Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (31 page)

Lysander nodded.
“She cursed the villagers and keeps them still as her prisoners. I grew up
hearing the tale of the Witch of Wendelgrimm, burning over it. So the day I was
old enough to be Captain, I picked my crew and set out to free the good people
of Copperdock.”

“And I’m sure
you gave no thought at all to the treasure,” Kyleigh said sarcastically.

He shrugged, and
a mischievous smile parted his lips. “Well … I admit I was a
little
intrigued by the treasure. Legend
has it that the dungeons of Wendelgrimm are bursting with history, plundered
from all the ships that the Witch has ever sunk,” he explained to Kael. “They
say there’s the crown of the first King, a ruby the size of a goat’s head and
an aquamarine chalice of immortality — all resting upon a mountain of
gold.”

“But none of
those things actually interest you, do they?” Kyleigh said as she picked at her
fingernails. “There’s only one thing a fellow like you would risk going into
Wendelgrimm for.”

He placed a
reverent hand over his heart. “The Lass of Sam Gravy.”

“Wait —
there’s a woman locked in the dungeons?” Kael said, slightly alarmed.

Lysander
snorted. “The Lass is a sword, whisperer — a blade said to give its
wielder true and infinite luck. With the Lass in your hand, every lock falls
away and every door swings open. You could stand in the presence of your
greatest enemy, and he would never recognize you. In battle, you can’t be
beaten.

“That’s what I
went into Wendelgrimm for,” he admitted with a sigh. “I thought if I had the
Lass, that I could make a difference. That I could go to war with the Duke
— with the Kingdom, even — and numbers wouldn’t matter. But the
Witch is strong …” His eyes watched the distance, and his voice dropped to a
growl. “My men and I marched on Wendelgrimm with our swords drawn, prepared to
fight, and all it took was a single spell to defeat us. Her horrible voice
burned our ears and the next thing we knew, our legs moved of their own accord.
They marched us back to
Anchorgloam
,
where our hands raised the sails and steered us away. We were a mile out to sea
when her spell finally released us … and then my curse began.”

Outside, the sky
had grown dark. Thunder rumbled and rain whipped the windows. The ship began to
rock beneath them. Lysander grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and fell to his
knees. He took several labored breaths, and as his breathing steadied, so did
the ship. Slowly, the dark in the clouds faded away and the rain stopped
falling. When the sky was a solid sheet of gray once again, he pulled himself
to his feet.

His legs shook
as he gripped the corner of the desk to steady himself. “I’m a cursed man.
Everything I feel, every beat of my heart is reflected out there,” he pointed
to the windows, “in the weather around me. The first time it happened, I nearly
wrecked us. We lost three — three good pirates — before I realized
that the storm was all my doing.”

Kyleigh got up
and slung one of his arms across her shoulders. He leaned heavily on her as she
helped him around the desk. He collapsed into the chair and pulled a green
bottle out from one of the drawers.

With a quick,
practiced motion, he popped the cork out between his teeth. “Somewhere between
my anger and my sorrow, I found a grim resolve — a steely gray sky and a
swift wind to sail by. But even at that, I have my moments of weakness.
Sometimes a little fog is safer than what I truly feel,” he muttered. Then he
took a long swig and sat the bottle down. “I tried to get them to leave me, you
know. I ordered them to maroon me on an island — someplace where I could
never harm another soul again. But those stubborn dogs wouldn’t do it.”

“’Course we
wouldn’t — you’re our captain!”

The outburst
came from the man who’d just waddled into the room. He was short, stocky, and
had a voice that sounded a bit like a frog’s croak. Lysander raised his bottle
in greeting. “Hello, Morris.”

“Hello nothing,”
the man called Morris said. He walked past Kael without even glancing at him
and pounded his arm on the desk top, knocking several precariously stacked
books onto the floor. “Now put that bottle down, Captain. A young lad shouldn’t
drown himself in ale.”

“And why not?”
Lysander said, looking slightly amused.

“’Cause it’ll
make your liver swell up fatter than Duke Reggie’s head, that’s why,” Morris
grouched. He finally seemed to notice Kyleigh standing off to one side.
“Dragongirl,” he said with a nod. “I heard you were aboard. It’s good to see
you again — luck always seems to follow you. And what can I help you
with, eh?”

“I need you to
train someone,” she said.

Morris was quiet
for a moment. He squinted up his eyes and his mouth twitched beneath his bushy beard.
“Train? But I don’t … there aren’t none left, Dragongirl. Haven’t you heard?”

“Yes, I wondered
about that myself,” Lysander said, leaning back in his chair. “But the boy’s
right here. And he’s already proven himself against the fog.”

Morris turned when
he pointed and his eyes, sat back in their pouches, roved the length of Kael.
Then they went to the top of his head, and his mouth broke into a wide grin. He
was missing several teeth.

“Well my beard
— you found one in the Unforgivable Mountains!” he said gleefully. “And
what’s your name, lad?”

“Kael.”

“Pleasure to
meet you.”

Kael reached out
to shake his hand and his fingers grasped at nothing. He looked down and
realized that Morris’s arm ended at the wrist. The nub of his severed hand was
capped in a leather gauntlet.

“I got myself a
matching set, I’m afraid,” Morris said, holding up the missing end of his other
arm. “Not everyone
died
in the
Whispering War — some of us got souvenirs. Usually try to warn a man
first, I do.”

“Oh, um, it’s
not a problem.” And he shook Morris’s forearm instead.

“So what’s your
power, lad? Wait — don’t tell me.” Morris looked him over again. “You’re
real evenly balanced, got a long reach and big hands for a lad your size. I’ll
bet you’ve got a gift for war, don’t you?”

He wondered if
Morris might be losing his sight. “No, I’m a healer,” he said. And he ignored
Kyleigh’s snort.

“A
healer
?” Morris burst out in a round of
wheezing laughter. “You can’t reel me in with that one. I’ve seen my share of
whisperers, and I’ve got a real eye for talent.”

“Well, maybe you
need spectacles — because I’ve always been a healer.”

Morris smirked.
“I won’t waste my time squabbling with you about it, why don’t we settle this?
Would you light a lantern for us, Captain?” Lysander took a lantern off the
wall, struck a match and lit the candle. He slid it over the top of Morris’s
right arm and wedged it against his gauntlet. “Thankee, Captain. And would you
happen to have a mirror?”

“Oh, he’s got
one,” Kyleigh said. “A man doesn’t get that sort of wave in his hair without a
considerable amount of preening.”

“I do not
preen
,” Lysander said with a glare. He
jerked open a drawer of his desk and handed Kael a silver hand mirror. “The
wave is natural — and I only keep a mirror for signaling purposes.”

Kyleigh waited
until his back was turned before she rolled her eyes.

“There was an
old trick they taught us before whispering became a crime,” Morris said,
holding the lantern up to his face.

The light hit
his eye at a certain angle and a series of gold rings radiated out from his
pupil, like ripples in a pond. They seemed to shimmer, and moved of their own
accord in the candlelight.

“Do you see
them?” When Kael nodded, he smiled. “Had the gift of craft, I did. I used to
make weapons for King Banagher himself. But that was back before …” He cleared
his throat loudly and blinked. “All right, it’s your turn. If you’re a
craftsman, you’ll see rings like mine. A healer will be a diamond, and a
warrior is a jagged cut straight across the middle. Got it?”

He nodded.

“Good. Now let
me get this situated. The light’s got to hit at just the exact right angle.”

He looked
straight ahead while Morris moved the lantern into position. The light touched
his eyes and he could feel the warmth of the candle flame. Then he heard a loud
clang
as the lantern struck the
floor.

“Tide take me!”

Lysander jumped
to his feet. “What — what is it?”

Morris took
several steps backwards. If his lids hadn’t been so droopy, the white might
have shown the whole way around his eyes. He jabbed one of his arms at Kael and
sputtered: “See for yourself!”

Amazingly, the
lantern managed to land upright. A little wax spilled out in its base, but the
wick still burned brightly. “Don’t move,” Lysander said as he held it up.

“If there’s
something wrong, shouldn’t I be the first to know?” Kael argued.

Lysander grabbed
him under the chin and peered into his eye. After a moment, he grinned. “Hold
the mirror up. You’re going to want to see this.”

Kael ignored the
sharp lines of his face and his too-pale skin. He brought the glass close,
until his illuminated brown eyes filled it. There was gold in the middle of his
eyes, too. But it wasn’t a diamond or a jagged cut, and there certainly weren’t
any rings.

A series of
straight lines crisscrossed through the iris. They cut so close to the center
of his eyes that it made his pupil look more triangular than round. “What is
it?” he said without looking away. He was afraid that if he blinked, the
pattern might disappear.

“It’s this,”
Kyleigh said. She pulled a book off the shelf — a small tome entitled
Classifications of Whisperers
. She
opened it and held it up so he could see.

A drawing filled
the first page, a drawing of an eye with lines crisscrossing through it. He
looked back and forth between the drawing and his eye, but there was no
mistaking that he what he saw were twin pictures.

Morris touched
the end of his arm to the first set of triangles, the ones that fanned out from
the point of the pupil. “Born of all,” he moved his arm to the interlocking
triangles beneath it, “lord of all,” to black triangle in the middle, “behold
— the Wright arises.”

They could’ve
heard a mouse chewing cheese in the silence his words left behind. Kael
couldn’t think of anything to say. He glanced around the room, but the others’
expressions were far from useful. Kyleigh’s face clearly said:
I told you so
. She was, no doubt,
reveling in her triumph. Morris looked as if he’d just kicked open a chest of
never-ending treasure. Lysander gazed out the window, a smile on his face.

Outside, the
gray sky was churning.

“I’m not …” Kael
began, but couldn’t quite get the words out.

“You are, lad.”
Morris’s croak was surprisingly gentle. “Ever find that the things you make do
exactly what they’re meant to?”

Kael thought
immediately about the traps, about how Kyleigh said it was so odd that he
managed to snare something every time. He kept his mouth hard, but Morris read
the answer in his eyes.

“I thought so.
That’ll be the craftsman in you. And ever taken a fall that would snap an
average man’s neck? Or made a shot that seemed impossible?” When Kael’s face
reddened, Morris smiled. “And that’s the warrior. The eyes reflect the soul,
lad. And the soul don’t lie.” Then he turned to Kyleigh. “So this is what you
went looking for, eh?”

“I knew we’d be
hopeless without him,” she said. Her green eyes bored into his. Her expression
betrayed nothing, yet he thought he could feel her excitement … and her relief.

He didn’t want
that. He didn’t care what the mirror said: he wasn’t their answer. “Sorry, but you’re
going to have to find someone else. I’m just trying to save my grandfather,” he
said. He tossed the mirror onto the desk and turned to leave, but Morris
blocked his path.

“The gift isn’t
easy, I understand that.” He wedged his arm in the collar of his shirt and
pulled it down. Through the tangled wires of black hair on his chest, Kael
could see the whisperer’s mark. “Do you know what this is?”

“It’s a
birthmark.”

“No it isn’t.
See how red and raised it is, how it goes down in a straight line? You ever
seen a birthmark like that? ‘Course you haven’t! ‘Cause it’s no birthmark, lad
— it’s a scar.”

“Well whatever
it is, it’s not like I asked for it.”

He laughed. “It
isn’t about what you asked for. You were
chosen
for this, long before you were even born. You were still in your mother’s
womb when the lady Fate split you wide open. She put her gift inside you and
sewed you up tight —
that’s
why
every whisperer has a scar.”

Amos never
talked much about the history of their people, so he couldn’t help but be interested
in what Morris had to say. He just wished he hadn’t brought Fate into it. “I
won’t let anyone tell me what I ought to do.”

“No, you got it
all wrong — Fate gives her gifts, but she lets us decide what to do with
them. There’s no reason why an ugly old seadog like me should have an eye for
craft, or a redheaded, toothpick of a boy should have the gifts of a Wright.”
He grinned and touched his arm to the side of his head. “But we do. Now instead
of jumping overboard, why don’t you give it a shot, eh? Let me train you up a
bit, teach you what I know about the gifts.
Then
you can decide what you ought to do with them.”

He thought that
sounded reasonable. Besides, whatever Morris had to show him might come in
handy when he finally got to Titus. “All right —”

“One moment,
please,” Lysander interrupted. He slunk over from the window, arms behind his
back and a sly smile on his face. “As Captain of this ship, I think I should be
compensated for Morris’s time.”