Iryana shrugged. “You bear a strange kind of generosity. You’ll rob this memory to prevent other men from doing so. You rescue me from a slaver’s block so that I can be your slave.”
Corin suppressed his first response and shrugged instead. “Wicked as I am, I make a better steward of precious things than the men whom I oppose. But if you chafe so much at my authority, I set you free. Turn and run. Now. If I end in chains, you will not much enjoy the hospitality of the ones who take my place.”
“I have known little enough of hospitality in my time,” she said. “I will find my own way free.”
“Please,” he said, serious at last. “Don’t underestimate what they could do.”
She cocked her head and stared at him with a crooked smile. “I just said these things to you.”
“But I am their captain.”
“And I am just a slave. Why do you care so much for my destiny?”
“I learned to sail from a man who’d fled his chains,” Corin said. “But more than that, I grew up in the streets of rich Ithale. I have seen the sins of my people. I come from a land that would make slaves of all men, and that has borne in me a certain sympathy for those who suffer.”
“Such nobility from a thief!”
“It isn’t hard. The only ones with anything to steal are those who own the chains.”
Iryana narrowed her eyes. “On the sea, perhaps. But here? All you take from here will be the memories of these wretched tribes.”
“As I said before, I’m only here to challenge those who will come after.”
“It isn’t easy to believe. A thousand years your people have not disturbed this place. Perhaps you learned some secret, but why should I suspect there would be others?”
“I could offer you their names. I found the map that led me here on some nobleman’s spoiled son. I learned the secrets of this place in the library at Rikkeborh. Trust my word, the Godlanders were coming to this place. I merely won the race.”
“So many answers,” she said. “And never hesitation.”
“It is the one thing I cannot afford.”
She shook her head and met his eyes. “Then tell me this: What will you do if I refuse?”
“I’ll ask again.”
She laughed, but there was bitterness in it. “Ethan Blake would have me beaten.”
“Ethan Blake would slit your throat,” Corin said. “He has no love for slaves at all.”
“Then he would leave here empty-handed. There is no way to enter Jezeeli without my aid, so—”
Corin shook his head, cutting her off. Then, without saying a word, he extended one arm back the way they’d come, pointing at the huge bronze cannons.
Iryana gasped. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“He would,” Corin said, a touch of sadness in his voice. “And I would, too, to keep that treasure out of the hands of some greedy lord.”
“You would fire on the forgotten city?”
“I would blast a way through solid stone and pray it didn’t do too much damage to the treasure buried on the other side.”
“It is not a treasure hoard. It is a sacred place.”
“Then let me in. Open the way for me, show me a chamber full of sadness and regret, and we will leave this place forever. Refuse, and you can see how much destructive power those things hold.”
Corin watched a tear spill down her dusky cheek, but in the end she nodded.
“Good.” He breathed a sigh and took her arm. “I’m glad to hear it’s settled. Because unless I miss my guess, the boys are back.”
Corin turned again, looking past the cannons this time. The horizon beyond the valley’s mouth was now a rolling cloud of dust, and beneath that backdrop marched an army of weary pirates. Ethan Blake came along at their head, and he looked angry.
Corin shook his head. “And I do
not
want Blake to have to use the cannon.”
“Beware that man,” Iryana whispered.
“Get to your tent.”
“I thought you needed me.”
Corin glanced her way. She looked prepared to go to battle. Her jaw was clenched, her hands in fists, and there was murder in her eyes. Corin sighed.
“Wait for me at your tent,” he said. “I’ll need you soon enough. But there is still some work to do.”
She hesitated, still intent on arguing, but Corin turned away to watch Blake’s approach. Still she lingered for a moment, but then she surrendered with a huff and Corin felt a small relief as he heard her footsteps receding across the sand.
He’d risked too much, rescuing her. And he had won no great victory in compelling her to open the gate for him. But she’d become entangled in this plot, and she was his responsibility. He couldn’t leave her to the traders, and he certainly couldn’t leave her to Blake’s care. Even if it had to be against her wishes, he’d see her safely on the other side of this affair, and likely with a fortune to pass on to her granddaughters. All he had left to do was end this strange adventure.
But as Corin watched the furious approach of his first mate, he remembered Iryana’s warnings concerning the man. Blake was pompous, reckless, and ruthless. Corin had no love for his first mate, but there were those among his crew—among any pirate crew, even Old Grim’s—who spoke no other language than violence. It had been useful to keep Ethan Blake around to manage those.
But like a gale-force wind, Blake’s power could prove difficult to harness. The only respect Corin had ever won from the man had come from shows of power. Perhaps taking the camel had been a step too far, but the card had been played. Corin didn’t dare back down. Not against so cutthroat an opponent. The only way forward was to raise the ante. The captain met his first mate’s glare, unconcerned, and when Blake finally stormed to a stop before him, Corin frowned. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,
Captain
. All the men are tired.” He glanced over his shoulder. “How long will you make us toil in this senseless pursuit?”
Corin kept his gaze locked with Blake’s, but he raised his voice. “Not much longer. Not at all. But right now, you all have important work to do!”
Corin’s deckhands obeyed the order, murmuring their assent as they flowed past Corin and Blake toward the pit they’d carved from the valley’s floor.
“Strange reward for victors returning from battle,” Blake said.
“It was not
meant
to be a battle,” Corin said. “Just a minor skirmish. How much blood was spilled?”
“Not enough. Not near enough. You should have let us kill them all. And then, after depriving us that natural right, after miles of trek across the open desert, you send us all straight back to our labor?”
“We all want to be finished with this business, Blake. We are so close. There may be grumbling—and rightly so—but they are good hands.”
“If you’re so anxious to be done, why waste a day of work to steal one rebellious slave back from the sheiks?”
“I have told you before, we need her magic—”
“There is no magic among these people and plenty in the cannons.”
Corin shook his head. “Some tasks require a more delicate hand.”
Blake sighed and shook his head. “Those are not the right tasks for pirates. Everything about this venture is wrong. We should return to the ships. I’m not the only one saying it.”
Corin nodded toward the men. “They will serve me for a while yet. Sand or sea, they’re all hard workers.”
“They’re ready to be out of here,” Blake snapped back. “I am, too, if it comes to that.”
Corin didn’t meet his eyes. “Are you sure of that, Blake? Are you in such a hurry to get back to the ship?” The first mate was already nodding, but Corin went on. “Back to
my
ship?”
That stopped him. The mouth worked, but Blake made no words. A cruel smile tugged at Corin’s lips, but after a moment he relented and climbed to his feet. “You’ll have your own command soon enough.” He clapped his first mate on the back. “That’s why you followed me a hundred miles from the shore, right?”
“I followed you because you’re my captain,” Blake said hurriedly.
Corin’s mouth twitched with the same dark smile. “Of course.”
He shaded his eyes and looked across the narrow valley to the far wall, where his men worked industriously at the base of the sun-seared cliffs. The huge carved figures of men and gods looked down on them, patiently watching while a hundred lawless sailors dug a path through years of rubble. There had to be a door beneath it all. There had to be.
Just then he heard the shout. He saw the excited face of a messenger hurrying their way, and a smile split his face.
“Iryana!” he called toward the girl’s tent. “I need you now!” As soon as he heard her grumbling approach, he clapped his first mate on the back. “Now! Let’s see if we can find enough gold so you won’t have to tell those lies anymore.”
Across the narrow valley floor, a towering cliff face glowed almost golden in the desert sun. The soft stone was carved with nearly human figures that towered hundreds of paces high. Iryana grumbled disapproval as she caught up with Corin beneath the timeworn faces’ demanding gazes.
The air felt hot as a blacksmith’s forge, but Corin did his best to ignore it as he hurried ahead of his first mate across the narrow valley. There a path had been dug into the settled sand and stone of the valley’s floor, and Corin followed the path down until the loose walls of excavated earth loomed on either side.
Then suddenly the wall on his right opened out onto a wide pit, taller than a man and nearly forty paces across as it crawled along the base of the huge cliffs. The air might have been cooler here, trapped in a little box of shade, but it was crowded with the stink of men at work.
Corin saw Blake’s lip curl at the smell. The pirate captain shook his head. An end of their arduous journey, and the man could still object to the stench. Corin sighed and fixed his eyes on the sandstone doors now revealed at the far end of the excavation. Thrice as tall as a man, they curled in a wide, pointed arch that looked more like an ironwork gate than a door into a mountainside.
That thought dragged his eyes back left, along the wide strip of rock his men had needlessly unearthed. The same pattern marked the stone all the way down and plunged behind the soft earth embankment to the left—not a gateway here, but a barred wall, a huge iron gate etched in solid stone. And it was not the crude work of ancients, as it should have been. It looked light and delicate, almost living, like the finest masterwork outside one of the great houses in rich Ithale. Corin chewed his lip as he considered it. So many mysteries, even after all these years of searching. Excitement burned within him at the thought of all the answers he might find behind these timeworn cliffs.
At his side, Blake was evaluating the stonework, too. “Huh,” he said. His sharp chin stabbed toward one of the carved figures high above the uncovered gateway. “So this is truly your Oberon after all?”
For just a moment, Corin clenched his jaw to still a sarcastic response. He took a long, slow breath, then forced a smile. “So it would seem.”
Blake shook his head. “I thought the slave girl was only humoring you. I’ve certainly never heard of him or seen his likeness.”
Iryana shook her head. “The Godlanders have truly forgotten Oberon?”
Blake shrugged. “Little worth remembering. Stooped and old. He looks a fool to me.”
Friendly
, Corin thought.
Not foolish. Friendly.
There was no room for the distinction in the first mate’s head, but Corin had learned his trade at the feet of Old Grim. There was no sailor on the sea more vicious, more brutal, more feared than dark Old Grim. But to his friends, there was no one more friendly, more measured, more insightful.
The face that both men considered now was barely more than a shadow on the stone, ten paces wide and fifty paces up a sheer cliff. But they had been here for weeks now, living beneath the unblinking eyes of those faded faces, and now they were all familiar.
There were others with their own features. Hundreds, probably, stretching far to the left and right. This was near the center of the range, if not the precise center, and there to the left, where the excavation had begun, was another towering figure, his feet carved in and eroded away some short distance above the delicate tracery of the long-buried gate.
That figure did look familiar. Carved in crude lines far more fitting to their age and worn thin by the sleeting sand that blew on the sun-scorched wind, still, it was recognizable. Familiar. It was the towering, powerful figure of the mighty Ephitel, tyrant god of all Ithale. Corin didn’t like to look at him.
“It just seemed so unlikely,” Blake said. Corin caught the motion as his first mate glanced sideways at him. “This far from the world. Buried under a century of sand—”
Corin cut in quietly. “Ten centuries, at least.”
Blake shrugged in disinterest. “The treasure at the heart of stars, you said.”
“The power,” Corin corrected again.
Blake ignored him, eyes aglow as he stared at the image of a god. “The wealth that made the nations of our world.”
“Understanding,” Corin said. “Or it might have been ‘magic.’ The translation is difficult.”
“The knowing,” whispered Iryana. “There is magic in knowing.”
Still the first mate went on, unheeding. “Such a treasure, so long lost. It seemed a child’s story, until you showed us these faces in the middle of nowhere. And then to claim this sad old elder was the guardian of it all.”
Corin pressed his lips together in frustration for a moment. “You’d be amazed what two hard years of serious study might reveal.”
Blake looked over at him for the first time. After a moment he laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t really believe a word of it. All this time…I was certain you were mad.”
The corners of Corin’s mouth quirked up, but there was no softness in his eyes. “But the pay was so good.”
Blake nodded. “For that much royal silver, the men would have built you a castle from this miserable sand.”
“And yet, in the end, I was not such a fool after all.” Corin turned on his heel and started across the excavated pit. His men were gathered in a half circle around it, watching with quiet interest as their captain and first mate led the exotic local toward the stone-carved gateway. Corin saw nervous glances skitter toward the door from time to time before snapping back to him. He frowned.
“There will be fortunes after all,” Blake said, oblivious to the nervousness among the crew.
Corin noticed a spring in the first mate’s shiny-buckled step. But he wasted no time on Blake’s wretched priorities. He fixed his attention on the doors, the gateway carved in stone. It was certainly a portal. Not just a decorative carving, but a passage into the mountain’s interior. The legends had been clear on that, but it was apparent here, too.