I recently finished the second draft of a story I’m working on, and I decided to share it online. I’m sharing one chapter at a time, and the story is about 487,000 words right now (roughly 5 paperback novels in length, give or take), so this will take awhile.
I estimate that 2nd draft is about 80% of the way there, story-wise; but 80% is not 100%. This chapter might show up in the final story completely unchanged. It might show up with minor changes, or heavy revisions; or might be cut from the final draft completely. If it does remain, it might be in a new place in the story or the same place.
Anyway, enjoy!
CHAPTER 2
Danur raced towards the nearing port city. Faster, he exhorted his ship, and it almost bucked as it clove through the waves, sending sea spray over the hull and the dark wooden deck. Faster.
The wind whipped at him, cold even with dawn on the horizon. The sun was just a muted ball of red fire now, easing its way up out of the ocean, casting a jagged red reflection across the waves. He squinted through the wind, willing the port city to come nearer.
It had been two days since he had gotten Alis’ letter. Two days of no sleep, two days of standing in the crow’s nest day and night and forcing the ship to fly through the waters.
That was the downside to his magical ship. With no-one else on board, and with the wood powered by his thoughts and his willpower, it didn’t move unless he willed it. That could be convenient when he was trying to sit it on a precise coordinate and not leave; but when he wanted to move quickly, it required making sacrifices.
A yawn almost cracked his jaws, but he barely noticed. He could sleep once Illidrea was back in his arms. Once he had saved her from whatever the threat was that Alis had mentioned.
The port city that Illidrea ruled had begun as just a smudge on the horizon, but as his ship galloped closer, bucking in the waves, it grew more distinct. He could see the docks, huge and wooden, and the other ships crowded around. He could see deeper into the city, to the shops and homes and schools and workshops that Illidrea had established. And there, high up on a hill…
The castle itself. Even with his mind in a haze, he couldn’t fail to appreciate the sheer beauty of what his lover had built. A circular curtain wall, forty feet high and twelve feet thick. Huge circular towers every hundred feet, lines with archers in wartime, and nobles and their attendants in times of peace. The whole wall gleamed white in dawn’s light, built from marble. He smiled, his heart lightening momentarily. Only Illidrea, only a sorceress nine hundred years old and with all the power she had spent almost a millennium acquiring, could afford to build an entire curtain wall out of pure marble.
When enemies considered attacking, that marble was as much a deterrent as the actual towers that bristled with archers. The kind of woman who could afford that much marble, who could squander a fortune building a wall of it just because it pleased her, was someone a rival city ruler would think twice about angering.
He growled, fingers tightening on the smooth wooden railing. When Illidrea was back in his arms, when he had assured himself that she was safe and whole and that Alis had simply over-reacted by saying that she was dying…they would take some of that enormous wealth and use it to find and crush whatever poor bastard had tried to hurt her.
That’s if Danur didn’t find the man on his own. And take a long, long time to kill him.
His ship streaked closer to the docks. Big waves crashed against his hull, over and over again; and his ship bucked as it clove through them, rising and falling between wave peak and trough. Up in the crow’s nest, the small wooden platform Danur stood on bounced and swayed like a drunk man trying to stand on a ball. Danur’s knees flexed, keeping him centered; and he ignored the motion. Keeping his whole attention on the city growing nearer.
When the ship crashed into the wooden dock hard enough to crack half a dozen of the thick dock planks, Danur leapt off the crow’s nest. In midair, falling through the cool salty sea air, he vanished into a puff of black wind.
The wind swirled around him, and he flitted through it, just one more gust off the coast moving towards land. Moving towards that curtain wall high above, and the keep inside it.
The wind carried him, up and over the city. It wrapped around him and gusted through him, and he was one with it as he moved faster than a horse could gallop. Through the city, flitting over merchants hawking their wares and hot unwashed bodies jostling for a chance to buy something. Over broad flat streets, dust rising from thousands of footfalls even at dawn; and past narrower curving alleys between tall apartment buildings built of stone and crammed up against merchants’ stores.
The wind carried him, strong and cold in dawn’s weak light, up to the curtain wall. Past the wall, past the guardhouse flanked by towers where supplicants begged entrance, and where he nobles and attendants who lived in the bailey sauntered past guards who waved them through. Past the small hidden doors in the wall, expertly concealed to look like big blocks of white marble, that Danur had used to slip in and out more times than he could count. Often hand in hand with Illidrea, when she wanted to escape castle life but didn’t want to be seen.
Danur ignored all of that, willing the wind to carry him up to the keep.
The keep was a work of art, a towering structure of pure white marble glittering in the sun. Two hundred feet high, with four round towers, one at each corner. Danur soared on the wind towards the highest room in one of those towers, slipped inside a small window, and turned back into a man.
He was in Illidrea’s chambers. As his booted feet thudded into the luxurious white carpet, his eyes saw the bed and his blood froze in his veins.
The bed was as big as he remembered, and the silken blue sheets weren’t even ruffled. And there, lying on the feather mattress, her head on a pillow and her eyes closed like she was sleeping….
Illidrea. Not a spark of life inside her.
Back in his body, the smell hit him. Like rotting fruit, sickly sweet. If his magic hadn’t told him, if his gut hadn’t screamed it at him, that smell would have confirmed it.
He shied back from her, not wanting to see the sheen of her skin, visible even through her lacy white and silver nightgown. The fact that her skin looked just a little looser on her luscious body.
Then he steeled himself, forced himself to remember his plans for this day. To look past the corpse that would start rotting soon, and to remember that they had planned for this.
But Gods above, to see her body lying there like that….
He took a deep breath. The stench of the dead almost gagged him, but he ignored it. Pushed past the smell.
“Alis!” he roared. “Get in here!”
The maidservant’s rooms were right next to Illidrea’s, and he knew she wouldn’t leave them. Not with Illidrea a corpse in her bed and no-one in the city the wiser.
She stumbled into Illidrea’s chambers through an adjoining door. She was not a pretty woman, old and hunched over. Her skin was tanned like bark and looked about as thick. But she had served Illidrea faithfully for her entire life.
She hobbled over, her twisted walking staff rustling against the thick carpet with every other step. When she looked at Danur, her brown eyes were wet with tears.
“I’m sorry, master Danur,” she cried. “I didn’t know…I thought the chalice was safe. She insisted on drinking from it, and I thought no-one had touched it, and….”
Danur slapped her. Not hard, but he didn’t have time for her babbling. “Pull yourself together, and tell me true. How did this happen?”
Alis licked her lips. Her lip trembled, but she took a deep breath and started talking.
“It was that assassin three days ago, the one who tried to stab Mistress Illidrea. The assassin was waiting for her, and of course Illidrea dispatched him. But then….”
She wet her lips, her eyes still full of tears, and her raspy voice continued.
“But then…she wanted to celebrate, the mistress did. And she got a chalice, the gold one she keeps for special occasions, and filled it with chilled wine. Well of course I tried the wine first, like always; but I felt fine afterward, so Illidrea drank it.”
She wrung her hands, awkwardly around her walking stick. It was only waist-high, with a carved handle that made it easy to hold.
“Only…the poison wasn’t in the wine, Master Danur, it was in the chalice. I think the assassin planted it before he attacked her, or maybe someone else came in while she was dealing with him. But as soon as the chalice touched her lips….”
Her lip trembled again, and tears ran down her craggy cheeks.
“She started to convulse. She spat the wine out but it was too late. In seconds she was dead.”
Her tears didn’t blunt the white-hot rage ripping through Danur’s heart.
“You’re lying,” he said to Alis. He didn’t know if it was true or not. Didn’t care. His rage needed an outlet, and the maidservant would do as well as anyone right now.
Alis started shaking her head.
“No, master Danur! Never! I have served Mistress Illidrea faithfully since my birth, and my mother before me, and her mother, and–”
She cut off as Danur reached out one hand, fingers hooked like claws. The magic he summoned ripped through her, and an instant later she collapsed on the white carpet. Her eyes were glazed with death, still tear-filled.
Danur didn’t look at her again. Now it was time to plan. Dead wasn’t dead, not yet; he could still get Illidrea back.
He turned his back on Alis’ corpse and on Illidrea, and began making preparations.
* * * * *
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