‘For which crime he is eventually beaten up and killed and left to drift on the outgoing tide,’ Brexan added as a quiet interruption.
‘And we thank you for that.’ Gilmour raised his bottle to her. ‘So what is it, and why did Prince Marek – Nerak – plant so much of it? Why did Prince Malagon – Nerak – harvest and ship so much of it? And, assuming what I encountered on that schooner was one of Carpello’s shipments, how can something that powerful be in use here in Eldarn without me or Steven or even Kantu feeling it?’
‘Those are the key unanswered questions.’ Garec reached for another beer, then asked, ‘Anyone else?’
A chorus of ‘please’ and ‘just one more’ broke Gilmour’s concentration for a moment; when everyone had quietened again, the old magician was staring at Steven.
‘I’ve never been inside Welstar Palace,’ he said finally. ‘I have no idea what Nerak might have been doing there, what preparations he was making for the advent of his dark master’s reign. I should have gone. A thousand Twinmoons later, and I realise now that I should have gone up there and taken a look for myself.’
‘Gilmour,’ Steven started, ‘you can’t blame yourself for-’
‘I’ve been there,’ Brexan broke in. ‘I was stationed there for a while before I came to Rona. But I can’t tell you much about the palace; no one gets anywhere near it.’
‘How about the army?’ Gilmour asked. ‘I understand it’s massive.’
‘Rutters, yes! The whole of the river valley on either bank is the army encampment. When I was there last, I’d wager there were nearly two hundred thousand soldiers on the grounds and in the hills above the river. The tents are a veritable city, and the barges running up and down the Welstar River are a wonder to watch. The river is the palace’s own supply highway; a regiment of soldiers is assigned to oversee the depot along the road into Pellia and to work the docks on either bank.’
‘Great dry-humping lords, why?’ Garec asked.
‘Versen asked that same question,’ Brexan said. ‘He was convinced Prince Malagon had gone insane – he said there was no need in Eldarn for an army that size, and unless Malagon planned to march through Praga and the Eastlands to kill everyone they encountered, there would be no reason to amass such a huge fighting force. Versen said any army that size, encamped for so long, would be riddled with disease. Ailments, afflictions and infections would spread like wildfire, and they’d lose more soldiers to sickness than they ever would to an enemy.’
‘Two hundred thousand.’ Steven whistled low. ‘Why?’
‘Could they be slaves?’ Garec asked. ‘Once the Fold is open and that thing, that essence of all things evil is released into Eldarn, could they be slaves, or maybe a source of energy? Maybe it needs souls, warm bodies, blood, who knows?’
‘That may be,’ Gilmour said. ‘Apart from knowing it exists in there, we never knew anything about what it would do when it arrived.’
‘Blood, souls and warm flesh,’ Kellin repeated. ‘Rutting whores!’
‘But that still doesn’t answer the question of the shipments,’ Brexan reminded them. ‘Unless the trees do something to fortify the soldiers.’
‘Maybe they eat the trees,’ Garec said.
‘We won’t know until we get there,’ Gilmour said finally, definitively.
They spent a quiet moment looking at one another, wondering how many more of their own they would lose. Sallax and Versen had been brought back to life, if only for a moment, by a woman who refused to allow either of them to fade away entirely. Who would be the next to fall?
Garec said, ‘Well, the Twinmoon is upon us. If we can get to Pellia and stop Mark before he reaches Welstar Palace, we might be able to use the table to stop the shipments, neutralise the effects of whatever Malagon has already managed to transport and perhaps even to eradicate or disband that army.’
‘You think they’ll go home quietly?’ Brexan asked. ‘Malagon’s Home Guard are humourless individuals who take their role very seriously. It will take more than just us asking sweetly for them to pack up and head for home.’
Garec said, ‘True; we’ll probably have to fight them, and the Seron, but by that time we’ll have the table.’
They drank in silence. There was nothing left to discuss: they would find Mark Jenkins or they would die.
Eldarn’s twin moons, burnt-yellow and silvery-blue, drifted towards one another in the northern sky and as if in deference, the Ravenian Sea rushed through the Narrows to flood the archipelago that sprawled from Pellia to the wind-ravaged Gorskan coast. With the tide rising in Pellia, ships overladen with Malakasian lumber, textiles, quarried stone and sometimes even livestock set sails and tacked into a queue to pass through the naval blockade. Outbound ships were inspected at their mooring buoys, then given scarcely a passing glance as they made their way across the blockade and into deep waters. Prince Malagon’s naval officers saved their scrutiny for incoming vessels. Ships were expected to heave to and submit to agents of the Harbourmaster, the Malakasian Customs Admiral and the prince’s navy. Terrorists, while rare, were either transported to the wharf and hanged for a Twinmoon, or lashed to a quarry-stone and cast over the side to join the pile of decomposing freedom fighters on the muddy harbour bottom.
A gold-and-green-striped banner was run up when terrorists or Eastland partisans had been discovered hiding below decks, or stowed away inside a foreign merchant ship. The little flag was known informally as Stripes. At night, when it couldn’t be seen, a lilting melody, Stripes’ invocation, was piped across the water and a second watchlight was set – a lantern was hung from the bowsprit. Stripes was more than just military intelligence; it was also an invitation to an aven of distracting entertainment. Guilty merchant officers were arrested and shipped off to a Pellia prison, their vessels seized for bounty or, if old and battered and considered next to worthless, set alight, navy crews were allowed – if not encouraged – to watch the conflagration, and to provide a chorus of hoots and jeers as the guilty men and women, often beaten and bloody by now, were transferred to a Pellia-bound naval vessel. Malakasian navy officers, not normally a generous sort, would dole out beer or rum while their crew enjoyed the spectacle from afar.
On this night, with the twin moons precariously close to one another in the heavens and the southern waters rushing north, three Falkan frigates were escorted towards the narrow mouth of the only deep-water passage through the Northern Archipelago. Somewhere in the midst of all the atolls, islands, spits and sandbars that made up the archipelago they would encounter the convoy of textile, lumber and livestock boats sailing from Pellia Harbour. Assuming the helmsman on each of the lead vessels knew the twisty route well enough, northbound and southbound ships would pass safely, though close enough to hail one another without shouting. Should one of the captains make a mistake, running inside a key marker or placing too far across the channel on a difficult tack, the entire group of ships would be in danger of running aground.
Redrick Shen, the raider-turned-merchant-seaman, had been through the Northeast Channel before, but like most first-timers, he had spent much of the journey watching from beside the rail as the lethal rocks and unexpected sandbars passed within a few paces of the ship’s hull. He might have glanced at a chart once, Twinmoons ago, but it had not been his responsibility to navigate the harrowing passage so he hadn’t committed the sequence of geographical signposts to memory.
Now he watched as the twin moons sought one another in the northern sky. They were an awesome sight, the massive glowing orbs sitting low on the horizon, one smoky-yellow and the other glinty-silver, destined to kiss before dawn.