A Respite From Storms Read online

  A Respite from Storms

  Ashes of Luukessia, Volume Two

  Robert J. Crane

  with Michael Winstone

  A Respite from Storms

  Ashes of Luukessia, Volume Two

  Robert J. Crane

  with Michael Winstone

  Copyright © 2018 Ostiagard Press

  All Rights Reserved.

  1st Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Author’s Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  1

  Luukessia burned.

  Smoke and flame tarred the twilit sky. Winds had dragged the uppermost parts of the smoke tower sideways in an unholy streak, smearing it out like paint under a thumb.

  The mountains that had once cradled Terreas drew the land to a gradual peak, off-center. They oughtn’t to have been visible in the falling night, at least not as anything more than a dark, diagonal mark against a velvet blue sky. Yet a fire burned within that crescent range, a churning, molten flame that belched smog into the approaching darkness, illuminating the landscape in hellish shades of red and orange.

  The land descended in a long slope that led to sandy white beaches, which in turn gave way to water, a liquid reflection of the sky, the ocean gently rising and falling with waves as if it breathed.

  Upon that ocean rested a boat.

  And upon its deck, shivering and sopping, Jasen crouched. He cradled Alixa, one-armed.

  Dark-skinned men surrounded them in a rough half circle, looking down at them. Upper halves of their bodies swaddled in a cloth wrap that had been fashioned into tunics, their clothes were patterned, but dark: deep blues, twilight purple speckles, diamonds and lines and curlicues in midnight black. Their sleeves came only partway down their biceps, the muscle there corded and thick. Black leggings clung tight to calves and thighs that were powerfully strong.

  Jasen’s jaw chattered. He should be spent; a night without proper sleep had preceded them to here. A day on the run, his collision with hard, compacted earth at the beach as the cart broke, then treading water to keep himself afloat … All of it had sucked every bit of energy it could from him. Not to mention everything they had lost …

  Now, a new threat—?

  “Who are you?” he wheezed.

  The dark-skinned men replied, or perhaps talked among themselves. A rising lilt to their voices sounded like questions, but Jasen could not understand the language they spoke. The consonants were harder and the vowels more guttural than the softer sounds of the Luukessian language.

  He tried again, raising his voice. “Who are you? Where have you come from?” Only this, too, came out as a croak, lifting barely higher than his last call. A child could have drowned him out.

  The men continued to speak. A handful eyed him, but their conversation was not directed to them any longer; they spoke back and forth between each other, their words and questions alien to Jasen’s ears.

  “What do we do?” Jasen muttered to Alixa.

  She was shivering too. Bent low on knees, her hair stuck to her face, braids glued to the fabric of her dress. The ocean had washed away some but by no means all of the mud and grime that coated her skin and clothing, and grains of sand flecked her face where the sea hadn’t touched.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Scourgey whined, to Alixa’s right. The hairless beast cowered as low as it would go against the wooden decking.

  The men arrayed on the deck conversed—and then they parted, talk stifling. To both sides, Jasen saw, were decks raised above this one, to the front and rear of the ship. Though obscured by tall masts and by the men who’d pulled them from the sea, Jasen glimpsed lights through windows built into the deck. A door had opened, and through it came a man whose presence was imposing, strong—yet as he strode across the deck, he did not tower over any of his men. Indeed, several of the largest were a half head taller than him, built more powerfully than he, frames larger. They deferred to him nevertheless, quieting in his wake.

  Dressed in a snugly tightened tunic fashioned of the same square of swaddling, patterned cloth, and trousers of banded crimson, his steps through the crowd were calm, measured, and strong. Cords of muscle stood out on his neck and forearms. Hair shorn short drew to a widow’s peak above dark eyes flecked with light spots, like white pebbles embedded in earth.

  He asked a question, or perhaps gave an order, to someone he passed, a shorter man with a thin strip of fabric tied around his forehead. Whatever he had said, the man responded, and the crimson-dressed man’s eyes found their way to Jasen, Alixa, and Scourgey.

  Jasen drew a suffocated breath.

  These men were not friendly.

  The crowd parted, and the man in crimson approached until he was maybe four feet shy of where Jasen and Alixa cowered.

  “Tanok-to?” he said.

  Jasen stared. Any words once in his throat had evaporated.

  “Cebrahna?”

  A man with a short beard fashioned into three braids with single beads at the end rattled off a quick flurry of incomprehensible syllables.

  Jasen swallowed against the lump in his throat. His eyes cast about spastically, for—what? A weapon, was his first thought … but he and Alixa were vastly outnumbered, and exhausted, so what hope did they have against new foes? Scourgey was their best chance, if these men grabbed out for him and Alixa. Yet Scourgey was whimpering like a kicked dog.

  Jasen glanced rearward. Another five, six feet between him and Alixa, and the edge of the ship.

  If it came to it …

  “Do you speak?” the man asked.

  Jasen’s heart skipped. Eyes bugging, he stared, mouth open.

  Those were words he recognized, his language. Not perfectly formed; they were a little heavy on the consonants, and gravelly speech made it sound almost harsh. But they could communicate.

  “Who are you?” Alixa asked, for Jasen still had not summoned back his voice.

  The crimson-dressed man peered at her with stony, assessing eyes for a long time.

  Then he said, “I am Shipmaster Burund.”

  Someone behind him said something, or asked; Burund answered in their language without looking away from Alixa. He spoke quicker in that one. Then he asked, “And what do you call yourself?”

  “A-Alixa,” she stammered.

&
nbsp; “Alixa,” he repeated: Ah-lix-ah.

  His gaze turned back to Jasen.

  Had he blinked yet? Even once?

  “And you?” he asked.

  A lump settled in Jasen’s throat. He swallowed against it—click. “Jasen,” he whispered; Burund’s stare permitted no further volume.

  “Jasen,” Burund repeated.

  Jasen nodded. And then, suddenly, he added, “Rabinn. My name is Jasen Rabinn.” It was deathly important that Burund know, that all these men knew, whoever they were: Jasen was a Rabinn, still, and always.

  “Jasen Rabinn,” Burund said slowly. His lips rolled over the name. A little too much tooth showed as he spoke, like he drew back his mouth as if it would free the words more cleanly from his throat. “Alixa.”

  “Weltan,” she put in.

  “Alixa Weltan,” Burund said.

  More chatter from the men on deck, a few at once this time. Burund answered in staccato bursts, nary taking his eyes from Jasen and Alixa. Not one glance was spared for Scourgey. For that, Jasen was perhaps glad: the crippling effect of Burund’s look would surely extract a more noisome, frightened clamor than her present mewling.

  Jasen tugged Alixa’s sodden sleeve.

  “What do we do?” he mouthed.

  Alixa shook her head: I don’t know. Dark bags hung beneath her eyes. Though the night was dark, lit torches upon the deck, and that orange glow from the windows farther up, threw her pallor into stark relief. Wide eyes, a yellowish-white in this light, compounded the contrast. She looked ill, terrified, or perhaps both.

  Burund snapped something—and Jasen and Alixa jerked back around to him.

  He brought his attention to the children.

  Forward a step.

  Another.

  Jasen’s chest seized. He inched backward, fingers twisting into claws against the wood under his knees—

  Burund knelt, down right to eye level.

  Their gazes held—this dark-skinned man from across the sea, whose face was a mask of angles, whose body was thick with hard muscle, and whose eyes could bore a hole into the hardest stone; and Jasen Rabinn, whose body had given all it could give and still he asked more of it, whose home had been razed from the earth, and who, here, perhaps mere hours after escaping a shoreline of scourge, needed to fight for an empty survival again, survival he only wished for because that was what the living did: they fought to keep on living.

  He prepared a clawed fist, to scratch and gouge.

  Burund’s lips parted.

  “Hello,” he said quietly, “Jasen Rabinn and Alixa Weltan. Welcome to my ship. We are friends.”

  Friends?

  The word did not parse, getting stuck in the barely turning cogs of Jasen’s mind.

  “Who are you?” Alixa asked again.

  He looked at her plainly. “Shipmaster Burund. And these are my crew.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Many places.”

  “I hear we’ve visitors.”

  The voice came from behind. Burund turned to see, between another parting, a more elaborately dressed man, whose pea green tunic was fashioned into overlapping layers. The undersides were lined in dark, opposing colors; flashes of purple, orange, red.

  His skin was a shade lighter than his comrades. He was longer-haired. Curly, it was arranged into what looked like tresses, one coming down each side of his head at the back. Beads held them together, wooden and gaudily painted, wider than Jasen’s wrists. Middle age had crept in to him: the frail light-licked hairs starting their turn to grey in a few places. Crow’s feet radiated from the corners of his eyes.

  “Interesting piece of flotsam you’ve pulled out of the sea, Shipmaster,” he said. He came to the fore. He stepped quicker than Burund had, his bootsteps clipped.

  Reaching Burund’s elbow, he fixed Alixa and Jasen with a smile that was miles too wide. “G’d evening, little ones.” He bowed. “My, my. Did you want for a nighttime dip?” And then he threw his head back and laughed heartily, a great, heaving belly laugh, like it was the funniest joke he had ever heard in his life.

  Jasen stared.

  Alixa, on his right, stared too.

  Shipmaster Burund’s expression was difficult to read. Momentarily, he watched this new man sidelong, before resuming his intense stare at Jasen and Alixa.

  “Are you thirsty?” he asked.

  “Thirsty?” the other man hooted. “You just pulled them out of all the water they could ever dream of, Shipmaster!” And once more his head went back, and he bellowed a laugh to the darkening skies.

  The ship rocked.

  “Who—” Alixa began.

  “Kuura,” Burund introduced, looking up at the laughing man rather than pointing. “He is a mad man.”

  “Aye, well, now that is true.” Kuura calmed immediately, looking somber and nodding.

  Jasen stared.

  All cognitive ability had left him now. All he could do was exist as a shell, watching through eyes a thousand miles away, as the evening grew steadily more …

  “Unhinged,” Kuura put in, as if reading Jasen’s thoughts, and it jarred him into a jerky lurch that went ignored by Kuura and Burund both. “Deranged. A loon. What other words are there for it in Luukessian?” He pondered for only a second. “Not enough. Ah, but in Coricuanthian—we have a wonderful word,” he said to Jasen earnestly. “Bannock-tahhi.” He seemed not to speak the word with his mouth, but his entire face. “It means …”

  Burund held up a hand. Kuura’s lips stilled.

  “Aye, well, I s’pose you’ve not the interest in hearing it at the moment.”

  “Forgive my first mate,” said Burund to Jasen and Alixa. He added not what they should forgive Kuura for, precisely, and in his rundown and befuddled state, Jasen could not comprehend what Burund meant. So he settled for only a wide-eyed nod in reply.

  Burund pivoted on his heel. It was the slightest of motions, yet simultaneously enough to swing him around from Jasen, allowing those deep, dark eyes to settle upon Alixa.

  The intensity of his gaze had much the same effect on her as it did on Jasen, apparently, for Kuura tipped his chin at her and said, “You c’n stop shaking, girl. You’re safe here.”

  “Wh-who are you?” The stammer quaked her body for a short moment. Then, as if remembering herself—or perhaps some reprimand from Shilara for her fear at some point in the days prior—she took a steadying breath, and inflated her little chest. Still little, but her shoulders squared. She could not oppose even the weakest of these men, yet the set of her frame dared them to think otherwise.

  “Where have you come from?” she asked.

  “Many places,” Burund answered.

  “You’ve said so before. Where exactly—”

  “We sail from Arkaria.”

  Arkaria. The name rung a distant bell in Jasen’s mind.

  A full second later, he realized: that was what he’d heard people call the continent to the west. And these men hailed from its lands?

  The mental fog that had slowed Jasen’s comprehension had also removed him from the exchange occurring upon the deck right and in front of him. He tuned back in to the tail end of another question from Alixa: “… boat doing here?”

  “Investigating,” said Burund plainly.

  Alixa’s eyebrows twitched down. “Investigating what?”

  Kuura squawked a laugh, distinctly birdlike this time. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

  Someone asked him something in a consonant-heavy lilt. He answered it quickly, then said, “So sorry. What a mad question. Is your head fully connected to those shoulders?”

  “Kuura,” Burund said over his shoulder. And though his voice had barely changed from the somewhat simple tone he adopted, Jasen believed he could detect the slightest hint of warning.

  If Jasen could pick it out already, Kuura’s ears must be attuned to it, for he fell silent.

  Burund swiveled carefully back toward Jasen and Alixa. Quiet, for long moments … only
it was broken by the whimper of Scourgey, her claws scratching against the deck as they rattled back and forth with her fearful vibrating.

  A wave broke against the ship’s edge. The mainsail puffed out, filled with a breath of salty air. It tilted the ship sideways, carrying it farther out to sea.

  Someone murmured. A few voices joined—agreeing, perhaps, or mumbling some assent to whatever had been said.

  “We witnessed a cataclysm many miles from here,” said Burund. His eyes moved between Jasen and Alixa in turn, smooth, slow. “The mountains glowed with fire, and the sky was streaked with smoke. You know this, yes?”

  Alixa swallowed hard. She glanced to Jasen—and then back, behind and over the ship’s edge, where Luukessia continued to shrink. The sky had faded down almost to black now, and much of the sea rendered invisible. That faint line of sandy white had faded out of sight … or maybe it had just receded so far as to be pressed invisibly thin, as the winds had picked up and already, in this short time, pulled the ship even farther out to sea. Why, Jasen could reach out and blot out the lands he had called home his whole life with one palm.

  However dark the night grew, though, Jasen and Alixa would not lose sight of Luukessia. The cratered mountain—or the remainder of it, cleaved open—glowed with hot fire, a beacon that was impossible to miss.

  Laying eyes on it hollowed Jasen’s stomach, filled his mouth with bitter taste.

  “We know it,” said Alixa. “We just came from there.”

  Quiet.

  When Jasen turned back, Burund was looking at them with wide eyes under low eyebrows, and a forehead full of lines.

  Kuura’s expression was not much different.

  Someone on the deck asked a question.

  When there was no answer, a volley of others followed.

  Burund snapped a quick, two-syllable response.

  The chatter ceased.

  Burund shifted on his feet. Leaning forward, past Jasen—the boy was forgotten now, all but background—he brought himself to within some eight, ten inches of Alixa.

  She swallowed again, the movement of her throat visible in the glow from the decks. Yet she held her ground.