JESSAN -- A TALE OF WIZARDRY Chapter 5
Copyright 2006 Trewin Greenaway All Rights Reserved
To learn more about me and the genesis of this tale, visit my website http://www.cronnex.com/ .
I hope to post a new chapter every Saturday from now on. If you're enjoying the story, do let me know! And, if you're wondering where the sex is, be patient. There will be plenty of that happening, and quite soon!
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Chapter 5
BY NOW I HAD BEEN ROWING FOR A LONG TIME, but the night was longer still. The moon had passed overhead, the stars shone brightly. I'd decided to wake Alfrund when we came near enough to the point to hear the waves breaking at its foot, for I didn't know how wide it was or how far Gedd would be once we passed beyond it. My only concern now was that the sun would rise before we had safely reached the shore.
As I stared ahead, I began to see a pinprick of light. It didn't flicker like the bonfire still kept alive by the soldiers guarding the road around the point, but burned with a steady fierceness. At first I thought it might be a star hovering right at the horizon, but soon I realized that even as I watched, it grew larger... and larger still. It must be on a ship that was moving toward us, and moving quickly, for now it seemed to increase in size and brightness each time I pulled the oar.
"Alfrund," I said, gently, not wanting to wake him yet if he were still deep in sleep. But he stirred at once and sat up in the bow. He yawned deeply and then turned to see how far we had progressed.
"We are almost there," I said. "But I called you because of that light that shines so brightly beyond the point. I have never seen anything so piercingly bright. And see how fast it's moving toward us, despite the fact that there's no wind at all."
Alfrund gingerly shifted his position until he was facing forward and stared. What had been a pinprick in the black sky when I first saw it was now the size of a small round pebble, and you could now see a halo faintly glowing around it.
After a moment of silence, Alfrund said, "Jessan, close your eyes for a moment and let your mind go blank. Then tell me what you sense."
It was a hard thing when rowing to close your eyes and harder still to clear your mind of thought, knowing that each stroke might be edging us off course. A rower in total blackness cannot help but go in a circle. But I did what he asked. At first I sensed nothing. But after a few seconds I began to pick up a kind of quivering, and when I focused on it, I shuddered, for it felt as though my mind were being pressed against a tangle of worms.
"Did you feel that, too?" I asked. "It's revolting."
"No, not yet," Alfrund answered. "You'd be more sensitive to it than I. But I know what it is."
I could sense the fear in his voice, although he spoke softly. I shivered. "Is it the light?" I asked.
"No," Alfrund said. His voice was somber. "That is what is called fellfire, a blend of noxious things that burns as bright as sunlight. What you see is a war galley rowing toward us at full speed. The fellfire is kept in a large, heavy metal drum, fixed on the top of a mast. Once lit, it will burn there for hours, and so hotly that the drum itself eventually glows red. In fact, such a mast is always hinged, so that if the drum begins to burn its way free, sailors can quickly tip it into the sea. A dangerous thing to have on a ship, but when sea battles are fought at night it can give a crucial edge.
"However," he continued, "what you sensed in your mind is something entirely different. It means that they have sent a Summoner after us, a human whose mind has been corrupted by magic. The Unnameable One can use it from a great distance to troll men's minds, sending out a mass of psychic strands to feel about for their presence.
"The Summoner sometimes uses this power to draw men to him against their will--hence his name; other times he uses it to find and lock onto the mind of someone his master seeks. He knows you are on the water somewhere near, and he is reaching out to find you and reel you in."
My heart sank and I slumped onto the small rowing platform, burying my head in my arms.
"Jessan!" said Alfrund sharply. "Stop it! This is very different from your encounter with the war dogs. I truly believe that you can defeat the Summoner. You have powers that you don't yet know you possess. They are there inside you and now you must try to tap them. He won't be expecting that you are even aware of them yet, so he won't be prepared for their use."
I lifted my head. I listened to these words, but only half--my eyes were fixed on the flame. By now it had grown to the size of a pullet's egg. As I looked I could see the double bank of long oars on each size of the galley, pulling it along. I could also see the darker red of the glowing drum from which the fellfire emitted its blazing light.
Alfrund turned and looked at it, too. "Do you see the glowing haze around the fire?" he eventually asked. "It glows faintly but it is clearly visible."
"Yes," I answered, "I saw it even earlier. Is that part of its magic?"
"Fellfire is not magical," Alfrund answered, "but alchemical, a mere manipulation of the natural order. And that haze is not part of it, in any case. You should know what it is, fisherboy."
"Mist!" I said, understanding at once. "Morning is coming and bringing it from off the sea." Sure enough, when I looked in the direction of the open water, the stars were no longer visible. A flash of hope surged through me.
Alfrund turned and faced me. "All we have to do is stall them a bit," he said, "and again the task must be done by you. I curse myself for not learning to row this boat instead of sleeping the hours away like a fool. But there it is--once again tonight you must do it all.
"Ordinary men are easy prey to those psychic tentacles, but you are not ordinary at all. If it weren't for the fellfire, you could simply help us stay out of their way, and, especially, keep our distance from them. For once we get closer they will be stronger and more dangerous.
"However, the fellfire makes everything more complicated. They are using it as well as the Summoner to search for us, and you can be sure there are keen-eyed spotters positioned everywhere--up the sailing mast, at the bow, along both sides of the ship. If we row in close to shore to escape their eyes, we risk being wrecked on the rocks. If we row out to sea, we would surely be lost in the mist, and once the sun burnt it off we would be spotted and caught at once.
"So our best chance is to play cat and mouse with them and see if we can't lure them far enough out to sea so they become lost in the mist themselves. To do that, you'll have to trick the Summoner. I can explain what you must do but I haven't a hint as to how--the simplest powers you possess are beyond my understanding.
"But, essentially, you must go into yourself until you can not only sense those probing strands but make them so palpable that you can manipulate them yourself. Then, go to the one furthest from you in the direction of the open water, and let it, for the merest part of a moment, become aware of you. Then withdraw from that inner space at once. Do you have any comprehension of what I'm saying?"
"I think so," I said. I had to go past that door that had opened inside me into whatever it was that lay beyond it.
"Do you think you can do it?"
I barely heard the question. Already, I was feeling my way toward it. As I did, tiny particles of understanding came flowing out of it, forming into something I could feel and so, perhaps, use. In the encounter with the war dogs, it had, so to say, used itself, leaving me to look on. This time, I was to take control and wield it myself--and the thought excited me. I became aware at last that Alfrund was waiting for an answer.
"Yes," I said. "I believe I can."
"Then," Alfrund said, with a sigh of relief, "you had better get started. Turn the boat toward the open water, give it a few good turns of the oar, go into yourself--and try."
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ONCE I HAD THE BOAT MOVING OUT TO SEA, I sat down on the rowing platform, closed my eyes, and let my mind grow blank. This time it was hardly necessary to do even that; the moment my mind turned into itself, I could feel the strands all about me, blindly groping for contact.
The more I concentrated, though, the more palpable they became, until it seemed that I could see them--a mass of writhing, translucent tentacles. Then, by focusing even more intently, I found I could extend a part of my mind out among them. In this manner, I reached out to the one that was furthest out to sea and, as Alfrund had directed, mentally brushed against it.
I hadn't expected to actually feel anything, and I shuddered when I touched a soft, flabby exterior, and, in that split second, felt something pulsating inside it, as if it were full of maggots. The thought of this thing groping inside my mind nauseated me, and I instinctively jerked back as first that tentacle and then the ones near to it began wildly thrashing about. Quickly I pulled away from them, drawing myself back into normal consciousness.
"Look," Alfrund whispered, when he saw my eyes had opened. The galley was shifting direction, moving further out to sea. It was now so close and the fellfire burning so fiercely that from the light reflected back from the water, I could see the bright war paint that covered its sides, the large evil eye drawn on its sharply pointed prow. And I sensed, rather than saw, the Summoner himself standing on the ship's raised stern, his head held rigid, his mind straining to find me, his arm raised, his finger pointing.
"Well done, little apprentice, well done. Now row out further for a few minutes and we will do it again."
As I rowed, Alfrund wrapped his cloak around his body and pulled the hood over his head. He then tossed mine to me and gestured that I should pause for a moment and do the same. The dark brown-gray of the fabric would make us that much harder to find in the gathering fog.
And the fog was gathering. Tendrils of mist were now floating above the water; the stars were vanishing bit by bit above our heads. This was so much so, in fact, that I feared if we went much further we would never find our way back to shore. Landsmen had a weak grasp of the dangers of the sea, but I knew them full well, and told Alfrund so.
"Very well," he replied. "Try our trick one more time, and then we will edge back toward the shore."
Again I shipped the oar, sat down on the platform, gathered my wits together, and entered my mind. I wasn't unprepared to find the Summoner waiting for me, and it was good that I was. For the tentacles had greatly increased in number and were far thicker in size. They pulsated with their nauseating contents, and I realized that once they found a mind they didn't so much seize hold of it as break apart inside it, letting loose a swarming mass of psychic maggots that would suck the life out of every thought.
There was so little space to maneuver between them that at first the best I could do was to avoid their touch. But then some deeper awareness reached me: within this inner world my size wasn't predetermined; I could shrink myself smaller or make myself larger as I needed. I willed myself smaller and smaller, until I became like the tiny fish who can move at will between the strands of fishing net without any fear of getting caught.
I also discovered that, like that tiny fish, I could actually swim within this inner space as if I were under water. While I still had a sense of direction, I sent myself in the direction of the open water, gliding over and around the tentacles, on and on, until I covered a good distance, and found that they had shrunk in size to what they had been the first time I'd encountered them. I was outside the area of the Summoner's most intensive search.
This time I seized hold of two of them and quickly, lightly tied them into a knot. This, I instantly realized, had been foolishly bold, for the Summoner now knew that I was playing with him, not he with me. Suddenly all his attention, all his energy was focused on this one spot. The tentacles came from all directions and wove themselves together like a thick, very thick, strand of rope, with its interstices filled with even smaller filaments.
However, I had shrunk myself still more and, moving quickly, managed to flit through these strands as they pulled together into a thick rope. This thrashed about like a snake and when it failed to find its prey, it began to spread out again, but this time the same tiny filaments multiplied themselves, so there was no space small enough for me to pass through.
I could only swim ahead of them and as I did so I became aware that I was nearing exhaustion. I hadn't expected that this interior world would make demands on my body that were at least equal to that of the physical world. My failing strength caught me unawares. I no longer had the strength to dart about; I could barely move fast enough to keep ahead of the expanding net, and, soon, not even fast enough for that.
At first, when it caught me, it was woven so fine that I felt almost nothing. But it felt me. And as I watched the filaments grew thicker and my ability to cast them away grew less. I was now so tired that I barely cared that the Summoner had finally trapped me; it was only some animal hatred of being caught that kept me feebly struggling, postponing the end for another second more.
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Then, suddenly, as if a storm tide had changed, the Summoner's presence crumbled. His net flailed, curled in onto itself, shrinking so fast that it swept me with it into his own mind, just as he had wished to be in mine. Alas, I knew no mischief to work there and was too tired to do so even if I had.
Instead, I merely looked through his eyes. And what I saw was that the vast iron drum that held the fellfire was slowly toppling over. So absorbed in capturing me had the crew become that they had failed to notice that its heat had finally charred the supporting mast to where it no longer had the strength to support it.
The crew raced to release the hinge that would send it overboard, but they were too slow. Down it fell, crashing onto the deck, sending gobs of burning liquid flying in all directions. But it didn't stop there. In mere seconds it burned its way through the deck itself and fell down among the rowers. Screams of pain and terror filled the air along with the putrid smell of burning flesh.
The fellfire pot burnt through that deck, too, and fell to the bottom of the boat, turning the bilge that floated there into a burst of burning, suffocating steam. But even that water was not enough to extinguish it. The pot burnt its way through the hull of the boat and sank into the sea, a glowing orb that sank and sank and still did not go out. And, water gushing through the hull, the galley sank down after it.
The air was full of the screams of the rowers, chained to their seats, until the water closed over them. Then a deathly scramble began on the top deck, as those who were still alive fought each other for a place on the galley commander's gig. Then the Summoner must have felt my presence in his own brain and shut me off, even as a great cataclysm sent shock waves through the deep psychic sea. The galley had gone down.
I found myself alone in a great silence and realized I was lost and no way of finding my way back. I didn't even know what to search for--some sort of hole through which starlight could be seen? If so, by now the starlight was obscured by mist.
How had I gotten out before? I'd entered for so short a time it had been like ducking my head in water and then lifting it out again. But when I had swum off, passing over and through the long weaving lines of tentacles, I'd let go of my connection to the outer world.
Still, what did it matter? I was so tired, so drowsy, and this was such a perfect place to rest. I floated in a great void, unaware if I were moving up or down or sideways, or moving at all. Sleep flowed through me and I embraced it completely. It was so sweet and I needed it so much. I felt my consciousness, like the last breath of a drowning man, form into bubbles and float away. And I had no idea even in which direction they'd gone.