Pathway - Chapter 219

“That’s when you came to WaterWay?”

“Not at first. I wandered a little, busied my hands at different jobs before I ended up in WaterWay. But the Cradle.” Chang Chang shook her head. “They’d never seen a dwarf woman pretty as me who could fight as hard as the boys they bet their coin on.”

Chang Chang smiled at Chang Chang’s pleased expression. “No one ever tried to make you grow a beard?”

“And they know better than to touch my hair,” Chang Chang said.

In the distance, Chang Chang could see the behemoth outline of Ferryman’s Haven. Wraiths circled in an endless dance in the water, occasionally swirling up to curl their bodies sinuously around the broken masts of the inverted ship.

The leviathan’s bones twined seamlessly with the rotting greatship. There was no flesh left to suggest what the creature might have looked like in its original form, but the thought of it driving the massive ship straight into the air was boggling. The leviathan’s remains kept the Ferryman from plunging into the deep by sheer force of an old will, a need beyond death to remain locked in battle.

Chang Chang looked unimpressed by the sight. “How you thinking of getting past them?” she asked, nodding at the wraiths.

Chang Chang closed her eyes. She hummed the familiar ballad to brace herself against the magic. The lost boy, trying to find his way home. She didn’t look at Ju Feng to see his reaction to the song. She couldn’t let herself be distracted.

“Find a path into the wreckage,” Chang Chang instructed them. She reached into her pouch for foci, careful this time to make sure they were the correct objects. “When the wraiths scatter, make for it with all possible speed.”

Chang Chang snorted. “They’re not just going to let us glide in—”

“Quiet,” Ju Feng said. “Let her work.”

Help me, Nelzun, Chang Chang thought. The raft drifted closer. One by one, the wraiths slowed their restless circling. They sensed a change in the chaotic usualness of their domain and turned their attention to the small raft and its three distinctly human occupants.

Chang Chang finished the spell and threw her arms into the air. She released a handful of coin-sized stones, three in each hand. They soared high and burst into orange flame. She pictured them in her mind, the wild, soaring orbs, pulsing with arcane energy.

To the wraiths, arcane energy released from a body steeped in spellplague was like a bone cast in the path of starving dogs. Their bodies glowed in concert with the flames. They streaked after the orbs in clusters of three and four, leaving a clear path between the only three living souls on the water and a cavernous hole snugged between the wrecked Ferryman and the leviathan’s bones.

The raft drifted up to a slash of sail draped across the upper half of the opening. Ju Feng pushed it aside with his oar. He maneuvered the raft between hull and rib and they floated on, into the Haven.

Cerest listened to Tau’s report in fascination. “You’re certain it’s only the three of them?” he said. Trik looked uncomfortable. Cerest narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry for the loss of Borion, but if you’re lying, it won’t go badly for just me. We’ve lost Guani and Dangong.”

Tau’s eyes bugged out and he half-swayed on his feet. “How?”

“Saragui’s guards,” Cerest said. “They caught them just after we split up. I underestimated their loyalty. But don’t worry, Feston is safe. He’s gone to get three more of your fellows to aid us.”

“Six of us,” Trik murmured. “Six of us against three of them.”

“More than passable odds, if Chang Chang is willing to cooperate.”

Tau shook his head. He looked at Cerest in a way that made the elf’s skin prickle with anger—disgust swimming in pity. But Tau wasn’t looking at the elf’s scars.

“You go find her on your own,” he said. “Take the others if you want. Hells, they’ll all fight ’til they’re dead, if there’s coin in it.”

He turned away, the torchlight burning his profile orange.

“Don’t you want revenge?” Cerest asked him. “They killed your friend.”

“And I killed hers, or near enough,” Tau said. “I’m out of it.”

Cerest watched the man walk away. It didn’t affect him the way it had when the Locks had left him. He felt nothing now, not in light of what Trik had told him about Chang Chang.

He’d finally worn her down. She was coming to him, and she was coming angry. He would have to fight to bring her to heel, but he wasn’t worried about that. He would have the upper hand, because he had the truth Chang Chang wanted.

All he had to do was make her give up everything to get it.

Ju Feng’s lantern flickered and went out. Chang Chang started to cast a light spell when she felt Ju Feng’s hand on her arm.

She knew it was him by the cool touch of leather.

“Save your strength,” he said. “I’ll get the lantern going. Ruo, keep rowing.”

The dwarf grunted acknowledgment. Ju Feng moved away in the darkness. Chang Chang could only assume he was feeling his way.

She tried to get a sense of the interior of the Haven by the moonlight filtering through the gaps in the rigging, but the sheer bulk of the vessel and bones prevented much detail from being discernible. The structures had massed together in one hive shape, eclipsing all the individual parts.

The raft bumped against something solid about the same time Ju Feng got the lantern lit. Chang Chang thought it was debris floating in the water. It took her a breath to realize that it was a boot, propped against the front of the raft. The boot’s owner floated six inches above the water.

Chang Chang looked up into the most frightening collage of a human face she had ever beheld. Naked above the waist, the man’s torso and shoulders were disproportionately wide. Veins and bone bulges stood out from his pale skin.

Thin patches of hair grew like scrub grass all over his head. His bottom lip folded over on itself in one corner, giving him a perpetual sneer and allowing a stream of drool to escape from his mouth in a needle-thin waterfall. This type of deformity, the godscurse, Chang Chang had seen before. But the gods weren’t done with their jest at this poor soul’s expense.

From the man’s neck sprouted a quartet of bulbous gray tentacles. He had them draped across his shoulders like a mane that ended at his belt. The tentacles were moving, seemingly independent of any conscious mental direction on their owner’s part.

With his boot on the raft, the man brought forward a long polearm, its tip reaching well above his head. He swung the point down level with her chest. His arm muscles tensed. Chang Chang thought he was going to drive the weapon through her breast, but instead, he let out a keening whistle that threatened to shatter her eardrums.

Chang Chang folded into herself, clutching her head against the high-pitched whistle. When it was over, she noticed Chang Chang and Ju Feng had adopted similar protective positions.

“We mean no harm here,” Chang Chang said shakily. “We came here for refuge—”

A howling cry echoed from somewhere deep in the inverted Ferryman, cutting off Chang Chang’s words. It rose in intensity, so that it mimicked the man’s whistle perfectly. The sound rang out again, nearer, and with it came clicks and rapid pounding on wood.

“Get the oars up!” Ju Feng shouted. Chang Chang was already hauling hers out of the water.

Ju Feng ran past Chang Chang and swung his oar. He batted the man’s polearm away from her chest and reversed the swing for a swipe at the man’s legs.

The deformed man backed off, blocking Ju Feng’s swing with his polearm, but he made no further move to fight back. He smiled, and the expression was horrid, his lips curling like worms around uneven rows of teeth.

Ju Feng plunged the oar into the water, trying to push them away from the Ferryman.

“Beware!” Chang Chang cried, pointing to the ship. Pinpoints of light were visible from a gap in the hull. There came another howl, and a breath later, two enormous bodies leaped through the opening. In size and movement they resembled stags, but their faces were a cross between canine and badger. They launched into the air using massive haunches, one and then the other landing on the small raft.

The stink of rotting flesh and gamey fur swelled in Chang Chang’s nostrils. Their craft was not big enough to contain the beasts. Chang Chang fell to her knees to avoid being slammed off the raft by the weight of the furry bodies.

The beast farthest from her whipped its head around, catching Chang Chang by the leg. She fell on her backside. The beast shook her like a playtime doll, and for the first time Chang Chang heard the dwarf woman scream. Terror widened her eyes, but she fought back, and folded her body up to get at the beast’s head.

It lifted her by her leg and swung her, tossing its head and snarling. On the second backswing Chang Chang grabbed her belt dagger and planted it beneath the beast’s eyes. She missed its burning orb by half an inch.

The beast keened and snapped its head down. The knife came out of its flesh. It bit the blade in half, nearly severing Chang Chang’s fingers too. The dwarf woman dropped the ruined weapon. Her skull smacked the raft, and she went senseless.