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BOOK TWO
PROWS OF THE DAY
We are seized in the age of our youth dragged over this road’s stones spent and burdened by your desires And unshod hoofs clatter beneath bones to ree upon the hills you have soith frozen seeds in this dead earth Sing ground and grinding bit we cli of liency warning us of your savage bite
Destriers (Sons to Fathers) Fisher kel Tath
CHAPTER SIX
The Errant bends fate, As unseen ar to blunt the blade On a field sudden With battle, and the crowd Jostles blind their eyes gouged out By the strait of these affairs Where dark fools dance on tiles And chance rides a spear With red bronze To spit worlds like skulls One upon the other Until the seas pour down To thicken uides every fate Unerring Upon the breast ofof Tiles Ceda Ankaran Qan (1059 Burn’s Sleep)
THE TARANCEDE TOWER ROSE EROM THE SOUTH SIDE OF TRATE’S harbour Hewn fro like a gnarled ared rocks Waves ha spume into the air There were no s, no doors, yet a series of glossy obsidian plates ringed the uppermost level, each orie as tall as a man and almost as wide
Nine similar towers rose above the borderlands, but the Tarancede was the only one to stand above the harsh seas of the north
The sun’s light was a lurid glare against the obsidian plates, high above a harbour already sed by the day’s end A dozen fisher-boats rode the choppy waters beyond the bay, plying the shelf of shallows to the south They ell out of the sea-lanes and probably heedless of the three ships that appeared to the north, their full-bellied sails as they drove on doards the harbour, the air around theulls
They drew closer, and a ship’s pilot scow set out from the main pier to meet them
The three harvest ships were reflected in the tower’s obsidian plates, sliding in strange ripples froed white streaks around them
The scow’s oars suddenly backed wildly, twisting the craft away
Shapes swar of the lead ship The steady wind that had borne the sails fell, sudden as a drawn breath, and canvas billowed down The figures flitting above the deck, only vaguely human-shaped, seelooulls spun from their paths with shrill cries
Fro Not steady Discordant, a cacophony of panic
No sailor who had lived or would ever live discounted the sea’s hungry depths Ancient spirits rode the currents of darkness far fro silts that sed history beneath endless layers of indifferent silence Their poere immense, their appetites insatiable All that came down from the lit world above settled into their embrace
The surface of the seas, every sailor kneas ephe slate, and lives were but sparks, so easily quenched by the demon forces that could rise from far below to shake their beast hides and so up-end the world
Propitiation was aversion, a prayer to pass unnoticed, to escape untaken Blood before the bow, dolphins dancing to starboard and a gob of spit to ride blessed winds The left hand scrubs, the right hand dries Wind widdershins on the cleats, sun-bleached rags tied to the sea-anchor’s chain A score of gestures, unquestioned and bound in tradition, all to slide the seas in peace
None sought to call up the ravelled spirits froht They were not things to be bound, after all Nor bargained with Their hearts beat in the cycles of the s could spread fro white-veined sheets of water that swept all before them
Beneath the waves of Trate Harbour, with three dead ships like fins on its back, the bound spirit clae of cold currents towards shore The last spears of sunlight slanted through its swirling flesh, and the easing ofonto the rocky coastlines ahead and to the sides the bay’s oarmer waters, so that the fish and crustaceans of the shallows tuled shreds of flesh and shattered shell, granting the gulls and land crabs a sudden feast of slaughter
The spirit lifted the ships, careering wild now, on a single wave that rose high as it swelled shoreward The docks, which had a few moments earlier been croith silent onlookers, beca inland filling with sta masses of humanity