Chapter 11

The Grayveil Strait

Nothing was visible astern of the Swiftwing—nothing, indeed, in any direction, beyond maybe a few hundred feet of open water. Fog had closed in on the little skiff, dark and brooding, clinging to the strangely becalmed waters in writhing shapes like ghosts. It swallowed light, devoured sound, soaked through the thickest mantle. Krenaz Bur, the boat’s crew called it, forking their fingers at the sky in a show of disgust as they worked the sails: the World Between, their vision of the afterlife.

Shedara thought it apt. In a way, that was where she was—on the way from one life to the next. She hadn’t been in a city for more than half a year, maybe more. Really, Blood Eye had been the last: she could hardly count her brief but violent sojourn in Kristophan, where the emperor had died on Forlo’s blade. Since then, it had been nothing but ships and the wild. But not that night. That night, they would pass through the blanket of mist that gave those waters their name, and at last they would reach the Rainwards. That night… she would have a warm bed, good wine, food in her belly that tasted like something. The trip had been long, but finally it was coming to an end.

She glanced again toward the boat’s stern. There was nothing to be seen back there, but a figure stood at the rail nonetheless, bundled in a woolen cloak, watching behind. Threads of mist clung to the figure, caressing it like fingertips. The sight made Shedara think of stories mariners told in wharfside taverns, back on the far side of Taladas: every sea captain had a tale or two of a haunted ship, where specters lurked in the hold or high in the rigging. More often than not, as sailors tended to be men, the phantom was a woman, a wife or lover who died while her man was at sea.

The figure was not dead, but she did seem to be dwelling in another world. Essana had spoken hardly at all since they’d left the Dourlands, finishing the long trek to the coast once the Black Tongue hobgoblins broke their bivouac and moved on. Even when they’d found the Rainwarders’ little harbor of Hyo-khal, hidden in a socket of the rocky coast as Shedara had promised, Essana had stayed quiet, lost in thought, always looking behind.

She was thinking about Forlo, of course. When Hult returned from his raid and told them what he’d learned, all of Essana’s grief and worry had returned, twice as strong as before. Then, as they began their voyage across the Grayveil, they’d passed close to an ancient woodland where the hobgoblins were camped. There, on the cliffs overlooking the water, they thought they might have seen him: a man, standing dark against the dusky sky, soon lost in the fog.

Barreth.

That had been hours ago; Essana hadn’t left the aft rail since. She stood still as a statue, her eyes fixed on the point where they’d seen that lone man. None of them went near her; Shedara had tried, once, but the look on the woman’s face had driven her back. There was sorrow there, of course—long damp tracks shone on her cheeks—but there was something else as well. It was a deep and burning anger, an emotion Shedara had never seen in Essana before. It made Shedara shiver and look away.

“What is she thinking about, do you suppose?”

Shedara looked sideways. Azar stood beside her, still clad in the same ragged robes he’d worn since Akh-tazi. While the others had accepted warm clothes from the Swiftwing’s captain—winter was easier there than in the west, but they were fairly far north, and the fog was cold—Azar still refused to wear any garment but the one the Faceless had given him.

Shedara sighed, running a hand through her hair. It was growing out long, something she hadn’t let it do for decades. It felt good, sliding between her fingers.

“Your father, of course,” she said. “She loved him. Seeing him again after what happened must be… difficult.”

“But that couldn’t have been him,” Azar replied. “You said so yourself. He’s dead. I killed him.”

Shedara flinched. He’d said it so matter-of-factly. She glanced sideways, looking for Hult as a chill ran through her. The Uigan was busy, however, hauling on a halyard like the rest of the crew, happy again to be working on a boat. His eyes raised and met hers, questioning: Is something wrong? She shook her head and turned back to Azar.

He watched her, curious as a child, though he looked roughly thirty. He could tell she was unsettled but didn’t understand why. “What happens when we reach the Rainwards?” he asked.

We rest, Shedara thought. Maybe we set this madness aside. Others can take up the fight; it doesn’t have to be us all the way to the end. Does it?

“We have to tell the kings,” she said. “About Maladar, the hobgoblins… everything. There’s going to be an important battle soon. They need to be ready. And we should find out if there’s a way to stop him. If what your mother says is true, Maladar’s going to raise the Chaldar, try to bring Aurim back. We have to keep that from happening.”

“Why?”

Shedara opened her mouth, then closed it again. She was quiet for a time, the only sounds the muted creaking of the boat and the slap of water against its hull. “Because he’s evil,” she said at last. “Because he’s caused too much suffering already.”

Azar nodded but abstractly, as if they were two philosophers discussing some minor point of rhetoric. He doesn’t care, Shedara realized. This isn’t his world; he hasn’t seen what the rest of us have. He doesn’t know what will be lost.

She was about to press her point when a shout from above cut her off. “The Spires!” called the lookout atop the crow’s nest, a short, narrow-eyed seafarer with beads woven into his long mustaches. “Sevenspires off the starboard bow!”

Shedara turned and caught her breath. There they were, as the lookout proclaimed: seven slender, onion-domed towers, jutting out of the mist. Two were hewn of green stone, two of blue, and the middle three moonstone-white, all inlaid with gold and gems that would have sparkled had the sun been shining. Each had to be three hundred feet high, maybe more, and silver lights shone from their windows. The stubborn fog clung to their lower reaches, hiding their bases so they seemed to float in the air. Jagged hills loomed behind them, capped with dark pines.

They’d reached the end of their travels, and miraculously, all four of them were still alive.

The boat’s captain, whose plaited beard was dyed a startling shade of sea-green, raised his fist, holding fast the tiller with his other hand. “Ready oars!” he shouted. “Hai!”

Working as one, the sailors lowered the sails, then moved to the benches that ran along the skiff’s sides. Each of them took a paddle, lowered it into the water, and began to pull. Even Hult did it perfectly, and Shedara had to smile at that. For a man who’d been afraid of the sea—and rightly so, having lost most of his people to the raging waters at the Lost Road—he’d become quite the mariner.

There was a faint clanging in the mist, some great gong being struck. At the prow of the Swiftwing, carved into the image of the front half of a leaping griffin, one of her crew struck a bronze bell in reply. Then, all around them, more chimes rang. They were coming into the harbor blind, the fog driving away all sight of docks and breakwaters and other boats, but they could hear the warning bells. The captain urged his men to row slowly, one ear cocked as he guided the steering oar. Dark shapes of rocks and ships faded in and out of the mist on either side, but it was the bells, each with its own distinct tone, that told him where to go.

They headed straight for one of the sounds, a deep, tuneless clanking that made Shedara think of a mace striking an iron shield. It got louder and louder as the rest of the bells faded away. Then, finally, the captain raised his fist again. “Back water, hai!” he bellowed.

“Hai!” the sailors answered and immediately reversed the direction of their rowing. As they did, a long wooden pier jutted out of the murk. With an expert’s eye, the captain guided the ship toward it, and the oarsmen killed the boat’s momentum, bringing it to a halt, then raising their dripping oars out of the water again as they pulled up alongside. Two sailors grabbed ropes and hopped onto the dock to lash her to the waiting bollards. The Swiftwing bumped against the dock, then was still. It was as gentle a mooring as Shedara had seen, and all of it lost in thick fog.

The bells fell silent. She looked at the dock, then up at the seven towers, the only part of the city that could be seen.

“Welcome to Suluk,” called the captain.

Shedara had never been to Suluk before, though she had heard tales. One of the largest “kingdoms” of the Rainward Isles, it—like its fellow realms—was really a city-state on the coast of a rocky, ruin-strewn island, part of Aurim’s far-flung provinces that had shattered when the Destruction struck. The folk who lived there were, like the men of the League and Thenol, descended from refugees who had fled the ashes of the fallen empire.

Unlike the League, however, the Rainwarders had lived in isolation ever since, making contact with the rest of the world on only rare occasions. Far away, in the west of Taladas where the minotaurs ruled, the kingdoms’ existence hadn’t even become known until two hundred years after the rain of burning stone. Since then, knowledge of the isles had grown: there were nine kingdoms in all, populated mostly by men and dwarves, though other races lived in the Rainwards as well. The kingdoms had fought several wars among themselves since the Destruction, but these days they tried to live in peace, for they needed one another to survive. Their true enemies were the monsters that lived in the depths, twisted, goblinlike creatures called disir who regularly raided the surface from the tunnels that shot through the rock. Because a disir attack could come at any time, and from any direction, nearly every Rainwarder was expected to be skilled in fighting or magic—or both.

That was good. An army of Rainwarders was needed, and quickly.

The fog was still thick on the shores as Shedara and the others walked the streets of Suluk. Its buildings were broad and many-columned, hewn of dark gray stone and decorated with bas-reliefs of sailing ships and images of Old Aurim at its height. Golden light flickered in the many windows, bleeding into the mist. Statues of mariners and warriors lined the main boulevard, which wound back and forth up the steep slope on which the city was built: smaller lanes took a more direct approach, climbing stairways carved out of the island’s rock to unseen courtyards on terraces above. Down the center of the main boulevard was a long strip of garden, with spindly, silver-barked trees that were just starting to come into their spring flower; tiny golden buds frosted the ends of their branches. At their feet grew riots of white and pale green flowers that glowed softly in the murk.

The streets were mostly deserted, the doors locked and barred: the disir came out when the fog was thickest. Silence even hung over the marketplaces; the only sounds were the distant, faint clamor of the harbor-bells as other ships moved into and out of port. Behind them, the mist swallowed the wharf. Above, the seven towers faded in and out of view, dark shadows in the gloom. They crowned the king’s palace, at Suluk’s highest point.

“What do you know about the one who rules here?” asked Hult, who kept one hand on his sword as they wended their way uphill.

Shedara shrugged. “The last word we had in Armach, King Zaldash was very old, and that was about five years ago.”

“Zaldash is dead,” the Uigan said. “His successor is named Nakhil. The sailors told me.”

“Then you know more than me,” she said. “What else did they say?”

Hult waggled his maimed hand. “Not much. Most of them were from the other kingdoms, and the ones who came from Suluk have never seen him. They don’t spend much time on land, these seafarers.”

“And then they probably don’t make it much past the alehouses,” Shedara said, chuckling. “Essana, did the Keeper tell you anything?”

She waited and got no reply. Essana walked alone, her head bowed, lost in thought. Shedara plucked her sleeve.

Essana jerked, startled. “What?”

“Wherever Forlo is,” Shedara said, “he is. There’s nothing we can do about him right now. I’m asking you a question. Did the Keeper tell you anything about the king of this place?”

“No.” Essana glanced around. “He only said the name of the kingdom. This is where the hobgoblins are going to attack?”

Hult nodded. “It’s closest to Aurim. If they hit one of the other kingdoms, the Suluki might be able to flank them. Maladar’s too smart to take that chance. He’ll hit here first, then work his way north. It’s what Chovuk Boyla would have done.”

“Can they hold out?” Azar asked. “Suluk, I mean. Can they stop them?”

Hult made a glum face and gave no answer.

The boulevard leveled out, giving way to a wide plaza dotted with ivy-covered pillars, atop which blue flames cast halos of light in the fog. The square was an overlook, and would have given a fine view of the city and the water below, except that right then they could see nothing but gray with the occasional shadow of a turret or steeple adrift in the vapor. On the square’s far end, beyond a wide pool ringed with more statues, stood the palace. It was built of the same stuff as the towers—a mix of blue, white, and green marble that glistened in the pillars’ light. A wide sweep of steps led up to doors of green bronze, surrounded by carvings of men on horses. Guardsmen stood silent before the entrance, clad in mail that was lacquered sea-green and snow-white cloaks. Plumes of peacock feathers fanned the crests of their helms. They held tall, oblong shields emblazoned with the seven towers and long glaives chased with gold. They stood motionless, staring at the four travelers as they drew near.

“They aren’t the only ones on watch,” Shedara murmured. “There are wizards too, though we can’t see them. I can feel the magic here.”

“What do we do now?” Hult asked.

“Get your hand off that blade, for starters,” Shedara said. “Let’s not give them any reason to be nervous. As for getting in…”

“Leave that to me,” Essana said.

Hult and Shedara looked at each other. The Uigan raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“All right,” Shedara said. “You’re the noblewoman, after all.”

Their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud as they crossed the plaza. A narrow bridge spanned the pool; they crossed it single file, then climbed the steps to the doors. As Shedara expected, the guardsmen lowered their glaives to bar the way. What she didn’t expect was the dwarf who stepped through the doors to greet them.

He was tall for one of his race, nearly reaching the height of her shoulder. His beard was the color of gold, forked and bound with silver rings. He wore fine robes of crimson silk with brocade in the shapes of foaming wave crests. When he spoke, his accent was so thick that Shedara could barely make out the words. The air around him seethed with strong magic, making Shedara’s scalp prickle.

“I am Roshambur,” he said, “vizier to Nakhil the Shrewd, King of Suluk and the South Reach. You are strangers to this land, and must go no further.”

Essana stepped forward and pressed her hands together, a courtly gesture of the League. “Most Excellent,” she said, “we beg admittance, that we might seek His Majesty’s counsel.”

The dwarf raised an eyebrow. “You speak sweetly, my lady. Who are you?”

“I am Essana Forlo, baroness of Coldhope, in the Imperial League,” she replied, pressing her hands again. “These are my companions and protectors, Hult of the Tamire and Shedara, an agent of the elves of Armach.”

“A strange company,” Roshambur replied. His eyes lingered on Shedara. “I sense your mastery of the Art. That would make you a moon-thief, yes?”

Shedara nodded. “You are most perceptive, Magi.”

The dwarf allowed himself a chuckle, and turned back to Essana. “You have only named three of your company,” he said. “Who is this man who stands before me, who wears the garb of dark sorcery?”

“Most Excellent,” Essana replied, “this is my son, Azar. He bears the name of one who is known to this court, and to its king.”

Roshambur blinked. His hands twitched. He stared at Azar, who reached up to remove his hood. His face was very pale, almost white.

Azar’s namesake had been one of the Faceless, a man called the Keeper, but he had also been a spy, keeping watch on the Brethren for the Rainward kings. He had tried to help Essana escape, and had paid for that betrayal of his brother-wizards with his life… but only after days of unspeakable torment. Essana had told the rest of them the tale on their first night together, an age ago in Neron.

“Azar!” Roshambur murmured, and licked his lips. “You know him?”

“I did,” Essana said. “He was a friend of mine… before he died.”

The dwarf jerked again. He was silent for a moment, his lips pursed in thought. Then, though he made no movement or gesture, the doors clicked and swung open. He nodded to the guards, who raised their glaives out of the way.

“Come,” he said. “His Majesty will see you at once.”