Heart of Black Ice Read online

  CHAPTER 8

  After he endured another day of exhausting work on the river, seeing no chance to escape, Bannon collapsed on the open deck near the bow of King Grieve’s ship. As night fell, stars began to sparkle overhead, but the new constellations seemed very far away and unable to help him. Nevertheless, Bannon would fend for himself and save as many of these people as he could. That was what he held on to.

  The other fifty or so slaves from Ildakar groaned and whimpered as they were tied or chained securely to the decks. In darkness, the swamp sounds grew louder as predators emerged from the muddy banks and thick underbrush.

  Though Bannon didn’t bemoan his circumstance, he felt determined and angry. His beaten body was bruised, his muscles sore. Hunger clawed like a beast inside his stomach. He knew the other slaves were in as much misery.

  After days of intense activity, many damaged ships had been partially repaired. The ruined hulks had been stripped bare, leaving only skeletons of wood. Masts and yardarms were replaced, rigging ropes restrung, broken hulls patched, bilges pumped dry. Bannon had looked for opportunities to sabotage the repairs, and he had left flaws in some of the vessels, but not enough to cause the disaster he needed to inflict.

  Seven slaves had died so far during the work, and Bannon could tell that many others were ready to perish from sheer exhaustion. But he was in better shape than these others. While held in the combat pits in Ildakar, Bannon had been trained and toughened to fight; the rest of the Ildakar captives, though, had led soft and prosperous lives. They wouldn’t last much longer as slaves of the Norukai.

  Impatient to launch his war, King Grieve took out his ire on his own people. That afternoon, he roared at Gara and two other shipwrights. “Faster! I need ships now. We must sail back to the Norukai islands.”

  “Four will be ready and provisioned tonight, my king, my Grieve,” said Gara, cringing deferentially. Her braids flopped from side to side. “I promise.”

  Now, Bannon crouched on the deck with his wrists tied and ankles chained to an anchor bolt. Repairing the serpent ships was horrific work, but he knew his situation would be worse once the raiding fleet set off down the river, taking him and the other captives. After the serpent ships sailed away, Bannon could never find his way back to the site of Ildakar.

  His heart ached over the loss of the city, as well as his friends. Despite its dark flaws and ugly secrets, Ildakar had great potential. With the overthrow of Sovrena Thora, it could have been a magnificent city again. Lila had wanted Bannon to stay, but now she was gone, and his heart ached even more. He realized he didn’t just miss the young woman’s company as a protector and fighter. She had cared for him, guarded him at first out of a sense of duty, but it had become more than that.

  Nathan was gone, too, but Bannon hoped the wizard was still alive. Now that his gift was restored, no one would trifle with Nathan Rahl. And Nicci … she had been cut off somewhere when Ildakar vanished.

  Bannon doubted he would see any of them again. He was trapped here alone, chained to the deck of a Norukai ship. “Sweet Sea Mother,” he mumbled. But he would not surrender his optimism. There must be a way he could survive and help defeat the hated Norukai.

  As the deceptively soothing swamp noises grew louder, Bannon’s stomach growled. The slaves had to drink dirty river water from buckets. When some of them spewed the water back up, the gruff Norukai would splash another bucket over their faces to wash away the vomit and keep the stink from lingering on the deck.

  In the thickening darkness, Bannon saw lanterns lit on the decks of the many ships lashed together in the current. Grieve’s ship and three others were anchored together near the shore, ready to depart, and the king did not intend to wait. He would leave the rest of his fleet behind.

  Two Norukai men walked along the torchlit deck carrying a wooden tub between them. They stopped at the first group of bound slaves and set down the heavy tub. One man lifted a ladle that dripped a slurry of fish guts and river water. “Dinner!”

  The first slave turned his head away in disgust, but the Norukai dumped the contents on the bound man’s face anyway. Wet entrails ran down his chin, and when the slave realized this was all the food he would get, he tried to slurp some of the entrails. Learning the lesson, the next slave braced himself and opened his mouth, so the Norukai ladled the nauseating mess onto his face.

  Prancing behind the two men, Chalk hopped from one foot to the other. “Dinnertime, dinnertime! My fish, your fish!” He scooped a long-fingered hand into the wooden tub and rewarded himself with a fish head, which he tossed in the air and caught with his mouth like a trained dog. Crunching down on the scales, he came closer to Bannon. “Fishes tried to eat me, and now I eat them!” In the light of the rising moon the puckered scars were prominent on his albino skin. Bannon wondered what had happened to him, what the shaman had endured, what ordeal had created those scars and driven him to the edge of madness. “They didn’t eat enough of you,” Bannon said under his breath.

  Chalk hopped over to him and squatted down. “They ate just enough. Razorfish nibbled my arms, nibbled my legs, and nibbled between them.” He clamped a palm against his loincloth-covered crotch. “They took much away, but they gave me something, too.” He leaned so close to Bannon that the young man could smell the rotting fish in his mouth. “That gave me my power! I see things. I know the future, the fire in the towns, the blood on the swords, so many screams. But good screams, I think.”

  “Are they the screams of dying Norukai?” Bannon asked, but the shaman seemed oblivious to his vitriol.

  Chalk cocked his head as if listening to whispered voices. “Yes, some of them are Norukai screams.” He sounded as if he was imparting a secret.

  The shaman seemed to find Bannon fascinating, as if he recognized that the young man was different from the other Ildakaran captives. The two Norukai men set their stinking wooden tub on the deck, and Bannon steeled himself. He raised his head to accept the food, vowing to keep his strength for when he really needed it, but he nearly choked as they poured fish guts onto his face. He made himself swallow.

  Squirming next to him, imitating Bannon, Chalk also turned his head up like a baby bird begging for a worm. The Norukai splashed the fish-gut soup across the shaman’s face, which satisfied him. He plucked a small fish head and held it between his thumb and forefinger. “You didn’t get a fish head. A special treat.”

  Before the young man could protest, Chalk popped the head between Bannon’s lips. He took it into his mouth, wincing as he swallowed the horrible morsel. Why was the albino paying so much attention to him?

  Drumbeats echoed from the stern of the serpent ship, and King Grieve stepped out into the lantern light. All the people fell silent, slaves and Norukai. Grieve’s voice boomed out to all the nearby vessels. “These four serpent ships are ready to sail, and four is enough to spark terror as we proceed downriver. Tonight, we will head back to the Bastion so we can begin this war.”

  Chalk leaped to his feet. “My Grieve, King Grieve! They’ll all grieve.”

  The king raised his heavy wooden baton and pounded the oar master’s drum again, louder than before. Guttural cheers resounded from hundreds of Norukai aboard the other ships, which were in various states of repair.

  “We will raid villages as we make our way to the estuary and the open sea. The rest of our fleet is already gathering at the Norukai islands, and I must be their king and warlord.” Offhandedly Grieve shouted across the water to the other vessels. “Finish repairs to the rest of the ships and sail back to us.” He raised his iron-knuckled hand. The chain around his waist jingled as he spun about and gave the order to raise the anchor. “These first ships will set off. Now!”

  Norukai sailors raised the midnight-blue sails on the four repaired ships, striking the ropes that lashed the hulls together.

  Bannon felt sick, knowing that once they sailed away from Ildakar with him and this small group of slaves aboard, he would likely never escape. He gazed longingly a
t the dense vegetation on the bank as he strained against his ropes and chains. He could think of no way to get off the ship, but he would keep looking.

  * * *

  From her hiding place among the thorny reeds, Lila spied on the raider ships, knowing that some—including Bannon’s—were repaired and ready to depart. In the darkness, she heard the drumbeats accompanied by distant gruff shouts, a voice she recognized as King Grieve’s.

  Lying in wait for days as the repairs continued, she had made her plans and created a booby trap. With all of the vines and trees along the river, she fashioned her tools, working quietly in the shadowy blanket of night. Her greatest advantage was that the Norukai didn’t know she was here.

  She had dismissed dozens of different plans because they would surely end in failure. Lila could not let herself fail. If this were just for her sake, she would have thrown caution to the wind and charged in with her weapons, confident she could kill a dozen or more Norukai before she died. But she had a greater calling now. She needed to free Bannon.

  When the four repaired ships prepared to depart down the river, Lila vowed to stop them. Fortunately, she had worked for days, laying her trap. She used vines to pull down the supple swamp trees, staging them, forming makeshift catapults. Her surreptitious work left her vulnerable to swamp dragons, large coiled snakes, and hunting spiders the size of rats. Lila killed many of them, avoided others. Now everything was ready as she lay in wait.

  With the anchors raised and the dark sails set, the four serpent ships moved off into the night. Lila knew she had only one chance.

  She wasn’t sure of her aim, since she’d been unable to test her crude catapults, so she had to rely on her guesses and her hope. Bannon was aboard King Grieve’s ship, and she had to make sure she didn’t accidently kill him in her attack.

  With three resilient saplings tied down, Lila had gathered bunches of dry twigs and dead vines into flammable bales that could fly like projectiles. The bent trees were quivering and ready to launch, loaded with all the dry material. When the ships began to move out, Lila struck her dagger against the flint she carried in a pouch, lit a spark to ignite the first bale. As the flames caught, she ignited the bundle in the second catapult, then the third. She could smell the sour odor of green wood burning.

  When her makeshift catapults held their blazing clumps, she slashed the rope holding the first bent tree in place. With a groan, it sprang upright and released the bale of fiery wood, throwing a burning comet toward the Norukai ships. Lila cut the second rope to launch the next projectile. The ball of fire raged across the sky as the first bale struck one of the four ships—not Bannon’s, she saw with some relief. The Norukai crew scrambled to extinguish the blaze before the ship could catch fire.

  The second bale whistled over the top of the next vessel, missing it and plunging into the river, where the flames spat as they were extinguished.

  The third projectile, though, crashed into the vessel just behind the flagship, and the flames spread as kindling scattered across the deck and caught in the rigging. The Norukai rushed about to extinguish the flames, but the blaze quickly got out of control. The vessel was engulfed in fire, a torch on the Killraven River.

  Fleeing the blaze before it could spread, the other three ships sailed away from the burning ship, while King Grieve and the Norukai shouted insults at their unseen attacker on the riverbank.

  Lila emerged from the underbrush on the muddy shore to watch the mayhem she had caused. She smiled before ducking back into the shelter of the trees. The other three ships pulled away.

  * * *

  Neither King Grieve nor his crew could save the fiery wreck, so the flagship raced away, gaining distance from the spreading sparks.

  Tied and chained onto the deck, Bannon could barely contain his joy as he watched Norukai diving overboard to flee the burning vessel. He wondered who had launched the catapults of fire that soared overhead like shooting stars. Someone else was fighting back! Someone else was still free out there! On the deck, several slaves laughed and cheered at this unexpected victory until their Norukai masters cuffed them into senselessness.

  As they sailed away from the bluffs, Bannon kept watching the thickets, and he thought he saw a flash of skin, a lithe young woman. Could it be? Lila! Even as the serpent ship sailed away, Bannon felt great joy just to know she was out there.

  CHAPTER 9

  From the sheltered stone doorway of the palace, Nicci watched the black cloud creep into Orogang.

  “The zhiss…” said the old woman next to her, and a deep shiver lurked in her voice. The other shrouded people crowded together, more afraid of whatever was out there than they were of Nicci. Some of them peeked out into the daylight, while others retreated into the gloom of the windowless passageways.

  The sentient cloud swirled like a thunderstorm that had been shattered into obsidian fragments. Each fleck was only the size of a biting black fly, and together they swirled in a shapeless predatory mass. A buzzing simmered in the air like a thousand beehives, and the sound grew louder as the mass drifted among the abandoned buildings.

  “What are they?” Nicci whispered.

  “Death,” said the old woman. Behind her, in the gloom of the shuttered palace, the other people remained utterly silent.

  Tendrils of the black mass extended, probing, hunting. The zhiss had a purpose.

  From the doorway, Nicci spotted movement in the overgrown shrubs in the empty square. As the daylight brightened, the two foraging deer cropped tender green vegetation. The doe pricked her ears and raised her head, while the young buck with short velvety antlers continued to munch flowers, until he also sensed the buzzing cloud.

  The zhiss moved toward the animals. Black specks tumbled, rotated, extended in an ill-defined tentacle that advanced like candle wax pouring down a slanted surface. The uneasy animals skittered, but they didn’t understand the threat.

  From her sheltered overhang, Nicci wanted to shout at the deer and make them run, but the old woman squeezed her shoulder like a vise. “Remain silent! We don’t dare call attention to ourselves.”

  The black cloud buzzed forward, expanding, then swooping down around the deer. Too late, the animals tried to bolt away, but one extension of the zhiss blanketed them like countless bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Smothered, the deer collapsed on the flagstones. The poor animals twitched and thrashed, but eventually lay still.

  Before long, individual specks rose up like drunken bumblebees and drifted away from their victims. Now, the tiny flecks were swollen globules the size of grapes, purplish red instead of black, engorged with blood. The rest of the cloud drifted and kept expanding, still hungry, still probing through the ancient city for prey.

  Sickened by what she had seen, Nicci turned to the old woman, realizing what these strange people had done by capturing her. “You did save me.” She had killed so many of them! “You knew what was coming. If I had been out there when the sun rose…”

  “We saved you, and perhaps we saved the world,” the woman replied. “We could not let them have you. The blood of a gifted sorceress is incredibly potent.”

  Nicci was frustrated that they had been unclear, that their muddled old dialect and their urgency had led to such tragedy, but they had been desperate to keep her away from the black cloud. Now their voices were loud in the silence, and the zhiss detected the sound even from outside. Part of the swarm poured toward the towering palace in which Nicci and the others hid. The furtive people let out a collective gasp and retreated deeper into the shadows. The old woman pushed the thick door shut, assisted by others. Nicci added the last nudge to slam the barrier in place just as the buzzing, swirling zhiss struck the blocky structure. Through the stone-hard wood, she could hear a vibrating hum as the angry force vented its frustration.

  With the door sealed, Nicci waited for her eyes to adjust to the light of intermittent torches mounted on the stone walls. The people had covered every crack and cranny, allowing no outside light and no speck
of predatory blackness to enter.

  The building was huge, an imposing palace with vaulted ceilings and enormous chambers larger than the torches could effectively illuminate. Hundreds of the pale people were crowded inside, far more than Nicci had expected. They all wore gray, unobtrusive garments. Although they seemed healthy enough, the people looked haunted.

  The clamor of questions became too loud in her mind. “Explain what is happening here,” she demanded. “What are the zhiss and who are you?”

  As the people muttered, the old woman pulled back her hood to reveal gray hair with a few streaks of brown. Her skin was pale to the point of translucency, showing the faint lines of blood vessels. “I am Cora. We call ourselves the Hidden People, for that is what we do—we hide.”

  “What do you accomplish by hiding? I rarely find that a useful strategy.”

  “We control the zhiss,” Cora replied. “We keep Orogang safe. We keep the world safe.”

  The people with her muttered more loudly. Nicci was glad to confirm her suspicion. “So this is Orogang, the capital of Emperor Kurgan’s empire.”

  “What is left of it,” Cora said.

  A square-jawed man with a grim expression said, “Emperor Kurgan is long dead, destroyed by his vengeful people, but General Utros will return. That is what the old prophet said.” Nicci was surprised to hear the statement, but did not point out that the man’s desire might actually come true, though not in the ways he expected. The man introduced himself as Cyrus.

  The old woman explained, “The city fell many centuries ago, after the people overthrew Iron Fang. The populace longed to anoint General Utros as their next emperor, and back then a crazed prophet insisted that Utros would come back to Orogang. But years passed, and he never returned. The empire fell into a civil war. The people were busy fighting under different flags, breaking into factions, paying little attention to anything but their own conflict.” She drew a deep breath. “Then the zhiss came.”