“Not much of one. I suspect that unless you get the knowledge I want to give you and quickly, you are going to die. There are many people who will want you dead before we are finished, and they have many ways of making that happen.”
“Still, you are saying that if I do not trust you, if I do not wish to learn this, you will not force me?”
Her smile was sad. “I already have, Rik, and we both know it. Not by magic either.”
Rik considered her words. There was truth in them. He needed her. And he was forced to trust her judgement. As far as he knew she had never lied to him, and if she thought his life depended on him acquiring such knowledge then it was most likely so.
“I will trust you,” he said. “Let us proceed.”
They settled down facing each other over a glowing crystal sphere. She burned opiated incense and chanted the words of the spell over and over again. As the drug took hold, the rhythm of the words drummed into his brain, regular as a heartbeat, and something inside him answered. He found himself repeating her words, and mirroring her gestures. Under the influence of the drug and the sorcery, time seemed to slow and the night lengthened to near infinity.
The narcotic loosened his mental defences, making possible a mystical connection between him and her. Knowledge flowed between them on a subtler level than words and gesture. There were times when he connected to the vast chambers of her mind, caught glimpses of the enormous store of strange knowledge there. Perhaps it was the truth. Perhaps it was hallucination. He was in no position to judge.
His vision turned inwards, and it seemed to him that the nature of his vision changed too, until he could see through his flesh to the muscle and bone and blood beneath. If he concentrated he could see the small sentinels that protected his body from disease and repaired damaged tissue. By pulsing magic through his blood and flesh he could heal it. He could expel stuff from his blood and his belly that was not supposed to be there.
Only afterwards, when his brain had recovered from the strain of all the mediations, incantations and visualisations she forced it through, did he wonder at the desperation with which she forced him to learn, as if she really believed that his life and most likely hers depended on it.
The shouts of the Foragers got Rik’s attention. He woke groggily, still dazed after yet another night of forced learning. There had been so much teaching on this trip and so many spells that he barely remembered the river voyage. After the healing spells had come spells to increase his strength and then his speed, spells to make him more perceptive, spells to let him sense the presence of magic. Asea had claimed they were all simple spells but they did not seem that way to him. He felt like he was slowly drowning in a sea of knowledge that would swamp his brain. He was tired and sick and he wanted the whole process to stop.
The shouts from above continued. He forced himself to rise and staggered up the wooden stairs onto the deck.
“Looks like we have arrived,” said Weasel, joining him at the bow of the River Dragon to get a better view. “You look like shit, by the way.”
“Lady Asea keeping you busy at night, is she? You lucky bastard,” added the Barbarian.
Rik did not want to tell them how drained and empty he felt. Strange words drifted up from his unconsciousness and he had to all but force his hands not to move through the ritual gestures associated with certain spells. He could see now the dangers this method of teaching posed. His whole brain felt bruised and his thoughts were foggy. The drugs and the rituals were taking an unholy toll. He hoped that it was all worth it.
He shaded his eyes with his hand, for the estuarine light seemed too bright, and forced himself to look in the direction in which the others were gaping. It was clear that they had indeed arrived.
Ahead of them the river widened as it met the sea. Along the banks lay a scum of cheap housing that grew more solid and respectable as it rose up the hills on either side of the river. Dozens of piers lined the water’s edge. Hundreds of boats were moored, but it was not the houses on the riverbanks that commanded the attention. In the river itself were several large islands. Towers crowded them, leaning together in places like drunk men clutching each other for support. Bridges leapt from tower to tower. Strange wooden carriages moved along pulleyways between them, sometimes spanning the gap between islands in what from a distance looked like an enormous cobweb of ropes.
Massive thick walls surrounded each island. The river itself provided a moat. Rik studied the city with a cautious eye. Each island was a fortress that could provide covering fire for every other island like the bastions of a fortified town. Tall-masted ships crowded the waters between them. Messenger birds flocked in the skies.
Asea strode on deck. She looked none the worse for their long nights of teaching. “We are early,” she said. “We must have made better time than the captain thought.”
“Maybe it just seems that way because we have been studying so hard.” Her warning look told him he had made a mistake mentioning this where others might hear. He was tired. It was not an error he would normally have made. Fortunately nobody appeared to be paying the slightest attention.
“Those islands would be almost impossible to take without a superior fleet,” said Rik.
Asea nodded. “Even with one, so long as Harven is allied with the Quan. Fortunately no one is talking about taking the city.”
“Getting ready to be diplomatic?” he asked. She nodded.
“And so should you,” she said.
“What are those islands called?”
“The nearer one — with the huge black central tower is the Island of the Sorcerers. The largest one with the white painted walls is the Island of Gold where the richest of the merchant prince’s dwell. The one furthest out is the called simply Temple although there is no temple to any god we worship on it.”
“That is where the Quan come ashore then?”
“Indeed. It is said that in the main Temple there are numerous pools connected with the sea, and that the Sea Devils emerge from those to communicate with the Intercessors, the priests who deal with them. There are other tales of human sacrifice that it would be wise not to repeat when we get to shore.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“On numerous occasions. The Book Market is famous.”
“What are the Quan like?”
“Look for yourself — down there in the water.”
Rik looked down over the wooden railing. There was something in the water, a shadowy sinister shape that made his flesh crawl. It was about the size of a man and looked as if it was of roughly human mass. There was a suggestion of a human-like head at the front but the whole body undulated bonelessly in the water, a mass of writhing tentacles streaming out behind it. Even as he watched the thing seemed to become aware it was under observation. Twisting like an eel it dived down out of sight into the murk.
“What was it doing?” Rik asked.
“I don’t know. Probably just scouting the ship. Maybe it had business of its own.”
It did not seem like a good omen to Rik but he kept the thought to himself, as he watched the massive buildings come closer. Looking beyond them, out into the estuary, he realised that for the first time in his life he was seeing the sea. A strange thrill of fear and fascination and something else passed through him and he knew with utter certainty that he was now a long, long way from home.
Chapter Nineteen
The River Dragon dropped anchor in the waters of Nearshore, the area of land on the bay closest to the islands. Draymen unharnessed the towing wyrm and roped smaller ones to the ship to pull them into dock. Rik’s pulse quickened as he studied the bustling wharves. He recalled the tales of the place he had heard as a youth.
Harven was one of the world’s great port cities, famously wealthy and famously corrupt. Impregnable, with the sea as its moat, and its allied monsters lurking in the waters, it went its own way in the world and paid tribute to none of the realms that surrounded it. It was a place where people went to make fortunes, where humans and Terrarchs mingled in a way that was not possible anywhere else, where money counted more than birth and the
