Master and Fool (44 page)

The second thing
was that Tawl was obviously expecting him to come up with the loot in his
absence-like his own personal treasurer. Talk about taking a boy for granted!

Indeed, if it
hadn't been for the third thing Nabber had figured out, he might well have
chucked the whole thing in and gone back to work for his old friend Swift-if he
could ever find him, of course. There was no one like Swift for lying long and
low. But no, that was out of the question now. Jack and Tawl were in danger the
minute they returned to Rom. The archbishop's henchmen were after them. A band
of armed men had raided the Rose and Crown in the wee hours of the morning
looking for them. It was lucky for Jack and Tawl that
The Fishy Few
had
sailed some seven hours earlier, else they'd be deep in a dark dungeon by now.

Anyway, the raid
was the reason why Nabber had to stick around. Someone had to warn Jack and
Tawl about the archbishop's plan before they got off the boat. Nabber shook his
head sadly. Those two just weren't as smart as him when it came to dodging men
with knives.

Coming to a fork
in his path, Nabber chose the way that looked most interesting: the dark
alleyway with the foul stench and the .greasy-looking cobblestones. He'd been
wandering around for some time now. The fast pocketing shift of the day-the
market hours between sunup and two-had been nicely profitable. And the second
shift-the wenching spell between eight and midnight was still a good few hours
ahead. So, he had nothing to do at the moment but kick dirt and revisit his old
haunting grounds.

Strange, but
nothing seemed quite as good as he remembered. Oh, it was dodgy all right, and
rife with as many possibilities as a bishop on the make, but it just wasn't all
he'd expected.

Feeling a little
disheartened, Nabber decided to head back to the market district. As he spun
around, something dark and smelling of figs was thrown over his head.

"Murder!"
he cried at the top of his voice. "Pimps!
Help!"
He was
grabbed, lifted from the ground, and the sack-thing was pulled tightly across
his face. Screaming, he was carried away.

Baralis was
nervous. Tonight he would do something he'd never done before. Something so
unpredictable and strength-depleting that it could conceivably harm himself.

He was in his
chambers. It was twilight, but Crope had stoked the fire to a furnace and lit
so many candles that it now looked like day. The newly born calf was in a
copper bath by Baralis' feet. Barely alive, it still managed to whine for its mother.
Crope had purchased it fresh in its caul this morning, yet already it was
losing the special luster that accompanied a creature from the womb.

There was power in
birthing. The herdsmen of the Great plains knew it, his teacher in Hanatta knew
it, and now, as he sat but a hand's length away from a creature who had drawn
its fast breath only nine hours earlier, Baralis knew it, too.

The womb was not
just tissue and muscle and blood. It was a barrier between worlds. On one side
was life: fertile, abundant, decaying. On the other was existence and the
beginnings
of existence: vulnerable, pure, benign. When the two sides met when water
broke and young were expelled and muscles contracted like a mighty olive
press--power was generated. And that power was granted to the newborn.

Rich with the
secrets of the ovaries, heavy with the blood of the placenta, nothing provided
as strong a sorcery as a life taken fresh from the womb.

During his time in
the Great Plains, Baralis had seen the herdsmen harness the power of a newborn
babe to create the lacus. It had taken six of their wisemen to contain it. Even
now Baralis could remember the terrible backlash, feel the searing heat on his
skin, and smell the burning flesh as the arms of two of the six were charred to
the elbow. Baralis shuddered. Afterward the wisemen, drunk on grain alcohol and
valerian root, swore the drawing had been a success. Lost limbs were nothing
compared to the value of the lacus. Wisemen's arms were expendable-the tribe's
hunters had to be healed regardless of the cost. Baralis ran a finger across
his lips. He would never dare to take a newborn child himself.

Crope made the
arrangements, bringing cup, knife, and powder. Baralis settled down in his
high-backed chair and watched his servant prepare the beast.

Debts were
dangerous bedfellows-especially if they'd been accrued at Lam's expense. The
priests on that windswept isle kept short tally, and they always demanded
payment in full.

That was what
tonight was: payment in full. They had told him their secrets and now he would
act on their behalf. The baker's boy had to be stopped. He was on his way to
Larn to destroy the temple, and if he succeeded Baralis knew it wouldn't be
long before his former scribe headed back toward Bren. Oh, Larn was a valuable
asset in the war; it fed them information direct from the gods themselves. But
it wasn't essential. He could dominate the north without the help of its seers.
So tonight Baralis wasn't only repaying a debt: he was working on his own
behalf.

Jack was the one
person who could prove a serious threat to his plans. Wrapped in an ancient
prophecy, he had powers that defied all reason. First he turned back time and
then last summer he destroyed an entire garrison, sending shockwaves throughout
the Known Lands. He had to be destroyed, Baralis knew that as simply as a child
knew the sky was blue.

Only tonight, over
a certain section of the sea southwest of Larn, the skies wouldn't be blue at
all. They'd be blacker than the deepest pits in hell.

Baralis leant
forward and sliced the shaking calf. Blood spattered his face and tunic. The
calf screamed like a baby. Crope hovered close with his hearth-warmed bowl.
Baralis bit down on his tongue, his teeth piercing deep into the muscle to draw
the tissue-rich blood. Baralis braced himself, then railed against the physical
world. His body let him go. Reaching out, he caught the essence of the beast.
It hit him like a jolt from a lance.

It sent him
reeling. The soul of the calf was still its mother's, but the power was all its
own. Baralis was borne upward by it. At first he was confused, disorientated,
drunk with the sheer potency of the force unleashed by the blade. Then, as
always, his will rose up to meet the challenge, compelling, reshaping, claiming
the power for its own. Like God, Baralis fashioned the creation in his own
image. He made it his alone.

The power was
breathtaking: the room could not contain it. Baralis stopped rising upward and
expanded
out
ward, instead. He stretched across the palace, then Bren,
then the north. No longer a loose scattering of particles, he was a deadly
force of nature. Southward he sped along the coast, causing the tides to
reverse in his wake.

"So,
Captain," said Jack, "you said this will be your third trip to
Larn?"

Quain looked at
him sharply. Four days they had been sailing now, and every time the captain
crossed his path, Jack got the distinct feeling he was being studied like a
chart marked with buried treasure.

This was the first
time they'd been alone. Tawl was on deck, trading insults with Carver, no
doubt. Either that or sharpening his knives. The knight spent a lot of time
seeing to his weapons, and over the past two days had taken to rubbing grease
into the blades to protect them from the damp, salty air.

A bottle of rum
was never far from Quain's hand, and he tilted one now in the direction of two
short glasses. Just as the rum level rose to the top of the second glass, the
ship suddenly lurched to the side. Amber liquid went spilling across the table,
where it pooled against the wooden band. "Swell's rising, Captain,"
said Fyler, popping his head around the doorframe.

"Aye, man.
Keep an eye to it," said the captain. Fyler nodded then disappeared, and
the captain turned his attention back to the rum.

Jack was aware
that the sea was growing restless; he could feel the boat rolling and jawing
beneath his feet. But he was strangely unaffected by it: no seasickness, no
queasiness, no fear. A born sailor, Carver had said. Reaching out to take his
glass of rum, Jack prompted the captain again: "So when did you first
visit Larn?"

The captain
managed a grudging smile. "You're persistent, lad. I'll give you
that."

"Let's drink
to my persistence, then," said Jack, raising his glass and smiling like a
rogue. "And your knowledge of the sea."

The captain's
glass came up to meet his. "The sea." They both downed their drinks
in one. Quain slammed his glass down on the table. "Aah. It gets your
blood running every time." He leant back in his chair and took a while to
savor the rum before he spoke again.

"The first
time I sailed close to Larn it nearly cost me my commission. Over thirty years
ago it was now. I was on a big merchant ship name o'
The Bountiful Breeze.
Four
masts it had, and a crew of close to forty men. It was my first time
out as a navigator and I was shaky as a jellyfish. Thinking back now, I'm
amazed that anyone would have let me within a galley's length of the wheel.
Still, Rorn was booming at the time, and the merchants were willing to take on
any man as long as he knew the stern from the prow."

"We were due
to sail up the coast to Toolay. Pick up seafood and drop off silk threads for
their embroidery. Well, the minute
The Bountiful Breeze left
the harbor,
things began to go wrong. The wind was blowing from the northeast now, that in
itself was strange, as it was early winter, and the northeasterlies never hit
until spring. But that wasn't the only thing that was odd. The ship's compass
started to play up, spinning around like a top one minute, dead as a rusty
anchor the next. Then came the storm......"

Captain Quain
shook his head.
The Fishy Few
rocked back and forth. Outside, Jack could
hear the wind picking up.

"It was a bad
one. Came out of nowhere, it did. There were waves crashing into the foredeck,
water leaking into the hold. The sails were ripped straight from the masts and
we lost three men overboard. It lasted three days. By the time it was over, the
ship's cat had about as good an idea of where we lay as I did."

As the captain
spoke, Jack was forced to hold onto the table to stop himself from being thrown
from his chair. The entire cabin was creaking. With every roll of the ship,
glasses, books, and instruments were thrown against the wooden bands on the
shelves. There was an oil lamp hanging from the wall, and it swung back and
forth like a drunkard at a dance.

Quain was as calm
as ever. He continued speaking in his warm, gruff voice, and soon nothing
mattered but what he said.

"Well, I gets
out my spyglass and takes a quick shifty round. On the horizon is this little
rocky isle. So, I consult my charts and find no sign of it, then talk to the
captain, who takes a look for himself and pronounces that the isle is Larn.
`Best get a move on out of here, boy,' he says. `Lest the devil catch us all
unawares.' I tell you, I turned that ship round as fast as if it were a rowboat
no one's as superstitious as a sailor lost at sea."

"Anyway,
we're just setting back the way we came when I takes another shifty from the
glass. That's when I see her."

"See
who?"

"The girl
from Larn. She was adrift on a skiff with neither sails nor oars to get her
moving. Right away I can tell she's in trouble, for she's just lying there, not
moving a muscle. So the first thing I do is turn
The Bountiful Breeze
round
once more. Up comes the captain cursing and yelling and orders me to turn her
about. Well, we have a terrible row. He doesn't want to pick up the girl. He
says it's bad luck and we'll all be cursed. I says it was no coincidence that
The
Bountiful Breeze
was blown off course, and that we were fated to rescue the
girl. Soon the whole crew's involved, and the captain has little choice but to
go along. Sailor's superstition works both ways-I managed to convince the crew
that it would bring us all bad luck if we left the girl to die."

The storm outside was
building. Jack could hear the crew calling to each other, shouting to be heard
above the roar of the waves.

"The poor
thing was as good as dead when we got to her. There was nothing in the skiff:
no food or water, no spare clothes. She was hot with fever. Delirious. She
rambled on in her sleep, crying out a boy's name over and over again. Aye, but
she was beautiful, though. A slip of a girl with long dark hair. I think
everyone on board fell in love with her-including the captain. You just
couldn't look at her without wanting to make everything right. We all chipped
in our rations; the cook made her special broth and the captain broke out the
special brew. I tended to her day and night."

"Her fever
broke the day we docked in Rorn. I asked her what she was doing cast adrift on
a skiff off Larn. You know what she said?"

"No."

"She said,
`Please don't force me to lie. What happened at Larn is between God, the
priests, and myself."'

The lantern swung
back and forth, sending shadows darting across the captain's face. Everything
in the room was moving in time with the storm: the table, the chairs, the rum.
Jack's heart raced ahead of them all.

"Why do you
think she was cast adrift?" he asked. "She was running away."
Quain met his eye. He searched Jack's features for a moment and then dropped
his gaze to his glass. Neither man spoke for a while.

An ear-splitting
crash broke the silence. The ship pitched sharply to port. All of the captain's
belongings smashed against the bands. A collection of rolled charts went spilling
to the floor. The oil lamp slammed against the wall. Lightning flashed.