The Orphans' Promise (38 page)

Léti had to carry Frog all the way to the boat, since the cat wasn’t amused at the idea of walking along a floating dock. As soon as they were aboard the sloop, he scampered toward the cabin, where he stayed for a long time, playing with the hammocks and blankets.

He was the only one who enjoyed himself. The others had a disturbing night.

Zarbone had given them a detailed map of this section of the Land of Beauty, but sailing at night was still perilous. The heirs didn’t dare light any lanterns on the
Othenor
, and they only saw a few lights around them, coming from the largest islands in the vicinity. They glided onward, practically blindfolded, the pale light of the crescent moon as their only guidance.

Bowbaq felt his old fears return. The sea was more frightening at night. The threshold between the depths and the surface was no longer clear, and he imagined that they were drifting out into harsh, dark waters. He feared that they would never return. He tried to snap out of his troubled visions by hopping from one foot to the other—feeling the world’s solid reality sometimes helped him feel better. But not tonight.

“I remember a legend from Arkary,” he announced. “It claims that the moon’s shadows reveal the true nature of things.”

His friends waited silently for him to continue, curious where he was going with this, but Bowbaq had nothing more to add.

“Why are you telling us that?” Rey asked, finally.

“I didn’t see the Mog’lur’s shadow,” he answered, sorrowfully. “I wonder if I might have seen the shadow of a child instead. Actually, I’m positive. I’m sure I saw a child’s shadow.”

“You have a mountain’s shadow,” Rey declared. His comment was as much a joke as it was an attempt to comfort his friend. “Demons would have to gather in hordes to bring you crumbling down.”

The actor went right back to sharpening his rapier as if nothing had happened. Rey had swapped his expensive clothes for his old traveling attire. He was unusually serious, hinting that he too was dreading what was on the horizon. He had narrowly escaped death on Ji, and he planned on surviving the Guoris’s Sacred Island the same way.

“You see how charming you can be,” Lana whispered kindly in his ear.

“You have the shadow of a divinely beautiful woman. My shadow would love to get to know yours,” he whispered back.

Lana smiled graciously, but it wasn’t a warm smile. She walked away. What Rey was suggesting was impossible, even under more pleasant circumstances. As a Maz, she couldn’t justify an affair with an atheist, no matter how tempting it was…

“Left!” Grigán whisper-yelled. “To the left!”

Yan corrected their course, trusting the warrior’s eagle eyes. Grigán had taken position at the bow, almost lying flat on the deck, and was acting as their spotter. Corenn helped him by relaying directions from Zarbone’s map. Their method had worked fine so far, but they still dreaded the possibility of getting lost or running aground on an unmarked sandbar.

“Look over there!” Léti said in a low voice. “There are moving lights!”

She was pointing to a group of lights five hundred yards to their starboard. These lights were different than the lights shining from the island residences that they had seen before. These ones were moving. It had to be a boat. A mercenary patroller.

As they had planned, Yan and Rey lowered the sail and let the
Othener
glide in absolute silence. The mercenary ship continued on the same heading, putting distance between them. The heirs weren’t out of danger yet. The
Othenor
might have drifted far off course.

“We’ve lost our way,” Grigán announced frankly, once he had time to judge their position.

The next few moments seemed to crawl for everyone. If they were still going the right direction, they were supposed to see a cathedral of coral sometime very soon. Grigán spotted it finally,
with a sigh of relief. It was nothing more than a six-foot-high mass sticking out of the water.

Corenn consulted the map again, even though by now she practically knew it by heart. They were getting close to the Guoris’ Sacred Island.
Is this really a good idea?
she wondered, for the hundredth time. Then she recalled the threatening mysteries that surrounded and hampered their quest. The answers from Usul could be their salvation. Yes, they had to try it.

“Steer left after the coral, Yan,” she whispered.

Yan executed the orders masterfully. He was simultaneously exhilarated and nervous, just like every time the heirs faced a turning point. Exhilarated by the joy of discovering, learning, living. He was nervous too because this new life full of experience could be cut short, or made painful if something bad were to happen to one of his friends, or to Léti…

He watched the young woman tenderly. Like him, she had changed too. She had become stronger. Tougher. Made more mature by the trials she unwillingly had to endure. He hoped they hadn’t changed so much that they would grow apart. For his part, he found her more captivating and beautiful than ever. Learning magic was just a way that he could finally have a talent to offer her. He wanted to protect her, live with her, laugh with her, have children that were like her. He had always wanted that, and he still did.

It wasn’t an obsession. Being with L
é
ti was simply the only way he imagined happiness. Yan had no intention of harassing Léti her whole life if it turned out she had other plans. But on this dark night on a distant sea, as they were being hunted down by a powerful enemy with no place to hide, to Yan, concentrating on his hopes and dreams seemed like the best thing to do.

Léti turned to him and gave him an affectionate smile, almost as if she had heard his thoughts.
Yes
, he thought, with renewed determination.
The best thing to do.

“We’ve arrived,” Grigán announced. “The island is right in front of us.”

The heirs wondered if Grigán had actually spotted something or spoke from intuition. He was the only one who could see anything. As the
Othenor
closed in, they could discern the rough shape of the island a few hundred yards ahead of them as it emerged piece by piece on the dark horizon.

Bowbaq candidly remarked, “It’s smaller than Ji.”

“That will only make finding Usul that much easier,” Rey joked. “All we have to do is stand on the beach and yell, ‘Hey! Is there a god somewhere around here? Or is that the next island over?’”

Lana shuddered at this latest blasphemy. Even though she was the one who had had the idea in the first place, she couldn’t believe that they were going to meet with a
god
. She was convinced that gods existed, but it was one thing to pray to them in the quiet confines of a temple; it was quite another to directly address an eternal being in the flesh.

Implicitly, they had designated her as the group’s representative to speak to Usul. She had scrupulously memorized the list of questions Corenn had prepared.
She
would soon speak with a god and was paralyzed by fear.

Yan slowed the
Othenor
, following Grigán’s advice. The Guoris could have set up some beams, rocks, or other pitfalls to sink any boat that ignored the interdiction, so at an achingly slow pace, the sloop approached the island.

They did their best to peer through the darkness, but the interior remained indiscernible. The only thing they could perceive was the edge between the vegetation and the beach.

The heirs hoped that the Guoris had abandoned the island to let it fall into obscurity, perhaps thinking that what is available to everyone interests no one. For the next generation, all that would be left would be a few legends of Usul. But until then, the natives had made such an effort to keep everyone away that such a drastic change in methods seemed improbable. They must have found a better way to keep people away from the god.

The sloop was soon close enough for Rey to drop anchor. They couldn’t risk approaching any closer and running aground. The beach was 150 yards away. Grigán plumbed the depth and decided it was best that they take the dinghy to shore, much to Bowbaq’s relief. He didn’t want to plunge into those dark waters.

The small boat was just large enough for four people, so Yan needed two trips to bring everyone to shore. Grigán, Léti, and Rey took the first boat, weapons in hand and senses alert. The others soon joined them.

Bowbaq lit two lanterns that he had altered following the warrior’s advice: Two large planks of wood masked the light from one side to partially reflect it back out the other. The giant took one and gave the other to Yan.

“Don’t forget to point your light inland,” Grigán reminded them. “And don’t hold them too high. We just need enough light to see where we’re stepping. Not to signal all of the Land of Beauty.”

The group left the beach, Yan in the front, covered by Grigán and his bow. Lana followed, protected by Rey and his crossbow. Then came Bowbaq, Corenn, and finally Léti, who brought up the rear. They had adopted this strategic formation without having to discuss it. Grigán also noticed that each of them tried to
walk as silently as possible, without him needing to remind them. His companions had learned a lot, he thought to himself with a certain sense of satisfaction at their progress.

Supposedly, Usul was at the island’s summit, and they headed in that direction. No more than twenty yards in, they had to stop.

“I found a carcass,” Yan warned them in a hoarse voice.

Grigán squatted down to examine the putrid animal, a colony of maggots squirming out of its bloated body. It was a large adult auroch. The beast was almost intact, except for dozens of small cuts that covered its body, maybe made by scavengers after its death.

Troubled by the sight, Bowbaq said, “There shouldn’t be any aurochs here. How can that be?”

“But there isn’t an auroch here, Bowbaq,” Rey responded. “At least not a living one.”

Lana inquired in a quavering voice, “How did it die? Sickness?”

“Maybe,” the warrior answered. “Well, let’s get going. I would like to get off this island as soon as possible.”

Grigán had seen a good number of carcasses in his life, but he had never heard of any sickness that left an animal completely drained of blood. This island had at least one species of vampire, bat or otherwise.

He didn’t think it mattered enough to trouble his companions with this detail. For once, the warrior was wrong.

The creature tossed and turned in its sleep. Many spirits were thinking about it right now, and some of them were very powerful. It could hear them, even as it drifted into the deepest of dreams.

It dreamed of crossing the sea, flying through the night, tasting the fear and suffering of humanity. What a pleasant dream it was. But there were other images too: those of children, a valley, a portal, and other things it didn’t understand or remember flashed through its mind. They interrupted the dream. It didn’t like the emotions the images brought. Its hate for humanity grew. It banished those dreams and went searching for spirits that continuously talked, like a buzzing noise in the back of its mind.

It immediately detected its friend’s spirit and admired its intensity, though that wasn’t the one it was looking for. It sifted through a thousand others, rejecting them disdainfully. None of them deserved its attention. It continued hunting, gliding through thousands of other spirits that were just as talkative, insipid, and boring. It partially woke from its sleep to force itself to listen better until it finally found something interesting—the spirits of the humans it would soon kill. They hated it. Feared it. The creature welcomed their hate, rejoicing in it, and drew new strength from their scorn.