Instinctively, he started counting them. As he watched through the narrow slit, he could see the occasional bloodied body plunging into the sea. There were forty splashes in all.
Then he heard snuffling, snarling, grunting sounds. They reminded him of one time he and his father had been ocean fishing. Twenty-Nine had been young, and had made the mistake of accidentally tipping an entire bucket of bloody fish offal overboard. Sharks had swarmed.
As had happened then, eventually all went quiet. Straining to get the best possible view, Twenty-Nine could see the red, spreading stain of blood as it stretched across the surface of the impossibly placid sea.
Then the topside deck hatch opened noisily again, and the Harlequin reappeared. Blood dripped from the hem of his doublet. Gently wiping it off with an embroidered handkerchief, he descended the stairs and walked to the master bleeder.
"Fill the vacant seats with replacements from below," he said casually. "Talis only. And be quick about it."
Several bleeders moved aside the oars and unlocked the grates in the aisle floor, then descended into the darkness. Soon the replacements came up and out, furiously blinking their eyes in the brighter light of the oar deck. They were assigned to their stations and roughly chained into place.
Twenty-Nine tried to smile hopefully into the face of the frightened, confused slave now seated next to him.
Then he felt the great ship rock and heard the accompanying creaking of her sides. He heard the scurrying noises of the topside bleeders as they went about their labors above. Slowly, the Defiant began to make way.
The Harlequin looked to the pacemaster. "Battle speed," he ordered. "We have time to make up for."
"Very good," the pacemaster replied. But an unusually worried look had crowded in upon the corners of his face. "But before we commence-are we safe?" he asked. "Are we through it?"
"Oh, indeed," the Harlequin answered casually.
"And the human offerings?" the pacemaster inquired, taking up his twin sledges. "Their numbers sufficed?"
"Oh, yes," the Harlequin answered, walking to a comfortable-looking chair placed before the slaves. He smiled. "I think it safe to say they all disagreed with something that ate them!"
The bleeders broke into raucous laughter. Reclining into the softness of his upholstered chair, the Harlequin threw a leg up over one of its arms.
As the slaves slid their oars into the restless sea, the pacemaster resumed the beat, and the Defiant truly began to make way. Reaching down, the Harlequin took the twin iron spheres into his hand and began clinking them together, exactly matching the pacemaster's beat.
O n the same ship, another slave lay shackled to the floor, one of hundreds packed cheek by jowl in the lower deck. His eyes were hazel. His straight, sandy hair was pulled back from his face into a tail that was secured with a bit of worn leather string and ran down almost to the center of his back. Before being chained down he had been branded with the word R'talis, as had many of the others imprisoned with him. He was strong and in the prime of his life, but in the darkness of this hold it didn't matter. Nothing did.
With no way to raise himself up, there was precious little escape from the constantly nauseating stench of human waste, not to mention the ever-present vomit from those who continually succumbed to seasickness. All the slaves marked R'talis were fed and hydrated enough to keep them alive. Still, his lips parched and his clothing soaked, his hollow stomach felt long past the point of hunger. He had no idea that his ship was part of a large flotilla of slavers. Nor did it matter. All he wanted was his freedom.
A few hours earlier, the ship had inexplicably stopped, then suddenly resumed course. He did not know why.
He could do nothing but listen to the moaning and sobbing of his fellow captives as the ship pitched sickeningly through the violent Sea of Whispers. Trying to keep from vomiting, he closed his eyes. His parched tongue reached out to touch the dark mole at the left-hand corner of his mouth.
CHAPTER
Two
"D ried tulip of Rokhana," the old woman said in her raspy voice, pointing to the smoke-colored bottle. Never in her life had she seen so many rare, wonderful herbs collected in a single place. The sheer quantity and selection astounded her. She watched anxiously, as a greedy child might, while the man in the two-colored robe took the fragile bottle down from the shelf. He carefully placed it into the saddlebag alongside the others. The woman smiled, revealing the absence of several teeth.
"And sneezeweed!" she added gleefully, clapping her hands together. She pointed to another container. "We must have sneezeweed!" Again the man complied.
The small, thatched cottage they were plundering was in the Hartwick Woods, just east of the town of Florian's Glade, in the south of Eutracia. An ancient herbmistress lived there. At the moment she cowered within the glowing wizard's warp the man in the robe had conjured after breaking into her home.
"What about this one?" he asked casually. He held a small, fluted bottle of shredded blue leaves before the light of the fireplace.
"Bah!" the old woman grunted with a disparaging wave of her ancient hand. "What you now hold is a bottle of the ground flowers from a shammatrass tree. They bloom only once every twenty-three years, and must be picked within hours of their appearance, or they are no good. It is used for medicinal purposes only-not at all something that we need."
She smiled wickedly. "It is, however, exceedingly difficult to come by," she continued. "It probably took the herbmistress there her entire life to collect the meager amount you now hold in the palm of your hand." Turning, she cast a jealous eye to the woman trapped behind the azure bars of the cage.
"Really?" the man asked nastily. "How interesting." With that he removed the cork and cast the bottle's contents into the fire. The flames roared colorfully for a moment before finally settling down again. The herbmistress cried aloud and slumped to the floor.
Smiling, the man in the two-colored robe looked over at her. "After I have finished here, I will visit the lead wizard," he said softly. "I will gladly give him your regards." He began to laugh, but his laugh quickly decayed into an all-consuming cough.
Hacking relentlessly, he placed a cloth before his mouth. When he took it away, it was covered with blood that was moving across the cloth, tracing his endowed blood signature. His lips twisting angrily, he stuffed the rag back into his robes. He stood there quietly for a moment, trying to reclaim his breathing.
"Are you sure there is nothing in this place that would help me?" he whispered to the crone as she went about selecting more of the precious bottles.
At last she stopped her search and turned her green eyes to him. "As I have told you before, Krassus, there is nothing of this world that can help you now. As you yourself have said, your illness is of the craft. What you have swirling inside was given to you by your previous master, the dead son of the Chosen One. What shall be shall be." She turned her attention back to the shelves. "The items we take today should, however, help me locate the scroll you seek. And hopefully before it is too late," she added softly.
Hours after they had gone, the wizard's warp finally dissolved, leaving the crying herbmistress free to face the task of cleaning up her smashed, looted home.
CHAPTER
Three
D reng!" the wizard Faegan shouted happily from his chair on wheels. "That's another two hundred points!" Using a feathered quill, he made an exaggerated show of noting the tally down on a small pad. Smiling coyly, he sat back and stroked Nicodemus, his blue cat, as he waited for the inevitable outburst from the lead wizard. It didn't take long.