LITMIR.BIZ

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him, and feared his power, but they remained hungry for the gifts they believed he would bestow. He intended to keep it that way. He kept silent, refusing to ask the question that Nullat had left hanging in the air.

      “Altharin believes we have reached the final gate,” Nullat said.

      “And has Altharin halted his work?” Cholik asked.

      “Of course, master. Everything has gone as you have ordered. The seals were not broken.” Nullat’s face creased with worry.

      “Is something wrong?”

      Hesitation held Nullat mute for a moment. The pirates’ voices and the clangor of ships’ lines and rigging against yardarms and masts continued unabated from below.

      “Altharin thinks he has heard voices on the other side of the gate,” Nullat said. His eyes broke from Cholik’s.

      “Voices?” Cholik repeated, feeling more excited. The sudden rush of adrenaline caused his hands to shake more. “What kind of voices?”

      “Evil voices.”

      Cholik stared at the young acolyte. “Did you expect any other kind?”

      “I don’t know, master.”

      “The Black Road is not a way found by those faint of heart.” In fact, Cholik had inferred from the sacred Vizjerei texts that the tiles themselves had been shaped from the bones of men and women who had been raised in a village free of evil and strife. They’d never known need or want until the population had grown large enough to serve the demons’ needs. “What do these voices say?”

      Nullat shook his head. “I cannot say, master. I do not understand them.”

      “Does Altharin?”

      “If he does, master, he did not tell me. He commanded only that I come get you.”

      “And what does the final gate look like?” Cholik asked.

      “As you told us it would, master. Immense and fearful.” Nullat’s eyes widened. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

      Nor has anyone else in hundreds of years, Cholik thought. “Get a fresh torch, Nullat. We’ll go have a look at what Brother Altharin has discovered.” And pray that the sacred texts were right. Otherwise, the evil that we release from behind that gate will kill us all.

      Pressed into the side of the mist-covered cliff, holding himself on his boot toes and the fingers of one hand, Darrick Lang reached for the next handhold. He was conscious of the rope tied around his waist and loins. He’d tacked the rope to a ship’s spike he’d driven into the cliffside five feet below, leaving a trail of them behind him for the others to use. If he slipped and everything worked right, the rope would keep him from plunging to his death or into the river sixty feet below. If it worked wrong, he might yank the two men anchoring him to the side of the cliff down after him. The fog was so thick below that he could no longer see the longboat.

      I should have brought Caron along, Darrick thought as he curled his fingers around the rocky outcrop that looked safe enough to hold his weight. Caron was only a boy, though, and not one to bring into a hostile situation. Aboard Lonesome Star, Caron was ruling king of the rigging. Even when he wasn’t assigned aloft, the boy was often found there. Caron had a natural penchant for high places.

      Resting for just a moment, feeling the trembling muscles in his back and neck, Darrick breathed out and inhaled the wet, musty smell of rock and hard-packed earth. It smelled, he couldn’t help thinking, like a newly opened grave. His clothing was wet from the immersion in the river, and he was cold, but his body still found enough heat to break out in perspiration. It surprised him.

      “You aren’t planning on camping out up there, are you?” Mat called up. He sounded good-natured about it, but someone who knew him well could have detected the small tension in his voice.

      “It’s the view, you know,” Darrick called down. And it amused him that they acted as if they were there for a lark instead of serious business. But it had always been that way between them.

      They were twenty-three years old, Darrick being seven months the elder, and they’d spent most of those years as friends growing up in Hillsfar. They’d lived among the hill people, loaded freight in the river port, and learned to kill when barbarian tribes had come down from the north hoping to loot and pillage. When they’d turned fifteen, they’d journeyed to Westmarch and pledged loyalty in the king’s navy. Darrick had gone to escape his father, but Mat had left behind a good family and prospects at the family mill. If Darrick had not left, Mat might not ever have left, and some days Darrick felt guilty about that. Dispatches from home always made Mat talk of the family he missed.

      Focusing himself again, Darrick stared out across the broken land at the harbor less than two hundred yards away. Another pirate sentry was encamped on the cliff along the way. The man had built a small, yellow-tongued fire that couldn’t be seen from the river.

      Beyond, three tall-masted cogs, round-bodied ships built for river travel as well as coastal waters rather than the deep sea, lay at anchor in a dish-shaped natural harbor fronting the ruins of a city. Captain Tollifer’s maps had listed the city as Tauruk’s Port, but not much was known about it except that it had been deserted years ago.

      Lanterns and torches moved along the ships, but a few also roved through the city, carried by pirates, Darrick felt certain. Though why they should be so industrious this early in the morning was beyond him. The swirling fog laced with condensation made seeing across the distance hard, but Darrick could make out that much.

      The longboat held fifteen men, including Darrick. He figured that they were outnumbered at least eight to one by the pirates. Staying for a prolonged engagement was out of the question, but perhaps spiriting the king’s nephew away and costing the pirates a few ships were possible. Darrick had volunteered for such work before, and he’d come through it alive.

      So far, bucko, Darrick told himself with grim realization.

      Although he was afraid, part of him was excited at the challenge. He clung to the wall, lifted a boot, and shoved himself upward again. The top of the cliff ledge was less than ten feet away. From there, it looked as if he could gain safe ground and walk toward the city ruins and the hidden port. His fingers and toes ached from the climb, but he put the discomfort out of his mind and kept moving.

      When he reached the clifftop, he had to restrain a cry of triumph. He turned and looked back down at Mat, curling his hand into a fist.

      Even at the distance, Darrick saw the look of horror that filled Mat’s face. “Look out!”

      Whipping his head back up, some inner sense warning him of the movement, Darrick caught a glimpse of moonlight-silvered steel sweeping toward him. He pulled his head down and released his hold on the cliff as he grabbed for another along the cliff’s edge.

      The sword chopped into the stone cliff, striking sparks from the high iron ore content just as Darrick’s hands closed around the small ledge he’d pushed up from last. His body slammed hard against the mountainside.

      “I told you I saw somebody out here,” a man said as he drew his sword back again and stepped with care along the cliff’s edge. His hobnailed boots scraped stone.

      “Yeah,” the second man agreed, joining the first in the pursuit of Darrick.

      Scrambling, holding tight to the edge of the cliff, Darrick pressed his boots against the stone and tried in vain to find suitable purchase to allow him to push himself up. He gave thanks to the Light that the pirates were almost as challenged by the terrain as he was. His boot soles scraped and slid as he tried to pull himself up.

      “Cut his fingers off, Lon,” the man in back urged. He was a short, weasel-faced man with an ale belly pressing against his frayed shirt. Maniacal lights gleamed in his eyes. “Cut his fingers off, and watch him fall on the others down there. Before they can make it up, we can nip on down to the bonfire and warn Captain Raithen they’s coming.”

      Darrick

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