Dragons on the Sea of Night by Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online Page B

Sha’angh’sei, the main port of the continent of man. Beyond the bustling quays, the streets, avenues and alleyways of Ala’arat radiated out in a precise star-shaped pattern. Instead of a massive jumble of hodgepodge shapes, the buildings were neat squares or rectangles, or as the city rose up the slopes to where, inevitably, the wealthy and politically connected families lived, other more complex but no less methodical geometric shapes.
    Standing on deck as the Tsubasa hove to and, with all sails furled, dropped anchor, Aufeya clapped her hands delightedly, crying, ‘How beautiful! The city looks like it was made of sugar cubes!’
    Moichi, standing beside her with his arm around her slender waist, found his eyes wet with tears. How marvelous his home looked to him after long years traveling to the far ends of the earth with the Sunset Warrior.
    But his joy was short-lived. A well-armed lighter rode the gentle waves out to meet them as he was ordering a boat into the water so that he could pay a call on the harbor-master and secure a mooring license. Even though he could see that the port was far too busy to allow him a berth at one of the quays, which were full of massive four-masted freighters loading and off-loading all manner of fruits, vegetables and grains, bolts of hand-dyed silks, voile cottons, tightly-woven linen, and raw materials such as cypress, ebony, precious marble and glossy obsidian, he had no doubt he could buy a mooring further out on either side of the main channel.
    He was surprised to see a contingent of Iskamen navalmen boarding his ship. The leader was a very young man, bald but for a long tongue of thick hair growing from the top of his head. He swaggered across the deck, calling for the captain. When Moichi stepped forward, he was momentarily taken aback to see a fellow Iskaman.
    â€˜Where are you from?’ the officer asked, and when Moichi told him, he nodded, adding, ‘You make any stops along the way? Were you boarded at sea or did you make a rendezvous with any other vessel?’
    â€˜No on all counts,’ Moichi said, somewhat bewildered. ‘Is there a problem?’
    â€˜Not if you’ve told the truth,’ the officer said, eyeing Aufeya. ‘What is your business here?’
    â€˜I am coming home,’ Moichi said. ‘I intend to marry.’
    The officer watched him for some time. ‘Your vessel will have to be searched.’
    â€˜What for?’
    The officer took a step forward, his eyes narrowed. ‘Have you anything to hide?’
    â€˜Certainly not,’ Moichi said. ‘But I must have an explanation for this extraordinary action.’
    â€˜In fact it is quite ordinary,’ the officer said. ‘You are Iskaman, but I see you have been away from Iskael for a long time. Much has changed in your absence. For some time now our intelligence sources have reported … disturbances in the desert settlements. Deaths and … disappearances under mysterious and suspicious circumstances. Enemy spies have been discovered in Ala’arat. How are they delivered here? They die before they will tell us, so now all vessels seeking to moor must be searched.’ He waited a beat. ‘Now may we begin, Captain? ’
    Moichi nodded, abruptly uneasy. ‘Do what you must. I want Ala’arat as secure as you do.’ As the officer turned away to instruct his men, Moichi said, ‘This almost feels like war footing.’
    The officer turned back to him and, despite his youth, Moichi could see the bleakness of premature age in his eyes. ‘A most astute assessment, Captain,’ he said.
    The villa of the Annai-Nin was as he remembered it: white-washed stucco walls drenched in brilliant sunlight, jade-green glazed tile roofs glinting like faceted jewels at every angle.
    In a land filled with fragrant cedar groves and thickly fruited date palms, it was perhaps surprising to see the great slabs of tiger-grain oak