The Southern Trail (Book 4) (33 page)

“Master!  It worked!  Are you alright?” a man’s voice was very near as it spoke to him.

“Good job you three.  If you can get a stretcher and carry me up to the ship, I think we’re probably about done with our little vacation on the beach here,” he weakly tried to joke with the sailors.

Half an hour later Marco was laid on the deck, and he felt the ship move as it cautiously followed the channel of the river and began to resume its southward journey along the river.  “That may not have been as flashy as yesterday, but it sure made an impression on the fellows!” Marco heard Petran tell him.

He opened his eyes and smiled weakly, then looked down at his chest, and gave a sigh of relief to see the energy line to the princess holding steady as it left his body and stretched off towards the south.

“I hope we don’t have to keep putting a show on for them every day,” Marco grinned.  “A fellow could grow kind of tired doing this every day!”

“You don’t need to do anything to impress anyone.  Jess and Reed just got themselves up off the injured list and said they were ready to resume duties,” Petran told Marco.  “So you just rest and we’ll get you down to Tabora just as fast as we can.”

And after that, they sailed on peacefully for the next five days.  Overcast skies and light rain, a rarity in the arid region at that time of year, settled over them two days after they left the sandbar, but by the time they pulled up to Tabora’s docks, the skies overhead were clear again.

Marco had listened to the eager sailors on his ship describe the city of Tabora to him.  It was the largest remaining city that existed in the territory that had once been the kingdom of Prester John.  It sat just at the border where the dry plains of the savannah became the wetter, more fruitful fields of a productive farming region.  The land had more rolling character than the flat savannah had.

The people still remembered their heritage as the descendants of the once great nation of Prester John.  They were a gregarious and friendly people, but they resented the rule of the Docleateans, even more than three centuries after the conquest of their land.

According to the men on the ship, the people of the city had a right to resent the cruel hand of Baron Crassten, who ruled the region on behalf of the king in Foulata.  Marco
recollected that Argen and Ellersbine had mentioned the possibility of relying on Crassten to facilitate their return to Foulata, but had acknowledged that he might not prove to be the most reliable help available.

But as Marco stood on the deck of the ship that was tied to the Tabora docks, and stared at the hulking castle that stood on a hill outside the city, looming over it with a menacing dark air that went beyond the structure’s black walls, he noticed one thing – the line of energy between himself and Ellersbine pointed straight at the castle.  The energy line was thicker and denser, and through it Marco had a sense of Ellersbine’s presence.  He was much closer to her now, he knew.

“We’ve got some settling up to do,” Petran told Marco as they waited for a shipping inspector to release them to deliver the goods they had carried.

“What kind of settling?” Marco asked.

“Well, Captain Sonnen owned this ship free and clear.  He had no wife nor kids that any of us ever heard him talk about.  The boys and I figure that as much as anything, we can all claim shares in the ship and keep running it ourselves,” the bearded man told Marco.

“You mean like a cooperative?” Marco asked, thinking of the shops that many artisans had relied on back in the Lion City, where they all contributed and jointly sold goods.

“About like that,” Petran agreed.  “And we all agreed that you deserve an equal share, for all that you did on this trip.  But you’re not likely to be planning on staying and sailing with us up and down the river, are you?”

“No,” Marco shook his head.  “I expect I’ll be trying to find the road to Foulata by nightfall, if I don’t find my friends up at the Baron’s castle.”

“I’d tell you to think twice about that, except I have an idea of what you can do,” Petran said.  He held out a leather pouch and handed it to Marco.  “In that case, this is your share of the ship; at least it’s what we can afford right now before we start selling off and delivering the cargo we’ve got here,” Petran told Marco.

“Thank you,” Marco looked at his companion with shiny eyes, touched by the crew’s sign of respect.

“Well, the other thing I need to tell you is that there are a lot of folks out on the dock looking at our ship real funny-like.  Apparently there’s been a story going around about us for the past couple of days, since our friends from the sandbars got here with some wild yarns about sorcery and such.

“You ought to be careful about how you depart and who you talk to,” Petran suggested.

Marco’s mouth was a thin line as he bit his lip and considered the prospect of watchers waiting for him.  “Could a distraction make them all look away?” he asked.  “If I was to slip over the side of the boat on the river side of the ship after dark while something was going on?”

“There always seems to be a scuffle or two break out when we arrive in town,” Petran said thoughtfully.  “I imagine it’s going to happen again tonight, right after sunset,” he said with a serious expression, then winked at Marco.

Marco grinned.

“I’m going to send one man out to visit the warehouse that has the paperwork we need to be free to do business.  Would you like for him to buy you a nice, gentleman-like pair of gloves, if you’re thinking of going up to the castle?”  Petran asked.  “Not that you’ve got anything to hide,” he added as he looked at the golden hands at the ends of Marco’s arms.

“You’re looking out for me better than I’m looking out for myself,” Marco said with a laugh.  “I think I’ll just stay below deck and out of sight until tonight.”

And so, after nightfall, after the paperwork was straightened out and the gloves delivered, a group of sailors got into a shoving match that degenerated into a broader brawl on the dock, and as eyes, attention, and guards were diverted to the fracas underway, Marco slid down a rope hung over the far side of the ship, and quietly swam down river, then climbed up onto the dock a quarter of a mile away from the scene.

The city of Tabora was not as large as Barcelon, let alone Athens or the Lion City, but it was the largest city Marco had seen in weeks.  Where he stepped up into the city was at the very end of the docks, at the least desirable berths that were available, down where the rundown and disheveled warehouses handled the least valuable and most noisome materials that occupied space in the city.  Marco moved past, as he navigated on the dark streets of the neglected quarter of town behind the warehouse, in places where no street light provided any sense of security.

As he walked in the direction of the energy cord connected to Ellersbine, he heard people around him talking, people who lived in the tenements of the city, apartments that had no glass in their windows.  Arguments, crying babies, laughter and drunken reveries, all the sounds taking place within the dreary walls of the homes of the poor people were shared with the streets that Marco passed through.

He paid no attention for several minutes, until he heard someone use a word he wasn’t familiar with.  He paused, and as his mind processed what he had heard, he suddenly jerked his head up in surprise.

The voices he had listened to, and the conversations that he had absentmindedly overheard, had been spoken in a language that was not the language of Docleatae – the language that he had been speaking for so long now.  They were using the language of the kingdom of Prester John, the repressed, second-class language of the underclass residents of the area he was in.

And somehow he understood the language, for the most part.   It too, had apparently been part of Iasco’s lessons that were imparted to him so long ago on the way to Athens.  It was the language of her own youth, he realized.

And at the moment when all this occurred to him, he heard a group of men ahead of him plotting to rob him.

“A stranger on our street!  It’s a gift from fate,” one of the men said.  “We knock him upside the head, grab his purse, take his sword, and we’ve made our money for the night.”

“You talk so openly about your intended victims in front of them?” Marco called out to the men in their own language, drawing his sword from its scabbard on his hip.

There was a long, silent pause.

“You speak the right words?” one of the men questioned.

“Not well,” another commented.

“No, not well at all,” the first speaker agreed.  “But no man of the,” he used a harsh-sounding word that Marco did not know, “would let his mouth speak any word of ours.

“Who are you?” the man asked.  He and his companions had spread out during the conversation, forming a half circle around the road.

“Not an enemy,” Marco said cautiously.  He slipped the wet, fancy glove off his right hand in preparation for what might come.  “I’m only passing through the city on an errand of my own, and I seek no trouble.”

“You may not have to have trouble if we all cooperate here,” one of the men said.

“Let him pass, I say,” another one disagreed.  “We don’t need to be taking from our own.”

Marco decided to make a plea for peace with the men one more time.  “I am on my way to the castle to find a friend,” he said.  “One who may not be treated well there.”

“Good luck to you then.  Your friend’s already dead, and you will be too if you go there.  Turn around and go back to where ever you came from,” another man said.

Marco raised a hand, and made one finger shine brightly, illuminating the men and himself.

“She’s not dead yet.  I intend to see her, and I will take her out of the castle if she chooses to go.  There’s nothing the Baron can do to stop me,” he said grimly.

Three of the men shouted and ran away at the sight of the glowing finger, but two men remained.  Marco lowered his hand and doused the light.

“Well?” he asked simply.

“You’re going up to the castle, you’re going to enter the gate, and you’re going to ask to see your friend?” one of the men asked.

“That’s all I’ve planned so far,” Marco replied.

“So you’re a sorcerer, but a stupid one,” the other man who stayed behind said.

“The baron’s got a sorcerer of his own there, you know.  Going in the front way isn’t very bright,” he added.

“Do you know another way?” Marco asked.

“There’s a filthy way in through the muck,” the man answered.  “No bigger than one skinny man can squirm through.  You’d be able to make it in.”

“Will you show me the way?” Marco asked.

“Will you promise to kill the Baron?” the first speaker asked eagerly.

“Not unless I have to.  I’d rather get in and out without trouble,” Marco answered, then paused.  “But if I have to, I will,” he added reassuringly.

“Let’s be on our way, before the moon rises,” one of the men spoke, and the three of them walked the dark streets of the disreputable portion of the city, then started moving through the alleys and side streets of the rest of the city, where the streets had torches lit.  They reached the end of the city settlement abruptly, and Marco stopped.

“Aren’t there any city walls?” he asked.

“Not on the side facing the castle.  The Baron wants to make sure he can come down and enter the town in the event there’s trouble,” one of Marco’s escorts explained.

They crept through the fields around the castle, then circled to one side of it, and entered a small, smelly, unwholesome bog.

“This is your spot,” one of the men said as he stopped at the edge of the stagnant water.  “The pipe from the castle is at the uphill end of the bog.  This time of night there shouldn’t be too much flowing down against you; you’re lucky,” he said wryly.  “You’ll come out in a pit in the basement, and have to work your way up.  There’s a spigot of fresh water if you’re dainty enough to want to wash off after you climb up.”

“Such luck!” Marco answered sarcastically.  “Thank you fellows; be careful going back to the city.”

“If you run into trouble and you have to run back to the city, just ask for the peat burners, and someone in our quarter will bring you to us,” one of the men said.  They quickly shook hands, then slunk away, leaving Marco alone in the foul spot.

He waded through the water, and tried not to breathe through his nose, but the moment he stuck his head inside the large ceramic pipe, he nearly gagged in disgust.  He paused to reconsider whether it was really worth it to enter the castle so stealthily, or whether he’d be better off forcing his way openly into the castle.  He would have to defend himself from the moment he entered the castle through the door, and he did not know how long he would have to spend within a protective shield on both the way in and the way out.  It could drain his powers just as his adventures on the boat had, and bring harm to Ellersbine, as well as leave him defenseless.

It was better to suffer the smells of the sewer, he knew, and hopefully not be forced to engage his powers for some time.  With a deep gulp, he pushed himself into the pipe and started squirming his way up the gentle slope.  There was a continual small trickle of water that ran down the pipe at him, and Marco found that he had to keep his head raised, and his mouth shut, so that he breathed in the horrid air only through his nose.

The journey was several hundred yards, and Marco found only one thing to be thankful for – no large wave of water came down the pipe at him during his slow progress.  He finally reached the end of the pipe and climbed out, then breathed in heavily through his mouth, panting to get fresh air back into his lungs.

He lit one finger to provide light in the totally dark space he occupied, and found that he was in a round, shallow, brick-lined pit.  He climbed out, saw the spigot that he had been promised, and took time to thoroughly rinse off his own body, as well as every piece of clothing he wore.  His own nostrils were still full of the foul odor of the sewer pipe, but he hoped that others would not be so quick to detect his smell.

Ready to move on, Marco climbed the staircase built into the brick walls of the subterranean chamber, then slowly turned the knob on the heavy wooden door at the top of the stairs.  He extinguished the light from his finger and opened the door a crack, letting a weak beam of light shine through, and he peeked to see what was on the other side.