01 - The Burning Shore (35 page)

It was the last thing the first-spawned saw. The great lump of water-smoothed
rock plunged down onto his skull, the crunch of it sparking a blinding flash of
light.

Florin stood over the lizard’s twitching body, his breath sawing painfully in
and out as he watched the last traces of life flicker from it. He held onto his
makeshift weapon until the last of his pursuers vanished into the depths of the
river, nothing left of them but a fading stream of bloody water. A dozen heart
beats later and even that was gone.

Florin dropped the stone, his breath slowing as he recovered from his escape.
Then, to his own surprise, he felt a wide grin spread across his face. It
pinched his cheeks and bared his teeth with a savage joy as he lifted the
first-spawned’s corpse and flung it back into the water.

“Gotcha, you bastards,” he said and, with a shard of jittery laughter, he
turned to make his way back into the jungle.

It was the boars that showed him the way. He’d barely gone half a mile into
the jungle, his joy at escape long gone beneath the realisation of how
completely lost he was, when the herd found him following their tracks.

Snuffling the air suspiciously for any trace of the skinks they let him
approach, their shaggy bodies still within the hiding place of their thickets.
Only when they were sure that this strange creature was alone did their leader,
a battle-scarred old tusker whose world was a simple place driven by the quest
for mates and food, squeal his challenge.

This time Florin didn’t hesitate. As the boars came crashing through the bush
in crude ambush he leapt for the nearest tree, scrabbling up the wiry ivy that
bound it like a rat up a rope. Ignoring the pain in his bruised toes and shaking
fingers, he climbed ever higher, unsure of how high the boars’ voracious
appetites could inspire them to leap.

He reached the first bough and the going became easier. No longer having to
cling to the trunk he found that he could merely drag himself up from one branch
to the next, almost as easily as climbing a ladder. Below him the boars milled
about in their frustration. Some reared up onto their hind legs to bare the
yellow chisels of their teeth at him and to squeal their outrage at being
cheated of his flesh. Others turned on their fellows in sudden, violent scuffles
that jewelled the mulch beneath them with droplets of blood.

Florin paused to catch his breath and to study the beasts gathered below.
Almost as if in response to his own slowing pulse they calmed down, their
squeals of hunger lapsing into the occasional grunt and their fights
degenerating into a game of chase amongst the youngest.

Unfortunately, they didn’t seem in any particular hurry to move off. A
horrible image flashed into Florin’s imagination, a grisly old woodcut that
showed the skeleton of a cat laying outside a hole within which the skeleton of
a mouse had been drawn. He couldn’t remember what uplifting religious point the
illustrator had supposedly been trying to make, but the principle had been clear
enough. He tried not to think about it as, with a deep, reverberating grunt of
patience, the largest of the boars started to roll around in the soil in order
to make himself a bed.

Florin swore long and loud, his language startling a flock of huge,
velvet-winged moths into flight below him. Then, acting mainly to keep the image
of the woodcut from his mind, he began to climb. Moving slowly now, with no
particular danger to drive him on, and with the terminal drop to earth growing
beneath him, the Bretonnian worked his way up the tree.

A couple of dozen feet further up the light began to become stronger and the
leaves of the tree grew larger and more succulent in response to its opulence.
Here and there beetles scuttled past, safe beneath their gorgeously armoured
carapaces. A lizard, as frightened of Florin as he was by it, hurled itself into
space to glide effortlessly into the darkness below.

Half an hour later, as green as a skink beneath his covering of grime and
tree mould, Florin climbed into glorious, blinding sunlight. He swung himself up
into the last safe branch and basked in the light, the heat soothing his tired
frame as his eyes adjusted to the new world beyond.

A breeze picked up, ruffling his sodden hair, stroking through it like a
lover’s fingers, and he closed his eyes dreamily as he listened to the
whispering of the wind in the trees.

No, that won’t do, he told himself, snapping back into consciousness and
looking down in an effort to frighten himself fully awake.

But there was no down. The leaves through which he had climbed had closed up
after his passage, so that the entire, cathedral-high expanse of the canopy
seemed as low and as safe as a Bretonnian field. Exhausted as he was, Florin
smiled at the image and started to imagine what sort of sheep would graze across
these lofty heights.

They would be soft. Slow moving. Cotton white. Gentle. Soooooo gentle.

The day slipped past the sleeping Bretonnian, his eyes flickering behind
closed lids with a dozen relaxing dreams that ended when he woke himself up with
a snore. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he watched the sun sinking towards
the west and realized that he had been asleep for quite some time. Somehow,
though, the nap had just made him feel more tired.

Well, he wouldn’t take the chance of falling asleep up here again. Wincing as
his cramped muscles twitched back into life, he pulled himself upright against
the tree’s trunk, deciding to take one last breath of fresh air and one last
sight of the sun before starting back down.

Despite the fatigue that still numbed him, he realized that, from here at
least, the Lustrian jungle could be a beautiful place. It stretched out in a
rolling green carpet into which nature had woven countless shades of green, the
endless subtleties of its permutations glowing beneath the falling sun.
Butterflies, some no bigger than wasps, others as large as bats, pursued each
other across this sunlit realm, their wings painted in shocking swirls of blues and reds that stood
out against the verdant backdrop like diamonds against black cloth.

Florin gazed towards the distant horizon, its detail lost in mist, then
frowned in puzzlement. A little to the east, thrusting up from the middle
distance to rise above the horizon, something gleamed, something uniquely hard
and bright in this gently rolling world.

Squinting against the dazzle of the light, Florin studied it through watering
eyes. As the sun dipped below the far tree-line, the canopy was plunged into
instant twilight, and the blinding flash of the distant stone resolved itself
into a triangular tip of quartz. Its uncompromising edges formed a needle point
that stabbed upwards towards the heavens, the aspirations of its builders as
untamed as the wilderness which surrounded it.

Too shattered to feel more than a slight sense of joy, Florin sighed. He
recognised that perfectly carved capstone well enough. It was the apex of the
temple and, by the look of it, it was no more than two miles distant.

With a muttered prayer to Shallya that the boars would have gone, he double
checked the bearing, rubbed his back and then started back down the tree.

“Well?” van Delft asked. Sat upon the powder chest, surrounded by overflowing
gold, he had thrust his jaw out and lowered his eyebrows in a scowl that would
have done justice to a thunder god. It was an expression he had surreptitiously
practised and polished over his years of command, so that now he could slip it
on as easily as an actor slips on a mask.

Lorenzo felt himself beginning to sweat beneath the Colonel’s fearsome
scrutiny. The only explanation given to him by the squad of Tileans who had
arrested and escorted him here was that the commander wanted a chat.

One of the escort, the purchaser of one of Lorenzo’s treasure maps, had
glared at him menacingly during the march to the Colonel’s hut but, surrounded
by his mates, hadn’t had a chance to mention their transaction.

Now, his brow damp despite the shade van Delft’s crudely thatched shelter
provided, Lorenzo wished that he and the Tilean had found the opportunity to get
their stories straight. It seemed that van Delft knew all about this little…
this little… Damn, what should he call it?

Ah yes. That was it.

This little “side line” of his.

The Bretonnian licked his lips nervously and decided that honesty might be
the best policy. To a certain extent, at least.

“I was just selling the lads maps,” he told the Colonel, shrugging his
shoulders in a gesture of assumed innocence.

“Stolen from Kereveld’s book?”

“No, no, no,” Lorenzo hastily waved away the accusation. “No. Of course not.
I’d never steal. Especially from a wizard.”

Van Delft tugged at the tip of his moustache thoughtfully. That last part, at
least, had the ring of truth about it.

“I don’t think that I believe you,” he said, looking at the Tilean corporal
who waited behind the Bretonnian. He looked almost as shifty as the Bretonnian
himself, further proof that the rumours he’d heard had been at least partly
true.

“Colonel,” Lorenzo said, all wide eyed sincerity. “I give you my word, on
Shallya and the Lady, that I neither stole from Kereveld, nor sold anything of
his.”

The Colonel watched the Tilean surreptitiously, noting the anger that
flickered beneath his unease.

“Of course, if you give your word,” he said after another moment’s unblinking
scrutiny, “It’s difficult for me to doubt it. After all, we’re all gentlemen of
fortune here, and a man’s word is his bond.”

“Er, yes,” agreed Lorenzo doubtfully.

“And I’ve already checked with Kereveld. His book is under an enchantment.
Any non-wizard who reads it is struck blind,” the Colonel informed them with the
clipped sincerity of a truly skilled liar. “The problem is that others have given
me their word that you’ve been trying to sell them treasure maps stolen from
Kereveld’s book.”

“Oh, I see what’s happened.” Lorenzo smiled with a carefully manufactured
sigh of relief. “This has all been a misunderstanding. I have sold a few treasure
maps, made by myself and based upon my own observations. Somebody must have got
the wrong end of the stick. You know, about their provenance.”

“A misunderstanding? My informant told me that you were trying to sell him a
map specifically on the strength that it was stolen from Kereveld.”

“No, he was mistaken,” Lorenzo said, with a confidence that he didn’t quite
feel. “I told all the lads to whom I sold maps that I made them myself. Based on
my own calculations.”

The Colonel’s gaze remained locked on Lorenzo, his face unconvinced.

“But you don’t have to take my word for it, Colonel,” Lorenzo continued,
shifting uncomfortably, “Just ask Caporell Villadeci here. He bought a map from
me only ten days ago.”

Van Delft’s ice blue eyes fell upon Villadeci like a hawk falls upon a mouse.

“Is this true?” he asked the man, whose face reddened as he glared at
Lorenzo.

“No… I mean, yes.”

“Which is it?”

“He no tell us that the map is stolen. He tell us that he made them.”

“Then why did… yes, what is it?” van Delft snapped irritably as a messenger
burst into the hut with a ragged salute.

“Sergeant Orbrant begs that you come to see what he has found, sir,” the
Marienburger gasped, his sides heaving.

“What’s he found?”

“Captain d’Artaud.”

“In that case, gentlemen, I think that we should adjourn our meeting for
now.”

But Lorenzo was already gone, racing to see if the news was true.

Hollow-eyed and shivering with exhaustion, Florin lay slumped in the shade of
one of the lesser temples. Beneath the grime and the dried blood that covered
him, he was pale, almost anaemic-looking, and his bones stood out from his
wasted frame.

And yet, despite the fact that he looked more like a corpse than a living
man, Florin’s face was animated, his spirits high. After the deprivations of his
ordeal, the faces of his friends and the stale bread and sour wine which he was
so busily cramming into his mouth seemed like a taste of heaven. He still
couldn’t quite believe that he’d made it back. When he’d stumbled out of the
darkness of the jungle and into the brightness of the clearing, the guards had
hardly been able to believe it either. One of them had almost shot him.

But to hell with that, Florin thought. To hell with everything apart from the
fact that I’m alive, and it feels good.

His head was thrown back in laughter, bread-crumbs flying from his mouth as
he roared at some jest one of the men had made, when Lorenzo came pelting around
the corner.

“Ah, there you are, boss,” Lorenzo said, forcing himself to slow to a casual
walk as he elbowed his way through the crowd that had gathered around Florin.
Bone-thin and covered in dirt, he would hardly have recognised the captain if it
hadn’t been for that familiar braying laugh. By Shallya, he thought, it’s a great gift to hear that again.