A Draw of Kings

12

UNDER THE SEA





AMOS TEK STOOD on the elevated foredeck of the Penance, his weathered sailor’s face wet and boyish, grinning each time his craft fell from a swell. “This is paradise, lad.”

Errol didn’t agree. The waves chopped in gray-green swirls in the temperamental winter weather, and the peaks and valleys of the sea weighted and floated his stomach by turns. The zingiber root took away enough of his nausea to keep him from throwing up, if just barely. Even so, he knew he wore the washed-out pallor of a sea traveler trying very hard not to be sick.

“You have a strange notion of it, Captain.” His words hit the air as a series of growls. If he relaxed the clench in his midsection enough to speak normally, he would puke.

Tek turned from his enraptured consideration of the sea to face him. “Ah, lad, you struggle against Deas’s creation.” He leaned forward to tap Errol’s forehead. “The problem be here, not here.” He touched his stomach.

Despite his doubt, Errol attempted to feign interest. The conversation kept him distracted. “How so?”

Tek laughed. “A ride on a ship is like a ride on a horse, or a run through hills. It’s not a floating house, it’s a horse made of wood and sail. You’re sick because you be fighting that in your mind, expecting stillness and solidity when you should be moving with her.” He pointed down the length of the ship. “Walk to the other end, lad. Embrace her.”

Errol let go of the rail, took a few steps before the boards beneath his feet slanted at an unexpected angle, and stumbled. Tek appeared at his shoulder to steady him. “Use your senses, lad. The wind and the waves will tell you how she’s going to move.”

Errol closed his eyes, felt the wind coming in from his left, from the east, heard the pop and snap of sailcloth in response to the gusts, felt the swell of the ocean and the ship’s responding tilt before she righted herself. In each case the ship responded a heartbeat afterward, a moment of time in which he could adjust.

“That’s it, lad,” Tek laughed. “Dance with her.”

Errol moved back and forth across the deck, his senses tuned to the rhythm of the wind and water. He came back, aware he’d been unconscious of his stomach. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that before?”

Tek threw his head back and laughed. “I lay trapped in port for years serving my penance before Deas allowed me to sail again. There in my cabin, I could do naught but think about the sea. Betimes I thought about why one person got sick and another didn’t.”

“Why were you a pirate?”

Tek’s face stilled until his sun-browned skin might have been part of the ship he commanded. “When someone goes to the shadow lands, lad, they tell their story a hundred times. A thousand. It be part of the law there. If anyone asks how you came to Haven, you have to answer.” The captain laughed. “And they make sure to ask you.”

Errol let his confusion show, and Tek clapped him on the shoulder.

“The people of the shadow lands have a keen ear, lad. They know the truth when they hear it. After I tried a few times to paint my deeds in better colors, I found the truth to be less uncomfortable than those cursed blank looks they gave my lies.”

He gave Errol a shrug. “The truth is, I loved the sea and hated service. I was willing to raid other ships so that I could live my way.”

They stuck to the coast, passing along the western shores of Gascony and Basquon until they were half a day north of the strait that separated Illustra from Merakh. There, Tek gave the order to heave to.

“Why are we stopping, Captain?” Errol asked.

“It be time for us to sail southwest and we need to fix the sail to quarter against the wind.”

“I don’t understand.”

Merodach stole up beside him. “The captain wants to make sure we avoid any contact with Merakhi longboats.”

Errol’s heart fluttered. “It’s still winter. They couldn’t be this close to the kingdom yet.”

Tek laughed as he fixed the wheel. “Never gamble your life on what your enemy is supposed to do, lad. The watch captain be right, but there be other reasons as well. The current into the mouth of the strait from the Western Ocean is quick and perilous. Sailors hereabouts call it the Wash. The entrance acts like a funnel, and the shores of Basquon are littered with the wreckage of the unwary.”


The thick canvas rippled against the lines as the Penance came about to quarter against the wind instead of sailing with it. Tek leaned against the rudder, and the ship slid sideways through the current heading southwest. The change in motion interfered with Errol’s newfound sense of stability. “How long before we clear the Wash, Captain?”

Tek looked at the sky. “The airs are light, lad. Probably two days at this rate.”

Merodach looked back to the east, his ice-blue eyes intent. “I think we should head due west, Captain.”

The captain snorted. “Landwalkers. We’d have to tack back and forth to do that, and we’d lose at least a day.”

Merodach pointed east, and Errol caught a different scent on the wind. “There’s a group of Merakhi longships out there, Captain. They haven’t seen us yet. We should try to keep it that way.”

Tek peered east, shaking his head. “Your eyes may be sharper than mine.” He looked up at the crow’s nest. “Eyes aloft! Give me a look east, Noddy.”

The man in the half-barrel, younger than Errol, held his hands to his forehead, shielding his eyes against the glare. “No sign, Captain.”

Tek shook his head, showed no inclination to change course. “My charge is to get the lad to Ongol and back before spring, Master Merodach. Impossible as it is, I’m going to give it my best. We’ll stay the course. The coastline be safer than the deep.”

Merodach’s normally impassive face registered his disagreement. Errol wasn’t the only one to notice. Rale, on the far side of the quarterdeck, eyed the blond-haired watchman, who paced and scanned west at intervals before confronting Tek again.

“They are there, Captain. Turn west.”

Tek snorted. “And how can a landwalker see something that a sailor in a crow’s nest cannot?”

With an almost audible click, the pieces in Errol’s mind to the puzzle that was Merodach came together. He stepped close to the silver-haired watchman and pulled a deep breath through his nose. “Are you sure?”

Merodach nodded.

Errol touched Tek’s shoulder to get his attention. “Captain, have Noddy check again, please.”

Tek sighed but voiced the order aloft. His eyebrows pinched when Noddy didn’t immediately reply.

“Possible masts to the east, Captain.”

“Possible? Curse your hide, Noddy. Do they be there or not?”

A thin face peered down from the perch. “They be points at the horizon. I can’t be sure.”

The sailor’s confirmation, however weak, decided matters. “Change course, Captain,” Errol said.

Tek shook his head, but the wheel spun in his hands. “I hope you know what you’re doing, lad. Ships don’t venture into the deep willingly.”

Errol turned to Merodach. “How long do we need to head west to keep from being seen?”

Merodach eyed him, his pale face impassive. “Half a day.”

“Make it so, Captain,” Errol said. “I have found Captain Merodach’s instincts to be flawless in the past.”

Tek muttered something salty under his breath. “You be in charge, Master Errol. Caution be wise.”

Merodach moved to stand alone at the starboard rail. Tek and his crew went about the task of changing the sail to suit their new heading. Errol walked on rolling feet to join the watch captain. Merodach acknowledged his presence with a nod but kept his gaze to the sea.

“You’re a reader,” Errol said.

Merodach’s expression might have been characterized as a grin had there been any humor in it. “What makes you think so?”

“The fact that you can see ships from the deck of a ship that a sailor in the crow’s nest can’t.”

Merodach shrugged. “I’ve always had uncommon vision.”

Errol nodded. “No doubt.”

The tall captain of the watch sighed. “What gave me away?”

Errol thought back. “You kept showing up at just the right time. At first I thought you’d been following me, making sure I was safe, but after Windridge there were times when I was in danger and you weren’t anywhere around. Luis said he couldn’t cast to see if I was alive while I recovered at Rale’s because I was so close to death. If you didn’t know I had survived, there was no way for you to follow me to Longhollow or know I’d signed on with Naaman Ru’s caravan.”

He turned to face Merodach head on, but the captain continued to watch the ocean. “But right as I was about to escape and Ru was going to kill me, you showed up to make sure I got away. How much wood did you go through to find me again?”

Merodach nodded. “Quite a bit. I thought I could keep you safe, but being a reader and a captain of the watch weren’t enough. In Valon, I was outmatched. You’re lucky to be here.”

Errol didn’t feel lucky—herded seemed a better description, like a cow to slaughter, or a sheep, maybe. “I don’t understand how you found me at all. How did you even know to look for me?”

Merodach’s mouth twitched, almost smiling. “The archbenefice and the primus are uncommonly wise men, Errol. When it became obvious Rodran would have no heir, they sent Martin and Luis to find the next king, but they didn’t stop there. When Illustra’s omnes were killed, the archbenefice had Primus Sten cast for the next one. Sten said it was a waste of time, since every boy in the kingdom gets tested at the age of fifteen for the reader’s talent and every one of those is tested for the ability to be an omne, but Canon is a man of great faith. He refused to believe that Deas would allow the kingdom to descend into chaos because we couldn’t confirm a cast.”

“So . . . they knew about me, that I was an omne?” He reached out to steady his stance as the ship bucked. “But the primus seemed so surprised when Luis told him what I was.”

Merodach smiled. “You showed up early. Strange, isn’t it, that the search for a king and an omne should end up in the same little village at the same time.” He gave Errol a penetrating look. “Too strange.”

A warning like a trickle of ice water ran down his back. “What are you trying to say?”

“No one knows who is supposed to be the next king, Errol. No one. It might be you.”

He shook his head against the temptation behind Merodach’s words. He ached for Adora with an intensity that twisted his guts and made him yearn for life. “The herbwomen said someone has to die. Liam will live. He will be a king for the ages.”

Merodach’s light-blue eyes weighed him. “Why are you so afraid to hope?”

Errol left the rail of the ship, answering over his shoulder as he walked toward the stairs leading to his cabin and the staff he’d left there. “Because there’s so much to lose.”

He spent the rest of the day on the deck, working the forms, trying to ward off the impossible longing Merodach had placed in his heart. When he fell into bed hours later, sleep took him as soon as he closed his eyes.



He woke to the sound of screaming. Hollow thumping on the deck above punctuated the high-pitched wails of dying women. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog of sleep and confusion. There were no women on the ship. He rolled to the floor and took the stairs two at a time as sailors and guards swarmed out of the quarters with him, scrambling for weapons.

The rising sun lit the port side of the ship in warm yellow light, illuminating the backs of men holding pikes arrayed along the starboard side. A scream jerked his gaze aft to see spray flying from a shape out of a nightmare. Light flashed from fangs as a sailor swung his pike to strike. The monster twisted in midair to avoid the slash, and cruel teeth clamped onto the seaman’s forearm. The thing dragged him screaming overboard. The water frothed red as other monsters gathered to share the kill.


Tek’s voice cut across the bedlam. “Get back from the rail! They be clumsy out of the water.”

Sailors and watchmen backed away, closing ranks. Errol slid his hands along the metal staff, searching for the point where it balanced in his grip as he watched the rail. The screams abated. Then without warning a monster flew over the rail, shedding a halo of mist to land in front of Errol. From the neck down it looked almost like a sea lion, though longer and narrower through the body with flippers that ended in glinting talons.

It looked at him.

Monster? What had he been thinking? The creature in front of him defied description—not human, surely not with that body, but its delicate face and luminous eyes spoke of intelligence.

Tek’s voice registered in the background of his thoughts, but he couldn’t make out the captain’s words. The creature came toward him, the woman’s face, narrow but strangely beautiful, delving, knowing him. Teeth bared, its scream like the sound of breaking glass, it lunged.

And stopped, pinned to the deck by a crossbow bolt. Merodach leapt forward, his sword striking the creature’s heart. The thing took a long time to die, thrashing against the deck, trying to free itself.

A scream jerked him from his fascination. A creature had a sailor down. Despite the sword blows, it gnawed its way up the sailor’s leg, ignoring his screams and struggles, until he stilled. Rale, brandishing a heavy cutlass, chopped through the tough neck of the monster.

“Throw the bodies of those things overboard,” Tek yelled. “They’ll not attack if they know they’re going to die.”

Two splashes hit the water, and the screaming of the creatures faded to stern. Tek turned the tiller over to the first mate and descended the quarterdeck to the waist of the ship. He barked an order toward the crow’s nest. “Noddy, keep a watch for froth.”

Gorge filled Errol’s throat as he surveyed the carnage. “What are those things?”

Tek didn’t answer, calling to a pair of hands instead. “Kagan, Weld, wrap Millon’s body for burial. We’ll lay him to rest as soon as I’m sure we’re clear of the tiamat.”

Errol had never heard the word before. “It looked . . .”

Tek sighed. “Yes, lad. It looked like a woman. That’s what make the tiamat so dangerous. They can spin and dodge a sword stroke and haul a man to his death or they can land on the deck and freeze you with a look until they rip through your guts with those teeth.”

Rale nodded. “You seem to know a lot about these things, Captain.”

Tek took no offense. “Aye. Only a pirate, or a reformed pirate, would know what lurks in these waters. Why do you think kingdom ships stick close to the shore? Magis’s barrier extends out into the ocean for a ways, it does, but outside the circle of that protection, there are dangers in the sea.”

A knot of revulsion formed in Errol’s chest. “Ferrals.”

Tek nodded. “Aye. The tiamat be an ancient corruption of the malus.” He scratched his head. “Of course, I never took the opportunity to ask a churchman. They might disagree with me.”

“I doubt it,” Rale said. “Will they attack again?”

Tek shrugged. “This time be different. The last time I sailed toward Ongol we didn’t encounter tiamat until we were on the south side of the Wash. They be much closer to Illustra than before.”

Errol understood. Rodran had died. The corrupted things on the earth and in the sea were creeping closer to Illustra, testing. How long would it be until the foul offspring of the malus realized the barrier was gone?

“Do they always scream before they attack?” Rale asked.

Tek shrugged. “I can’t say always, but the two times I’ve sailed these waters, they have.”

“Let’s hope so,” Rale said. “Otherwise you’re going to have a difficult time manning your ship, Captain.”

Tek lowered his voice. “That be why I brought extra crew and supplies. The monsters and the sea took half my men the last time I came here. I be hoping to lose less this time, but the ocean and its inhabitants be hard to tame, they do.”

Rale gave Tek a hard look. “Is this why you confessed to a nuntius before we left, Captain?”

Tek nodded. “Things be in Deas’s hand, they do, but we be swimming with the sharks now, and worse, make no mistake. I wanted Brandy to know I loved her as much as I loved the sea.”

The plainspoken finality in Tek’s voice opened a hole in Errol’s middle.

Rale brushed the captain’s admission aside. “I’ve spent a lifetime learning to judge the truth behind a man’s words, Captain Tek. The tiamat aren’t the worst of it, are they?”

Tek lowered his voice as he shook his head. “No. By the seas they are not.”

With a grumble, Tek left the tiller in the hands of the first mate and waved Errol and his captains to the lower deck and into his cabin. There they circled around a broad weathered table darkened with age and cluttered with maps and charts. Symbols and abbreviated inscriptions Errol couldn’t identify etched the parchments, and he fought the urge to take up a map and stare at it as if his reader’s talent could provide him with some interpretation.

Tek ignored the chair behind him, and the rest stood as well. Each man wore his tension in his posture, as if they might come to blows in an instant, but none seemed as taut as Rale. “I’d like to know why you saw fit to withhold this information from us until now, Captain.”

Tek, shorter than Rale by well over a hand, drew up. “Because I be captain, chosen by lot, and while we be on the water the mission be in my charge, watchmen or no.” He pointed at each of them. “Unless any of you think to guide us through these waters.”

Rale appeared to consider the idea, but at his silence Tek continued. “The last time I be in these waters, the sea spawn took a third of my men. I’d heard tales of the creatures, but the reality of them took us by surprise. Still, we passed through.”

The horror of the tiamat filled Errol’s mind. “Why would you ever brave this place after having heard the tales?”

Tek’s sea-green eyes caught Errol’s, and the captain’s laugh sounded like waves breaking on shore. “The rarest spices in the world don’t come from Merakh, lad. The people of the river want the world to think that, but they come from Ongol. The captain that finds a direct route to their land at the end of the world will be a rich man indeed.”

He sighed, but the smile on his face never wavered. “In those days I wanted wealth above all else. Piracy or trade was all the same before the king’s ships finally caught me and sent me to Haven.”

“You should have been hanged,” Merodach said.

Tek laughed. “Probably, but they did a rare thing at my trial. They cast lots to determine my punishment.” He shrugged. “Deas spared me, and the cast banished me. Then I found a different way.”

Rale’s voice cut across Tek’s, like a cloud obscuring the sun. “If the tiamat didn’t stop you, Captain, what did?”

Tek’s smile fled. “The maelstrom.”

The captain pronounced the word on the tip of his tongue, giving it a Soeden sound. Merodach was the only one of them who appeared to understand and nodded. Rale caught the gesture.

“Explain,” Rale commanded.

“There are areas in the gulf between Soeden and Frataland where the channel narrows,” Merodach said. “The tides collide with the snows’ runoff from the mountains, creating whirlpools. Each year, they catch some fishermen unaware.” He looked at Tek. “But those are hardly more than rowboats.”


Tek puffed. “Aye. Well, there’s a maelstrom ahead where an island off the coast of Merakh narrows the sea down to a channel, and it nearly took my ship.”

Rale shook his head. “Why not just sail around the island and avoid it altogether?”

The sea captain’s eyes widened. “Do you not think I tried? There are worse things in the deep than the tiamat. Imagine a whale corrupted by the malus, man. No ship can withstand that. No, I will not chance that deep again.”

“Then how do we get through?” Errol asked.

Tek paced his quarters. “I spent ten years in Haven considering that maelstrom, lad.” He reached up to brush his hands across a thick beam. “I built this ship with the whirlpool in mind. She’s two spans narrower across the beam, and her masts can hold more sail. The wind off the maelstrom will carry her through . . . I think.”

Errol’s stomach churned at the thought. “When will we get there?”

Tek laughed as if he hadn’t told them they might all die aboard his ship. “Ye’ll have no worry about advance notice, lad. The maelstrom be as loud as an avalanche. You can hear it two leagues away.”

Errol thought he might throw up then and there.



He awoke one morning two weeks later, sweating in the summer of the southern continent and groggy from sleep haunted by the clash of armies. As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and the ache from his temples, he realized the tumult of his dreams still pervaded his hearing like an omen of conflict. When he went on deck he discovered a small crowd at the forward rail, looking off in the distance.

Tek greeted him with a wave and a smile. Errol found the captain’s enjoyment of perilous situations unnerving. Though he liked Tek, he would have preferred a seaman who exhibited more caution.

The roar grew by the minute, though the maelstrom remained beyond their vision. How could anything be so loud? He looked over the rail, but all he could see were the distant mountains of coastal Merakh and the island just west.

“You won’t be able to see anything for a few hours yet, lad,” Tek said. “We’re still too far away, unless you want to go aloft.”

Errol’s stomach inched upward toward his throat at the offer. Tek nudged him and placed two small balls of waxed wool in his hand. “When we get nearer the whirlpool, you’ll want to use these, lad, unless you want to come through the other side deaf as an anvil.”

“Will we come through, Captain?”

Tek’s perpetual squint lessened, and his jaw worked from side to side. “You be the only one to ask me, lad. I think we will, but I be a liar if I promised it, and Deas himself knows what we may run into on the far side. From here on I be no more experienced than the greenest deckhand.”

Errol glanced aloft, saw a pair of sailors in the rigging, adding sail. “How will you pass orders to your crew?”

“You be thinking. That’s good. We’ve worked out hand signals, though the most important command has been given. The maelstrom raises a powerful wind. It should be enough to pull us through and out the other side before the whirlpool sucks us down.”

The ship seemed to lurch under his feet. “Should be?”

Tek laughed, his eyes alight. “The sea is a fickle mistress, lad.”

The roar grew throughout the day. By noon Errol was forced to squeeze the sticky wads of cloth into his ears. Swells rocked the ship with a nauseous rhythm no amount of zingiber root could alleviate. Errol looked over the aft rail, squinting in surprise. Rings of waves like ripples in a pond stood in the water. The impossibility of what he saw drove him to rub his eyes, but the standing waves remained.

He could see the maelstrom now, a giant whirlpool with a heart of black descending below the surface. Mist and wind lashed the ship as Tek took the rudder and aimed for the heart of destruction.

Tek had gone mad. He must have. The captain’s unnatural thirst for danger had finally driven him to insanity. Errol moved with the pitch and roll of the ship to claw his way aft toward the wheel. Wind whipped Tek’s hair about his face, and he roared with maniacal laughter. Errol slithered along the deck as the ship raced toward doom.

He reached the captain just as a sickening jolt threw the ship sideways with the creak of timber and fittings stressed to the breaking point. Tek threw the wheel over, his arms straining to change course. His mouth chewed curses Errol couldn’t hear as the wheel pulled back to its previous heading.

Taking the ship back toward the whirlpool.

Errol gathered his feet underneath him and made a sliding dive for Tek and the wheel. He used the wheel’s handholds to pull himself to his feet, struggling with the ship’s captain to force the ship to a new course. Slowly it moved, taking them away from the vortex.

Too slowly.

Hands covered his and Tek’s. He blinked away salt water to see Rale and Merodach straining to help, necks cording with effort.

Groaning with protest, the ship found its course and rocketed away from the maelstrom and out into eddies. Wind filled the sails, and the water gradually smoothed. Errol flopped on the deck and rubbed his aching arms. Water dripped from his hair into his eyes.

Sometime later, when the roar had died enough to permit conversation of a sort, Tek turned the wheel over to the first mate and took a seat beside Errol. “You have the makings of a sailor, lad, despite your tender stomach. You were the first to realize I needed help with the wheel. With the time you bought, we were able to hold until your friends could help force the ship to its proper path.”

Weak laughter shook Errol, threatened to pitch him into hysterics. “I thought you’d gone mad. Until the ship pitched I thought you were trying to kill us. I meant to take the wheel from you, not help you.”

Tek’s laughter drifted up to fill the sails. “It would have been a glorious end, lad, but I be wanting to see my Brandy again if I can.”