Page 8 of Crucible of Chaos

CHAPTER 6

THE GATE

Estevar’s skin was cold and wet beneath his drenched linen shirt and wool trousers. Lacking even his boots now that they– along with his sword and greatcoat–were settling into watery graves somewhere off the coast of this misbegotten island, his progress over the slick rocks and spiny scrub became a slow, endless series of stumbles and scrapes. At least the damnable storm had settled down. In its absence, another fog had begun to blanket the shore.

He kept coughing, his throat and lungs aching from the seawater he’d breathed in during his struggle against the currents. As a boy in his homeland of Gitabria, a thousand miles across the sea from here, he’d heard tales of sailors who’d been pulled from the frigid waters and brought to safety, only to be found dead in their bed hours later, drowned by the water still in their lungs.

‘Not us,’ he murmured to Imperious, patting the mule’s flank. ’We have defeated the sea herself, my friend, outwitted her servants, the mighty ocean currents. Surely Saint Werta-who-walks-the-waves herself blesses our arrival, eh?’

Imperious gave a wheezy neigh that made plain his distinctly less optimistic assessment of their situation. Estevar clung shivering to the mule’s side as they shuffled up the path like a pair of miserable drunks, following the grey-robed mountain of a monk who’d saved their lives.

Ahead, the massive gate of Isola Sombra awaited, the downwards curve of its mighty arch like a god frowning at them, warning them away. The iron bars, thick as a man’s forearm, were rusted, the lower crossbars covered in barnacles, suggesting the water had further still to rise. But beyond were the stone stairs leading up to the winding cobbled streets that promised civilisation: food, shelter and care for their wounds.

He took a last look back the way they’d come before the stormy sea had intervened in their journey, but the causeway was nowhere to be seen.

‘This time of year, the road disappears for days at a time,’ the monk informed him, making his way with far more ease and grace than his unwanted companions. ‘There used to be a ferrywoman who’d sell passage back and forth during the winters, but she hasn’t turned up this season.’

‘I thought I saw someone,’ Estevar said, ‘standing on the clifftop. She had long red hair and wore a pale, sleeveless dress or shift of some kind. Might that be—?’

‘Sounds as if your mule wasn’t the only one to hit his head on the rocks.’ The grey-robed man turned briefly, gesturing to the beach as he shot Estevar a smirk. ‘But feel free to wait for your mystery woman to ferry you upon her lustrous red locks back to the mainland if it suits you.’

Estevar’s eyes locked on to that mocking grin, his gaze following the twisted contours of the monk’s disdain and apparent lack of interest, peering deeper until he observed the faint pinching around the man’s lips that suggested hidden pain.

No, Estevar thought.Not merely pain. Anguish.

He hadn’t imagined the woman after all.

‘Imperious and I shall be quite content with the well-known hospitality of your abbey, thank you,’ he called back.

His guide resumed his march, which Estevar took as assent. The moment they reached the iron gate, the monk took a sharp turn and set off down a barely discernible trail heading away from the stairs.

‘Where are you going?’ Estevar shouted. Imperious leaned against him and groaned, as if to make it clear that any thoughts of pursuit were futile.

The monk kept walking away from them. ‘Ring the bell in the old way,’ he called back. ‘Whoever sits in the watchtower will come down from the abbey. Assuming there’s anyone left.’ Then he stepped into the mist rolling along the shore.

On a more auspicious day, with a dry shirt on his back and a decent meal in his belly– or at least the prospect of one– Estevar would have clapped his hands together in excitement at the cryptic reply and the possibility of intrigues to untangle and mysteries to solve. But he was wounded, starving and cold, and his poor mule was suffering those very same depravations, with the deep gash on his forehead a jagged bolt of scarlet lightning badly in need of tending. So, far from being enthused by the monk’s enigmatic words, Estevar was filled with a sudden rage that overpowered his exhaustion.

‘It is well that I owe you my life, Brother,’ he shouted, ‘else I would trace a duelling circle right in the sand between these gods-forsaken rocks so that I might remonstrate with you most violently!’

The monk’s hulking figure became less and less distinct as he stepped deeper into the mist. ‘Gods-forsaken?’ His deep-throated laughter intermingled with the rumble of the rising ocean waves. ‘At long last, the Greatfool says something sensible.’

‘You think my challenge a jest?’ Estevar demanded, although he had indeed meant it as such when first he’d issued it. ‘Come here then, you mountainous canker sore! Let us see how an overgrown oaf who hides beneath monk’s robes and would leave a brave mule to drown among the waves fares against Estevar Vale—’

‘Estevar Valejan Duerisi Borros,’ the monk finished for him. ‘Sometimes called the King’s Crucible. The magistrate not one but two silly monarchs have trusted to interfere in matters beyond mortal comprehension.’

‘You know me?’

At last, the monk stopped and turned on his heel, smoothly, assuredly, despite the precarious rocks on which he stood. ‘Everyone here knows who you are,Trattari. Venia, the old fool, prayed often that your “peerless intellect” would one day set you on the path towards faith and humility– a dream that not even the gods would indulge in, from what I’ve seen.’

There was something unnerving about the monk’s lazy tone, the unflappable confidence with which he spoke. Estevar had dealt with many a braggart in his day, and more than his share of madmen. This fellow was neither.

‘Who are you to speak so callously of your own abbot?’ he asked. ‘What sort of monk spouts such spiteful irreverence?’

‘They call me Malezias,’ the man replied, then lifted his hood back over his head, casting shadows that hid his face, save for the gleam of white teeth as his lips parted in a feral grin. ‘And I never said I was a monk.’

With that, the grey-robed figure spread his arms wide, took three backwards steps and disappeared in the thickening fog.

PART THE SECOND

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