Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (45 page)

“And it was too
dangerous?”

“Aye. We were
more likely to run over than rescue them at that point,” he grunted, squinting
his eyes against the bright sun. “Kyleigh happened to be staying in the Bay,
and when we got back, she disappeared. But at sunrise we found all three of
them sitting at the breakfast table — the two boys tired and burnt red as
crabs, and Kyleigh splitting a glare between them.” Morris broke out a smile
that quickly turned into a chuckle. “Old Matteo — oh, he was so mad! He
spent a good half hour ranting before he thought to ask Kyleigh how she’d done
it. Setheran made her tell, of course. She never would have oth —”

“Wait,
Setheran
was there?” Kael interjected,
and Morris nodded. “You knew Setheran the Wright?”

“Of course I
did,” Morris said, scoffing at his incredulity. “Setheran and Kyleigh fought
through the Whispering War together. Now I don’t know where he found her,
originally. I can’t tell you that. But,” he glanced over his shoulder and
dropped his voice, “I
can
tell you
they were the reason we won the war. They’d go off on missions for weeks at a
time, and then we’d hear the news that one rebel army or another had
mysteriously disappeared. I can’t prove it, of course. But,” he tapped a nub to
the side of his head, “I knew it was them.”

And Kael thought
he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what Lysander meant when he said that any
man who chased after Kyleigh would have to be her match in every way. He’d have
to be strong, cunning, and dangerous.

He’d have to be
Setheran the Wright.

“Stop trying to avoid the question,
lad! Just answer me straight.”

Kael hadn’t heard the question. His
mouth was dry and his tongue was stuck somewhere in the back of his throat. The
burn in his stomach made his arms go numb. He didn’t know if he was angry, or
about to be sick. All he knew for certain was that Kyleigh and Setheran had
been lovers — it all made sudden, horrible sense.

“What did you ask?” he said, barely
getting the words through his swollen throat.

Morris made a frustrated noise. “I
asked if you and Kyleigh were able to talk. Could you speak to her in her dragon
form?”

Kael nodded.

“I see, and what
did it look like?”

He explained the
pictures the best he could, describing what he saw. He didn’t mention anything
about his glimpse of Setheran. But he thought he knew what the thing was inside
Kyleigh’s head — the thing that wrenched his heart and brought her tears
to his eyes: she was still heartbroken over Setheran.

When he was
finished, Morris nodded, as if he’d been expecting to hear it all. “Yeah,
that’s how Setheran used to talk to her, too. But he was an accomplished
Wright. Mind-walking is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Kael was just
glad to have an excuse to turn the conversation away from Setheran.
“Mind-walking?”

“It’s a branch
of healing,” Morris explained. “You can enter a person’s mind through touch,
and share things like memories or even imaginings. It’s quite useful for
dealing with mental plagues and the like. You can go through the eyes, too
— but you shouldn’t. It’s real dangerous.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’ve
obviously never done it myself, but I’ve heard it explained before … and I’ve
seen what happens when it goes wrong. The mind is a house with many rooms.” He
set his arms out, like he was explaining how to build it. “Someone powerful in
healing — a Wright, for example — is actually able to
enter
the mind, to walk around in it
like you would a house.”

“Hold on,” Kael
interrupted. “So if I were to enter someone’s mind —”

“But you won’t,
because it’s too dangerous.”

“I know,” he
said, slightly annoyed. “But say I did — would my whole body get sucked
up inside their head, or what?”

Morris
chuckled. “No, but that’d be a sight. It’s just your soul that goes —
your body stays behind, completely vulnerable. If it’s not left in the proper
care, you may not have a body to come back to.”

Kael thought for
a moment. “But it seems like mind-walking
could
be useful, particularly if you needed to find something out.”

Morris narrowed
his eyes. “Sure, it can be useful. It can also be abused, too. If you know what
you’re doing, you could easily turn someone into a mindless slave. Now what you
did with Kyleigh was more like looking through a window: you saw only what she
allowed you to.” He screwed up his eyes and poked an arm in the middle of
Kael’s chest. “And that’s just as far as I want you to go, all right? You can
talk to Kyleigh because she knows what she’s doing, but I don’t want to hear
about you tampering with anyone else.”

“Fine, I won’t.”

But it was more
to appease Morris than anything. He wondered what it looked like inside Aerilyn
or Lysander’s mind, even Jake’s … though he was afraid to think about what he
might find in Jonathan’s. The whole idea of mind-walking fascinated him. And
promise or no, he decided that if he ever found anyone to teach him, he would
learn.

*******

The sun was a
hand’s breadth from noon on the following day when
Anchorgloam
erupted in cheers. Kael had been so lost in thought
that the sudden burst of noise made him jump.

“All hands to
the rails,” Lysander said as he jogged towards the bow. “Just think, dogs
— today we’ll lunch with the ones we love!”

More deafening
cheers followed his cry as the pirates crowded around on deck. They had their
belongings hoisted over their shoulders, every one talking as loudly as he
could.

“After five long
years, I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight,” Morris said,
turning the ship. When they got close to Gravy Bay he’d insisted on taking the
wheel. Apparently, the entrance required a fair bit of skill to get through.
But so far, Kael hadn’t seen anything that looked remotely like a village.

On one side was
the open ocean, and on the other they passed a huge island of rock. It was
remarkable: like a mountain rising up out of the sea. The rock was bleached
white from the sun and if he tilted his head back, he could see trees perched
on top of it.

“Are you ready,
lad?” Morris said. “We’re about to make a sharp turn.”

Kael glanced
around. “Into where?” Then Morris nodded in the direction of the island and he
blanched. “You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m
serious! There’s a crack in the wall. You’ll be able to see it when we turn.
Granted, it ain’t a big crack, but I wouldn’t hold your breath — I’ve
only ever wrecked one ship trying to get through.”

Kael didn’t know
if he was joking or not. But he grabbed onto the nearest rail, just in case.

“Here we go!”
Morris spun the wheel hard and the ship groaned under his command. She moved
quickly, turning until they faced the rocks head-on.

A slight shadow
cut down the middle of the high cliffs, hardly wider than a crack. And Kael
realized, as they barreled down upon it, that Morris meant to squeeze them
through it. He gripped the rails and bit his lip as the current swept them up,
sucking them helplessly towards the crack. As the bow slid into the gap, he
waited breathlessly for the noise of splintering wood … but it never came.

The current
pushed them through, and before Aerilyn had a chance to scream, they popped out
on the other side and floated into Gravy Bay.

It was a large
plot of land, a little world of its own, hemmed in on all sides by cliffs.
There was a lake-sized pool of ocean between the entrance and the first sliver
of beach. A mound of houses squatted behind that, and then a forest, acres of
it, stretched back against the gray opposite mountain in the distance.

Kael felt
emptiness when he saw the trees. He tried not to dwell on the fact that his bow
had been destroyed, but seeing the woods made it hard to forget. Perhaps he
would try his hand at the longbow. There was bound to be game lurking among the
trees — and no doubt it’d been left at peace far too long.

The rounded
front lip of the Bay was covered in rock, upon which numerous houses sat. Some
were short and fat, others were tall and thin. They were built strangely
— as if the pirates made their homes with whatever materials they
happened to pillage. He counted at least four different types of stone, none
the shade of the cliffs around them, and a dozen different lumbers. One house
had a garden wall that was made entirely from slabs of purple, glittering rock.

Trinkets of all
sorts littered the stone yards around the village. There were statues perched
in odd places, some arranged in hilarious scenes. In one yard, a gargoyle that
looked as if it had been pilfered off the side of a castle crouched in the
garden. Lodged between its open jaws was the golden head of King Crevan that,
judging by the ragged edges of his neck, had been hewed from the larger statue
that stood next door.

His Highness was
not without a crown, however, as someone had the good sense to weld the brazen,
laughing head of a donkey upon his shoulders.

“You think
that’s something?” Morris said when he pointed it out. “Take a glance up the
hill, lad, and you’ll see the mansion of Gravy himself!”

The mansion was
most enormous house he’d ever seen. It perched high on a cliff above the
village, and more wings grew from it than from an army of butterflies —
each with its own particular character. There was one section out to the side
that he immediately liked the look of: its walls were made of dark red brick
and the arches of its windows were shuttered in steel.

He imagined it
would be a good place to find some peace and quiet.

As they sailed
closer to the docks, the sharp
clang
of a bell rang out, drawing the villagers from their houses with its song. They
stood along the beach, shielded their eyes from the sun and strained to see
which ship was heading for the harbor.

When they
recognized
Anchorgloam
, Kael thought
it was lucky he was still several yards away, or he might have gone deaf from
the cries that exploded from the shore. No sooner did he think this than the
pirates answered with a roar of their own. They jumped up and down like
children and pounded their fists onto the rails. Even Jonathan hollered along,
so contagious was the excitement.

They barely had
a chance to get the ramp lowered before the pirates flooded off the boat. They
ran down the docks as the crowd ran down the sand — and the two groups
collided somewhere in the middle.

Wives cried and
didn’t seem to be able to stop kissing their pirates. Children leapt off the
dunes and unabashedly into their fathers’ arms. Sons shook hands and tried to
keep their faces stern while daughters held on tightly and cried.

There was one
little girl who seemed more unsure than excited. She was young, so young that
Kael doubted if she’d ever met her father. She watched with big blue eyes from
safely behind her mother’s skirts, staring bashfully at the pirate who knelt
and tried to coax her out. At her mother’s urging, she took a hesitant step
forward, then raised her little arms to the man whose eyes matched hers.

She screamed in
delight as her father hoisted her off the ground and held her high in the air.
He spun once, tightly, just before he brought her back to his chest for an
embrace.

“C’mon, Kael!
I’m famished,” Jonathan shouted.

He tore his eyes
away from the crowd and saw all of his companions lined up on the dock,
watching him curiously. “Coming,” he said, then he turned to Morris. “Well, I
suppose you’re going home?”

“Aye. But I’ll
be right down the path, should you need anything,” he said with a smack on the
arm. “Mine’s the one with the bronze octopus out front.”

He bid Morris
farewell and then hurried down the ramp. As he followed his companions down the
road, he took one last glance at the happy scene behind him. He could only
imagine how the pirates felt, to have lost the ones they loved only to find
them once again. But he hoped that he would know the feeling for himself, one
day.

*******

It was no
surprise that the great house on the cliff belonged to Lysander, and yet when
they stopped at the huge front door, it still shocked him.

A horde of
servants must have been waiting eagerly behind it, because no sooner did they
stop than the door swung open and the whole mob came rushing out. They swooped
in, distracted them with curtsies and bows, then made off with their luggage.

“Where are they?
Are they here?” An old man’s voice bounced out of the front door, followed
closely by the old man himself. He was dressed very smartly in pressed trousers
and a pressed shirt. A carefully-groomed mustache topped his wide swindler’s
grin. “Well, well, you’ve finally come back, have you?” he said as he hobbled
towards them, leaning heavily on a polished oak cane. “And what have you done
with my favorite ship?”

“She’s tucked
safely in the harbor, Uncle Martin,” Lysander said.

“Good … because
now I’m going to give you a piece of my mind!” His face went dangerously stern.
“Do you see what comes from stealing off in the dead of night? From chasing
after wild tales and fancies?”

“It wasn’t a
fancy, Uncle. The Witch was —”

“I
know
she’s real, that isn’t the point.”
And Uncle Martin reiterated this with a none-too-gentle tap of his cane. “The
point is that you absconded with my ship, threw caution to the wind and
convinced a good number of impressionable pirates to sail straight into the
heart of folly — and for what? A few sparkly trinkets?”

“The Lass isn’t
a trink — ow!” Lysander took another furious tap to the chest. He
massaged his bruise while Uncle Martin ranted on.