Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) (3 page)

Then he dragged his finger over a wide expanse of blue, all the way to the largest landmass on the map, Felep, called the mainland by its inhabitants that were of many nations, from the city states of Ishaf and Ker to the kingless kingdom of the Selorm, and many other countries. Most of these realms had already been taken by the enemy and were part of the Emperor Drakhar’s growing empire these days.

Batumar nodded as if satisfied with his course. “The trip must be made quickly, before the season of storms begins.”

“There is no season of storms,” I cried in distress. “The storms do not cease at all.”

Endless hardstorms ruled the wild ocean throughout the year. Some believed the storms were at their quietest at the beginning of winter, but even so… “Nobody who has ever sailed the ocean has lived.”

“They did once.”

“Not since the hardstorms have come.”

Before that, the ocean had been calmer, if legends could be believed, but that had been so long ago as to be at the very edges of human memory.

Batumar ran his large hand up my back in a gentle caress then down again, letting it settle at my waist. “I shall go with the pirates. I have it on good account that an Ishafi merchant turned pirate is even now making repairs to his ship in Barren Cove. He will be leaving to return to Ishaf within a day.”

I stared at him, speechless.

The pirates were little more than a myth—a few scraggly ships now and then in a cove possibly hidden somewhere under the cliffs of Karamur. From time to time, they supposedly circled the Middle Islands and raided smaller merchant vessels.

Some merchants swore they had heard pirates brag about having crossed the ocean.
Nobody
but children believed those tales.

I searched Batumar’s gaze. “Why would the Ishafi let a pirate ship come into their harbor?”

“Because this pirate doesn’t attack Ishafi merchant ships.” Then he added, “I must go. I shall hire a thousand mercenaries in the free cities of the north. The bank of Ishaf holds some gold coin for me.”

A thousand mercenaries sounded a reasonable force. Yet I still did not like Batumar’s plan in the least. From what I had heard—mostly servants’ gossip—pirate ships were small sloops, built for speed.

“A pirate ship cannot carry a thousand mercenaries back to us.” The plan was madness. All of it.

I considered the courses served for dinner, whether one of the herbs might have been accidentally switched by the cook, replaced with something that could cause this kind of loss of sanity.

I surreptitiously checked Batumar’s pupils and laid a hand over his heart to see if his heartbeat was still steady. If I could puzzle out what herb he had eaten, I could give him the antidote.
What did he eat that I did not?

He covered my hand with his. “The Landrians have a navy.”

A laugh escaped me.

Dozens of small island cities made up Landria, their people living in grand isolation to protect the secrets of their dye-making industry. They produced a startling purple color—somehow with the help of sea snails—that was their prime export and the basis of their wealth. The older their king grew, the more suspicious he became of foreigners, seeing them all as spies.

“A foreigner approaching one of their city gates is as likely to be shot through with an arrow as let in.” I repeated what I had heard from a wine merchant in the kitchen.

Batumar nodded. “
If
a person can even reach as far as setting foot on one of their islands. They have a full fleet of warships to ensure their isolation.” Then he said, “Yet I must try.”

I wished he wouldn’t.

“Landria is far south from the free cities where you mean to hire your mercenaries.” I marshaled my next objection. “And the lands in between are held by the enemy.”

Batumar pulled another tapestry map off the table and laid it on top of the first, then pointed out the journey from Ishaf to Landria. “I mean to free the lands in between. Starting with Seberon. I pledged Lord Karnagh my assistance. He and other Selorm lords fought for us in the siege of Karamur with their battle tigers.”

“But Castle Regnor has been taken. Lord Karnagh is thought to be slain,” I said with a heavy heart. The last we’d heard of Seberon—the kingless kingdom of the Selorm—their lands had been overrun, but a warrior queen had risen in the south, a foreigner, holding their last free city.

“Last Lord Karnagh had been seen, he was on the brink of death,” Batumar corrected, “and nobody has heard of him since. But death has a fair wide brink, my lady. You and I have both been there and have managed a return journey.”

I could scarce argue with that.

Batumar said quietly, “I must help the Selorm, if I can. Our honor demands it.”

I threw my hands up in defeat. “Oh, why not then the whole world, my lord. Easily done while you and your new mercenaries stop for your midday meal.”

And from the somber look in his eyes, I could see that he
was
thinking it. “Not nearly enough men, and no time,” he said at last. “We must cross the ocean with the Landrian warships during the spring lull.”

The spring lull was yet another myth, a handful of days at winter’s end, at around Yullin’s Feast, when the hardstorms were thought to weaken ever so slightly.

How I wished I could make him see reason. “You cannot mean to sail the ocean, then cut a swath through enemy troops, freeing castles as you go, then negotiate with the King of Landria for use of his navy and sail across the ocean yet again, all in a few mooncrossings.”

He tugged one of my braids free and wound a dark lock of hair around his finger. “Surprise will be on our side.”

“For certain.” I huffed. The enemy would not expect such a leap of insanity. “But how will the Landrian warships cross the wild ocean? Only the pirates know the way.”
If
even that much was true and not a myth they themselves created.

“I shall hire the Ishafi pirate to lead the Landrian navy,” Batumar said with confidence.

I could only stare at him as I imagined what the King of Landria would say to the suggestion that he turn his navy over to a
pirate
.

The whole plan was preposterous from beginning to end. The distance alone that would have to be covered…
Impossible.

I ran my hand over the map that usually hung with all the others in the antechamber where the High Lord sometimes worked in the evenings, writing his letters or meeting with some of his most trusted advisors. I’d noticed some days ago that the maps had moved into his bedchamber. He had been planning this trip for a while. I thought he needed to plan it a good while longer yet, but I did not want to offend him by making that suggestion.

“You do not think my plan can be accomplished.” He loosened another braid, then another, dissembling the intricate arrangement Natta had labored over that morning.

I shook my head.

Batumar’s dark eyes seemed bottomless in the flickering light of the fire. “It is our only hope.”

“And if Emperor Drakhar’s sorcerer somehow reopens our Gate from afar while you are away? If more enemies arrive, they could destroy not only Karamur but all the Kadar strongholds, along with the Shahala lands.”

And, the spirits forbid, what if the enemy entered the Guardians’ Forgotten City? The Seela were the few remaining descendants of the First People, the custodians of the last of the ancient wisdom. The Forgotten City was the beating heart of our island. I feared that if it was destroyed, the whole island would simply sink into the sea.

Batumar relinquished the lock of hair he’d been playing with, took my hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed my knuckles. “The Gate will not fall.”

And I heard the rest in his voice. If the Gate fell, it would not matter whether he had left or stayed. If the Gate fell, we were doomed. All of us would perish.

“You cannot go on a journey through war-torn lands as a lone warrior,” I protested as I went into his arms. “Everyone will think you a spy. You will be pursued every step of the way.”

“I mean to go in disguise.”

As what? A lonely beggar?

Short of cutting off limbs, nothing could make him look anything other than what he was, the most powerful warrior of the land.

“As a merchant,” he said.

Better than a rattle-bone beggar, but still… I looked up at him. “Without trade goods? Without servants?”

He frowned. “I cannot take trade goods. The pirates would seize them.”

I laid my head back on his chest, while he returned to running his hand up and down my back. I desperately tried to think of something I could say to convince him to take me with him, and nearly fell off the bed in surprise when Batumar said in an even tone, “I wish to take you with me.”

My gaze snapped up to his once again. “Why?”

“As perilous as the journey might be, I wish you under my own protection.” He watched me carefully. “The Emperor knows of the prophecy that you are the one who will turn back the war.”

His voice tightened. “The Guardian of the Cave told me that the Emperor knew of the prophecy even before you were born. He sent a man to your mother to kill you upon your birth. The Guardian seems to believe your mother softened the man’s heart, so he could not kill you in the end. He sold you into slavery.”

By the time Batumar finished, his jaw was so tense he could barely get the words through. But he managed to add, “You did not think this important enough to tell me.”

I thought his anger most unfair. And worrying. Was this why he had sent for the Lady Lalandra the day before? Because I had displeased him?

If I were lost, he would still have a palace full of concubines, I wanted to tell him, but cast aside the childish impulse. “The Emperor wants to kill us all. If he desires me dead, a small measure more than all the others, what difference does it make?”

Batumar glowered. “It makes a difference to me. When Shartor came over the wall so close to you during the siege, that was not by chance. He meant to capture you. Or worse.”

I shivered. Shartor, Karamur’s soothsayer, had always wished for my death. But he could no longer hurt me. He had perished in the siege.
Best not to think of that now.

I kept my silence for a while to let Batumar’s anger lessen. I lay next to him without a word for as long as I could.

“In truth, I am to go with you?” I asked then with care, needing to hear the words again.

“You are not to leave my sight,” he said roughly, and gathered me against him even more tightly, his strong arm holding me willing captive.

My heart thrilled. “We could go as a traveling healer and her guard.”

And after a moment, he nodded. “But nobody can follow us to Barren Cove. Nobody can know that we left the island to cross the ocean. We must go in secret.”

“How?”

His wide chest rose and fell. “There is a way.”

I waited, seeing, for the first time, a small measure of doubt in his eyes.

At long last, he said, “We shall go through the mountain.”

I stared at him. “A secret passage through the mountain to Barren Cove, then a journey on a pirate ship across the uncrossable ocean?” I shook my head. “Have I fallen into a children’s tale, my lord?”

The corner of his lips twitched, and his hold on me relaxed. “Let us hope not, my lady. As I recall, many of those tales end most grimly.”

“So there
is
a way through the mountain?” I never heard but the most superstitious servants talk about that before. To hear the High Lord of the Kadar utter such words shocked me more than a little.

“The tales are true.”

I stared at him. “Everything?”

“They say dark spirits and old gods live deep inside the mountain.”

“And you do not fear them?”

“Can they be worse than being overrun by the Kerghi?”

They very possibly could be.
I did not say the words.

He let me go and sat up, undressed for sleep. When he unlaced my gown in the back, I undressed too, leaving on only my shift.

When we were under the furs, he gathered me back to him. He kissed the corner of my eye, then the corner of my lips. But even as I craved his touch, I thought,
did he kiss the Lady Lalandra yesterday?

I pressed my lips together, hating that thought with every fiber of my being.

He leaned his forehead against my temple and expelled air from his lungs, his warm breath fanning my neck. “We might not get much sleep for a long time to come. I should not take advantage of you this way. Tonight we rest.”

Because Lady Lalandra was here yesterday?
The bitter taste of jealousy bubbled up my throat. I swallowed it.
Think of something else.

The fire popped and crackled in the hearth.

“Have you been inside the mountain before, my lord?”

He did not answer at once. He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them again. “Vooren’s grandfather has. And he lived to tell the tale.”

Vooren was one of the High Lord’s stewards. Since Batumar’s last words sounded hesitant, I waited, and when he said nothing more, I prodded. “My lord?”

“He did not come out as he went in.”

“How so?”

“He went in with nine other warriors, all men in their prime. He was the only one to return, aged to an old man in a mooncrossing’s time, his hair white, his back stooped, his eyes blind.”

Unease slithered up my spine. “What did he say?”

“He did not talk much for the rest of his life, but once or twice to his eldest son. Before he died, he passed on the secret of safe passage. And his son, on his deathbed, told his own son, Vooren.”

Impossible
, I thought for the dozenth time.

Yet I found I could not worry about our journey, for I found it far out of the realm of all possibility. One perilous threat I could have feared. But the plan had so many as to make comprehension impossible.

In truth, I only half believed there would be a journey. I would not have been surprised if we set out and found no path through the mountain. And even if we somehow found our way through or around the mountain and found the hidden cove, I could not fathom finding pirate ships in it, certainly no ship that would brave the hardstorms of the wild ocean.