25


    The Sailor''s Spew had a deserved reputation as the worst, most dangerous tavern in all Milardin. All of Alandriel, for that matter. Tolerated, because His Lordship had useful assets there, and because he preferred to keep the criminal element pent in one spot. They knew this, too, and had dug out a secret, ocean cave hideout, somewhere below.


    Like the rest of the young, foolish nobles, Filimar was eager to find this second "Shadow Spew", but he''d never yet gained admittance. Valerian was too distracted to care. In his grandfather''s realm of Ilirian, crime was ruthlessly squashed, so all of this was a new and exotic experience… As was just reaching that last, fabled inn.


    The Sailor''s Spew lay at the very end of Waterfront Row. It had been built on pilings over the restless harbor and was backed by a cave-riddled limestone cliff (where fugitives hid and where smuggled treasures were stashed… or, so it was rumored).


    Outside, on the wooden boardwalk, all one saw was high cliffs and increasingly sketchy wharves. There were rock-roses, tumble-down huts and wild children on the stony plains above town. Sea goats, too; sometimes sporting a powerfully coiled fish tail, sometimes converting to four-legged shape to scamper about and graze on the richest pastures.


    A tribe of selkies were present; their seal skins well hidden as they dallied with sailors, guards and the curious. But… very troubling to Val… There was also a picket of fly-blown corpses at the end of the waterfront. They''d been impaled upon great, sharpened posts, with their heads locked in cages, below.


    Shrieking skuas tore at the exposed bodies in greedy, flapping clouds. The victims'' crimes were written in mage script that spiraled continually from the top of each post to its bottom, like the glowing stripe on a stick of candy. Val counted five ''disturbing the peace'', three ''mocking His Lordship'', and two simple ''drow'' in that ghastly forest of rotting flesh. A single ''thief'', too, who might have been female, or else just a child. Hard to tell, under that feathery shroud of seabirds.


    The Arvendahls ruled with a heavy hand, and Filimar did not seem troubled, at all.


    "Have they no kin?" Valerian asked his friend, distressed by those pecked, ragged bodies. "No one to burn and release them?"


    Filimar shrugged. He''d met a female… one Neira, of the sea-blue skin and dark eyes… to whom he seemed very attached. Had little attention for anything else, as a consequence.


    "Criminals don''t give birth, Valno. They drop litters, like mortals," he scoffed. "I doubt they''d know their own father or recognize their mother, once out of the shanty. Besides, how else are you going to encourage good behaviour?"


    "I had a cousin staked out there, once," remarked Neira, who''d been braiding a strand of her opaline hair with Filimar''s shining black tresses. "We cut her down under cover of night… but you didn''t hear that, Mar."


    "I am all at once deaf as a stone," agreed the young Arvendahl, drawing her closer.


    Skirting His Lordship''s grim orchard, they came at last to the Sailor''s Spew. By this time, Sandor, Kellen and Arien had also met with affectionate companions. With Filimar''s casual, distracted acceptance, the three went off to private booths in the back.


    Valerian, Filimar and Neira took a table beside the driftwood wall. Sat looking around as they waited for service. There were no windows and only one obvious entrance, making the place a trap, unless one was "made", or had manna in buckets.


    By way of decor, there were colored glass floats, filthy straw, carved serpent''s teeth and old nets, along with a very long, broken harpoon.


    "Father Ocean''s, that was," said Neira, from her perch on Filimar''s lap. "He used it to kill the world-serpent."


    The crowd was rough and unkempt, but not inclined to ask questions. Slumming nobles, they simply ignored. There was a great deal of selkie and sea-elf blood in that crew, half of whom looked like pirates. The smell was a blend of closely packed bodies, sea-stained clothing and grog. Lots of spilt, sour grog.


    The music was bad and the drink was worse, but Neira and Filimar were soon too potted to care. When three sheets to the wind, one didn''t trouble much over the thread-count.


    Still upset by the corpse-farm outside, Val made do with resin, a pine-flavored drink that he knew from back home. Neira and Filimar sampled the grog, and each other.


    The bard (?) was a goblin-lad. He sat on a stool, ducking hurled food and insults as he determinedly sawed at a fiddle, yodeling his one… really bad… song. From the look and sound of things, the Spew''s patrons were about to stuff that overworked instrument someplace distinctly uncomfortable.


    Taking pity, Valerian cast a glamourie over the kid, making him suddenly competent. Wouldn''t last forever, but might earn the young bard enough coin to afford some actual music lessons. One helped out where one could.


    Then, just as he''d drained his third resin, something manifested onstage, near the smiling young goblin. A column of inky-dark smoke it was, with a lovely porcelain mask by way of a face. Benches scraped. Hoarse voices cried out in warning. Time stopped, for everyone else at the inn but Valerian.


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    He stood up, having to push very hard to shift that resistant wood bench, in air that burned and flowed like hot tar. Lord Oberyn must have been watching, because he didn''t just smother or bake where he stood.


    The smoke-being… dark and fluid… poured itself off of the stage and across the crowded taproom, draining life-force from all that it passed, leaving them grey-faced and empty. It was headed his way, Val realized, which would take it directly through Neira and Filimar.


    Thinking quickly, he tapped into a local ley-line, then misty stepped out of the Sailor''s Spew. Fetched up on a dock by the still, sculpted sea, with gannets and gulls pocking the air all around him.


    He''d moved at an angle, hopefully forcing the apparition to bypass his friends. It was on him almost before he arrived, though, seeming to know exactly where he would jump… but at least no one else was in danger.


    In an oddly stilled world, feeling clenched by a massive fist, Valerian faced his pursuer. The spectre circled him once, then rose up before the young elf like a dark and vaporous serpent; one with a strangely beautiful, mask-like face.


    ''You cannot flee from me, Pretty Child,'' it whispered, without speaking aloud. ''Any more than I can stray further than a league or two from you.''


    The voice was female, all minor-key notes, and weirdly familiar. The mask changed its expression without moving, he noticed. One moment neutral, the next, amused. Worse, the phantom seemed able to read his thoughts.


    ''Indeed, I am known to you, Saviour. Have I not lain, age beyond time, close by your heart?''


    Valerian had the sick sense that she was telling the truth, but he shook his head, anyhow, making the shorn blond hair flop into his eyes.


    "No. You haven''t. You''re just a Chaos-spawned nightmare, like the globe at Lerendar''s place, and a sigil will hurl you straight back to the void you came out of."


    The mask spun slowly about in that column of vile, churning smoke, briefly revealing its sinewy, red-purple lining. Her version of a headshake, he guessed.


    ''The way back has been closed, Son of Keldaran. You sealed it, yourself, before inviting me into your heart.''


    Which was… had to be… a foul, dirty lie. Only, before he could say so, the ghostly thing went on speaking.


    ''I was meant to be drawn in, trapped here and sacrificed, so that one long imprisoned might be released. You were intended to slay me, but stayed your hand, in the end.''


    "You''re a liar," he growled, backing away as he summoned up magic. "I abjure you by Oberyn''s might and Firelord''s. By all of the gods who love my house, I command you to go."


    But she uttered a thin, broken laugh, saying,


    ''That I shall, as there is more potential here than there was in your home, and someone of far greater influence to drain and corrupt.''


    Home? What had the monster done to his realm and his family, Valerian wondered, all at once icy with dread. Aloud, barely able to push enough air to shape words, he grated,


    "If you''ve harmed my wife… touched any of my family or people…"


    ''Ah. It pleases me to leave you in doubt, Little Harbour… but know that we cannot ever cease hunting each other. Not till the far away end of all things. Now, look to yourself, for my quarry soon wakes, and I shall be hosted, once more.''


    After that, with a final ashen-cold brush at his thoughts, she was gone. Time lurched forward once more, leaving the elf-lord alone on a rickety wooden dock.


    Wind blew, bearing the mixed taint of decaying flesh, flowers and woodsmoke. The whisper and slap of water against half-rotted pilings, the various noises of gulls, people and city, were anchors he clutched. A nightmare or vision, he thought. It had to have been just a terrible dream. Then,


    "This way!" he heard someone hiss. Moments later, a small crowd edged past a toolshed and into his view. Gildyr and Cinda he knew at once. The others… Tabaxi, mortal and drow… he recognized as he had the dark goddess. From elsewhen. Otherwhere. Somelife.


    "Valerian!" called Cinda, rushing to seize and embrace him. "You''re alive!"


    Very much needing that hug, he did not thrust the ranger away. Was all at once surrounded, but didn''t have time to react, because Filimar had arrived, porting out to the dock in Valerian''s wake. Neira was with him, still. Both were bleary with grog, but ready to fight and rescue their stolen comrade.


    Filno took a step forward onto that creaking wharf, his gaze darting uncertainly from Val to the escaped felons surrounding him. He put a few things together in his drink-sodden head, then, whispering,


    "It''s you. The one His Lordship''s had us out searching for!"


    Filimar''s hand hovered partway to his sword-hilt, but he didn''t draw steel. Refused to. Miserably, through tightly-clenched teeth, the Arvendahl lordling rasped,


    "Get away from here, Valerian. Now. I… I''ll do my best to buy you some cover and time, but…"


    But he''d be found out and killed for daring to aid a fugitive. For letting the wanted Tarandahl go. It''d be the stake for Filimar, after a very slow death.


    "Come with us," urged Val, taking hold of his friend''s arm. "We''ll head for the sea realm. My people have ties to Averna, and my voice should carry some weight there."


    Filimar shook his head no, saying,


    "I cannot, Val. My oath of loyalty as an Arvend…uhnh."


    The rest was cut short, because Neira had drawn a belaying pin from her cloak, then smashed it across the back of Filimar''s head. The young elf-lord dropped to the wharf like a rock. Before her startled audience could interfere, she''d stooped down to lift and then sling his unconscious form across her slim shoulders.


    "What his… urf… lordship means to say is that sea travel sounds like a splendid idea, right the wreck now."


    Valerian nodded. They were quite far from the water stairs, but Neira knew a back route, down through the limestone cliffs on which Milardin was built. The elf-lord jerked a thumb at his friends and suffered himself to be led. First, though, calling on Firelord, he raised a mighty tornado of flame. Used it to burn every last one of those pitiful bodies to ash, along with a holocaust of shrieking skuas. Visible all through Miliardin, lasting for weeks, that blazing cyclone declared: Here stands a Tarandahl. Come and face him, who will.


    Would have taken all comers, up to the High Lord, himself, but the rest had other ideas. Chiefly, survival. He was yanked along with them through twisting, glow-lit caverns, with the smell and sound of the ocean filling the air all around them. Milardin''s war-bells rang loud and long, shaking the ground as the city guard went on the hunt.


    Valerian got an extremely rushed and garbled account of what had happened to Gildyr and Cinda… of where the Tabaxi, drow and mortal wizard fit in… but their scrambling hurry made full explanation difficult.


    "Arvendahl''s going to wake up soon, if he hasn''t already," panted the ranger, "and he''s going to be spitting bricks and teeth when he does it."


    Val thought of his vision; of the smoke-being''s threat to take over "someone of far greater influence". His Lordship was likely to wake as a servant of Chaos, with Mother Night at the helm.


    "Keep moving," he ordered, sending courage and strength to the flagging mortals. "It''s the ocean, or I lead them off while you scatter."


    ...Because no was going to suffer on his account, if Val could prevent it with deeds or with sacrifice. Not ever again.