Joron could not help but join them.
The sky was blue, blue as dreams and as unreachable. Thin lines of cloud scudded across it. Below was the ocean, green and grey and cut with lines of white. To their landward side the sky and sea were divided by the black towers of Skearith’s Spine, reaching up to impossible heights, their tops crested with snow and it looked like clouds nested there, resting before journeying across the Archipelago. Through the centre of this vista ran Arkannis Channel, and in the centre of the channel swam the arakeesian.
Vast.
Able to compare it to the pair of two-ribbers, Joron got his first true idea of the creature’s scale. It took his breath away. It was like an island had come alive. The huge red wingfins on its back were raised, catching the wind and pushing the beast on inexorably. He tried to calculate how long they had before it came within range of the towers’ gallowbows but could not. Not long enough, he knew that. The creature’s branched horns stuck out of the water, marking its head. As if sensing his gaze, the arakeesian blew a plume of water out of the hole between its horns, and it reached up for the sky before vanishing into a cloud of droplets to be whisked away by the wind. The beast’s flippers were held against its huge curving sides, and the long tail swept lazily up and down through the sea. From this distance Cruel Water looked about the size of Joron’s hand, and Snarltooth, which sailed at the rear of the arakeesian, looked no bigger than his littlest finger.
“It is difficult, D’keeper,” said Farys, “to understand how something so huge can even be alive.”
“Ey, Farys, you are right. But it is and we must keep it so.”
“It is a good thing we do, I think, D’keeper,” she said and then bowed her head as if worried she had said too much and hurried off after Narza.
“It is,” said Joron quietly with one last look at the beast. “I believe it is.”
When he reached Narza she had found another hole and was busily pulling away vines. This was larger and would allow even Old Briaret to squeeze through.
“This looks good,” said Joron. “Narza, you lead.”
Narza nodded and produced a wanelight from her belt with a little container of oil. She filled the light and then lit it with a sparker. Joron wished he had thought ahead and brought his own light but Narza was prepared for forgetful deckkeepers and produced three more. Then they squirmed and squeezed into the darkness.
To enter the cave was to enter another world, one as alien to Joron as being underwater. So dark. Sound no longer behaved as it should. The voices Joron had heard were louder here, but he could not tell from which direction they came. The glistening walls of the cave threw sound around, turned it into a mush that hissed in his ears. The cave enclosed him, pushed him inside himself and at the same time pushed him physically down, forcing Joron and his small crew to continue on all fours. He did not hold a wanelight, and the meagre glow from those in front was as often as not blocked out by Old Briaret or Karring, and in those moments it was easy to believe he was utterly alone, the only sounds those of clothes scraping against rock. The only sensation the feel of loose shingle and slippery mud as it squeezed between his fingers. Everything here was alien to him, from the darkness to the way the decreasing space eventually forced him to move like a creature without arms and legs, wriggling along on his stomach. Progress was slow, and he felt the weight of the rock above, crushing him. Panic fluttered in his breast. To be stuck here was to die. To die alone in the dark.
His heart beating.
His breath rasping.
The air in his ears whispering.
The blood in his veins hissing.
Behind all this the ever-changing melody of the windspire, that strange, sad chorus, and it felt to Joron that the organs of his body had become part of it, that his body’s struggle through the arteries of the island was a counterpoint to the melody of the spire far above. And though he did not know why, that song helped him. Had it not been with him, he was sure he would have been overwhelmed by the darkness. He was a man of the sea, and the weight of the island above him would have broken his mind, or worse, entombed him. But the song was like a guide: it pulled him on, cleared his mind of worry.
Then he felt less weight, more space.
The air around him was no longer cold and close but wider and moving.
The wanelights gilded his little group with golden highlights – hints of body, leg and head, breast and chest. Narza stood, then Namd, then Farys and Old Briaret, then Karring, then him. They were in a cave, a true cave, almost high enough for them to stand up. Two passages led from it. No one spoke – not, Joron thought, because they were afraid of being heard, but because this dark place did not invite speech.
Then he heard voices from somewhere ahead. Narza cocked her head, and the way the wanelight haloed her hair changed. She pointed to the seaward tunnel. Touched a finger to her lips. They followed her silently down the passage, the voices becoming louder, light growing before them.
Two people, two men.
They stood with their backs to the passage, a rope dangling in front of them. Joron could smell clean, fresh water.
Narza glanced over her shoulder – did he see her black eyes? Were they lighter in the dark? – and motioned to them to stay where they were. Then she simply walked towards the two men, not attempting to hide or to slow or to mask her footsteps. If anything she speeded up as she approached. Joron had seen many fights, many deaths – nothing was as common as violence in the Hundred Isles – but he had never seen anything like Narza. Never seen anyone who committed so fully, as if they knew no fear.
By the time she reached the men, Narza was running. She threw herself at the back of one, knocking him to the ground with her shoulder and using his bulk to stop her forward motion. As the other man turned towards her, surprised, shocked, uncomprehending, Narza’s bone knife slashed across his throat. He staggered back, never having drawn his curnow or made a sound, vainly trying to halt the flow of blood from his neck. Narza, still moving, let herself fall. It was a lazy movement. The man she had knocked down was pushing himself up. She fell on to him, elbow angled to dig in just below his ribs. Joron heard the air as it was knocked from his body by her weight. She rolled off him and came to her knees in one movement, then drove the bone dagger down into the man’s skull.
It took her more effort to remove the blade from the man’s head than it had for her to kill them, and Joron wondered if he found her more frightening than the journey through the caves.
Narza sheathed her knives. Far above in the roof of the cave was a circle of light – the cellar of the tower. The rope fell from it into a small spring surrounded by a woven wall of dried varisk vines. She grabbed the rope, pulled a bucket from the spring and took a long drink. Then threw it back into the well before yanking away the wall of vines and pulling on the rope until it was taut. Then she looked at Joron.
“Well,” he said, “the arakeesian comes, and the longer we wait the more danger Meas will be in. Best we go up quick. And, Narza, best you go first.” He pointed towards the two corpses. “It seems you are well suited for such work.”
Did she smile then? Maybe, fleetingly, before she took hold of the rope, swung on to it, waving her leg to give herself a little swing which she used to to twist the rope around her thigh. Then she started to climb. Not wanting to appear cowardly, though he could not be unaware of the quick beat of his heart at the thought of the tower full of raiders above them, Joron grabbed the rope and did the same. Farys followed him with Karring, Old Briaret and Namd behind.