knotting. “What do you mean, ‘putting off’?”
“Now, don’t play the innocent Dunarran schoolboy with me, mate. Until we left the wharf at Tlulanxu, you were ever and again scribbling in that journal of yours. But since then, you’ve been holding off, waiting until you saw some sign that your uncle had caught up to us.”
Druadaen opened his mouth to deny it, but he shut it again. Beyond avoiding lies, it was foolish to deny what had become so obvious over the many weeks that had passed. When he finally spoke, he did so quietly. “We should have heard something. I am worried that Varcaxtan got caught up in the politics I narrowly escaped.”
“You mean, that led to your banishment.” The swordsman turned to look him in the eyes. “See here, Druadaen, it’s not as though Dunarra’s priests wield enough power to put a noose around your uncle’s neck, particularly when he’s given them no reason.”
Druadaen elected not to correct Ahearn’s presumptions regarding the nature of punishment meted out by temples in the Consentium. “I am not worried about a noose, Ahearn. I am worried that he is going to remain a ‘guest’ at the Waiting House, just like poor Shaananca.”
“Poor Shaananca!” Ahearn exclaimed. “The only way your magic auntie can be held is if she consents to it!” He grew more serious. “But I suppose she might feel duty-bound to cooperate, lest she make matters worse between the priests and your Propretoriate.”
The swordsman glanced astern. “You know,” he mused, “even if there’s a ship right over the horizon, we won’t see it before the harbor gates close behind us. We’ve a following wind and a square rig to catch it. And once we’re ashore, who knows what will happen, and how quickly?” He paused. “It is Shadowmere, after all.” Druadaen could feel the assessment lurking behind the swordsman’s seemingly casual gaze.
Druadaen managed not to smile. Trying to get me to scribble, again, eh? To finally commit the last six moonphases to paper and posterity? He frowned. And unfortunately, Ahearn was right. Once they set foot on the streets of Shadowmere, there was no telling what might happen. If their travels had taught them anything, it was that when you travel on behalf of—or with—people of power or repute, you get caught up in their affairs, for good or bad. It was more often the latter, it seemed.
Druadaen pushed away from the gunwale and squared his shoulders. “I don’t suppose there’s any good to putting it off. Besides, if I don’t, it makes it just that much harder for someone else to pick it up.”
“And why would anyone want to do that?”
“Well… if something happened to me.”
Ahearn looked horrified, but apparently not at the notion of something happening to Druadaen. “‘Pick it up’? Chum, your journal is… well, it’s your journal.”
Druadaen nodded. “Yes, but if I’m dead, then whose is it? It’s become our story, not just mine.” He smiled. “If you didn’t feel a bit the same way, I don’t imagine you’d be encouraging me to return to it.”
Ahearn looked away with an almost spasmic shrug. “Ah, well: your journal, your business. If we don’t remember every little detail of our journeys, it’s no never-mind to me. So if you decide to let our voyage from Tlulanxu be but a footnote—or not even that—so be it.”
Druadaen shook his head. “No, I should. Every time I’ve felt the urge to leave out a detail, the odds are good that’s the one we’ll have most want of later on.” He turned to go below, thought, turned back. “Of course, if something should happen to me, maybe one of you should pick it up. For posterity’s sake.”
Ahearn made a warding sign. “I’ll carry that suggestion to the others, but that’s all I’ll have to do with it.”
Druadaen shrugged. “As you wish,” and he headed to their cabin to end the longest lapse between journal entries since he’d started keeping it at age nine.
As Druadaen’s broad shoulders turned slightly sideways to more easily navigate the companionway down into the stern, Ahearn smiled shrewdly—and fondly. A true son of Dunarra; appeal to his conscience and he’ll follow it whether he wants to or not. Ahearn felt his smile fade. Can’t really blame him for wanting to avoid this entry, though. He’d have to start by recounting why the bright hopes with which they’d begun their journey to Shadowmere hadn’t lasted twelve hours.
As he sought out the others, Ahearn also had to admit that Druadaen might have a point about one of them picking up the tale of their travels if he no longer could. But who? Only one way to find out; propose it to the group.
The instant Ahearn did, Umkhira literally took a step back, shaking her heavy head. Hardly a surprise: she had repeatedly made it clear that she considered all things involving reading or writing a chore.
When his eyes came to rest upon Elweyr, his friend’s neutral expression transformed into one of aggrieved alarm. “I spend too much of my time with books and formulas as it is. I haven’t the time or inclination to agree to more!”
Before Ahearn’s eyes could even shift to S’ythreni, she shook her head sharply. “There’s an old saying that in recording the lives of others, writers reveal the most about themselves. So, no.” She drifted off to follow the other two.
“Well, this is a fine turn of events!” Ahearn almost shouted at their collective backs. “Do you seriously think I should be left with such a task? Me? Are you all mad?”
“You seem to be the one who feels it should be done,” Umkhira observed matter-of-factly.
Elweyr smiled back at him. “It’s like you’ve always said, Ahearn; when you get close enough to a fellow for your ways to rub off on him, his are just as likely to rub off on you.”
S’ythreni laughed and the three of them continued making their way to the bow.
“Well, I’ll be curst for a cretin, if you think that just because I’ve befriended a naive Dunarran bookworm, I’m about to take up his scribbler’s ways!” he shouted after them.
But for some reason, those words rang hollow even in his own ears.