Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (45 page)

There was little she could do on this ship. But only for now. Soon she would find a way back to Mai Dun. All the rage and hurt sank deep into her chest like heavy winter ice in a well, and formed a solid wall in front of unimaginable loss.

Who wanted her dead? One man knew: the Gaesatae. Only he could tell her who gave the order. She would find out from him ... somehow.

She pressed her hands to her forehead, wanting to stop thinking. And then she knew.

There
was
a way.

She must find a way to touch him and see into his life. Just the thought sent thin tendrils of fear racing through her body, curling around her heart, her throat. She lay motionless, stunned by the idea, as if felled by a giant blow. It was full of danger. He was a killer—she might see him killing Maigrid! How could she stand that? Her head spun, dizzy with fright.

But she must know. It was the only way.

“And then ... it is I who will kill
him
,” she vowed.

Lorc lay dozing on Akmu’s table, drifting in a fog of pain and humiliation. They had whipped him like a slave. A movement flashed and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a hand coming close to his face. Would the Carthaginians kill him now when he was broken and weak? They did not know about Gaesatae warriors. He would fight to the death.

Eyes closed, he reached out and grabbed the hand. It was small! Shocked, he opened his eyes. The boy. A cup of water dropped from the boy’s hand and splashed to the floor.

Memory flooded through Lorc’s body and with it, anger. He owed this boy his life!

“I killed your mother, little boy! Leave me alone.”

Glas backed off and left.

“Why are you so mean to the lad? He saved your life,” said a voice from a corner of the small room. It was Midacritus: his nursemaid. Dimly he remembered that Isis had placed him as a watchdog, because Admiral Himilco insisted. The admiral did not want Isis to harm him.

“And what is your name?” Midacritus asked. “You have a name, don’t you?”

Lorc looked up at that, his vision blurred. His mouth tasted of blood.

“No, I don’t. They took my name away.” He knew it made no sense to Midacritus, and his mind drifted away from any further talk.

When next he looked up, Akmu-en-Swnw stood by the table doing something painful to his back. The little physician was alone. More healing salve said Akmu and put clean bandages over the stitches that covered his back. Someday, Lorc vowed to teach Isis about pain.

“In five or six days you will be better,” Akmu said. “But no moving or the stitches will break open. I’ll give you something to make you sleep and be still.”

Akmu gave him more poppy syrup and it shoved Lorc back into the dream world of memory: a shameful world. The drug made it all happen again.

Ramach danced like a dark demon before Lorc’s eyes. Every Durotriges in Mai Dun stood in front of Caradoc’s round house with its great stag’s head hung over the door. Enemy souls, imprisoned in their skulls, looked down in white-boned indifference at the folly of the living. No one spoke or moved as Ramach walked around Lorc, casting a sacred circle of salt, using the unspeakable power of the spoken word to strip Lorc cù-luirg’s life of all meaning and honor. A Druid’s curse on his life—a
geis
! A knife in his heart would have been kinder. But that, of course, was the idea—to have to live with his shame.

And die of it.

Lorc opened his mouth to scream and no sound came out. The poppy juice had soaked his mind, drowned his voice.

A drum started beating! Ramach marked each word with a small drum slung across his chest, a skull covered in skin. Lorc’s dream eyes swung to the drum in horror. It was covered with Lorc’s skin!

The words of the
geis
echoed. “Gods beware! Lorc cù-luirg places his will before his king and clan. Leave this man!”

No! He couldn’t live without the gods—he
would
die without their protection. The drum beat faster and louder. Ramach spun around the salt circle. His long robe swung out, covered with small iron bells, bones of ravens, and strings of bronze beads that chimed and clattered.

He stopped in front of Lorc cù-luirg and dropped to his knees, a thin froth on his lips. Ramach’s one eye rolled back as the god’s spirit moved through the Druid’s body. He fell to the ground, his arms and legs racked with spasms as his body arched and shuddered. There was a collective gasp from the crowd, and many closed their eyes.

Ramach dragged him to the river by a rope around his neck. Chanting to the gods to take back Lorc’s name, he held Lorc under the sacred water, which carried away all remnants of his clan name. Ramach yanked him out by the rope, and he choked and gasped for air on the riverbank. No one came to help. He had no past, no future, no names or gods. No clan.

He was nothing.

Then Ramach’s one eye stared into his poppy-soaked mind and offered a way back. A way back to his Gaesatae life. To the honor of belonging. To his name! His clan!

With a sob, Lorc struggled out of the drugged dream and opened his eyes.

Akmu-en-Swnw was gone and now Midacritus stood next to the table.

“Gaesatae, who is this Lorc cù-luirg? You were talking in your sleep.”

Lorc glanced up at Midacritus with a baleful eye and shook his head. He resented anyone knowing about the
geis
. And his name ... his name was his own.

“He is no one. What else did I say?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” Midacritus had a knowing look on his face. “You said you get your name back by killing the girl. If the captain knew that, he’d kill you. The Admiral likes the girl and gave orders to the crew to let her alone. ”

Lorc closed his eyes. This seaman knew his true name! And he knew about the girl. That made everything harder, but not yet impossible. He cupped his hands together as though he held her head. When the ship reached Carthage, he would find a way.

CHAPTER 30

Escape to the open sea had not brought safety. Each day Admiral Himilco and Captain Adonibaal stood on the small deck above the Admiral’s cabin, gazing at the horizon. And each day Sabrann secretly watched them as she brought the morning meal.

“They’ll give up soon,” said the Admiral. He still sounded confident, but looked grim.

It didn’t stop the fear that lived deep in her stomach. When will they stop? She wanted to ask, but knew better than test the Admiral’s patience. He stood there, glaring at the Veneti ships close behind the
Astarte
. It would only take one accident whispered the anxious seamen—a sail tearing, a spar breaking; anything that diminished the
Astarte’s
speed—and the Veneti would be on them.

The
Astarte
raced down the coast of Iberia, land of the ancient
Iberes
, Celtic people, his ancestors, said Carloi the navigator. The
Astarte
followed the coastline from afar, never losing sight of land. But true safety lay far to the south in Carthaginian waters.

The ship flew like a great bird in front of the strong northwest wind, always pushing onward. Captain Adonibaal had noticed Sabrann’s worried face one morning, and told her not to worry. Even with her weed-coated bottom the
Astarte
was the faster ship. Still the horizon showed the same thing each morning: the Veneti never coming closer, never going away.

Today, the sun was a dull red with a haze over it. Carloi the navigator and some of the older seamen kept looking at the sky with anxious eyes. A deep frown set across the captain’s forehead. Admiral Himilco stood next to the steering oars, his arms folded. All morning, they kept one eye on the sky and the other on the water as they watched the sea rise.

The afternoon brought a line of dark-gray storm clouds out to the west, moving fast. Thunder rumbled in the distance. In Akmu’s room, Sabrann looked up from her writing tablet, her skin sweaty, hands slippery, and dropped the wooden stylus.
Mau
paced around the small room, tail straight up, and then jumped up on the highest place, a shelf near the ceiling.

The air felt oppressive, heavy. Sabrann came on deck to feel a cool breeze. Keeping her eyes away from the dangerous water, she started for the Admiral’s cabin when a sharp wind came up and, in a flash, the wind began to howl. She ran and clung to the doorway.

It took two men to steer the ship now. The long, thin pieces of linen attached to the mainsail to measure the direction of the wind, flew straight out to the east. Too dangerous. The wind would push them toward the shore and certain disaster.

“Get away from the coast! Take her out into the ocean,” the captain shouted to Carloi. Against the wind his voice was like a whisper and sped away on the breeze. The captain lashed Carloi to the steering oars and tied a rope as anchor to his own waist.

“And set the oars!” he shouted in the ear of the nearest man.

Seamen started running.

Caught by the Admiral’s cabin, Sabrann grabbed one of the brail lines that whipped about in the wind, and pressed her back against the ship’s altar where the Carthaginian gods hid, safe behind closed cabinet doors. She held tight, wrapping the rope around her hand, struggling to keep from blowing away.

Tacking back and forth, the
Astarte
made a long, slow arc of a turn and plowed westward. The oars strained to keep the ship pointed out into the storm and away from the shore, out into the great ocean, straight towards the black horizon and the giant squall line.

They met it head on. Silvery, white- topped waves crested high over each side of the prow. The wind turned freezing cold. A shower of ice poured down in sheets, flowing over the deck and, for a moment, the seamen were all blinded and cried out, grasping hold of anything, afraid of sliding off the ice-slick deck into the foaming sea.

Small pieces of ice stung Sabrann’s arms and face. Then, abruptly, the ice storm stopped, and it felt warm again, even though the deck was covered with ice. It started to melt and ran off the deck in small rivulets of water.

Sabrann gasped. The air smelled hot, like Culain’s hut, when he melted pieces of tin over the fire and pumped his bellows. Against the dark violet sky, a massive stroke of lightning struck down, a giant arm with jagged fingers of light reaching all around the ship.

A thin bolt of lightning struck the mast and a ball of fire rolled down and across the deck before it disappeared into the water. The brail lines caught fire—flames leaped into the mainsail. The sail caught and started to burn, first smoking, then, sweeping to the top of the mast in an updraft of air.

Admiral Himilco yelled something, but no one could hear. There were shouts from all around the ship. Two seamen clambered up the mast and started hacking away with axes at the burning sail. The wind picked up again, and the sail flapped to one side. Flames leaped up, vivid red against the dark sky. The sail was finally cut loose, and sent crashing, hissing, sputtering as it sank beneath the waves.

Then another bolt of lightning struck one of the seamen on the mast. Sabrann watched in horror as his whole body was covered in moving light. His hair caught on fire, and he fell into the ocean, his mouth open wide in a scream no one could hear.

A brace of fire-singed birds fell from the sky as she ran into the Admiral’s cabin. Inside, a white-eyed Hero clung to the wall table. Flashes of lightning lit up the cabin and his face.

“Get below,” he yelled. Nothing was safe up above.

Sabrann screeched in fear, the falling seaman’s face vivid in her mind’s eye, and ran out of the cabin to the lower decks. She had to find Glas. She heard Isis screaming at the rowers below the deck. The air smelled of scorched hair and burnt skin. They were all going to die!

The sky above turned black. White lightning tendrils speared the water all around them. With only the small foresail left, the
Astarte
struggled to stay upright, and not be swamped by the rising waves.

The Admiral lurched down the ladder and sent more seamen to the bottom of the ship below the hold. Water had fast worked its way through the sides of the ship and the bilge pump needed to be manned constantly. The water already came up to the Admiral’s knees.