The Dark Defiles Read Online Free PDF

again. Below her, the Helmsman Anasharal spindled about and bumped up a couple more of the companionway steps. Its weighty iron carapace clanked dully on the wood, its underfolded limbs twitched feebly about. As ever, it looked and moved like a crippled giant crab.
    And talked like an exasperated schoolmaster.
    “Krinzanz has clouded your judgment.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She took a turn of rope about her forearm, set her boot against the hatch frame, and leaned her weight steadily backward. She’d run the rope over the top strut of the companionway rail and then under the rail itself to create a makeshift pulley. Now the cabled hemp came slithering round the polished wood rail at really a quite promising speed. She staggered backward, semicontrolled. Anasharal came up again, a solid yard this time. Whatever krinzanz was or was not doing to her judgment, it ran in her muscles like liquid rage.
    “You are going to regret this.”
    “Doubt it.” Words bitten off, she was panting hard from the exertion. “This is … the best fucking idea … I’ve had in months. ”
    Another savage tug backward on the last word and she made three more steps across the deck, away from the hatch at a tight angle that kept the rope pulleyed around that strut. Damp gray daylight, and the cold wrap of drizzle across her face. Summer in the Hironish. If the sun was up there somewhere, you’d never have known it. The rail was beginning to warp visibly with Anasharal’s weight, but there was a krinzanz certainty in her head that said it would hold, if she could just … 
    Knees bent almost to sitting, Archeth dropped her weight near the deck to stop her feet slipping on the rain-greased timbers. She heaved backward, felt the throb of a krin-elevated pulse in her neck as she strained. The companionway was built amidships and equidistant from either bulwark. Sea Eagle’s Daughter was a decent-sized ship, starboard was a good fifteen feet away, but once Anasharal was up on deck, dragging it across the wet planking would be child’s play. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d get the Helmsman up and over the bulwark—work something out once she got that far. Truth was, she hadn’t been much in the mood for careful planning when she went below with the rope.
    “Daughter of Flaradnam. You cannot believe any of this is my fault. ”
    “No?” Haul-l-l —and suddenly the Helmsman’s carapace cleared the top of the companionway. Anasharal hung and swung there like some big, misshapen ship’s bell. A couple of its legs reached halfheartedly for purchase on the rail, but as always, the effort of motion alone seemed to defeat them. Archeth felt a vicious surge of satisfaction jolt through her at the sight. “So who dragged us the fuck up here in the first place? Whose idea was this fucking quest? Who told us we’d find a Kiriath city in the ocean up here?”
    “I had no reason not to believe—”
    “Or wait—what about a phantom island that comes and goes like the weather? Ring any mother-fucking bells, does it?”
    “I understand that you may be disappointed, Archeth.”
    “Oh, you do?” Leaning back into the tension on the rope, getting some breath back. “That’s good, then.”
    She began to track an arc sideways across the deck, opening the angle on the taut rope and hauling herself back in closer, leaning steeply backward the whole way. Another couple of steps and the rope should snap free of the rail end, yanking the Helmsman over the edge of the companionway hatch and out onto the deck … 
    “But what exactly do you think this will achieve?” She thought there might be the faintest trace of panic in the Helmsman’s voice now. “Do you expect me to confess some secret I’ve been keeping from you?”
    “Nope.” Shortening rope, hand over hand. “I expect you to sink.”
    “Daughter of Flaradnam, you cannot —”
    “Just watch me.”
    Footfalls on wood. Off to her left, where the ship’s gangplank lay lowered, a figure