Gerriod sat behind Trypp, one hand on the skiff’s tiller, the other on the sheet attached to the tiny craft’s sail. Although the city of El Silat was just a blur on the strip of shoreline they had left behind, Gerriod felt they were not going anywhere. He was accustomed to Cold-powered engines that thrust a ship through Lake Erras’ many complex currents. He felt vulnerable sitting in the small boat, unable to carve out a passage to his destination. After standing at the helm of The Crimson Dawn for so many years, Gerriod felt emasculated by the situation in which he now found himself.
Ten yards off their port bow, the hunched shapes of Pylos and Remiel could be seen, silhouetted against the rapidly descending sun. On either side of Remiel’s boat, tiny flashes of light jumped about playfully on the shifting surface of the lake. The sun was so low that the nearby skiff threw a shadow across the distance between the two boats. Gerriod felt a chill whenever the sun slid behind the other skiff’s sail. He mused to himself that soon it would get much colder, out where the water turned into a morass of ice churning around Caliban’s End.
For a few moments, he thought of what was ahead of them and found the prospect so terrifying, so daunting, he let his mind wander to other things. A number of disparate images floated through his mind, random moments from the extraordinary life he was now living.
He thought of the great tower of Cessair and the multitudinous races he had encountered that day in the Cloud Chamber. Pylos was there. He seemed quieter then. Gerriod had spent much of the meeting staring across the chamber where the representatives of Acoran were seated. The Acoran consul Jehenna Canna – he remembered her, beautiful and aloof. Her husband, Maeldune, was also there, confident and articulate, giving no sign of his treacherous nature. Maeldune had been talking to a fat man in purple robes. The fat man had slunk away before the Assembly had formally began, but Gerriod had noticed him. There was something familiar about him.
Suddenly Gerriod’s thoughts shifted to a time before he arrived in Cessair. He was in a chamber filled with phosphorescent red light. The Endless. He was by the dark lake, hiding behind a rocky outcrop, watching a hideous monster taunt two poor wretched captives. One of them was a tall, dark man and the other... the other was the fat man in purple. The beast – Succellos his father had called it – lifted its sting high and then rammed it into the fat man’s spine. A scream cut through the cavern and Gerriod was jolted out of his reveries.
The last rays of sun clung to the top of his skiff’s mast. He looked to his left and saw the other skiff right where it had been before he started daydreaming. Remiel. He had to tell Remiel about Succellos. About the fat man in purple. About Mulupo.
Although his memory of his time in the Endless was confused by concussion and mixed emotions – the joy of finding his father had been soiled by the pain of leaving him – Gerriod remembered enough details for Remiel and Pylos to put the pieces together.
‘This explains a lot,’ sighed Remiel.
‘It is catastrophic news,’ said Pylos. ‘The fat man in purple – it has to be Porenutious Windle, the Chamberlain’s Advisor.’
‘I agree,’ nodded Remiel, ‘which means that Caliban has been exerting his influence upon us from the very start.’
‘We can’t know how much impact Windle has had upon the Chamberlain. I do not believe Tiberius Llyr would be easily manipulated by one such as Windle.’
‘Perhaps not, but Llyr makes his decisions based on the advice he has been given. I just wonder who originally came up with the entire plan to assassinate my brother.’
Pylos looked curiously at Remiel. He could see where he was going with his line of thinking and he did not like it. ‘Wait! Are you suggesting that this entire mission was Caliban’s idea from the start? How does that make sense? Who would design such an intricate plan to bring about his own death?’
‘Oh I doubt Caliban plans to die. But everything that has befallen us on this tragic journey seems to indicate we are not controlling the game.’
‘The game?’ asked Trypp, unsettled by Remiel’s description of the horrors that had been unleashed upon the Myr over the past year.
‘That’s what it is to him. A game. In our youth, Caliban went out of his way to make sure I was aware of his ideas on winning. “There are many ways to achieve victory,” he once said, “but the most satisfying of all is when you fool your opponent into thinking he is controlling the game.” At the time, I thought he was talking about our many battles of Siege, but now I can see in hindsight that his gaze was much wider than that.’
Pylos looked over at Remiel. ‘You said you knew something was wrong with Mulupo. What did you mean?’
‘When I healed him, a detected something out of place, like he had been pulled apart and put back together incorrectly. It’s hard to explain.’
‘It seems you detected Succellos’ influence upon Mulupo,’ Trypp noted.
‘But but you did not detect it in Windle,’ Pylos observed.
‘I had no contact with Windle at all. You may remember he absented himself from the Assembly’
‘What about Maeldune?’ Gerriod asked. ‘Was he also under this creature’s influence.’
‘Maeldune was not under anyone’s influence,’ remarked Pylos.
‘I agree.’
‘Can we be certain that Mulupo was under Succellos’ control?’ Pylos asked. ‘He seemed normal… for Mulupo, that is.’
‘We can’t be certain of anything. Mulupo’s fate is out of our hands now.’
‘Perhaps,’ mused Pylos. ‘Maybe if we can kill Succellos, all those she has enslaved will be released.’
Gerriod groaned. ‘Let’s just concentrate on killing Caliban for now. Once that is done, and my father freed, then we can look for other heroic things to do.’
Night came and passed by slowly. They were close now. Caliban’s End was within sight.
Massive shards of ice collided around them sending bitterly cold water spilling over the sides into the skiffs. Trypp did what he could to influence the path their skiff took but the five foot oar he held was no match for the floating white monoliths that crashed all about. His oar was a shadow of its former self within minutes of being dipped into the frozen torrent.
The sky above was sable which contrasted starkly with the frigid grey air around them. The Worldpool’s countless icebergs belted one another with a ferocity unmatched by anything else in nature. Gerriod could feel the churning mass of frozen water scraping against the skiff’s thin hull. ‘It will be a miracle if we survive this,’ he grunted to himself.
But it was no miracle that was keeping him alive. It was Remiel Grayson. He was using all his Morgai skills to keep the boats together and intact. The skiffs had lost sight of one another numerous times as white knives of ice cut through the space between them, but Remiel maintained his control over their passage towards the screaming maw named after his brother.
A flash of white.
Gerriod was aboard The Crimson Dawn. The noise of crashing and splintering shards of ice was deafening. Suddenly, he felt the deck being pulled out beneath his feet as another iceberg smashed against the starboard hull at a frightening speed. Gerriod twisted about in mid-air reaching for something to halt his fall. But nothing was within reach and he hit the deck hard. His skull bounced off a small killick he had left lying out in the middle of the quarterdeck and after enduring a sensation akin to a thousand sharp needles being simultaneously pushed into his brain, his mind succumbed to blackness.
Another white flash returned Gerriod to the tiny skiff.
Gerriod looked up and noticed the first of the Myr’s moons had already risen. Arma stared down at him, a cold white eye that showed no concern for the traumatic situation to which he had willingly submitted himself. On his right he could feel Trypp furiously paddling, but the oar was hopelessly broken and having no impact upon the direction of the boat.
‘Are you scared?’ he asked the Sapphyrran who smiled and stated coolly, ‘I’ve fallen three leagues down a waterfall. I think I can handle this.’
Gerriod laughed and muttered, ‘Yeah, I’m terrified too.’
In the other skiff, Pylos and Remiel said nothing. The both stared ahead into the darkness of the maw. And then the world turned white.
Remiel was on a boat. Its Cold engines could be heard chugging away in the background. A young boy’s voice cut over the sound of the engines. The voice was strained, almost hysterical. ‘You bound him up like an animal. What had he done Mr Grayson to make you hate him so?’
‘He… he had…’ Remiel’s voice faded to nothingness...
Gerriod braced for the violence to come. He wound his arm under the plank of wood that served as the skiff’s seat and suggested to Trypp to do the same. They lay there, huddled on the bottom of the small skiff looking up as the first of the Myr’s stars appeared in the dark sky. They whirled around an ever-spinning circle of white streaks. The blurring disk spun faster and faster, became smaller and smaller until finally there was only darkness. Cold, swirling darkness.