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Chapter Thirty



The first half of their journey aboard the Courier brig Swiftsure was largely uneventful. The seaways were fairly quiet, and the ship was large enough to deter any but the most determined pirates. Even as they skirted the northern limit of the Eshfet Deep that ran like a trench between Ar Navir and the equator-straddling continent of Mihal’j, they saw no sign of the marine cryptigants that sometimes troubled passing vessels, and occasionally took one whole.

The weather was mostly fair and Raun proved to be more reliable than the ship’s barometer at predicting when a storm was on the way. At first, Druadaen had to make frequent use of the velene, which invariably unwound itself into a small dragon as soon as he lowered his wrist toward Raun’s dry, anxious nose. Within minutes, the huge dog was curled up and sound asleep. Perhaps he came to associate the approach of storms with comfortable sleep because, as time went on, he required the velene’s intercession less. Shortly before they began tacking northwest to complete their travel to the far western shore of Ar Navir, Raun ceased to need it at all; at the approach of high weather, he simply trotted down to their cabin, paced through a few turns, and set himself down to sleep.

However, it was only as the last landmark of their home continent dropped behind—Corrovane’s fortress-port of Araxor—that the group’s talk turned to what Druadaen meant to do on Far Amitryea after he had discharged his duty in Shadowmere. Which would surely be, as Ahearn confidently asserted, “but the work of an hour. If that.”

Druadaen shrugged. “After returning from Gur Grehar, I encountered other impossible accounts of beings that have been worrisome to human communities.”

“You mean, you have even more questions about urzhen?” Umkhira asked.

“No: about giants. After the battle with the shaman, Elweyr remarked that blugner are not lesser kin of giants and are not numbered among the Bent races at all.”

Ahearn frowned. “Blugner aren’t related to the Bent?” He glanced at Elweyr. “And you never bothered to tell me?”

“You never bothered to show interest.”

Ahearn shrugged. “Well, I can’t think of everything now, can I? So, Philosopher, what have you learned about the giants? Even if they’re not Bent, are they really so different?”

“They are. And the differences are stark.”

“Such as?”

Druadaen explained in detail. He was concerned that they might become bored, but instead they were not only attentive, but became more so as his description progressed.

When he was done, they exchanged wide-eyed stares. Elweyr finally rubbed his hands together. “And you mean to…eh, find these creatures?”

“I do.”

“To do what?” S’ythreni blurted out in something that sounded very much like panic.

Umkhira shook her head in resignation. “Unless I am much mistaken—and I hope I am—he means to have speech with them.”

S’ythreni cocked an ear toward the Lightstrider. “Excuse me,” she said sardonically, “did you say he means to be eaten by them?” She straightened, face souring. “Because at least that makes some kind of sense. Assuming his final objective is suicide.”

“Now, now,” Ahearn soothed. “I doubt he means to do himself in”—his eyes shifted to Druadaen—“do you?”

“I mean to learn about them. That would have little value if I did not survive meeting them.”

“Aye, aye…but what makes you think you will survive meeting them?”

Druadaen noticed that Ahearn had used the word you rather than we. “Well, firstly, I intend to approach them with extreme caution—”

“Oh, well,” exclaimed S’ythreni, “I feel so much safer now.”

“—and to observe them and their routines in detail before announcing my presence. It is essential to keep the initial contact to a single member of their community, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously,” the aeosti echoed.

Druadaen turned to her. “Note I use the word ‘I.’ This is because I only speak for myself, for my actions. If you—if all of you—decide against joining me, I neither begrudge nor blame you for making that choice. I freely acknowledge that the risk is considerable.”

“Well, and who’s averse to a little risk, eh?” Ahearn almost wheedled. “Better than the tunnels of Gur Grehar, surely. He’s just assured us that giants live in wide-open caves or forests: easy to run from, in either case. And think of the treasures they must collect! Gigantic, just like them!”

Druadaen was about to object—no account had ever connected giants with hoarded wealth—but Elweyr caught his eyes and waggled a deck-pointing finger slightly. The look on his face was almost as easy to read: Hold your peace, for now.

So Druadaen remained silent as Ahearn waxed poetic and inspired about the surety of giants being in possession of long-accumulated riches—because, after all, who would have the nerve to try to take them, either by force of arms or stealth? He ignored S’ythreni’s dry counter that it wasn’t a lack of nerve, but a lack of idiocy, that kept fortune-seekers from hunting giants.

But Ahearn was undeterred and spun a gossamer and gold-limned tale of the ancestral treasure troves that such insuperable creatures must necessarily pass down from generation to generation, just waiting to be plucked by adventurers as bold and cunning as they! It was delightful to listen to.

It was also sheer fabulation. Or, as Umkhira pronounced in her one-sentence coda, “Those are hopes made to sound like truth. So, they are cousins to lies.” And yet, she did not refuse to take part in the venture.

It was late by the time the discussion broke up, having carried straight on through dinner. Although never a sound and ready sleeper, Druadaen had learned during his years as a Courier that nighttime aboard a ship in calm seas was often soothing, which meant longer and more restful periods of slumber, some of which were blissfully dreamless. And if he did find himself wandering through the Wildscape, whatever determined the severity of its typical cavalcade of savage misadventures, chaos, and disorientation also seemed to respond to the quieting effects of the gentle risers.

So it was with relief rather than trepidation that he anticipated the dubious comfort of his cramped bunk and left the others to conclude their meal and deliberations without him.

* * *

Druadaen woke in a room which seemed very familiar, but which he did not immediately recognize. Not until he realized that he was still asleep and dreaming of Dunarra.

Except this was not like any dream he had ever had before. It had the crisp sensory edges and detail of reality, rather than the mere impression of being real. The point of view was unusual as well; he was looking over the sloping shoulder of a woman somewhere between aged and elderly.

It was Shaananca’s shoulder, he realized when she spoke. “We have had word from the Urn Wardens of Corrovane. The ship has departed Araxor and is underway to Far Amitryea.”

Beyond the weary curve of her shoulder and long gray mane of hair, he saw a man of similarly indeterminate but advanced years. Among the neighboring nations, he would likely be deemed halfway through his sixth decade and well preserved, at that.

“These activities of his: Do they pose a risk?”

“I would need to know what you mean by that, old friend.”

The man sighed, a frown of regret growing on his brow. “For now, Shaananca, I must ask these questions not as your friend, but as the Propretor Princeps.”

Propretor Princeps! So this was Alcuin IV’s grandfather, Alcuin II. Druadaen saw both similarities and distinctions between their faces and allowed that his mind had conjured up a very convincing blend of features.

“Very well, Propretor Princeps,” Shaananca answered, even more wearily than the other, “but I remain unsure what kind of risks you mean. That he will inadvertently reveal state secrets? No, he hasn’t enough pieces of knowledge from which to assemble any such deeper truth. Or perhaps, that he will cause an incident with some foreign ruler? No, because we have seen that is not in his nature.”

“Came damned close to doing so in Menara last year,” the man interrupted.

“That was a more complicated situation than it first seems, Propretor.”

“How so?”

“Alas, to address that adequately requires a great deal of additional background. Do you wish me to—?”

“No, no,” he waved irritably. “Let us stay on present issues. So, firstly: You do not believe the lad presents any risk in the conventional sense of the word?”

“Correct, Propretor. But again, I must ask: What kind of unconventional risk do you fear he might pose?”

“It is not he who poses the risk, Senior Archivist. It is his questions, no less than the answers he’s discovered. All of which become far more problematic, now that you have been compelled to store his notes in the Reserved Collection.”

Shaananca leaned forward. “Is it his findings that worry you, or that they may now be accessed by—?”

“Senior Archivist.” She grew silent at his severe look and equally severe tone. “Druadaen is asking not just one, but many questions. And for every question, there are many possible consequences. Any of them could cause one or more of the pillars of our strategic edifice to wobble, maybe fall. And although there is no way to predict which might start tumbling first, it is a surety that one or more will eventually impact the most rigid and fragile of the Consentium’s buttresses.”

Shaananca nodded. “The temples.”

“The temples,” confirmed the dream-image of Alcuin II. “And I can only imagine that their response would be—”

Abruptly, the dream was over and replaced with another that was equally vivid. But the change was so rapid that it lacked the lurching nausea of the Wildscape hurling him from one surreal scenario to another as it churned through its constant and chaotic transmutations. This was a sharp, jarring shock, as if he’d fallen through the floor of one reality into another in the blink of an eye.

Ahearn, Elweyr, and S’ythreni were sitting in a tight cluster, just abaft the Swiftsure’s midship companionways into the hold. The night was calm, but clouds were scudding across Duryonax, the one risen moon.

“—never would have believed that a Lightstrider would agree to march alongside the Dunarran into certain death. And all for the sake of knowledge,” S’ythreni was saying. “Knowledge he is never going to get, by the way.” She looked from one human to the other. “And you’re both going along with this insanity as well? Truly?”

Elweyr shrugged. “It might be insanity for him, but not for us.”

“Explain that.” Her tone was somewhere between a request and a command.

The mantic shrugged. “Traveling with him means we can listen for word of new places that are likely to be profitable for us to visit.”

Ahearn leaned in. “Ar Navir’s naught but occasional wars between nations and races, now. The only old sites of wealth are on—or within—the lands roved by the Bent. But Far Amitryea? Now, there’s a seat of once great power that, to hear Druadaen tell it, hasn’t been able to form up into great nations for over a millennium. Lots of outback that’s never been stripped by armies careening this way and that.”

S’ythreni nodded. “So if he’s determined to parry a giant’s paw with his skull, we leave him to it and seek more promising opportunities. Very well. I can accept that.”

But Ahearn was shaking his head. “That’s not what I was suggesting, High-Ears. I’m for trying to talk sense into him if his quest turns out to be as hopeless as the rest of us suspect.”

“Why? So he can conceive of some new but equally insipid quest?”

Elweyr looked up at her. “Do you like the odds of just the three of us trying to locate, then find our way around, and finally drag loot out of old ruins? Because if Druadaen doesn’t come, then Umkhira doesn’t either. And we are back down to where we were in Menara: just the three of us. I’m not fond of those odds.”

“Besides,” Ahearn said with a mischievous twinkle, “there’s something to be said for traveling along with a feller as well-placed as he is. A magistra, and probably Guide of the Ar, as his auntie? Who must have been the one with the authority to hold this ship in port long enough for him to meet up with us? And who gave him a magical metal monster as a going-away present? I wish I had someone who’d drop in to say, ‘Farewell and here’s a vermin for you!’”

“Velene,” S’ythreni corrected, “and Shaananca was correct; you don’t give a velene to a person. They make their own choices.”

“You talk of it as if it was alive,” Elweyr observed.

“It might be,” she retorted. “There’s a lot more legend about them than reliable fact. But I agree with at least one thing you’ve said, Ahearn: having friends who walk around with a velene on their arm means having friends with real power.”

Ahearn nodded. “And where would the likes of us find access to that on our own, hey? We could roam across this tired old globe for a century and never even meet such folk, much less find ourselves on speaking terms with them. Mark my words: we stick with that feller, peculiarities and all, and we’ll find patrons with bigger plans and deeper pockets than we ever dreamed.”

She looked from one to the other again. “So, you’re serious? About this idea that we’re all one big, happy fellowship of fortune-seekers?”

“In fact, I am,” Ahearn announced, a bit defensively. “Naive or not, I have to admit Druadaen may be on to something with these questions of his. Mad as they seem.”

S’ythreni shrugged. “It’s not the questions I mind. It’s the kind of attention they may attract. As Elweyr said the day we left, the Consentium got rid of him for a reason. And whatever that reason is, it will stick to us as long as we stick with him.”

Ahearn nodded. “Aye, but that’s simply what comes of traveling with well-placed folk, now, isn’t it? With greater influence comes greater opportunities, but also greater trouble. So I’m of a philosophical mind on that point. Besides, I have to admire a man who’s got the courage to ask unpopular questions and stand by costly convictions—mad as they may be.”

S’ythreni shook her head, glanced at Elweyr, who was shaking his own. At her. “Leave his crazy quests aside for a moment. He’s pretty good to work with. Learns quickly. Good in a fight. Doesn’t lose his head. Almost as strong as Ahearn and definitely more agile.”

The swordsman reared back, affronted, but did not interrupt.

“He’s got a lot of useful information between his ears and he’s able to put it to practical use. And best of all, he doesn’t belong to either category of fortune-seeker we’ve had to deal with over the years.”

“And they are?”

Ahearn folded his arms. “Aristocratic second-son adventurers who are ready to grab fame and fortune by climbing to it upon the bodies of their ‘lessers.’ Or, gods help us, temple-sent, crusading zealots.” He shook his head. “Right away, you could tell he wasn’t either of those.”

S’ythreni frowned. “How?”

Elweyr shrugged. “The way he pitched in beside us in the tavern. And later, how he shared everything that was in his pack. He never held anything back, and he never argued about his share of any gains made along the way.”

“So, you’re saying he is stupid. Or spoiled. Or both.”

Ahearn tapped an impatient toe on the deck. “Or he’s simply honest, as strange a concept as that may seem. Gods above and below, if that’s stupidity, then we could all afford a bit more of it. You do what you want or what you must, High-Ears, but my mind is made up.”

He made to leave but S’ythreni spoke quickly. “It’s not that I don’t think he’s—an acceptable companion. But he’s dangerous.”

Ahearn and Elweyr frowned. The latter asked, “Dangerous in what way?”

She held a palm aloft. “Yes, he has powerful friends and mentors. Yes, he has surprising amounts of knowledge, even for a Dunarran. But he’s already attracted far too much attention of people far above his station. That’s dangerous under any circumstances, but in his case, no one—not even he—knows why. Or they’re not saying.”

She looked urgently from one to the other. “Those kind of secrets can hide interests and enemies that could do away with us as easily as they’d pop a soap bubble.” She held her hands tightly in her lap. “You haven’t…lived as long as I have. Seen as much. All of which tells me that he isn’t possibly dangerous; he already is. And the longer anyone is connected to him, the more his fate becomes theirs. Are you ready for that?”

Elweyr glanced at Ahearn, who recrossed his arms. “Not sure that I am. But likewise, I’m not sure that I’m not. Either way, no harm tagging along for now. It’s weeks before we reach Far Amitryea, and then we’ll see what we see. Now, let’s away lest the Lightstrider wakes and decides to come looking for us.”

Druadaen tried to speak. Couldn’t. Tried shouting—

—and heard the words coming out of his mouth even as he jerked upright in his bunk and hit his head against the overhead crossbeam. The crack! was so sharp that it surprised him even more than the sudden flash of pain.

Rubbing the spot where he could feel a goose-egg lump forming, he saw that Ahearn and Elweyr were not in their bunks. Even asleep, he must have sensed that they still hadn’t returned to the cabin, and so the Wildscape had populated a dream with them.

Except, he reflected, he hadn’t felt trapped the way he did within the aimless and insane scenes through which the Wildscape incessantly pushed him. In this dream, he’d felt the way he imagined a ghost might, hovering in a room, overhearing others, but unable to act. A very, very strange dream, indeed. And so startlingly realistic. But still, he thought with a smile, it is certainly better than the Wildscape.

Now, if only he could get back to sleep despite the throbbing in his head.


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