Ironcrown Moon (46 page)

“The Blossom Moon Song.”

Rosebud, spring rosebud, tight and green, No soft, fragrant rose petals e’er to be seen; When will you open wide to me?

When shall I my true love see?

In Blossom Moon, in Blossom Moon, it will surely be.

Dala hummed along, rocking Casya gently, and the baby slept even as the barge began to rear and plunge like a rampaging living thing.

The noise of rushing water swelled to thunder. Some of the women’s voices faltered, but none of them dared to wail or weep so long as the queen kept singing; and this she did, keeping her back turned resolutely away from the tumult outside. The barge surged on, expertly steered by its skipper and powered by the muscles of the forty valiant oarsmen, evading boulders and monstrous standing waves, skirting each rocky patch and climbing the foaming chutes like a huge homing salmon.

As the last verse of the song began, with only Queen Bryse and two of the bravest ladies still singing, a faint huzza came from the men on deck outside. Dala saw that the Whitewater was
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ending. Only the eddy, a broad, swift-spinning gyre of foam and floating debris some twenty ells in diameter, now blocked their way. The skipper steered far towards the heavily wooded right bank to take them safely around it, then guided the barge proudly up the deceptively glassy-looking center of the Malle, where the current ran swift and the waters were dark and deep.

The queen’s song ended and the relieved women clapped and cried out for joy. The cheering of the deckhands intensified and was augmented by glad shouts from male courtiers swarming out of the sterncastle and racing forward to call out congratulations to King Honigalus and the two princes for having held steadfast throughout the passage.

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“Well,” said Duke Ranwing Boarsden to the Archwizard Fring, “that was mildly exhilarating to watch, but hardly the momentous spectacle you hinted at when you convinced us to ride out here. Just what did you think was going to happen, wizard?”

Fring’s brow was spangled with sweat and his jaws clenched tightly together. His gaze was fixed not on the barge but on the smooth expanse of river just ahead of it, where his talent perceived something moving just beneath the water. In the bow pulpit, little Prince Bartus seemed to see something as well. He pointed at it and gave a high-pitched scream as loud and penetrating as the cry of an eagle.

Fring said quietly, “There. Half a dozen ells in front of the boat. They look something like smooth rocks just breaking the surface of the water. But they’re not rocks.”

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“Nothing!” Prince Somarus raged. “Nothing at all happened to Honigalus and his barge! Where are the damned Salka hiding? What are they waiting for?… Tesk! Tesk? Curse that sneaky wee magicker—where’s he got to, now that I really need him to scry out what’s going on?”

Baron Cuva cast a swift glance around the shore near the Boar Creek bridge where the prince’s party stood watching the river, but the little black-robed adept was nowhere to be seen. “Not a sign of him, Highness. And the Green Woman’s gone missing as well. I wonder

—”

“Shite!” whispered Somarus. His sturdy form went rigid as he stared out onto the river, aghast.

“Father Sun and Mother Moon—will you look at that?”

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The barge’s skipper set the helm over, steering towards the left bank, and signaled for a last great pull of the sweeps to bring the barge out of the mainstream current and into the backwaters above the landing stage at Boarsden Castle.

The dark heads of the Salka rose from the water.

Carbuncle-red eyes blazing, spiky crests uplifted, maws agape, and crystal teeth flashing in the low sun, the monsters came rocketing downstream toward the barge in a broad inverted-V

formation before a single person aboard could give warning. The creatures on the flanks closed in on the sweeps. Their powerful tentacles ripped the oars from their housings with sharp cracks, rending the stout timbers of the hull. Some of the Salka began to pluck howling rowers from their benches, flinging them overboard to other monsters who waited with open jaws. The barge slewed violently as its motive power was lost and began to drift downstream towards the eddy.

Some of the shore observers gave cries of horror as they discerned huge shapes massed at the sides and stern of the vessel, beginning to clamber aboard. An explosive noise signaled that the rudder had been ripped away by main force. A few valiant souls on the boat, having armed themselves with swords and pikes, tried to beat off the inhuman attackers, but the Salka on deck
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hurled screaming boatmen and courtiers aside as though they were dolls. Black tentacles tipped with clawed digits lashed the air like flexible tree-trunks, making a shambles of the standing rigging and toppling the mast with its square sail.

Then the broken barge reached the rim of the eddy and slowly began its death spin. Terrified men jumped from the fast-settling stern, which the Salka had abandoned in favor of a concerted attack on the glass windows of the saloon cabin. The openings were too small to admit the enormous bodies of the amphibians, so they groped inside with their tentacles in search of prey.

Those onshore gasped at the sight of King Honigalus, menaced by three bellowing monsters on the foredeck, taking a small son under each arm and leaping off the bow pulpit into the whirling water. The barge circled faster and faster until it was sucked beneath the surface of the water and disappeared from view.

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“Futter me!” Somarus exclaimed. His ruddy features had turned the color of chalk. “That was grim. At the end, the great brutes were going after the women. I could hear them screaming.”

Baron Cuva only shook his head, speechless. The knights stood in small groups, cursing or dazedly silent, staring upstream at the place where the great boat had vanished.

Then one man pointed to the rapids below the eddy. “I see floating wreckage coming down towards us. The whirlpool has spat it out!

Could it be that some have survived the disaster?”

“You think so?” another said somberly. “Look—the cursed fiends are cavorting out there among the rocks, tossing things to one another in some hideous game! Those who drown will be the fortunate ones.”

The others uttered cries of abhorrence and pity.

“It happened as Beynor promised,” Somarus whispered, his eyes glittering. “As the renegade Royal Akhymist Kilian planned it, so that no man could lay the deed at my doorstep.”

“No, Highness.” Baron Cuva’s voice was steady. “The tragedy cannot be ascribed to you. But the former Conjure-King and Kilian

Blackhorse are perhaps not so easily exonerated. It would be wise to keep that fact in mind.”

Somarus was silent.

“What will you have us do now?” the baron asked, after some minutes had passed.

“It’ll be a while before those at Castle Boarsden dare to send search parties out on the water,”

the prince decided, “although land patrols may begin combing the banks for survivors rather soon. It won’t do for anyone to discover us loitering here. We’ll have to return to the highway as quickly as we can, then ride back the way we came to the road leading to Boarsden Town. It should be safe to wait there in some handy alehouse until word of the disaster is cried about the city streets.”

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“You might be recognized,” Cuva warned.

“What does it matter? This is my tale: I came out of the Elderwold intending to present my respects to King Honigalus as he held court at

Boarsden Castle. If I had actually conceived such a saucy notion, dear Cousin Ranwing would not have turned me away, loving a good row as he does… So I’m properly appalled at the awful news, and I vow vengeance against the devils responsible, and wait with the duke and his people to see whether any of the royal family has survived.”

“What if one or more of them did?” Cuva asked softly.

“Then Beynor and Kilian Blackhorse will have their work cut out for them. But I don’t think we need worry overmuch. I’ll deplore this lamentable tragedy, while at the same time you will make
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a great show of thanking Providence that the Crown of Didion passes not to a weakling child, as it would have done if Honigalus alone had perished, but rather to a mature warrior ready and able to lead our nation in these difficult times.”

Cuva inclined his head. “Highness.” His smile was sardonic. “You must forgive me if I postpone styling you ‘Majesty’ until the time is ripe. I’m not as audacious as the Green Woman Cray in such matters.”

Somarus scowled and began looking about again, muttering low-voiced oaths. “Where is she?

And that rascal Tesk?”

One of the younger knights smirked. “Earlier, I saw the wizard making sheep’s eyes at the Green Woman. Unlikely as it might seem for two such creatures to be smitten by love’s thunderbolt here in a muddy morass, we can’t discount the notion.”

“Then let them swive amongst the frogs and midges and be damned,” Somarus said, “for I won’t wait another minute for them.” He turned about, squelched up the creekside path to where they had left the horses, and swung into the saddle.

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The nursemaid Dala got up from her chair, holding drowsy little Princess Casabarela tightly against her breast, and watched in frozen disbelief from one of the saloon windows as the nightmarish dark creatures rose from the river.

What were they

? Not seals, not giant squid or octopods, not any kind of animal she had ever seen before. They roared with demonic jubilation as they attacked, and she knew that the frightful things were worse than dumb beasts: they were thinking beings bent on slaughter. The royal barge was their target, and the people aboard were their intended prey.

She was… and the baby girl entrusted to her.

Sleek and greenish-black, red saucer-eyes glowing and enormous mouths wide-open, the monsters snatched the sweeps away from the oarsmen and began pulling the helpless men overboard to their doom. The barge lost momentum and began to swing broadside to the current. Dala saw King Honigalus and his sons clinging to the rails of the bow pulpit. She felt the vessel shudder, then lurch. A terrible rending sound filled the air, as though the stout wooden frame of the great barge were being torn apart.

She lost her balance and crumpled to the carpeted deck with the baby still in her arms. Unhurt but frightened by the fall and the jolt, the year-old girl began to cry. Without thinking, Dala snatched up a long knitted shawl that had earlier served to cover the baby and swathed the small body completely, head and all, in soft wool. Then she crammed herself and her precious burden into the small space between the heavy padded chair and the bulkhead and began to pray.

At the other end of the long cabin, the court ladies were screaming at the top of their lungs.

Someone shouted, “We’re sinking! God have mercy, we’re sinking!”

Because of the drawn draperies at the windows round about them, few of those in the stern of the saloon had any real idea of what was happening outside, nor did the queen seem to understand the atrocious nature of the peril that threatened them. She shouted vainly for all to remain calm, while the boat wallowed and heaved and furniture tumbled and women ensnared in long skirts fell about weeping and moaning.

“Dala!” Bryse shouted desperately. “Is my little Casya safe?”

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“I have her with me, Majesty,” the maid called out from her hiding place, which was nearly ten ells away from the queen and out of her eyeshot. “I can swim. I’ll do my best to save her.”

“Bless you—” Bryse began to say.

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Her words were lost in a great crash as several of the casement windows shattered simultaneously. Boneless dark limbs, dripping blood and water, thrust through the billowing drapes and began ripping the thick fabric away with sharp talons. In moments all those within the saloon knew what was outside, trying to get in.

Dala, at least, had seen them from a distance. Most of the women caught unawares by the sight of the invading Salka fainted dead away from the shock. A few braver souls, including Queen Bryse, tried to escape by opening the doors leading onto the external gallery; but by then the barge was foundering, and a great gout of discolored, debris-laden riverwater flooded into the saloon, washing them back inside.

A rumbling noise now swelled amidst the human cries and the almost continuous roaring of the triumphant Salka. The barge vibrated like the sounding box of a titanic lute as the eddy currents strummed and whirled it in a narrowing spiral. Then came a crackling fusillade deep within the hull, loud as tarnblaze explosions, as the unbearable pressure of the water began to snap the dying vessel’s beams and planking.

Dala was too terrified to move, cringing away from the tangle of writhing tentacles flailing about in search of victims. A glistening black arm encircled the waist of Queen Bryse Vandragora and dragged her out through a broken window frame. With dreadful precision, the monstrous questing limbs sought out and found the noblewomen, the pages, the musicians, and the servants, those who lay senseless and those who frantically tried to escape, and hauled them all away.

The nursemaid no longer heard the human screams or the booming Salka howls. She was conscious only of the rising water now, and the fact that the barge was being engulfed stern first as it sank into the maelstrom. The forward section of the saloon where she and the baby hid still had most of its windows intact. Equally important, the massive chair had become wedged in a clutter of other furniture. It continued to shelter her, but no longer slid towards the submerged area where the Salka and the last of the victims continued their struggles. Even when the rising waters finally forced her to stand, Dala was able to conceal herself and the baby behind the sodden folds of the undrawn draperies near her. The child’s muffled wails could hardly be heard above the tumultuous racket made by the breaking hull.