“There!”
“Get him!”
Rahl flung himself over the railing, scraping against the hull as he fell. He could barely swim, but he didn’t have much choice. The water was chill, despite the warmth of the air, and his entire body spasmed as he plunged under the surface.
A muffled explosion pressed the water around him, and momentary knives stabbed into his ears. Then both subsided, and he struggled to reach the surface.
Flame was everywhere, and he ducked back under the water, trying to struggle away from the ship. He kept paddling until he reached the smooth stone wall of the pier, which he could barely grasp, and pulled himself up just enough to get another breath before using his fingers to push himself under the water toward the base of the pier.
Another quick breath, and he ducked underwater and tried to keep moving toward the shore. He was so light-headed, but he couldn’t give up, not yet. Pull and breathe, and duck, and pull and breathe and duck…pull and breathe…
The water was so deep he couldn’t feel or sense bottom, and he had to keep half-swimming, half-pulling himself toward the base of the pier.
Finally, he was well clear of the flaming hulk that had been a ship, but there was no way he was going to be able to make his way much farther, especially since another vessel was tied up before him, with frantic activity on its deck. Stars pinwheeled across his vision, points of intolerable light and pain.
“There’s someone in the water!”
“It’s Rahl! I knew he was down here…”
“How did he…?”
“The blast must have thrown him into the water.”
“…have to get him out…”
“…not that far from the ladder…”
Rahl strained, trying to find the ladder, and finally seeing the niches carved into the stone, and the iron railing beside them. Slowly, so slowly, he tugged himself to it.
His fingers were raw, and he could hardly grasp the rough iron of the ancient railing. Somehow he managed to get his boots onto one niche, then another…
Hands pulled him up the last steps, and hot darkness swept over him.
XCIX
“You don’t look back…look back…The past has no hold on you.” The words echoed through the hot darkness, only to be replaced by other phrases, one after another. “He doesn’t seem inclined to listen…not inclined to listen…has to learn everything the hard way…everything the hard way…it’s up to you…life doesn’t provide private tutors…use your skills without thinking…you lack adequate forethought…just keep to the piers…do your own job…always blaming others…whiner…”
The words vanished, only to be replaced by the image of a brown-haired woman in healer green, looking sadly at him even as her image dwindled into the distance and vanished.
Deybri…vanishing once more…
Rahl coughed, then shuddered.
His face felt as though it were on fire and still burned. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He was in an unfamiliar chamber, and it was light outside the single narrow window. How long had he been struggling through the darkness? What had happened?
“You’re awake. Good.” The voice belonged to Hewart, who stepped closer to the bed on which Rahl lay.
“Where…?” Rahl croaked.
“In the infirmary. You’re lucky to be alive. Very fortunate,” Hewart said, looking down at him. “Suvynt said that you’d gone to check on the Jeranyi vessel, or we wouldn’t have been looking for you.”
“Captain…undercaptain?” Rahl croaked.
“No one can find the captain. We think that he might have been killed by the blast on the Jeranyi ship. Someone killed the undercaptain. At least, it looks that way. All we could find were his blade and boots, and insignia and parts of his cap and uniform. It looks like a Jeranyi plot. You were just lucky.”
“Who takes over…in charge?”
“The regional commander is running things, but Jyrolt and someone from Luba are coming as well. The Jeranyi were up to more than what anyone knows happened, so far, anyway, but no one’s quite sure what happened. They think it might be tied into the rebellion in Merowey.”
“Rebellion…” Rahl tried to remember. He had known something about that, about the Emperor’s brother being behind it. How could that be tied to the Jeranyi? He didn’t know, and it was still hard to think, and his face burned, and his breathing was labored.
“You don’t have much order left in you, Rahl, but you should be all right before long.” Hewart lifted a mug of something. “Heavy beer. It’ll help a lot.”
Rahl had to swallow slowly, and his throat was more than a little sore, but he got all the beer down.
“Good.” Hewart smiled. “Now you need to rest.”
Questions swirled around in Rahl’s head, but before he could ask any more, the hot darkness rose and swallowed him once again.
C
The heat and fever continued, and Rahl drifted in and out of it for several days. The words and phrases echoing through his head became fewer, but the dreams more vivid-if scenes from his past were truly dreams, particularly those involving Puvort and Kadara. The dream-scenes were seldom pleasant. Even the dreams of Deybri included the time she had chastised him for trying to shield himself against nonexistent chaos in learning how to handle the falchiona.
In time, he did wake from the fever, on oneday morning, according to Hewart, who had hovered over him and clearly had some ability as a healer.
“Have I just lain here the whole time?”
“Hardly…you’ve eaten and washed and talked, but you weren’t really here,” replied Hewart. “You had as much of an order-loss fever as a real one, and there was some wound chaos in your throat and lungs. That was probably from being so close to the Jeranyi ship that caught fire and exploded. You talked some.”
“Ah…” Did he really want to know what he’d said? “What did I say?”
“Most of it didn’t make too much sense, especially at first when you mostly muttered and whispered, but you did keep saying that you tried to find the captain and tell him, and something about the Jeranyi getting caught in the fire of the Nylan Merchant place, but that made sense, because that was where the big fire happened.” Hewart looked embarrassed. “Did you have a girl named Deybri? You kept saying her name.”
“She’s a healer, but she was never my girl. I wish she were,” Rahl admitted.
“Rahl…what happened on the pier? Do you remember?”
How much should he say? Rahl took another swallow of the beer in the mug on the table beside the bed before answering. “I thought one of the concealed guns on the pier side of the ship exploded, and then there were more explosions. I felt like the whole ship would explode and there was nowhere to go. So I jumped into the harbor.” All that was true, if hardly complete.
“That was smart. It probably saved your life. Did you see the captain?”
Rahl shook his head. “I was looking for him, but I never saw him.”
Hewart looked to the infirmary door. “There are some important mage-guards here who need to talk to you. They’ve been waiting.”
Rahl could feel a chill go all the way through him. “Who?”
“The regional commander, Jyrolt, and a mage-guard from Luba named Taryl. I never heard of him, but both the others defer to him, and I never saw a regional commander ever defer to anyone except the Emperor, the over-commander, or the Triad.”
“I heard that he was once part of the Triad.” Rahl just hoped Taryl would understand and could help. Otherwise, he was likely headed for Highpoint or Luba, if not worse.
“Oh…” Hewart looked to the infirmary door as it opened. “I think they’re here.” He moved away from Rahl’s bed.
Taryl was the first one into the room, and he merely looked at Hewart, who immediately stepped back, then departed after Jyrolt and a third mage-guard entered.
“Rahl,” began Taryl, “you know Jyrolt, and this is Regional Mage-Commander Chaslyk.”