Conqueror’s Moon (44 page)

“This time of year, we’re likely to get fair winds down there even without resorting to magic. Let me show you.” The stalwart Peel began to demonstrate tactical technicalities on a channel chart, using tiny model ships, and the two men remained completely absorbed until the wizard rose from his seat, threw back his hood, and approached. His countenance was baleful.

“I’ve spoken to King Beynor,” he announced, interrupting the captain’s lecture without apology. “It seems His Majesty is temporarily indisposed, due to magical overexertion on our behalf. He tells me he’ll perhaps be recovered later, when we can expect the wind to rise. Restoring the seafog, unfortunately, is not possible at this time. He gave me a complicated explanation involving arctic air masses and other meteorological twaddle that I’ll spare you.”

Honigalus uttered a disappointed curse. “There goes any hope of postponing the Cathrans spotting us.”

“If we sail well away from the coast,” Fring said, “we’ll be out of their range. Only Mossland wizards, Tarnian shamans, and a handful of other adepts can windwatch or search beyond twenty leagues or so, even with combined talents.” He paused and looked away modestly. “I, of course, am able to scry nearly thirty leagues, over open water.”

“Which is why we are so fortunate to have you with us,” Honigalus said tactfully.

“Don’t worry, Highness,” Peel said, flicking an indifferent glance at the wizard. “Even if the Cathrans do scry us, our strategy can accommodate it.”

“But,” intoned Fring, almost with malicious glee, “can it also accommodate a squadron of twenty Tarnian frigates racing to Cathra’s aid? King Beynor assures me it is on its way. The ships left Tarnholme yesterday morning, driven by strong natural winds. We’re actually racing them to Cala.”

“Bloody hell!” groaned Honigalus. “How long before the Wave-Harriers make Intrepid Headland and Cala Bay?”

“Perhaps as little as four days, given the expertise of their crews,” Fring said. “The Conjure-King may be able to delay them—but only at the cost of giving less impetus to our own fleet.”

Galbus Peel was rummaging in a drawer of the chart table. He found more model ships and began deploying them in Tarn’s Goodfortune Bay with a mordant smile. “Our upcoming sea-war looks more and more interesting. Any other bad news, wizard?”

“If you require some,” Fring replied loftily, “I can always have my colleagues intensify their windscrutiny of the shore. Perhaps we’ll detect a group of Cathran adepts scrying us from Skellhaven.”

Honigalus said, “Do what must be done. And bespeak our spies in Cala City again. I must know whether Prince Conrig is still in the palace attending the dying king. Tell them to exert their talents to the utmost and find out for me.”

Fring sniffed. “If King Beynor has thus far failed to discover Conrig’s whereabouts, I doubt whether our people on the scene in Cala will have much better luck. I’ll urge them to do their best, but I can’t promise success.” He gave a curt bob of his head and left the day-room.

“Prickly bastard,” the Fleet Captain observed. “But he seems to know his job.”

“Just as you do, my friend.” Honigalus went to the expanse of windows at the ship’s stern and looked out at the Didionite navy surrounding his flagship. The vessels had raised every scrap of canvas in hopes of utilizing the paltry breeze. “With Tarnian mercenaries augmenting their fleet, the Cathrans will have far the advantage of numbers until our allies from Stippen and Foraile arrive.”

“But not a tactical advantage,” Peel said comfortably. “Our men o‘ war are bigger, faster, and better armed, and we’ve forgotten more about naval tactics than those poxy southerners ever knew. With or without the aid of our Continental friends, we’ll whip the cods off the lubbers.”

==========

For the first time in many days his body was free from pain, and the terrifying dreams had finally ceased. Let the Didionites wait until tomorrow for their high wind. He had other business to accomplish—out on the Darkling Sands.

The Conjure-King ordered his skiff to be prepared, then had himself driven down to the harbor in a two-wheeled pony carriage. Most of the fishing fleet was away, but six large sealers from Thurock had come up from the south and were unloading bales of raw furs and casks of oil at the commercial dock. A single fast schooner of the Fennycreek Company was taking on a cargo of amber, walrus ivory, and medicinal herbs, risking one last profitable run to the Continental markets before winter closed in. Beynor had the coach stop at their warehouse store, where the manager presented him with three small, lumpy leather sacks. He scrawled his signature on a receipt and ordered the carriage driver to proceed to the royal boathouse.

The day was brilliantly sunny and crisp with a smart offshore breeze, ideal for his day-trip. Alighting at his private dock, he greeted Opor, the grizzled old retainer in charge of small craft who had first taught him to sail when he was a tiny lad. “Is everything ready?”

“Aft’noon, Majesty. Got your oilskins stowed aboard. You’ll need ‘em out in the channel. It’s chilly. Sand-gliders, too—but you take care if you go for a stroll on the flats today. Tide’s dead low now, but she’ll come in three foot over normal.”

“Thanks, Opor.”

“Sail’s still under cover. Didn’t figure you’d need it.”

“That’s fine.” The king hopped aboard the skiff and stowed the three sacks while Opor cast him off. A few minutes later the boat was moving down the Darkling River, impelled by the regal talent, while Beynor sat at the tiller and gazed over the sparkling expanses of black sand.

He deliberately emptied his mind and tried to relax, keeping as close as he could to the southern shore, which was bereft of human habitation above the isolated village of Gonim. Area creeks draining the Little Fen made a maze of confusing channels accessible only to shallow-draft watercraft, such as his own skiff.

He steered up one of those creeks, past desolate marshy islets where recent hard frosts had rendered the rice-grass and bulrushes lifeless and brown and driven away most of the birds. It was cold, even with the windproof oilskins, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to wait too long at the lake.

Two leagues inland, he reached the first of the Forbidden Lakes, linked dark mirrors of water having a reputation so sinister that not even the most intrepid fowlers and herb-hunters ever came there. Only Beynor came, and then only when he needed to converse face-to-face with the Darkling Sands Salka.

He liked to think that this particular band of monsters were his friends. They were much less sophisticated—and less contemptuous of humanity—than the Salka of the Great Fens or the Dawntide Isles. When Beynor was twelve, just entering manhood, two of the frightful creatures from the Forbidden Lakes had inexplicably rescued him from death on the tideflats. In the years that followed he’d visited their scattered settlements along the chain of lakes, bringing gifts and soliciting counsel on magical matters.

The Salka were the ones who had first recognized his tremendous talent and suggested that he might be able to master the Seven Stones of Rothbannon, even though his parents had failed so disastrously. The Salka had shown him how to convince Lady Zimroth (and ultimately, the entire Glaumerie Guild) that he was worthy to be trusted with the sigils. They’d guided him through his first encounter with the Lights when he’d activated Subtle Armor, the least of the minor stones. They’d advised him on the safe use of Shapechanger, Concealer, and Fortress. But when it came to the three Great Stones, the Darkling Salka had turned reticent. They provided only reluctant advice about Weathermaker—and would say nothing at all about Destroyer or the Unknown Potency. Whether their silence was prompted by fear, or by an unwillingness to permit a human to control high sorcery that should have belonged to their own race, Beynor did not know.

He did know that they were his only hope in overcoming the new crisis that faced him.

==========

The familiar Salka lair lay within the high bank of a hummock at the last lake’s far end, concealed by a growth of scraggly willows. The monsters who dwelt there had never invited him into their abode. Perhaps the entrance was underwater, as in a beaver’s den. He guided the skiff to a point some five or six ells away, where the still, black water was very deep, and paused to listen. The only sound was a faint hiss of wind in the dead rushes.

Using the Salka language, he bespoke them.

“Great Ones of the Land and Water! It is I, Beynor, your friend. If this is a propitious time, I beseech you to please emerge and give me your excellent advice, for I am sore troubled.”

He waited for what seemed an interminable time. It was always like that. Sometimes, especially during the past three years, after he’d empowered Weathermaker, the monsters had declined to meet him—not saying a word, simply refusing to come out.

“Please don’t deny me today! I have gifts…”

Ha!

First, a few bubbles, then a roiling of the water, and finally an upsurge and a fountaining splash that would have drenched him had he not worn the protective oilskins. The huge sleek form with the burning eyes opened his snaggle-toothed maw and uttered a conversational roar. He wore a sigil the size of a razor clam on a woven strand hung about his thick neck.

Beynor smiled and held out two of the leather bags. “Arowann, my old friend! Thank you for coming.”

Boneless arms with tentacular fingers clasped the gifts. The monster’s voice, although harsh and overloud to human ears, was amiable enough. “What have you brought us?”

“Beads of finest amber in many colors, pierced and ready to be strung.” The king lifted the third bag. “And ivory loverings, so that your sweetings may long delight in your attentions.”

“Good.” The Salka dropped the bags of amber into the water, where they were doubtless retrieved by one of his fellows, and did the same with the ivory. Then he sank neck-deep, blinked, and said, “Let me know your trouble, Beynor.”

“Arowann, recently I’ve suffered agonizing dreams of the Lights. They seem to feed on my pain and demand more and more of it as I use my one Great Stone.”

The monster considered the matter gravely for some minutes. “Do you use the Weathermaker sigil often?”

“Yes,” Beynor admitted. “To aid my human allies in Didion, who are waging war on Cathra.”

“Ah… a war. And have you also used the Great Stone in other ways?”

Beynor’s reply was defiant. “I used it to make a triple rainbow at my coronation. It was necessary to impress the Didionite royal family with my abilities. To gain their respect.”

“And how else?”

He flushed and looked away from the blazing red-gold eyes. “To create a great thunderbolt. It demolished the tower where my treacherous sister Ullanoth lived. But she was not inside, as I’d thought.”

“In your dreams, did the Lights approve your actions?”

“It’s hard to remember,” the boy-king admitted nervously. “I think—I think they were scornful and laughed at me! But why should that be? Aren’t the stones mine to do with as I like?”

The Salka’s booming voice was caustic. “Only a fool, or a child, would ask such a question. The Great Stones extract enormous power from the Coldlight Army, and the conjurer must pay their price. If the Lights despise the use to which their power is put, or if they decide that the sorcerer is using the power frivolously, they may exact penalties.”

“Worse than the pain-debt?”

“Much worse.” Arowann shook his enormous crested head. “Beynor, my young friend, you said you came for advice. Here it is: leave off using the sigils vaingloriously. Approach the Lights in the way Rothbannon did—as a meek pupil—and do it very slowly.”

“But I’ve made promises to my allies! And my sister will find a way to steal my kingdom if I don’t destroy her. Is there no way I can make the Lights understand?”

“No,” said Arowann. “There is no way any of us mortal beings can sway them. The Coldlight Army does as it pleases, and we deal with them circumspectly, and always at our peril. Farewell.” He sank out of sight.

Beynor stared at the place in the water where the monster had been, wishing his advice had been different. Then he took the tiller and steered the boat back in the direction it had come. On his right index finger, the glow of the knobby moonstone ring was lost in the Boreal sunshine.

twenty-five

Red Ansel had easily beclouded the minds of two Cathran grain-ship captains, making each think that the other one had taken charge of him. By the time the corn fleet reached Tarn and the truth was discovered, neither man wanted to admit being duped. So the shaman’s continuing presence in Cala remained undiscovered.

He modified his appearance somewhat and took a room in a sailors’ lodging above a cookshop on the waterfront, where he pretended to convalesce from recurrent ague, a common affliction of seafarers visiting southern Continental ports. His dinghy, disguised with a new sail and a repainted hull, was tied up at a nearby slip. On moonless nights when the landlord and his wife were too busy with trade to notice his absence, he prowled the bay, committing to memory its tidal vagaries and hazards to navigation, while he easily scried the maneuvers of the Cathran fleet and judged the competence of the different squadron leaders.

On the day that Didion’s navy emerged from the fog and became visible to his powerful oversight from Cathra, Ansel was ashore. Events were fast coming to a head, and his great premonitory talent warned him to remain alert. He had spent long hours eavesdropping windspoken orders that had been flying between Cala Palace and the patrolling vessels like frantic clouds of bats. Ever since Ullanoth’s message about the Didionite armada had been received, Cathra’s leading naval captains and Lord Admiral Copperstrand had been arguing about what to do.

Coming himself from a race of expert fighting seamen, Ansel could scarcely believe what happened next. Cutting off all debate, Copperstrand divided his strung-out force of fifty-two warships into two equal groups. The first, under the command of Vice Admiral Woodvale, headed for western Cala Bay off Castle Defiant to safeguard the capital from attack from the Continent. The other half of the fleet, led by the Lord Admiral himself, began to gather below the Vigilant Isles some two hundred leagues to the southeast, evidently intending to engage the oncoming force of Crown Prince Honigalus.