* * *
The seventh day after they entered the Sea of Dread, a long low vessel came storming out of the west to intercept them. The Crimson Guard led the convoy of twelve in their captured local raider ship, which Captain Ghelath insisted on rechristening Mael’s Forbearance.
The strange vessel was long and sleek, and moved with extraordinary speed – all the more astonishingly as she showed no sail nor sweeps. Like a shot arrow, it darted straight for the Forbearance and pulled up alongside, slowing to match the ponderous pace of the sweeps that pulled the Forbearance along, as there was no wind to speak of.
A lone figure straightened from the deck. It was a thin old man, mostly bald, wrapped in a ragged cloak. ‘Permission to come aboard,’ he called up in a reedy voice.
Gwynn, next to Shimmer, muttered: ‘That vessel is soaked in magery.’
‘Raise your Warren,’ she answered, and signed likewise to Petal and Blues.
A rope ladder was lowered. The foreign vessel manoeuvred alongside. The old man climbed aboard – quite vigorously for such an ancient. K’azz came forward to meet him. The fellow scanned the deck with eyes tiny and dark, like deep wells.
‘What can we do for you?’ K’azz asked.
‘You can surrender this vessel and all those behind to us.’
‘I’m sorry …’ K’azz began.
The old man snapped up a wizened hand. ‘Do not argue. And do not resist. We will destroy—’ The fellow stopped himself, his gaze narrowing. He murmured, ‘Wait a moment …’
Someone very big and sturdy brushed past Shimmer: Bars pushing his way forward. ‘Just a minute,’ he called.
The two met at mid-deck. The old man’s gaze widened and he gaped; Bars rocked back, pointing. ‘You!’ the old man growled.
‘It’s them!’ Bars called. ‘The Sharrs of Exile Keep!’
Snarling, the old man spun sending his cloak flying across to enmesh Bars who went down in its smothering folds. Beneath, bands and belts wrapped the old fellow from head to foot, all holding short blades that shone like polished silver. He threw his arms out and every one of the blades, an entire forest of them, flew from their many sheaths.
The blades scattered over the deck. Shimmer staggered at a blow to her chest, then threw herself flat as several glinting shards flew for her face. She heard the slivers punch into someone near, and his answering grunt as he fell: Sept, thrust through the throat. Multiple impacts now sounded as Black the Elder closed on the man behind his shield – the blades thudding home. But, the slivers of metal flew like birds, and many swung round to strike Black from the rear, hammering into him so hard they disappeared fully into his back. He fell as well.
She glimpsed Gwynn lying against the side, a hand pressed to one eye, blood coursing between the fingers.
A thrown rope took the mage round his neck and yanked him viciously from his feet, but the spinning blades flew and severed the rope. A new figure appeared at the bow: a young man wielding lengths of slim chain in each hand. These he lashed about, clearing the space round him. The tearing of cloth revealed Bars freeing himself. K’azz and others were closing on the old man, all crawling forward.
With another snarl, the Sharr mage jumped over the side. Shimmer leapt to the rail; saw him on his own vessel. A panicked yell snapped her attention to the bow: Blues was closing upon the youth, the chains now wrapped about his twinned fighting sticks. Bars lunged in, blade overhead, for a ferocious swipe that hacked through the lad’s shoulder, collarbone and ribs and stuck in the spine. A kick sent the body over the side. As one, like a flock, all the flying shards converged upon Bars. Rather coolly, he simply rolled over the rail to follow the lad into the sea below.
At that instant Reed, Cole and Amatt all bounded past Shimmer to throw themselves after the mage. K’azz and she yelled simultaneously, ‘No!’ But all three thumped to the strange vessel’s deck, rolling, and came up, blades readied.
K’azz joined Shimmer at the rail. ‘Get off there!’ he yelled.
Chains, Shimmer noted, lay all about the decking. The old man laughed and gestured, and the chains snaked to life. They lashed their fat links about the three Avowed, then tumbled over the side in huge splashes. She caught one last glimpse of Cole before he disappeared, and she wasn’t certain, but she thought the man flashed her one last typical roguish smile, as if to say: well … had to happen sometime. She had one boot up on the rail when a firm hand on her shoulder urged her back down – K’azz.
A sudden blur of motion next to the Exile mage, and the fellow fell stiffly to the deck. Or rather, most of him did: Cowl stood holding his severed head. The last links of chain slithered off the deck to sink into the water, and all was quiet.
Shimmer stood staring at the waves where moments before three good friends had disappeared. She shook her head in horror and disbelief.
‘By the gods …’ someone murmured, in awe.
She rubbed her chest where one of the flying slivers had rebounded from her mail armour. K’azz was staring at her, a strange expression on his face. She frowned at him, distracted.
A call sounded from the water below: ‘Hello? Some help here?’
Everyone dashed to the side. Bars was splashing about. Ropes were thrown and soon the man was up over the side, dripping water to the deck. Shimmer embraced him, but he did not share her pleasure. ‘How many?’ he asked K’azz.
Their commander opened his mouth to answer, but stopped himself. He looked to Shimmer. ‘How many?’
She scanned the deck: Gwynn, she saw, now stood, a cloth tied over one eye. ‘Five, I believe,’ she answered. ‘Black the Elder, Sept, Cole, Amatt, and Reed.’
K’azz, she noted, had not taken his eyes from her the entire time. The man was obviously in anguish: the flesh of his face was drawn so tight as to seem parchment. ‘Yes … five,’ he managed, his voice breaking. ‘I’m sorry … Shimmer.’
She nodded. ‘As am I.’ She gestured to the Exile vessel drifting alongside. ‘Take that ship under tow.’
‘No!’
She turned. Gwynn approached. He had a hand pressed to his ravaged socket. ‘It’s cursed. Burn it.’
She shrugged. ‘If you insist.’ Her gaze fell to the still figures of Sept and Black the Elder prone upon the blood-soaked deck.
‘And them?’ Gwynn asked.
She sighed, rubbing her chest. ‘Burial at sea, Gwynn.’
He inclined his head in agreement. ‘Very well.’
She turned away, only to nearly run into Cowl standing behind her. ‘What?’ she snarled, in no mood for the man’s games.
Fresh slashes and gouges marked where many of the shards had struck the High Mage. His crooked smile appeared even more manic than usual. ‘Nothing.’ He turned away, brows raised. ‘Nothing at all.’
She frowned her irritation. Lunatic.
Bars came to her side. Water still dripped from him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, his gaze lowered. ‘I tried to warn you.’
She wanted to embrace him – I could have lost you! – but held his shoulder instead. ‘It’s all right. Now we know why Cal-Brinn chose to break off.’
He took her hand. His was so icy cold she almost yanked hers free. ‘If only …’ he began.
‘If only we were somewhere else,’ she finished. ‘Someone else.’
His answering smile was a half grimace. ‘Yes … if only.’
They held a short ceremony for Sept and Black, then slid the weighted bodies over the side. May Mael embrace them, Shimmer prayed. The short invocation reminded her of her earlier prayer to Burn, the ancient goddess, to guide them through these dangers. It seemed her prayer was going unanswered.
After this, she found she was spending almost all her time on deck, staring at the unnaturally smooth surface of the Dread Sea. It was all too familiar: the sliding water, the seeming spell of timelessness. Far too familiar.
The fourth night after the attack, she decided she’d seen enough. It was too much like a land half the world away. A land named Jacuruku. ‘Gwynn,’ she murmured into the dark, though it was after the mid-night bell and the deck was deserted.
A moment later he appeared. He wore a leather patch now; he’d lost his right eye.
‘Yes?’
That was all. No What? or sleepy resentment at being disturbed. No, he knew she wouldn’t call unless there was a reason. She extended a hand to the water. ‘Look familiar?’
The mage’s remaining eye narrowed on the barely undulating milky surface. He let go a tired sigh. ‘I see your point.’ He’d been a long time in Jacuruku.
‘Get on it.’
He bowed, and returned below. Shimmer returned to studying the waves where they glimmered, reflecting the stars above.
Three days later, three mages came to see her. She was again at the rail of the ‘liberated’ pirate vessel. Something told her she was not alone; that, in fact, she was the object of a great deal of regard, and she turned. The Guard’s mages faced her: Gwynn, as sour as ever; Petal, looking uncharacteristically concerned; and even Blues, ostensibly second-in-command, but a company mage as well.
Now that they had her attention, Blues waved a hand to indicate those self-same waves. ‘Casts quite the spell, don’t it?’
Shimmer flicked her gaze to Petal, who nodded, his thick neck bulging.
‘Can you do anything about it?’ she asked.
Blues tapped one of his fighting sticks to his chin – Shimmer hadn’t noticed them slipping into his hands. ‘Petal here is of the opinion that maybe we can. But it’ll take all three of us working together.’
Shimmer was surprised. What could possibly be so potent? ‘Why all of you?’
Blues looked to Petal. The big mage actually blushed. He lowered his gaze to study his hands where they clasped his stomach. ‘It’s not just another Warren, Shimmer. This is a Realm. Jaghut magics. Omtose Phellack. And we’re not welcome.’
‘If you need power then bring in our vaunted High Mage.’
Petal shrugged his humped shoulders. ‘He said his participation would only make things more difficult.’
Difficult bastard. Typical. ‘So? What’s stopping you?’
The three exchanged uncomfortable glances. Blues finally supplied, ‘Could be fatal.’
Fatal? To all? ‘I see. So … should we risk all our mages …’
Blues gave a curt nod. ‘Right. So I’ll do it.’
Gwynn snorted. ‘Idiotic.’
‘It would make most sense,’ Petal stammered, ‘if it was me … don’t you think?’
Shimmer had had enough of this. She brushed past all three. ‘Won’t be any of you.’ Difficult, my arse! Trying to duck a dangerous job!
She stamped her way across the mid-deck, scanned the stern, saw no hint of the fellow. ‘Cowl! Come out from under your rock! We need to have a chat!’
‘Yes?’ The answer was gentle, unforced, and directly to her rear. She turned round slowly. The man stood uncomfortably close. In kissing range, in fact. His eager, avid gaze seemed to be daring her to act: either embrace him, or knife him.
She forced herself not to flinch, began calmly, ‘I understand that attempting to ease us through Omtose Phellack could kill the mage who tried.’
‘True.’
‘Then shouldn’t you be the one to make the attempt – High Mage?’
His habitual mad mocking smile climbed even higher, as it always seemed to whenever they spoke. He shook his head in a negative. ‘Oh, it would be worse if I tried. Much worse.’
‘Why?’
The man fairly hugged himself in his glee. ‘You’ll see …’
She raised a hand to cuff the man across his face, thought better of it, and stormed off. Fool! Where’s – ah, there he is. She marched up to K’azz at the bow.
‘K’azz! Your pet is becoming more and more obnoxious.’
‘Shared a frank exchange of views, did you?’
‘I’d like to share my sword.’
‘He is still High Mage, Shimmer.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Take his word for it.’
She almost flinched. There it was – the lingering ghost of the old chain of command. Was she able to give orders or not? Damn the way the past just wouldn’t go away! She turned on her heel and left the man standing alone.
She returned to the gathered company mages. Her gaze found Petal and rested there. ‘You said it should be you – why?’
The huge man seemed to shrink under her stony regard. ‘Well,’ he began, stammering, ‘Blues’ D’riss is not appropriate to this. Nor is Serc. Nor Shadow.’ He pressed his hands together and touched them to his chin. ‘I believe my insights into the Mockra Warren – the magics of the mind and perception – should guide us best.’
Shimmer nodded. ‘Very well. You have the task.’ The fellow blinked, quite surprised by his success. ‘Blues, Gwynn, give him any aid necessary.’
The mages murmured their assent and the three went off, already arguing and sharing opinions on the coming job.
Shimmer crossed her arms and returned to staring out over the water. Familiar. Hood-blasted familiar. Like Ardata. But not as heavy-handed or powerful. More subtle. More … insinuating.
Days passed. Eleven vessels followed their lead, including the Lether ships of that ruthless merchant general, Luthal Canar. Eleven now, as one morning the sun rose to reveal that one of their number had simply gone missing overnight. No further losses appeared after that. The ship immediately following theirs, the Mare galley, the Lady’s Luck, kept close, and the others followed them.
One day Blues joined her at the rail where she was studying the unchanging heavy cover of fog. ‘How is Petal doing?’ she asked.
‘Holding up.’ He glanced back to where the mage sat cross-legged on the deck, wrapped in blankets. He let out a hard breath. ‘I gather from his muttering that what he’s facing – Omtose Phellack unveiled – is fading even as he wrestles with it. Unravelling like rotten cloth. Probably be impossible to push through, otherwise.’
‘Good. Maybe we’ll make it through this without any further losses.’
They stood together in silence after that. The sun sank to a dim reddish smear close to the horizon. She remarked, ‘The Brethren have been silent of late.’
‘Petal says the Jaghut magic is holding them off.’
Shimmer grunted her acceptance. The night darkened. The unvarying haze of the Sea of Dread thickened to an impenetrable blanket that blinded her.
With the sounding of the mid-night bell, Blues remarked, ‘There were ex-Stormguard on that Mare vessel. The men who used to fight the Riders of the Strait of Storms. They’ll be useful in a dust-up.’
She nodded at this information. Yet she wished to say so much more; to thank the man for his support, for his extraordinary lack of jealousy that would have driven others to undermine her position; for frankly just being him all these years. But something stopped her, something intervened and closed her mouth like a clenching fist, and she wondered: was it the clichéd isolation of command? The weight she’d heard described so often? Ridiculous. Yet there it was. Something had driven itself between her and all the others of the Guard. Something she hadn’t felt before.
But she said nothing of this. She remained silent. She was no longer the one to give explanations; she gave orders now. And a voice within her remarked, scornfully: how like K’azz!
Days later – Shimmer had no idea how many, and felt no impulse to ask – the banks of fog that choked the Sea of Dread parted before their bow, revealing a rugged rocky coast, forested hills beyond, and distant jagged snow-peaked mountains.
Shimmer went to find K’azz. He was at the stern, hands clasped behind his back. ‘We’re through,’ she reported.
For some time he did not answer, then his eyes fluttered, blinking, and his head turned to her. It was as if he was surfacing from some deep dive, such as his undersea walk at the Isle of Pillars. He nodded. ‘Good.’ He gestured to the line of vessels emerging from the fog-banks behind them. ‘Nine now. Lost two more.’
‘When?’
He shrugged. ‘Some time ago.’
‘An attack?’
He shook his head; his iron-grey hair, she noted, was thinning even more. ‘No. No attacks. I understand that here, on the Dread Sea, crews just give up. Or disappear. Vessels lose headway, then coast, and finally lie adrift, empty. Abandoned. A sea of ghost ships.’
‘We made it through.’
He nodded again, the muscles of his jaws bunched in stark contrast beneath his parchment-like skin. ‘How is he?’
She jumped, flinching. Petal! She ran to where the man sat close to the side rudder and knelt before him. His head hung so low she couldn’t see his face. ‘Petal? Hello? Are you with us?’
The blankets heaped about the man stirred. The head shook, as if its owner were waking, then rose. Sweat sheathed the pale rounded cheeks, dripped from the chin. He peered about, puzzled, as if he’d forgotten everything, then his gaze found her face and fixed there and he smiled, rather self-consciously. ‘Thirsty,’ he croaked.
She straightened. ‘Water here! A drink!’
One of Ghelath’s crewmen ran up with a skin of water. Petal just blinked at the thing. Shimmer snatched it away, unstoppered it, and held the spout to his lips, squeezing gently. Water poured down his chin but he managed to swallow some few gulps. He nodded his thanks.
Only now did Shimmer realize how neglectful they had been. Who had taken care of him? Gods, how could they have been so … forgetful? But no, Blues, surely … With Petal awake, Blues was here with her now, along with Gwynn.
‘Did you check on him?’ she demanded.
Blues blinked his surprise. ‘Well … no. I thought …’ and he gestured vaguely, as if to indicate the ship’s company in general.
Shimmer gazed down at the mage as he stirred. He wanted to stand, and so they helped him to his feet. The blankets fell from him and steam rose into the air from his sweat-soaked robes, as if he smouldered with heat. How many days, weeks, had it been, she wondered. Or had it only been a few? In any case, how could he have survived? It was inhuman.
She studied the fellow as he weaved on his feet. He looked to have lost a full two stone.
They passed a number of bare rocky headlands, a few yet sheathed in scabrous ice, then came to where the coast flattened and here they found the shore littered with the broken husks of ships.
Blues pointed a stick ahead, where cliffs rose; there stood a keep, a heap of rock exactly the same slate-grey hue as the surrounding cliffs. The land before it lay checkered in fields in various degrees of care and cultivation. A bedraggled clutch of wooden huts hugged the shore.
A rain that had fallen on and off through the day started in earnest. It pushed down the smoke climbing from holes in the shack roofs. Though Shimmer had longed for land, it was a dour and depressing sight.
‘We should go ashore first,’ said K’azz from beside her and she started, surprised; she hadn’t sensed his presence.
‘Of course.’
The landing party consisted of her, K’azz, Blues, Gwynn, and Keel. She was startled to see K’azz actually carrying a sword – a hand and a half. He caught her gaze and said, explaining, ‘Cole’s.’
The losses still burned in her chest, and she nodded. ‘I’m sorry, K’azz.
‘As am I, Shimmer. As am I.’
A launch took them to shore. They tramped up the wet sand then climbed a ratty set of stairs built of timbers taken from stricken vessels. The huts were likewise constructed from ships’ timbers. But so much wood was in evidence, Shimmer began to suspect deliberate wrecking. The shacks were roofed with sod, bundled grasses, or wooden shakes. What few men and women they met turned away, or stopped in stony silence to watch them pass. One woman, her rags gathered about her, murmured, ‘Run while you can,’ and hurried off herself.
Shimmer looked to K’azz, quite uneasy. He motioned her on to the stone fortress. Blues, she noted, had drawn his sticks. These he tossed and spun as they went, and she knew this was his habit when nervous. Keel walked with his enormous rectangular shield readied on his arm.
They found the wide wooden door open upon its heavy iron hinges. The hall within was flagged with broad cut stones, yet littered with wind-blown leaves and twigs as if from long neglect, and thick with tramped-in mud. The entrance hall led to a much larger reception hall. It was very dark after the outdoors. The only light streamed in from the open doorway behind them, or from thin slit openings high up the walls. Here a woman awaited them. She sat in a wooden chair also constructed from battered ship’s planking, and wore a flowing white dress that hung down to spread in long reaching lengths all about the floor. Her hair was similarly snow-white and extraordinarily long – it appeared to even reach the stone floor around her. The proud way she sat in the chair of faded old timbers made it clear to Shimmer that she regarded it as a throne.
K’azz stepped forward and bowed in a courtly manner, as when he had dealt with the prickly Quon kings and nobles long ago. ‘Greetings,’ he murmured, his head lowered. ‘I am K’azz, commander of the mercenary company the Crimson Guard. With me are members of my troop: Shimmer, Blues, Gwynn, and Keel.’
The woman favoured them with a hard glare; she did not respond to K’azz’s greeting. ‘A mercenary company,’ she said, musing. ‘An army – of sorts.’ Her glare narrowed. ‘Are you the enemy I was warned to expect?’
K’azz turned round to examine each of them. Gwynn stood leaning upon his staff. He adjusted the leather patch over his eye, frowned his confusion. Shimmer was completely mystified and shook her head. K’azz turned back to the woman. ‘I do not believe we are …’
‘Mist,’ the woman supplied. ‘You may call me Mist. Normally, here I would also say that I am your queen as well. But there is something about you …’ She turned her head as if to regard them first through one eye, then the other. ‘Something about you I do not like. Therefore, while I would usually give you until tomorrow to lay down your weapons, you I will ask to depart – immediately. Or you will be executed.’
K’azz appeared to rub his chin. ‘Executed? Then we are your prisoners?’
Mist shook her head. ‘No. Not prisoners. Trespassers. Meddlers. Troublemakers here among my peaceful farming community.’
‘Perhaps we may be permitted to purchase a few small parcels of food – kegs of potable water? We must travel north, as we have business there.’
The woman’s features hardened even more. ‘The north does not want your business. But I see that you are not to be convinced. You are armed and experienced fighters – perhaps you think you can win your way through by strength of arms.’ She snapped her fingers, motioned curtly to one side.
Heavy steps sounded from the darkness behind the woman’s throne. Two gigantic shapes emerged. Twins they seemed, two giants. They resembled those of the race of Jaghut Shimmer had seen over the years, but differed in the coarseness of their features: enormous jutting tusks; thick shelves of brow ridges entirely shadowing the orbs of their eyes; massed thick manes of hair that tumbled about their shoulders. One wore a long coat of scaled bronze, and carried a two-headed axe thrust through a wide belt. The weapon was fully as tall as Shimmer herself. The other wore a similar set of shell-like scaled armour, but of iron. This one carried a massive two-handed sword taller from tip to pommel than Keel’s full height.
Both set their shovel-like hands to their belts and grinned to expose uneven teeth; both obviously enjoyed the reactions their appearance evoked.
Shimmer heard Gwynn’s breath leave him in one long hiss of revulsion. She cast him a questioning look. He whispered low, ‘Twisted, these two – in the womb.’
She could not help her hand climbing to where the grip of her whipsword rose over one shoulder. Gwynn shook a negative, inclined his head to the gloom of the chamber. Shimmer squinted. At first she saw nothing, but slowly details emerged. She had thought the ragged scarf-ends of this sorceress’s dress and hair ended in the small circle of light she could make out, but in fact they did not. They stretched on across the full breadth and length of the hall. Then she realized something even more remarkable: they were moving. The tatters and ribbons writhed and twitched – and they surrounded them.
Like cats’ tails, she thought to herself. Lashing. And we are the mice.
‘May I introduce my sons,’ Mist said, sounding quite proud. She extended a hand to her left. ‘Anger,’ and she indicated to her right, ‘Wrath.’
‘Impressive,’ K’azz allowed, and nodded his greeting to each. Their low rumbled amusement sounded like rocks shifting. ‘We will leave you, then, to your peaceful farming community,’ and he bowed again, motioning for Blues and Gwynn to back away.
‘Go then,’ Mist called as they retreated. ‘You I do not like. But the others … the many vessels dropping anchor even as we speak … they may stay.’
Shimmer could not help but shoot K’azz an anxious look. He waved her on. Outside, the commander motioned for a hurried retreat to the shore. ‘Why did she let us go?’ she demanded.
‘We are an unknown. She senses there is more to us.’
‘Such as what?’ she snapped.
He would not meet her gaze. ‘The Vow, I imagine.’
They found that a thick ground fog had arisen while they were inside. Shimmer did not imagine it coincidental. The meandering streamers of fog reminded her too much of Mist’s lashing white dress. In fact, she began to wonder whether they were in very great trouble; certainly K’azz seemed to think so as he hurried them along.
‘Get to the ships,’ he told them as they jogged. ‘Warn them off. None should put in.’
She gave a quick nod and ran for the nearest launch already ashore. These sailors she warned away. The next lot she found by nearly running into their boat in the dense soup-like miasma. They were clinging to the boat’s side as if afraid they’d sink in the fog and she recognized them as sailors of the Mare galley, the one with the pilot K’azz said knew most about these waters.
‘Put out,’ she told them. ‘It’s a trap. A sorceress is here.’
‘Mist?’ A youth spoke up, standing from within the boat.
‘Yes. She calls herself Mist.’
‘We must leave,’ the youth said to another sailor, presumably his superior. ‘The Fortress Mist and its witch. It’s mentioned in some few accounts. She enslaves all those who land.’
The officer grimaced his scepticism. ‘We need water, Storval,’ another said.
‘Shut up,’ the officer growled. ‘Let me think.’ He eyed Shimmer. ‘Couldn’t we find a—’
A scream sounded from the distance. Its source was utterly obscured by the layers of dense fog surrounding them. It bespoke chilling terror, and was all the more horrible for being cut off in a gurgle, as if the man had fallen from a gallows.
‘Push off now!’ Shimmer commanded, and ran into the fog. She headed for where she thought she’d glimpsed another longboat. Her feet splashed through the waves and sand hissed beneath her boots, but for all that it was as if she waded through a sea of blanketing soup.
She doubled over as she ran into the next boat, nearly falling in. ‘Push off!’ she gasped.
None of the sailors within answered. Nor would they again. They lay sprawled, contorted, hands at throats, their features swollen and purple, although paling now. Scarves of thick fog drifted from their necks even as she watched. She threw herself from the boat, scanned the coursing banners of mist. Damn it to Hood! They were turning round. Where was their boat?
She ran on along the strand. Thicker gravel crunched beneath her boots and the normality of it comforted her; the fog was so leaden it was as if she’d wandered into another world – perhaps Hood’s demesne itself, which some theorize as a land of mists.
The loud shock of a boot-step sounded nearby, one far heavier than any she or any person might make. Something hissed above her and she sidestepped – a fluid motion as swift as thought that only a trained sword-dancer could execute. Something sliced the fog beside her to slam into the gravel like a battering ram. She found herself within a hand’s breadth of the beaten bronze blade of a two-headed axe, one pounded so heavily into the strand that she could step over it, though she knew it to be as tall as she.
A gnarled fist larger than her head yanked the weapon free and it disappeared once more into the swirling mists above her.
Shimmer ran.
Cries of terror continued all about, most cut off in throttled gurgles. She stumbled over boulders, flinched when her boot pressed down on a yielding body. It was galling that just nearby, out of sight, waves slapped against boats. If she could only find theirs!
A voice called then, from nearby in the mist, and she recognized it: Petal. ‘Shimmer!’ It was spoken, not shouted, as if from just next to her.
She shouted, ‘Yes!’ and was chagrined by the note of panic she heard.
‘This way. Follow my voice.’ She set off, feeling her way. Petal spoke every few heartbeats to reacquaint her with his location: ‘Keep going,’ he sometimes said, or, ‘More left.’
Distantly, she heard cordage creaking and sweeps banging wood; the ships were drawing anchor and pulling out. From across a portion of the strand she could make out the silhouette of one of the giant brothers, Anger or Wrath. The massive shape knelt at the shore then rose, roaring, and she recognized the shadowy curve of a boat’s side rising with him. A mass of panicked shouts and screams was abruptly cut off as the longboat, overturned, fell upon its crew.
The giant’s roar of laughter was an avalanche of falling rocks.
‘Swim for it,’ Petal told her.
‘What of you?’
‘Never mind me. Swim!’
Snarling her displeasure, she pushed her way into the surf. It was a good thing she’d chosen not to wear her armour, but then it had been weeks since she’d donned it. Her feet left the bottom and she paddled – she’d only ever had a few basic lessons from Blues. Something snagged at her and she flinched, gained a mouthful of water, and almost slipped into blind flailing terror. Blues’ first lesson saved her: don’t panic, he’d told her. As in a fight, panicking is the worst thing you can do.
She forced her eyes open, stilled her slapping of the water, and saw that she was engaged in a struggle with a corpse. Its limp arms kept bumping up against her. She pushed it away and carried on.
‘To the right.’ Petal spoke again and she realized then that he’d never been with her at all. It was a sending of some sort, or he was watching for her from his Warren. She paddled on.
‘Shimmer!’ a new voice shouted. She recognized Bars bulls’ bellow.
‘Here!’
‘Follow my voice! This way! I have an oar! Do you see it?’
Something splashed the water nearby through the cloaking fog. She headed that way. A tall cliff of darkness emerged from the bank – the side of a vessel. ‘Here!’ she called.
An oar came sluicing through the waves. She grasped for it but missed. She caught it on the second try.
‘There’s a rope here,’ Bars said. The oar pulled her along through the water to where a rope ladder hung from the side. She took hold and started up. On deck, she was met by all the landing party.
‘You’re last,’ Bars told her.
She scanned the shore; the coursing banners of fog still obscured everything. The rest of the Guard were manning the sweeps. She noticed that, oddly, Lean was at the rudder.
‘Where’s Havvin?’
Bars and K’azz exchanged glances. ‘I’m sorry, Shimmer,’ K’azz said. He motioned to where several shapes lay bundled in sailcloth.
Shimmer suddenly felt very cold as she stood dripping wet in the fog. She shivered. ‘How many?’
‘Eight,’ K’azz said. His voice, and his features, did not change at all, and Shimmer realized that he was holding himself under a terrifying degree of will. ‘Taken by the mist.’
She swallowed to dare her next question: ‘Any of us?’
‘None.’
She was vastly relieved, but then fixed her gaze upon him; she wished to take hold of his shoulders and shake him. ‘Why? Why?’
‘The … Vow … I imagine.’ He lurched away and seemed to totter off.
She let him go. He knows more than that – he must. She met Bars’ gaze, but the man just shook his head.
‘I’m very sorry, Shimmer.’
‘As am I, Bars,’ she sighed.
The Avowed helped on the sweeps, a skeletal few, yet Mael’s Forbearance made steady headway. They finally emerged from the fog and Shimmer found that they were a good way out in the bay. Behind, the thick bank obscured the shore for several bowshots. Utterly unnatural, that concentration of mist. She peered round, counting ships. Found nine. Every vessel, it seemed, had escaped – though most of the ship’s launches and their crews probably hadn’t. She turned to face ahead, and while the sky was a leaden hue, overcast, she still had to squint in the light. Three vessels were far ahead: the Letherii modified merchantmen. It seemed Luthal Canar was in no mood to offer anyone any aid. Well, that was fine: they could face whatever lay ahead first.
At that, she shifted her gaze to where a pale light seemed to glow to the north-east. ‘What is that?’ she asked Bars.
But Blues answered, sounding uncharacteristically grim: ‘An ice field.’ She remembered that he’d crossed the immense plain of ice that separated Stratem from the lands of Korel to the north.
‘Can we get through?’ she asked.
Blues shrugged. ‘There must be some way.’
She nodded at that. Yes. Surely some vessels must have made it through ahead of them. Her gaze fell on the wrapped bodies. ‘We should give them a proper send-off.’
‘Yes,’ Bars agreed, and he sounded very firm on that.
It was a channel. A narrow gap of open water that ran between tall cliffs of white and sapphire glacial ice. They reached it near to dusk, but such was the peculiar light held by the ice from the moon, and the star field where it shone through gaps in the cloud cover, that they continued on.
Luthal’s command ahead did likewise. They too neither paused nor let up, and Shimmer began to wonder whether the Letherii merchant had – rather stupidly – decided that this was some sort of race. And the gold to the winner.
Behind, the rest of the ragtag convoy straggled along. Next in line was the Mare galley. Privately, Shimmer was of the opinion that if any ship survived, it would be that one. She had a great respect for the vessels and crews of that seafaring nation.
The passage narrowed alarmingly in places. The cliffs reared nearly overhead. At times great reports cracked the night air and carriage-sized shards of ice came crashing down ahead or behind to send up fountains of frigid spray. Some of that spray even reached them on board the Forbearance.
Something about these avalanches of shards troubled Shimmer, and not just that any one of them could crush them into splinters. As they proceeded through, the sweeps hissing through ice-mush and clattering off floating chunks of sapphire-blue ice, it came to her.
The ice was only falling near them.
She watched to the rear for a time: no ice shards burst from the cliff faces behind them – at all. She turned ahead to study the three Letherii vessels and the full length of the channel ahead: nothing. No fracturing, cracking or rumbling.
She turned to K’azz.
Cowl suddenly appeared next to their commander. His scarred, ghostly pale face was upraised to study the overhanging cliffs. ‘We must back out – now,’ he said.
K’azz frowned his puzzlement. ‘Back out? Why?’
The High Mage lowered his face to gaze straight at K’azz. ‘You know why.’
K’azz snapped his gaze to the cliffs. ‘You don’t think …’
‘I do.’
K’azz spun to the mid-deck, roared, ‘Back oars! Back off!’ The Avowed on the oars pushed hard, heaving. Mael’s Forbearance came to a slow sluggish halt amid the wash of hissing crushed ice. ‘Back oars!’ K’azz yelled anew.
It appeared to Shimmer that they had just made a terrible mistake.
Reports like munition blasts erupted from the near port-side cliff. Cracks zigzagged up and down the translucent gleaming facets of the face. Chunks ranging in size from barrels to horses and wagons came crashing and tumbling. They sent up great fountains of spray that punched down to slap the decking of the Forbearance. One single massive crag now pulled away from the entire cliff. It extended from halfway up to the white snowy top. As slow as night falling it came, leaning farther and farther out from the body of the great ice wall above them.
Shimmer caught Blues’ wide gaze. ‘Do something,’ she said.
He shook his head in utter helplessness. ‘D’riss is of no …’
‘Cowl!’ K’azz demanded.
Shimmer snapped her gaze to the High Mage, but the man only stared, his face now uncharacteristically severe. ‘There is nothing.’
Brutal explosions of tons of crushed ice thundered above. A dark shadow engulfed the Forbearance.
K’azz drew a savage breath and bellowed: ‘Abandon ship!’
The crew and the Avowed on the oars let them fall. Everyone dived for the sides.
The last thing Shimmer remembered was the intense cold of the water. She struck the ice mush first, and it parted for her, but not before imparting numbing blows to her protecting forearm. She churned her one good arm, fought for the surface.
She never made it. Some immense dark shape came plunging into the water and it dragged her down with it, down into the frigid night of the depths below. For a time she fought to free herself from the weight that drove her on and on deeper into the darkness. But in the murk and the utter cold, her strength gradually seeped from her, and she knew nothing more.