David Weber - The Road to Hell

A boat ride across to the mainland was easy to cadge at the docks, with half the local fishermen falling over themselves to offer him a trip across. Drindel accepted the one with the largest boat and seated himself carefully in the center of the vessel. He hated being on the water. He always tried to blank his mind as much as possible to reduce the chance of even the smallest tendril of his Talent squeezing out. It was just that he wasn’t always successful.

This trip across was uneventful, for which Drindel thanked Heaven most fervently, but only in the confines of his own heart.

Outwardly, he took care to pose as if he’d known exactly what went on beneath the surface of the waves and had all the ocean’s mysteries under his complete dominion.

The truth, Drindel had to acknowledge, if only to himself, was something significantly less comforting. He could call sharks, all kinds of sharks and especially the biggest of the white ones. And the sharks would come great distances for him, even without enough food and without the energy to do more than wash up dead on the beaches once they arrived.

But they would come. He just couldn’t direct them to do a single thing once they arrived. And deep down Drindel wondered if they didn’t all come in hopes of finally getting a bite of him, snapping him in half with those great teeth, and tearing out mouthfuls of his liver and lungs. Those open jaws seemed like they would do anything to stop the compulsion to come, to follow, to swim to wherever he was.

The compulsions he couldn’t find a way to stop sending. Drand had said the Talent could be controlled with mental exercise and should be expanded only most carefully after control was proven. The work of control had hurt and left him exhausted, though, and Drindel was now sure it had been no more than a trick his father had played on him. There was certainly no pain and exhaustion in expanding the summons! When Drindel unfurled his Talent, it felt like Arcunas Himself had descended from the Heavens to kiss his brow.

The euphoria was better than anything. In fact, Drindel couldn’t stop calling, at least softly, even if he wanted to. And he wasn’t sure he could imagine ever wanting to stop. It wasn’t like the sharks should really mind. They were cold, wet, and heartless creatures.

The biggest ones would just eat the smaller ones he’d also called, so Drindel didn’t feel like he really starved them all that often. It wasn’t fair of them to blame him for anything, if indeed they did want to eat him.

The qualms he sometimes felt were just echoes of the foolish things Drand had said about the sea needing its balance.

But Drindel did have the nightmares. At the frazzled edges of the euphoria, where he couldn’t tell real from phantasm, he sometimes saw his father. The Drand in those fever dreams wore the body of a great shark with a pale grey, almost white, skin, and it swam from sea to sea, looking for him.

That one couldn’t possibly be real. But Drindel was careful never to embark on too small a boat or come too close to the side of a larger vessel. Starving sharks could do quite a lot to get at meat. Especially if his Talent let the flare of the Call get too loud.

Fortunately, this time he was summoned to Othmaliz, to the City of Tajvana, and that meant no more boats. Safe inland travel would bless him all the way to Tajvana’s magnificent confluence of seas.

* * *

Drindel Usar picked up a tourist packet at a train station hub during the transfer to the morning train that would take him most of the rest of the way to Tajvana. From the pictures, Tajvana was a massive place.

He couldn’t actually read much of the descriptions that went with the pictures, but the pictures were really all he needed to know. His orders always came in a code he’d been suffered to learn along with the basics of his letters.

Uromathia did not abide ineptitude in its servants.

But when Drindel hadn’t wanted to learn more, he’d been allowed to stop his studies there. The Service instructor might have called him a fool to his face and spat at him for quitting, but what did he know?

The instructor’s slight Talent in Mind Healing had been applied, quite properly in Drindel’s opinion, to easing the challenge of code-based studies. That hardly made the man qualified to judge the value of the supposed literacy he also wanted to teach!

The instructor had never even seen an ocean, nor, after a disdainful look at Drindel, expressed any interest in visiting one.

Maman always said that if a thing actually mattered, everyone would be talking about it anyway, so there was no need to hurt your head learning to puzzle out words on a paper.

Drindel bent his thoughts to his work in Tajvana. It was a city built for sea-borne commerce: oceans to the north, oceans to the south, a twisting strait connecting them, and inlets scattered nearly everywhere. Water meant sharks. Perhaps not the biggest, and perhaps not all the species of sharks, but there would be at least a few waiting for him and he’d Call more.

The fear in his stomach eased a bit. This might be a simple assignment after all.

He boarded his train and eased into a comfortable seat. A quick riffle through his luggage produced a pleasant breakfast from Maman’s parcel, and he leaned back and let his Talent go. Perhaps some sharks would try to fight up riverways until the lack of food and heavy currents forced them back. He didn’t care. It felt too good.

Around lunchtime, Drindel finally tapered back on his Talent and dug into Maman’s sack for more food. There was salted fish and the good thick bread she did best. He chewed with pleasure.

Perhaps the Tajvana job would rank among his favorites too.

It couldn’t be the best though. Surely nothing could ever top that ocean prison with the very efficient warden. Drindel had only had to really work to Call the sharks for a few days. After that the warden used the condemned prisoners to keep Drindel’s listeners used to legged prey. Well-fed sharks stayed and fed even better any time an escape was attempted.

If Drindel could stand just on this side of Tajvana’s strait and not need to cross over while Calling, it would be an entirely safe job. It’d be just like the way he’d stood on the nice rocky beach mainland while Calling every great monster he could to that island prison. The shoals and reefs were surely bare of other fish by now, but if the warden had kept his word those sharks still weren’t hungry.

Yes, that’d be good. Drindel promised himself he’d find a way not to get on a boat at all this time. Maybe there’d even be a big crowd. Some mass of people to get bitten, tasted, and spat back out-where it didn’t matter who died and who didn’t. I could just Call, fill the beach waters with fins, and walk away.

Or the people could be on boats even. Big sharks could overturn boats, and skiffs for sure. Maybe even some smallish ships if the sharks’re really hungry and the big big ones.

Swimmers’re always easy, but how do I get ’em in the water after a Call? Unless it was night…

Drindel pondered some more, trying to guess who his targets might be.

The instructions in the orders this time were odd. He was to present himself as a new acolyte for a religious sect and follow whatever directions they gave him. The Order of Bergahl. The tourist packet had a picture of a robed man wearing cloth-of-gold with the letters matching the sect’s name included in its caption. He might be the boss. Drindel shrugged to himself. If he was, someone would say so.

Drindel opened up the last packet from Maman and had a nice sandwich.

December 29

The Seneschal of Othmaliz stood breathing in the incense, listening to the majestic music of organ and woodwinds, and the bathed in the glorious polychromatic chiaroscuro light pouring in through the Temple of Taiyr’s stained glass dome and managed-somehow-not to curse.