Three days upriver was the junction of the Kaddaroud and the Sharroud.
He’d have his answer then.
If the ship turned up the Kaddaroud, Amortis was waiting for him in the Temple at Havi Kudush where she’d fry him alive and eat him for breakfast.
Crossgrained, intemperate bitch god.
She had reason to be annoyed, she’d lost a hefty portion of her substance running his errands, going after Brann for him when he was still trying to kill the Drinker of Souls before she got him.
Hunger began to nag at him.
By the second day on the Sharroud, thirst grew into a torment.
He ignored hunger and thirst and continued to tease ravels out of his bonds, dissolving them as soon as he had them loose so they couldn’t wriggle away from him and rejoin the parent weave.
He was beginning to burrow his way out. Soon, soon… By the beginning of the third day, thirst had him hallucinating.
He saw lightlines turn to serpents of gold that writhed and knotted and coupled in a frenzy of lust and rage, he cringed away from them, thinking that Amortis was coming for him.
Amortis was the patron of lust and frenzy.
He saw polymorphous gold beetles shimmer into uncertain being and drop onto him.
They crawled all over him.
The tickling of their feet grew worse and worse until it was unendurable.
There were other torments, all the worse for being self-inflicted.
He rode out the first waves of that disorientation, husbanding what strength he had left until he saw a chance to seize control…
He shaped a mind-drill and drove it through the decks into the river.
He turned the drill to a drinking straw and sucked up water through it. It was unfiltered river water with all that meant, the suspended soil, the sublife swarming in each drop, but it flooded with grateful coolth into his arid mouth and slid down his aching throat more welcome than the finest wine.
His stomach clenched, cramped and he almost vomited up what he’d swallowed, but he kept the water down and drew in more.
The hallucinations went away.
He returned to his raveling of the spellbonds.
Time passed in its uncertain way.
He looked around.
His vision was no longer confined to what his eyes could see.
He inspected the river banks, felt a flood of relief and pleasure.
They were deep into the great arid plain called the Tark that made up most of Northern Phras.
They were past the junction of the Kaddaroud and the Sharroud.
It isn’t Amortis who has me.
Tak WakKerrcarr in the Fringelands, we’ll be reaching him soon. If I can call him, if he’s in a mood to listen…
If I can’t, it looks like Jorpashil’s the endpoint of this voyage.
Interesting.
Thinking about Dil Jorpashil reminded him of Brann; he smiled.
Bramble, whoever’s got that devilkid of yours has put his hands on me, I’d bet my stash on that.
He drank some more river and slept a while.
The hot wind that blew incessantly across the Tark crept through the cracks in the crate, turning it into an oven.
He had to reroute some of his meager resources into cooling himself.
He had to find a way of ridding his bladder of urine without voiding it into the crate; the stench would bring attention he didn’t want.
When the ship came to the first of the Locks, he had almost reached the key strand.
One last sustained effort and he would make these bastards wish they’d never been whelped.
Outside the crate, there was frantic activity as the sailors prepared for the entrance into the lock.
The noise and shuddering of the ship faded from his senses as he narrowed and narrowed his focus.
He drew power from the heat in the planks he lay on and prepared himself for the strike that would free him.
He heard an immense rumbling roar and force smothered him.
The Others were awake finally.
He fought them, but he was still more than half bound by the old spinning so his reach was lamentably short, the power he could call on so small it was whiffed out immediately.
He screamed hate and rage at them, but could not get his curses past his tongue, the ties on it were iron-heavy, iron-hard.
He struggled to unlock his hands, but failed.
They were knowing and swift with their binding, but this time he was awake when they handled him and he learned more than they realized. Or so he hoped.
It was godFire they called on, no wage or sorceror, witch or warlock could wield that Fire without a god behind him. Or her.
Not Amortis
His mind slowed and stiffened.
Not Amortis
I know
I am sure
Who? Don’t Know
Don’t… kno… o… ow…
2
When he slid out of the darkness, his mind and body were sl000w annnnd stiifff.
More than they were when his captors first nailed him in the crate.
He remembered.
That was the first thing he managed.
While he was remembering, the sunlines appeared and disappeared in one blink of his eye.
Appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared. Sound came to him, slowed down and stretched until they were no more than hollow groans without meaning. He listened and looked.
A concept at a time, a word or a phrase, he explained to himself where he was and what was happening to him. The ship shivered continually.
That bothered him until he understood it.
The ship was moving with her usual grace at her usual speed; it was the difference between his timerate and hers that made her seem so jerky.
She kept moving, no halts, no major changes in her motion.
They were through the locks.
He was angry.
They’d slid him past WakKerrcarr before he had a chance to call the Prime.
He wondered about WakKerrcarr.
Tak must have known something peculiar was happening, he must have ignored it. That was typical of the man and his whims.
He thought about Brann.
It was a better world she lived in.
She wouldn’t have dozed as someone was carried past her trapped in a web of demonspin. She’d have been down there finding out what was happening.
He thought about Cheonea and wondered how his experiment was progressing.
He hoped he’d laid a strong enough foundation to carry it on without him.
Brann wouldn’t let him go look. You go back, she said, you won’t keep your hands off, you’ll adjust this thing and lop off that and before you know it, you’ll be the old kings reincarnated. Do you realize, he told her, how irritating it is when someone’s always right? She laughed at him and patted his cheek and went away to work on a pot or a drawing or something like that.
He missed her.
She was dear. Mother and sister and child in one.
He thought of her walking into a trap like the one that had closed on him and he lost control.
His mind shut down before he could gather its ravels, the world turned black, a mix of fear and rage like pine tar painted on him waiting to be fired.
He woke thinking of her.
How odd it is, he thought. In Kukurul I knew that she wouldn’t come back to Jal Virri, that I wouldn’t see her again, perhaps for years. I could contemplate that absence with equanimity because I knew… he thought about that… yes, because I knew we’d come together again. How odd it is. I hadn’t the least idea how painful the separation would be. We argue and she runs her hands through her hair, certain we’ll never ever resolve our differences. Or I go stomping off, sure of the same thing. A few hours later she laughs, or I laugh, it’s all so stupid, not worth remembering. She is dear.
He started working at his bonds again.
Much to his satisfaction, the erosion went faster this time. He knew them now, he knew the twists they put on their spells.
He knew their arrogance; he’d felt their surprise as he’d come so close to escaping them.
He knew how much an accident it was that they discovered his work before it fruited.