Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (28 page)

He’d prepared to
be crushed when Kyleigh slid into him. She knocked him aside and caught the
crate under her boots, using her legs as a wedge to hold it at bay. When the
boat finally rocked back with a shudder, the crate slid forward.

She ignored his
astonished look and glanced behind him. “Is everyone all right back there?”

Aerilyn’s hair
was piled up in a knot and her skirt was ripped down the side, but other than
that she seemed fine. Jonathan was stuck in a tangle at the back of the canopy.
A crate full of silk had fallen on him and he was trying to dig himself out
from under a mountain of brightly-colored scarves.

Panicked shouts
rang out across the deck, and Kael nearly jumped out of his skin when a roar of
voices answered them. Shadows slid in and out of the fog, grappling with one
another. The shriek of metal striking metal cut over the top of everything, it
stabbed at them from all sides.

“What’s
happening?” Jonathan said as he crawled towards them, kicking free of the last
scarf.

“I
told
you this would happen!” Aerilyn
wailed. “I told you we should have gotten off this boat. But you didn’t listen,
and now we’re being attacked by pirates!”

Kael’s mouth
went dry. The sounds of battle were growing steadily weaker, trailing away as
one side won out over the other. He hoped the soldiers held their ground. At
least the Duke had laws: there was no telling what pirates did with their
prisoners. But it probably involved sharks and a good amount of flogging.

“How will we
know if they’re pirates or not?” Kael said.

Jonathan
snorted. “You’ll know. They’ll be the ones with gold teeth and bones weaved
into their beards!”

“Who cares what
they look like? We’re all going to be murdered —!”

“
Shhh
!” Kael clamped a hand over
Aerilyn’s mouth. They were talking too loudly on a ship that had suddenly gone
deathly quiet. If there was anyone still onboard, they would’ve heard.

He had an arrow
knocked and ready. Blast what Kyleigh said — if man or beast came
charging out of that fog, he’d bring it down. He watched the fog, searching
desperately for any signs of movement. For a long moment, all he could hear
were the quick breaths of his companions and the thudding of his own heart.
Then, something creaked.

It was a careful
sound, a practiced one. A noise caused by a man who was used to hushing his
footsteps. He probably cursed when he stepped on that plank, because it might
as well have been a battle horn: now Kael knew he was coming.

A shadow moved
behind the wall of white, and then a dozen others joined it. They began to take
shape, swaying slowly back and forth as they inched closer. The first man
stepped out of the fog and blinked, as if he hadn’t been expecting to see them
so clearly.

He wore a long
black cloak that fell to his knees and had a red, upside down V painted on the
front of his white tunic — a mark that stood out even in the fog. In one
hand, he held a slender cutlass. His face was clean-shaven, his jaw set tight.
He had the eyes of a man who’d lived for a thousand years.

And the mouth of
a man who hadn’t learned to smile in any of them.

He waited until
his cloaked companions formed a half circle around him before he spoke. “A pox
on the Duke,” he said, and the others leaned forward and collectively spat.
“You’re under the rule of pirates, now. And you’ll answer our questions.” He
pointed his sword at them. “Which of you is the mage?”

“None of us
practice magic. We’re simple travelers,” Kyleigh said.

The serious
pirate frowned. “You don’t work for the Duke?”

She spread her
arms wide. “Do you see an emblem on my chest?”

“A tunic is easy
to change,” he countered, his voice every bit as flinty as his stare. “You
could be a liar.”

“True. Or I
could be on my way to help your captain.”

His face
hardened, his eyes narrowed. “You know nothing of my captain, landscab. And if
you aren’t careful, I’ll gut the lot of you.”

Kyleigh stepped
out from the shelter, watching him from under her hood. “I know all about your
captain. I know about his trouble with the Witch,” she said quietly, and the
pirates stiffened. “I know that he’s at his wit’s end — that he’s poured
over every tome in his ridiculous library and still hasn’t found an answer. And
I happen to know what he needs.”

The other
pirates shifted, their hooded heads turned in the direction of their leader,
waiting for his answer. He finally sheathed his sword and mirrored her,
crossing his arms. “What’s this information going to cost me?”

She shrugged.
“Our lives, for now. I’ll discuss the rest of my terms with Captain Lysander.”

A round of
anxious whispering broke out among the pirates. The serious one took an
involuntary step forward. “Where did you hear that name, landscab?” he growled.

“I have my
sources,” she replied coolly.

He looked on the
verge of hitting her, but instead his mouth bent in a smirk. “Well, I hope your
sources weren’t wrong — for your sake. Come with me.” He marched back
into the fog, and Kyleigh followed.

Kael didn’t know
if they were allowed to come or not, but he certainly wasn’t going to stay: the
pirates were trying to roast him alive with their glares.

He slung his
pack over his shoulder and hurried past them. Aerilyn latched onto his shirt
and he could hear Jonathan stumbling along behind her. Once again, he found
that if he swung his arms the fog cleared enough for him to see where he was
going — which came in handy on a ship littered with crates and bodies.

The first
soldier they came across was the one who’d taken their coin. There was a bloody
hole in the middle of his chest. His face was frozen in shock. Kyleigh knelt
beside him to retrieve the purse from his belt.

“And that’s the
cheapest way to travel on the High Seas,” the serious pirate said approvingly.
He looked over her shoulder and his eyes found Kael. “I know you’re not a mage,
but since flapping your wings is magically clearing out this fog, how about you
get up to the front?”

There was a
large dose of sarcasm in his voice, and absolutely no nonsense on his face. So
Kael dragged his line of followers up even with him. He felt stupid waving his
arms, now. And he thought that might have been the pirate’s point. But it was
too dangerous to worry about feeling stupid.

More than once,
he had to tell Aerilyn not to look down because the scene at their boots was
beyond gruesome. Several times they had to walk over bodies and through dark,
sticky puddles. At one point, he heard Jonathan gag and lose his breakfast
— which made the pirate chuckle.

When they
reached the far side of the boat, he saw immediately what had caused them to
nearly tip over. The noise he’d heard wasn’t a thunderclap, but the sound of
their boat being struck by another. Now the starboard side was all splinters,
its railings were cracked and fallen over on the floor.

A large ramp
dropped out into the middle of the wreckage and led directly upwards, to the
deck of a monstrous ship.

It perched on
the ocean like it had every right to be there — easily thrice the height
of the merchant vessel. There were four levels, and whoever built it must have
used the tallest tree in the Grandforest for its mast. Waves slapped against
it, but couldn’t so much as shift the massive planks of deep red wood that made
up its side.

“Welcome aboard
Anchorgloam
,” the pirate said as they
reached to top of the ramp. “She’s the toughest vessel to ever sail the High
Seas. No tempest can take her.”

Kael seriously
doubted that. He’d seen drawings of tempests in the
Atlas
, of waves the height of castle towers and swirling pits of
water with no bottom. The meetings rarely turned out well for the ships.

The fog was, if
possible, even thicker aboard
Anchorgloam
.
He had to swing his arms twice as much and they still managed to run into
people. “Sorry about that, Miss,” a pirate said after he nearly knocked Aerilyn
flat. “It’s hard for a fellow to see in this blasted stuff.”

They followed
the serious pirate to the back of the ship, where a small cabin sat on top of
the deck. The pirate went to rap on the door and cursed when it swung open.
“Steady, lad!” he barked.

A sandy-haired
boy looked sheepishly out from behind it. “Sorry, Thelred. I was just coming to
get you.”

“Why? Is there
something wrong with the captain?” Thelred asked, a surprising amount of
concern in his voice.

“Not yet, but
we’ve run out of wine and now he’s turning sour.”

“Perfect,” Kael
heard Aerilyn grumble. “We wouldn’t want a sober man deciding our fate.”

A rumble of
thunder trailed her words, and Thelred glared up at the sky. “Get in, all of
you. Pick your feet up,” he snapped as he pushed them through the door. “You
follow at the rear, Noah.”

The sandy-haired
boy nodded and took the place behind Jonathan.

When they
stepped through the door, it was like they fell through a portal and wound up
in the middle of some wealthy man’s hallway. The walls were made of dark red
wood and every square inch was polished to a shine. Glass-covered cases were
built into the walls, each one holding a different treasure or trinket.

There were coins
dating back to the time of the first King, tarnished and green with age. One
case was full of gold-spined books, opened to pages written in strange, curling
symbols. A pearl the size of Kael’s fist sat on top of that case, and it was so
polished that he could actually see his reflection on its ivory surface. The
plaque beneath it read
Seeing Eye of
Argus Yar
.

Kael nearly
gasped. No one knew what happened to the eye of Argus Yar — a Seer so
powerful that legend told he could travel into the future. Though Kael thought
he’d believe in the legend before he believed the eye had wound up in the hands
of pirates.

He came to the
next case, one that held a simple broadsword — badly chinked and rusted
from use. He read the plaque that claimed it was the Arm of Vindicus the
Broken, and he snorted.

Thelred turned
around. “Is something funny?”

He wanted to say
that something
was
funny; that he
thought Thelred’s face looked as if he had a barnacle stuck somewhere highly
uncomfortable. But since he probably could’ve drawn his cutlass faster than
Kael could draw his bow, he didn’t.

“This isn’t the
real
Arm of Vindicus,” Kael explained.
“Everyone knows that the King keeps the real one locked in a case over the door
of his armory.”

Thelred smirked,
and the gesture didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Everyone
does
think that — which is why no one comes looking for this
one. And if you’d like to keep them, I suggest you put them away,” he added,
without taking his eyes off Kael.

Behind him,
Jonathan had been reaching out to touch the pearl. But after Thelred’s warning,
he stuffed his hands hastily back into his pockets.

At the end of
the hallway was a solid wooden door. Two twisting sea serpents were carved into
it. Their mouths were open — revealing two rows of needle teeth. The one
coiled around the handle seemed to snarl at Thelred as he turned it.

The door opened
up to a large room. Two of its walls were covered in shelves of books,
stretching from the ceiling, over the doorway, and down to the floor. It only
took Kael a second to realize they were all arranged alphabetically. He scanned
their titles and itched to read through them. One in particular caught his eye:
Travels with Shapechangers
.

It was a thin
volume, but exciting nonetheless. He didn’t know there were any books at all
devoted entirely to shapechangers.

A small bed
folded out of the third wall, neatly made up with cream-colored sheets and
fluffy white pillows. The space was decorated, inexplicably, with a pair of
striped knickers framed like a painting.

In the very
center of the room, a large desk squatted on stubby legs. There was a quill and
parchment tucked neatly to one side of its shiny top, and a rolled map on the
other. Behind the desk were three clear, floor-length windows that overlooked
the foggy sea.

There was only
one thing in the room that didn’t quite fit, and that was the man sitting at
the desk. Well, perhaps
slouching
was
a better word for it.

While Thelred
and Noah had been a bit of a disappointment, this man looked exactly
the way a pirate ought to. His
shoulders sloped downward and his head lolled from side to side, as if they
were making him seasick just standing there. His mouth gaped open through a
ratty tangle of a beard that stretched down past his collarbone. His brown hair
stuck out like the frayed edges of a rug.

He blinked his
bloodshot eyes. “’Ow man’ we loss, Red?” he mumbled.

Thelred clamped
his hands behind his back and frowned. “None, Captain.”

“Goo’,” the
captain said. An empty decanter sat by his elbow. He slung his arm out and
knocked it onto the floor, where it shattered. “Don’ een usa glass do I?” He
let out a scornful laugh, then dropped his hairy head. “Can’ do ‘is no more,
Red. Is jus too ‘ard.”

A quiet,
tinkling noise drew Kael’s attention to the window. Soft drops of rain pattered
against them, sliding down in uneven lines while the captain shook his head and
moaned. Kael thought he could have done with a slap around the ears.

Thelred deepened
his frown. “I know. But I’ve brought some people who might be able to help us.”
He took Kyleigh by the arm and led her up to the desk. “This one knows your
name. She says she has your answer.”

The captain
belched loudly and flicked his hand at her without even looking up. “Snake oil
ands ‘moke! I nee ‘em —”