Rhune Shadow Read online

  “Watch!” the pearl diver shouted.

  Elissa watched the second brother glide effortlessly through the sea. It was uncanny. The swell caught him. He went up. The swell would hurl him against the rock. She waited for the splat. She waited to see him tumble back into the sea, unconscious or lifeless. Instead, the wave tossed him, and he scrambled up the wet boulder amidst the spray and spume.

  “Did you see?” the last pearl diver asked.

  “It’s timing,” she said.

  “Yes!”

  “And training,” she said.

  “You are Rhune.”

  Half-Rhune, but she didn’t tell him that. They expected miracles from her. By the gods, the Tyrant expected miracles. Maybe what she needed was a miracle. You are Rhune. It sounded so good. She wished it were true.

  “Go,” he said.

  She blinked stupidly at him and then lurched forward.

  “No, wait,” he said, grabbing her shoulder. “You missed it. You must try the next one.”

  It was then she realized this was never going to work. Miracles only happened in stories.

  “Now,” he said, and he shoved her.

  She struck out for the rock. The swell caught her, and she didn’t need to swim at all. It propelled her toward doom. The rock, the wall above, zoomed to greet her as she lifted higher, higher—she madly scrambled for a hold as the sea tossed her against rock. She hit with an ooph and at the last second turned her head so her cheek snapped against rock instead of her chin. Dizziness threatened her, blackness and limp failure. She heard a roaring sound and vaguely understood it wasn’t the sea. There were bright sounds and loud sights. She moved her jaw as if to savor the pain.

  “Here!” someone shouted. Flesh touched hers. “You’re safe.”

  She panted and blinked away the explosive thunderclaps in her mind. Spasms shook her, and the darkness that tried to engulf her senses reluctantly retreated. She found herself crouched beside the wall, holding the youngest pearl diver’s hands.

  “What happened?” she asked, feeling as if she spoke with a mouthful of glue.

  “You did it,” he said. “You scrambled up.”

  “Turn your head,” the second oldest brother said.

  She cried out with pain as he touched her cheek.

  “Bruised,” he said. “You were lucky.”

  She worked her jaw again and mewled at the hurt. She sank against the joint of rock and wall. She wanted to sleep or simply curl herself into a ball, putting aside the burdens of vengeance.

  The last brother soon scrambled up beside them, panting. “Well done,” he said.

  “She hit her cheek.”

  “It couldn’t have been that hard,” the last brother said. “Otherwise it would have knocked her out.”

  “She’s hurt.”

  “She climbed the rock like one of us.”

  “Look at her cheek.”

  “Rhune,” the oldest brother said. “We’re here. We made it. Now we must lower the chain.”

  Elissa peeled open a bleary eye. The pearl divers were fuzzy. What was that crashing noise?

  “I touched the sea-chain earlier,” he said. “The iron links are thicker than my wrist. We cannot file through them. The Tyrant says there is an iron wheel that lowers the chain. Soldiers guard the towers at each end of the chain.”

  “What?” Elissa whispered.

  “The ends of the chain disappear into towers. The towers flank the harbor entrance. The taller tower holds the iron wheel. We must enter that tower and turn the wheel until the chain sinks to the bottom of the harbor.”

  “How do we do that?” Elissa whispered. Even though her vision was fuzzy, she caught the brothers eyeing each other.

  As usual, it was the oldest who spoke. “We know the sea. You are the Rhune, the assassin. You know about sneaking around. You must slip inside the tower, kill the soldiers there and open the door for us. You’re a girl. The iron wheel will likely take the three of us to turn.”

  Elissa would have laughed, but she was too tired, and it would hurt her jaw.

  “Do you have a better plan?” the pearl diver asked.

  “A tower…” she said, “I would need spider claws, a hook and silken line and poisoned darts.”

  “We have none of those,” the pearl diver said.

  Elissa struggled up. The ringing in her head was beginning to lessen. She was careful not to touch her cheek or move her jaw as she talked. She would just move her lips.

  “What’s plan two?” she asked.

  The brothers traded glances. The oldest became solemn. “The Tyrant has kept our oldest brother with him.”

  “There are four of you?” she asked.

  “If we lower the chain and you escape, the Tyrant will kill two of us, chosen by lot. If you escape and the chain remains in place, three of us will die. If we lower the chain and we kill you trying to escape, only one of us dies.”

  “Three of you die?” she asked. “Why would he think you’d go back?”

  “We are brothers. We cannot abandon the eldest of our line.”

  “And if you lower the chain and I return with you?” Elissa asked.

  “The Tyrant will give us four helmets full of Cyrenean owls. I do not know his plans for you.”

  Cyrenean owls were gold coins, the medium of exchange throughout much of the Great Sea. The Owl of Wisdom, whom the Cyreneans considered a goddess, adorned in stamped relief one side of every Cyrenean minted coin. She had no hope that she would be rewarded in like manner by the Tyrant.

  Elissa stared at the swells dashing themselves against the boulders. The sea had roughened since she’d left the launch. Wouldn’t it be funny if they actually lowered the chain, but it became too stormy for the Tyrant to sail his galleys into the harbor?

  “You saw guards?” she asked.

  “Outside the small oaken door,” the oldest brother said, “and patrolling the quay and up in the tower watching.”

  “Karchedonians?” she asked.

  “Who else?”

  Maybe merchants with hired swords caught in the siege, she wanted to say. But that was foolish. The siege had lasted months. Sea escape had snapped shut weeks ago with the Tyrant’s galley victory. There were some foreign merchants caught in Karchedon. Soldiers guarded the tower. That meant soldiers likely guarded the quay, and surely the war harbor. Determined soldiers could hold out against the Nasamons in built-up areas of the city for days, maybe even for weeks. After the Temple Mount, the quay and the war harbor were two of the most easily garrisoned places. Himilco’s treachery must have caught many soldiers and commanders unawares and far from their posts. The Nasamons had poured into the city and stormed places in stunning succession, but apparently not the quay or the war harbor.

  “No, let her think.”

  Elissa glanced at the pearl divers. They looked away. Two of them crossed their fingers. They wanted her to solve an unsolvable dilemma. Even if she could slip into the tower, slay heavily armed and alert soldiers and lower the chain…was it the right thing to do?

  “We won’t let you escape,” the oldest brother said. He clutched his hatchet.

  “I owe you my life,” she said.

  They nodded solemnly.

  “You would have drowned without our help,” the oldest agreed.

  If these pearl divers would swim back to the Tyrant so he could slay three of them, all for their oldest brother’s sake, could she become a traitor to Karchedon? Would she then be any different than Himilco Nara? Yet, she owed these pearl divers her life.

  “We could say she tried to escape,” the youngest said, “and that we had to kill her.”

  Elissa used the wall to climb to her feet. She panted. There was a two-foot ledge between the wall and the drop into the sea. It looked slick in places, but she could negotiate it.

  “Do you have a plan?” the oldest pearl diver asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The younger two divers brightened.

  “What is
your plan?” the oldest asked.

  “Do pearl divers tell others the secret of their skills?” she asked.

  “It is forbidden.”

  “I am a Rhune.”

  “I understand,” he said. “What should we do?”

  “I want you to wait here while I sneak into the tower.”

  “You will slay the guards inside?”

  “You keep asking me to reveal my secrets.”

  “Forgive me.”

  She clapped him on his greasy shoulder. “Trust me as I trusted you. You saved my life. Now, I plan to save yours.”

  “I am glad.”

  “You don’t plan to escape?” the youngest diver asked.

  “No,” she said. “You saved my life. I want to save yours. We Rhunes pay our debts.”

  “That is good,” the oldest brother said. “I did not want to slay you.”

  “Nor do I want you to,” Elissa said. “Now wait until I signal you. You will spoil everything if you refuse to wait.”

  “We will wait,” the oldest brother said.

  Elissa patted him on the shoulder. Then she eased around him. Covered in grease, in naught but her sodden underclothes, a wet belt and a Delium stiletto, she began shuffling along the slippery ledge.

  -20-

  Elissa wasn’t Himilco Nara, but she was Rhune. A Rhune on a mission could shade the truth if it helped her achieve the goal. She owed a debt to the pearl divers. She did not owe a debt to the fourth brother. He would have to fend for himself. She felt bad about that, but feeling bad wasn’t a reason to throw away her life.

  The Tyrant was likely mad. If he was sane, it was a frightening sanity. One day in his power had been more than enough for her. So how could she save the pearl divers?

  As she shuffled along the narrow way, one hand on the wall, the physical focus required allowed her mind to roam. An idea formed. The Nasamons might be in the process of cheating the Tyrant. Because he felt cheated, the Tyrant would storm Karchedon’s harbor without informing his allies. She suspected he planned to tow away any worthwhile ships and the last triremes in the war harbor. Karchedonian soldiers still held the quays and likely the war harbor.

  The idea had problems, the chief ones being her bruises, her state of undress and the possibility that none of the soldiers would recognize her and therefore no one would believe her story.

  It surprised her that the pearl divers believed she could do anything. Rhune legends helped. What helped even more was that people often saw what they hoped to see. The pearl divers knew the sea, but they were simpletons concerning fighting and sneaking around. Worry for their oldest brother also plagued them. Having never experienced sibling loyalty, Elissa both admired and couldn’t understand their dedication to their older brother. If the Tyrant would murder three of them…why go back? Under those conditions, a Rhune would only go back to garrote the Tyrant.

  Finally, she reached the tower. The rocks were slicker here. She fully concentrated on her footing now, rested once and looked up. The tower was five levels high with turrets on top. There were lower slit windows for shooting arrows. She spied glinting points of loaded ballistae. Those weapons shot seven-foot iron spears, each able to splinter galley planks and skewer several armored soldiers at once. The iron spears wouldn’t stop a quinquereme, however.

  Then, she saw the chain. It stretched across the open harbor to the tower on the other side. Each iron link was the size of an ox’s head. The chain would halt a quinquereme. Sailors could drag rowboats over it, or under, she supposed.

  Did the Tyrant really think that three pearl divers and a half-Rhune girl could lower such a chain?

  Elissa resumed easing around the tower’s base. The builders of Karchedon, colonists of an ancient sea people, had designed the city on a familiar pattern. Most of the sea peoples chose isles just off a coast, or easily-defended peninsulas, or an isthmus such as Karchedon used. In those days, the purpose of the far-flung colonies had less to do with easing overpopulation and more to do with providing secure outposts for daring merchants. Over the centuries, Karchedon had proven the greatest of the colonies, even outstripping the original, northern city-states. The other similarity between colonies concerned harbors. The ancient sea people had cherished their merchant ships. Thus, in each city, they either used a preexisting lagoon or dredged an artificial one. Then, they built a well-protected harbor within the city walls.

  As Karchedon had waxed powerful, the magistrates of old had decided upon a further refinement. Even deeper within the city, they dredged an inner, circular harbor. A walled channel led from the quays into the specially built war harbor. Over the years, magistrates had added extra features. Today, the inner war harbor boasted covered marble berths or sheds. These berths lined the outer circular part of the war harbor and contained individual stalls for 200 galleys. A tiny isle in the center of the war harbor, connected to the city by a stone mole, held a lighthouse and storage sheds. These sheds held tackle, tar, lumber, sailcloth, pegs, and all the other paraphernalia needed to refit the war galleys. Until a month ago, those galleys had allowed the people of Karchedon to boast that their city was the Queen of the Western Great Sea.

  It was only natural that Karchedonian soldiers still held their posts here. In many ways, these two harbors were the heart of the city. Some of the best soldiers and formations were by custom stationed in the quays and war harbor.

  Elissa eased off the rocks and onto the paving stones around the tower. The quays held merchant ships, a veritable forest of them. She spied men, women and children on the decks, although most were men. Many of those wore foreign costumes.

  The quays contained docks and ships, and sheds farther back along with a few taverns and square storehouses, many two or three levels high. Beyond those rose an inner wall. Soldiers waited there on the ramparts, fewer than she might have wished.

  “You there,” a soldier shouted. “Halt.”

  Elissa stood near the chain, near the hole the chain used to disappear into the tower. She noticed a worn wooden sleeve protecting the stone hole from the chain. How often did they replace the wood? The lowering and rising chain rattling through the hole would act as a dull but powerful saw.

  “Don’t move!” the soldier shouted.

  She hadn’t planned to.

  A trio of soldiers clattered near in their breastplates, sword pommels, shields and spears. They wore similar attire to the Tyrant’s soldiers. Instead of flowing horsetail crests, however, these soldiers had three tall feathers each sprouting from their bronze helmets.

  “What are you doing here?” the foremost soldier asked. He wore a huge ring, a green emerald. His breastplate was golden rather than bronze, and his square-shaped beard was snow white. Unlike the two tall and muscled soldiers flanking him, he was medium-sized.

  “She’s hurt, magistrate,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Someone has badly beaten her,” the other said.

  “She wears a Delium stiletto,” the magistrate said, the snow-white bearded soldier. “She’s greased like a pearl diver. And if my eyes still report truly, she’s dusky like a Rhune.”

  The other two stiffened, and they lowered their spear-points so they aimed at her.

  “I’m Elissa Magonid.”

  “There is a ring of plausibility to that,” the magistrate said.

  “I flew out of the city last night.”

  “Men reported seeing a Sivishean skay,” the magistrate said. “You launched it from the Great Temple?”

  “Yes. I flew across the Bay of Sails.”

  “Yet, now you’re here,” the magistrate said.

  “I’ve come to lower the chain,” she said.

  “For any particular reason?” the magistrate asked.

  “Because the Tyrant of Delium demanded I do so.”

  Within his helmet, the magistrate raised his white eyebrows. “You sound addled.”

  “She looks thrashed,” said a soldier. “Maybe they beat her until she became witless.”
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br />   “I think you should hear what I have to say,” Elissa said.

  The magistrate nodded slowly. “But not standing out here. Let’s go inside the tower. You look as if you could use some warmed wine.”

  “That would be good,” Elissa said. Before she could say more, she slid against the tower until her undergarment rested on paving. For some reason, her knees had given out. Oh no. Her eyes were closing too.

  “You two,” the magistrate said. “Help her.”

  The last thing Elissa remembered were rough hands gently gripping her arms.

  -21-

  “Look, brothers,” one of the pearl divers said.

  The three brothers had not remained in place as Elissa had said, but had steadily crept toward the tower. Now they stared in amazement as the great sea-chain protecting Karchedon’s quays began to rattle. The huge links sank into the sea.

  “She did it.”

  “She is a Rhune.”

  “Will she return, do you think?”

  “She gave us her word.”

  “She owes us her life.”

  “Look! I see her. Brothers, we’re rich men now.”

  -22-

  Elissa leaned against the tower. Behind her, the sea-chain lowered toward the harbor floor. She had scraped off most of the rancid grease and fat. She still went barefoot, but now wore barbarian breeches, a tunic and a cloak. Two cupfuls of hot wine had fortified her.

  She still felt dizzy and lightheaded, and her limbs were rubbery, but she had to do this. She owed the pearl divers. Maybe they were simple, but they would have to make a terrible choice. She could have chosen for them, and probably should have. The magistrate…he was like many rich Karchedonians, a clever man and too quick to use others. Elissa hated weighing the good of her city—what was left of it, anyway—against the lives of the three divers who had saved her life.

  The pearl divers drew near. All grinned. It was the first time she’d seen something other than their stoic masks.

  “Shed your clothes,” the oldest brother said. “We must swim back to the Tyrant.”

  “The chain is down,” she said. “You’ve achieved your goal. But I’m staying. I think you should stay, too.”