The Hidden Fire (Book 2) (21 page)

“Let them have this.  Pallan will make sure it doesn’t get out of
hand.  They need a night of light and laughter to drive away the uncertainty. 
By definition, we are now lost.”

He watched his crew for a moment.  Dice and ducats had already
come out.  “Perhaps we need a festive evening as well.  I have a deck of cards
and a bottle of sherry I was saving for our landfall.”

“Splendid idea,” said Aiyan.

“Sounds fun,” said Lerica

Kyric looked at her.  Later
that night they would banish uncertainty together.

Calico weaved southward in light warm airs and springtime rains,
for it was nearly summer below the line.  The crew began doffing their shirts
after the forenoon watch on the sunny days, most of them having weathered skin
that hardly burned.  The water began to taste bad, and the food worse.  The
rice and bread ran thick with weevils.  The salted meat got so foul that Ellec
had what was left dumped overboard and detailed sailors to commence deep-sea
fishing in hopes of a fresh meal.  Kyric began to eye the two pigeons that
Ellec seemed to be saving for a special occasion.

He finished carving his first figurine.  It was crude, but at
least it was recognizable.  It was a seahorse.  When he showed it to Dorracan,
he got a smile and a nod, the man saying, “That’s a good start.  My first was
no better.”  Dorracan showed him how to coat the figure with a protective
sealant made by his people in Terrula.  He told Kyric how they made it from the
secretions of a jungle beetle, and how it was better than anything used in the
West.  Kyric shook his head in wonder once again.  In Terrula, everything of
nature was useful.

On the 12
^th
night after crossing the equator, Athor and
Kallux rose together along a perfect horizontal line, and Ellec set a course
due east.  The change in heading put the crew on their tiptoes.  They leapt-to
with a purpose, everything more shipshape, more spit-and-polish, and when Ellec
sent a man aloft to serve as lookout, it was like an electrical charge coursed
through the air.

The color of the ocean changed to a deep blue, and they caught a
strong breeze from the southeast.  They sailed close-hauled to the wind for
days and shirts stayed on in the afternoons.  Everyone was forever squinting
windward.  Pallan and Lerica passed the spyglass back and forth whenever Ellec
wasn’t using it, and Ellec had two men posted as lookouts on every watch.

One week after turning eastward, as Kyric and Lerica readied
themselves for bed, she said to him, “The sea smelled different today.  Uncle
Ellec thinks we could be as close as two days away.  He’s going to release one
of the pigeons tomorrow.”

Kyric swallowed.  It was like he had awakened from one of his
dreams.  They were no longer alone on the wide sea.  The ship was coming to
land and the Spice Islands were real.  What had Aiyan said to him that night in
the jail? 
Wealth enough to make empires rise and fall
.

He awoke at six bells.  Lerica would be up in half an hour to get
ready for her watch.  The sea was quiet.  The ship rocked gently.

Suddenly there came a knock at the cabin door.  It was Ellec.  “Lerica. 
Wake up.  I smell land.  Meet me on deck.”

Kyric heard boots on the companionway, and Ellec’s muffled shout,
“Mister Pallan!  Shorten sail at once and get the lead going — “

That was when they struck.  On deck, a sound like the crack of a
gunshot rang out, then a heavy thud.  Lerica had already climbed out of bed,
and was thrown against the bulkhead.  Kyric slid off the end of the bunk.  They
were pelted by candles flying from their sconces.  The great hoop fell off the
wall.  The storm lantern slipped from its peg and went out.

In the dark, Lerica shrieked, “Gods, no!”

“What happened?”

“We’re
aground
.”

It was true.  The ship sat motionless.

By the time Kyric made it out on deck, the ship was more astir
than a kicked-over anthill.  The foremast had snapped, and now hung over the
side in a tangle of rigging.  Half the crew had gathered there.

“Do not cut the mast away,” Ellec called to them.  “Sort it out
and salvage as much as you can.”

Pallan’s head popped up through a hatch.  “We’re not taking water.”

Ellec nodded.  “Good.  Get Borrell over the side.  He’ll be able
to tell something by feel.”

Kyric went to stand by Aiyan, who was well out of the way on the
quarter deck looking out to sea.

“Hazy night,” said Aiyan.  “I can’t see anything.  We’ll have to
wait until sunrise.”  He looked at Kyric.  “Where is your sword?”

“In our cabin?”

Aiyan frowned.  “The next time anything happens, and I mean
anything, you come out wearing your sword.  In fact, from now on you’ll keep it
within reach at all times.  Is your double-barrel clean and oiled?”

“And loaded,” said Kyric.

Mr. Pallan tied a line around Borrell, who was the ship’s bosun,
and into the water he went.  He stayed under quite a bit longer than Kyric
expected.  His report to Ellec was brief.

“Feels like she’s run onto a sand bar, Captain.  Thar’s a dent in
the keel, but ‘tis nothing serious.  Know more when I can take a look in
daylight.”

Lerica brought out more lanterns and took charge of salvaging the
foremast.  Kyric and Aiyan waited for daybreak.  A palm-studded shoreline
rising into gentle hills took shape as the sky lightened.  Ellec came aft to
join them on the quarter deck.  He scanned the shoreline with his spyglass.

“This is a very large island,” he said.  “I can see no end to it. 
It must be Mokkala.”

The flurries turned to falling snow, the first of the season, as
Keldring rode past the gate and into the courtyard.  The sky had been spitting
at him all morning on the trail up the mountain, and now it came in big wet
flakes as he reined up in front of the stables, his horse’s breath coming out
in frosty jets.

Silenthand
met him in the entryway, saluting him
formally with head bowed and one finger to his eye. 

“Greetings, Seldorven,” Keldring said to him.  “The Master bid me
come to him.”

Seldorven nodded.  “He commanded me to bring you to him the moment
you arrived.  He awaits in the place of perfect darkness.”

More serious than I had assumed
, thought Keldring as
he followed through the inner halls to the great stairway.

The citadel had been built in the vertical, against a sheer cliff
on the upper shoulder of the mountain.  Before the Master had acquired it, the
place had been owned by an impoverished nobleman.  Long before that it had
served as one of Graifalmia’s rebel strongholds during the War of Mages, and
many sorcerers had been trained here.  The magical Essa ran high in this place,
highest of all in the place of darkness.

The stairway had been hewn from the granite cliff, and they
followed it upward in gentle circles, bypassing the lower levels of the
structure on one hand, and entrances to strange chambers within the mountain on
the other.  It ended in a wide antechamber with three iron-strapped doors.

Keldring tossed his wet cloak to
Silenthand
, “You may leave
me now.”

The junior knight bowed and backed away.  Keldring entered the
Master’s study, having to pause and admire it as he always did.  He doubted the
Master had ever noticed the vaulted ceiling and the fine wood paneling. 
He
preferred to sit in a cold dark cave.

Keldring found the secret door and stepped into the passageway of
rough rock that lay beyond.  It was freezing, but coming to the Master in this
place, he did not feel the cold.  He closed the door and groped his way along,
soon passing the rune at the entrance to the cave.

The Master sat wearing the plain habit of a monk, his eye patch
removed.  The light of the Pyxidium shone on the walls in a thousand facets.

Keldring lowered himself to the cold stone floor.  “You have
called me here, Grandmaster.”

Cauldin sat motionless, fixed upon something unseen.  “He came at
me from the battleground of dreams.  He looked through my eye, Keldring.  He
saw my vision of the world to come.  I have not seen one who could dream with
such power since . . . ”

“Sorrin?  Is his spirit not trapped in the flame of Esaiya?”

The Master broke from his meditation, looking straight at him. 
Keldring lowered his head.  He would not look into the Pyxidium again.  He
could not.

“It was not Sorrin,” said Cauldin, suddenly impatient with him.  “It
was the vessel.  The vessel that the Designing Powers now prepare for him.  You
know of what I speak.”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

Ten years before, the Master had received a revelation.  He had
walked upon the high realm of power and come to believe that Sorrin would
return to unite the shards of the Pyxidium, that the Powers had fashioned a
being capable of housing Sorrin’s spirit should it be released from the flame. 
It was the only time Keldring had ever seen the Master shaken.  He rode several
horses to death in his haste to get here and sit in the place of perfect
darkness, the place where his sight focused most sharply, meditating for weeks
without food or drink.  When he came out, he said nothing more about it, and
Keldring thought he had dismissed the vision as flawed.

“Of all the knights of my blood, Keldring, you are greatest in the
weird arts.  Have you had no perception of this?  No insight through your communions?”

“None.”  When the Master didn’t say anything, Keldring asked, “Did
you see him?  The vessel?”

“I did not.”  He placed his hands on his knees.  “The Magus
Archeus of the sage council once implied that the Pyxidium was blind to matters
close to the bearer — you cannot look into your own eye.  And yet I felt him in
my veins, as if he were of the blood.  But that cannot be.”

“Have you seen no place where I might seek him out?”

“No, and I would not have you wander the world fruitlessly.  All
things in time, Keldring.  I will find him as he found me, on the battleground
of dreams.  You must continue to oversee the great design.”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

The Master raised the hood on his robe, and the cave fell dim.  “I
have found myself ruminating upon the expedition to Mokkala.  Are you sure it
departed Baskillia without undue attention?  There has been no mention of it in
the circle of spice?”

“Yes.  It set sail at the very end of summer, and they should have
arrived last month.  The Spice Clan knows nothing.  Mekato has turned all their
spies, and they report only what he instructs them to report.”

“And you placed
Frostheart
in charge of the expedition?”

“As you commanded, Grandmaster.  But I must ask why you would send
an albino to a tropical island?”

“He is not an albino.  In the northern wastes where he was born, he
killed another boy when he was young.  His punishment was to be buried alive in
the kurgan of the reiver kings.  Even as a youth he was immensely strong, and
dug himself out, but not before he was touched by something nameless.  The
whiteness of his skin is not lack of pigment, it is another layer.”

“That explains much about him.”

“Did you make it clear to him that he must treat the Mokkalans
harshly?  That he must take slaves and do all that would outrage the Western
states?  We must stir the pot well if we wish the Aessians to respond with
sufficient force.”

Keldring shook his head.  “It wasn’t necessary.  I saw his gang of
barbarians.  They are a cult of death worshippers.  They sacrifice those they
capture in strange rituals, and wear the neck bones of their victims on a belt. 
Frostheart
is so naturally cruel that even Mekato is taken aback by his
excess.  Had I encouraged him, he would turn Mokkala into a place of horror.”

End
of Book II

Afterword

Thank you for reading
The
Hidden Fire
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Sincerely,

James R. Sanford