In Shartelle the Tower of the Bats collapsed. Grain rotted. Plague visited briefly. The besiegers found the hidden aqueduct that brought water down from a built-over, camouflaged spring in the hills northeast of the city. Loss of that resource caused severe rationing.
A Dreangerean relief fleet assaulted the blockade at Shartelle. The warships were allowed to break through. The cargo vessels fled or were captured. The warships were then lost while trying to break back out. Slaves aboard several somehow slipped their chains and revolted.
* * *
The Mountain huddled with his surviving veterans. “The end of the world is near. What shall we do? How shall we meet it?”
Old Az said, “We’ll meet it as we meet everything. Chin to chin.”
Bone, on crutches these days, agreed. “This is as it has been Written. We cannot dispute the Will.”
More of that fatalism that lay behind everything, Nassim thought.
Bone added, “The Rascal wrote the opening scene. I just hope we can end his tale before ours plays out.”
There was no good news from the Idiam. The Ansa felt abandoned, though Indala’s indifference was not of his own choosing. Er-Rashal was an apparition of the monster that had been but he forged on, relentless in his determination to raise the dead god and unswerving in his lust for ascension. The Ansa were on the defensive. They would flee the Idiam had they anywhere else to run.
The Mountain said, “Then let us bridle our grand ambitions and beg for that one boon. Perhaps God will grant us that.”
Someone muttered, “You would think He’d show more interest in making His enemies weep.”
Outside, none too distant, masonry crumbled. People began to cry out. That meant that there had been casualties.
37. The Mother Sea: Pilgrims
Brother Candle argued that he had lived a long, productive life. He had had a positive impact on the world. He had done his share. It was time the world let him go home to the Light. The Good God had prepared him a place.
The Widow and the Vindicated did not agree.
Never had he been so sick for so long.
Kedle, her henchmen, and the Terliagan seamen all promised that he would get over it.
They lied. He was still at the rail, still limp, when Darter made port at al-Stikla, on the heel of Firaldia, which was as far east as Terliagans were willing to travel.
There were pirates in the eastern Mother Sea. Also, the Dateonese and Aparionese were lethally jealous of their monopolies. They even fought one another, constantly.
There was a long delay at al-Stikla. Passage east, for groups, was scarce and dear. Countless pious pilgrims and bloodthirsty adventurers wanted to get to the Holy Lands in time to participate in the great event of the age.
At shared prayers Kedle murmured, “You would think that supernatural forces were at work.”
The Perfect harrumphed. Solid ground had yet to restore his good temper. “Of course they are! Weren’t you paying attention?”
Lady Hope had visited Darter several times.
Kedle blushed. The Perfect noticed and was startled. Was there something physical between Hope and the Widow?
Oddities suddenly lined up and made sense, then, though he had trouble getting his mind around the situation. That was plausible only on an intellectual plane. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You are too liberal, Master.” Kedle paused. “It’s … I can’t help myself.”
“Let’s not talk about it.” After his own pause, “She has that effect on me and I’m older than stone, nor ever owned strong appetites.” Kedle’s had been strong from the first. “Just ask the blessing of the Light.”
Hope was not the only supernatural visitor. The monster bird with the damaged wing sometimes circled while Darter was at sea. Brother Candle thought the ship was being shadowed by something in the water, too. He was too miserable to care much but did mention it to the crew, whereupon the Terliagans grew excited.
There was no such beast native to the Mother Sea.
Kedle observed, “We must be caught inside a bigger story than the one we can see.”
Brother Candle agreed. He had no doubts about that.
He did wish that the Good God was the sort who stepped in on behalf of his followers.
Brother Candle did not like being afraid. Being an object of interest to the Night-in particular to those parts of the Night that dogma proclaimed to be unreal-was scary in the extreme.
* * *
Kedle found a fat Dateonese transport, purpose-built to carry pilgrims, that had room for the Vindicated. Such vessels reaped grand profits by shifting the pious and ambitious.
They did not want to accept the Widow. She was bully enough to get her way. The holy man with the tattoos was terrifying, too. His tattoos looked like they could come to life.
The ship’s master finally took them aboard, though, because the approaches to the Holy Lands had become so dangerous. Consiglieri Reversi Ono must pass along shores where she was likely to encounter pirates, privateers, or warships from Lucidia or Dreanger. Even ships from Aparion and the Eastern Empire could be troublesome.
* * *
Brother Candle could not believe it. The passage from al-Stikla east was worse than the first leg. Consiglieri Reversi Ono left shallow coastal waters for a direct run across those deeps where the big waves stalked. Two days out he begged to be put to death.
Cruel people all, the Vindicated and crew only mocked his misery.
* * *
Pirates caught Consiglieri off the south coast of the Antal, just days from the Holy Lands. A swarm of small ships closed in, under the illusion that the Dateonese could be captured easily. Brother Candle was too sick to wonder. Though the seas were minimal he was preoccupied with his misery.
The pirates soon learned that they had made a lethally bad choice.
They were not accustomed to having to do much real fighting. Kedle and the Vindicated slaughtered them like the amateurs they were.
A pirate no older than fourteen came at the Perfect. Brother Candle thought his death was upon him. He was too sick … But his serpents were not. Two came out. The boy went down.
People saw it happen. The fighting slackened. A man who might have been the boy’s father wailed, charged, and died of lightning snakebite.
Awed, the pirates began a loud debate.
Then someone aboard one of the pirate craft howled an alarm.
A war galley was headed for the tangle. Its sails were Aparionese. More so even than the Dateonese the Aparionese were merciless toward pirates. They hunted pirates down. They destroyed whole villages suspected of harboring pirates.
There was a particularly dire air about this monster galley.
Brother Candle could only observe, later, that it was a strange old world, and cruel.
The galley broke unfamiliar colors. For the pirates escape was improbable already. That warship lay in the hands of the Night, no doubt about that. Kedle and Brother Candle smelled a smell like Lady Hope, only older, heavier, and darker. Hints of shadow swarmed around the vessel. Another ship, in the distance, noted earlier but paid little heed, began to show flashes of light and puffs of smoke. Thumps came rolling across the water. The vessel caught fire.
Shadows danced round the vessels trying to run from Consiglieri. They brought loud bangs. “Firepowder,” Kedle reported. “Top grade and delivered by sorcery. We have found ourselves somebody really, really bad, old man.”
“Somebody with a grudge against pirates, perhaps?”