Rosalind lunged across the deck to grab her companion’s outstretched arms, pulling her away from the railing. “Something’s got my leg!”
Frederick pulled his sword in one quick motion and straddled the banister in the same. He could see Elayne’s leg pulled taught toward the water and something black and slimy just cresting above the breaking waves. Catching his foot between the posts, he swung down and sliced at whatever was tethering Elayne to the ocean depths.
There was a clatter as Elayne flew forward, crashing into the other two women. She batted at her ankle with a disgusted noise, but the thing had not completely detached itself. Frederick knelt beside her and gripped the smooth surface of the black mass that had twisted itself around her. With a set of puckering snaps, he ripped the tentacle from her flesh, and it hung limply in Frederick’s hand, leaving a row of red welts around Elayne’s ankle. Then the thing spasmed and he dropped it, and it slithered to the edge of the deck, falling into the water with a plop.
A muddled, high-pitched scream broke through the mists. “Bix!” Rosalind leapt up.
Neoma slapped her forehead. “And I sent Gramps with him…”
“We can’t let anything happen to the crew,” Elayne said frantically.
Frederick raised an eyebrow at her concern over Rel. “Oh? Why not?”
She looked at him sharply. “How else are we going to get to shore? Or anywhere for that matter?”
Frederick felt foolish for a moment—where had that even come from? He shook his head. “Right, well, stay here. And keep away from the water.”
As he strode to the deck’s edge, he tried again to recall the last time he’d swam. He could touch the bottom of Lake Mourning with his feet, so he wasn’t sure that counted. Just as he hopped up onto the banister, a shadow came flying out of the mist on the other deck. Captain Corin wore a horrified look as he scurried to the other ship’s edge, a handful of coins and some metal trinkets tucked under one arm, his cutlass bared and swinging over his head in the other.
From behind him something followed at near the same speed but with all the grace of a drunken donkey. It took heavy steps, nearly tripping over itself as its torso swung from left to right. It was the size of a man and roughly the same shape, but the limbs were floppy and the skin grey. And then there was the smell. It hadn’t hit him till now, but Frederick’s stomach lurched into his throat, replacing any fear with disgust.
Somehow the thing got to Corin before the pirate cleared the far deck, and he landed atop his minor horde, spilling the trinkets in a metallic clatter. Corin clawed after them even as they splashed into the black water, forgetting for the moment about the jelly-limbed creature that was climbing up his back. Frederick blotted out any terror left swimming in his mind and leapt the gap between the ships, landing on the tilted deck and sliding down before catching himself and scrambling up toward the captain.
Corin had turned, yelping in terror at what pinned him down, but he was swinging madly with his own sword, and before Frederick could get to him, he’d cut his captor in at least three places. The thing who’d taken him down didn’t seem to have any self-preservation, or at least not the ability to move in a way to protect itself, and took the cuts gut on, its insides spilling out in one mass exodus.
The stench was impossible, but when Frederick retched it was not just from the smell. A cascade of parts, wet, slimy, and sickly purple and blue, covered the captain as the body fell back off him, deflated and hollow like soft leather armor. The captain rose up, a trail of mucus stringing from his back to the deck. He peered down at himself sidelong and raised an arm to admire the way the slime glistened in the moonlight.
Frederick strode over, an arm across his face, and poked at the entrails with the tip of his longsword. They recoiled from him but didn’t run off as the tentacle had. These were too far gone, rotted bits of sea life, fish, rays, and the kinds of creatures only the drowned ever saw. Their skins swirled with a sickening blackness. “The miasma.”
“Sea’s gone all wrong.” Captain Corin got to his feet, shaking out his jacket to little avail and glancing at where his bounty had bounced off to. “Shame.”
Frederick observed the skin that had housed the entrails. It had been a sailor once, human perhaps, maybe elven though he didn’t think they left corpses, but definitely long dead from its coloring.
“Fred, look out!”
A wet slap took the knight by surprise as a tentacle took him across the face and knocked him flat to the deck. His mouth filled with briny wetness, and his eyes stung as he opened them to see something like a man standing above him. Its head was elongated and orange with too many arms coming out of its chin, which is to say any amount more than zero. Frederick raised his sword to take the thing out in the same cutting fashion, but this apparently had more experience using limbs. It moved fast, ducking and dodging, snaking itself around Frederick before he could get to his feet. Corin appeared behind it, his cutlass raised, but a tentacle shot up, wrapping itself around the blade’s hilt and relieving the pirate of his weapon.
Then from seemingly nowhere, a screaming ball flew over Frederick, barreling into the creature and knocking it off him with the sharp release of many suckers. Bryllin had flown, or been catapulted, across the deck and bowled the creature over. They rolled down the slant toward the water, Bryllin wrapped up in the thing’s tentacles and arms, but she hacked at every bit of it with a hatchet in each hand. Kurz was there, waiting, and he grabbed the creature and held it aloft in one arm is if it were nothing, gave it a good shake, and Bryllin fell free onto the deck with a wet smack, some of its limbs going with her. Kurz tossed what was left of the creature overboard.
With a screech that came closer by the second, Bix padded across the far deck and toward Kurz, leaping for the other side, and the large man reached out and snatched him from the air. Behind him ran a beast on four legs, something that was once perhaps canine, but now had a pointed, smooth snout full of teeth and eyes that weren’t more than black holes. Its mouth was massive, and it was a wonder the rest of it could support the jaws, but Kurz swung a hammer down toward the beast as it leapt between the decks, clipping it on what would be its temple and sent it flying.
Bix appeared safe atop Kurz’s shoulders and still had Gramps strapped across his chest, so Frederick turned back to The Fairy’s Knickers, but was stopped dead when he saw the shadows shifting on the higher deck and tentacles wrapping about the bottom banisters.
Frederick sheathed his sword, hoisted himself back over the banister and leapt for the far ship. He hung precariously for a moment, then pulled himself up to find a whole host of dead but not quite, foul-odored forms crawling across the deck. Rosalind swung her staff and connected with one, sending it flying over the far side of the ship. Neoma too had picked up a mop and was pushing a wet, spongy fish-like thing toward the deck’s edge. Elayne stood between the two and was beginning to look the way she’d looked in the Trizian Wood which was all glowy and mad. He didn’t think her chaotic aether fire and fae-enchanted yew wood would be a good mix.
With a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw the crew, but they hadn’t moved to return to their ship. “Come on!” he called to them.
“There’s too many, they’ve taken the ship!” Bryllin’s eyes were wide.
Corin cupped his hands around his mouth. “Can you swim, lad?”
Frederick screwed up his face at the captain’s question. “What’s that got to—oh, no!”
“Gotta swab the deck somehow!” Corin cleared his throat and shouted in fae-speak, and Frederick felt his stomach preemptively drop out.
He sheathed his sword again and yelled to the girls, “Hold your breath!”
CHAPTER 31
One moment the deck was there, and the next it was gone, replaced by a plunge into cold water and instant darkness. The ocean came up around Elayne and closed in over her head, the shock of the cold seizing up her lungs. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but not before they’d been burned by the sal
ty water, the taste of brine filling her mouth and nostrils. She flailed her arms and kicked erratically, but she couldn’t seem to move, her clothes heavy and dragging her down. There was no way out, this was it. Cold, dark, breathless, death was closing in.
And then her foot slid over something solid. She kicked again and found the ocean floor steady beneath her. Elayne’s head crested the water, and she took a deep, salty breath as a wave slapped her in the face. Glancing around, she saw other heads floating nearby, bobbing in the black water, then they were gone as a wave overtook her again, and she sunk down to where her feet could touch. Of course they’d been on the sandbar, but Elayne had no concept of such things. The ocean was, in her mind, significantly shallower than it appeared and thanklessly just deep enough that she couldn’t keep her head afloat.
She jumped back up above the water. This time as she sputtered she saw even more heads than she ought to have. It was perhaps a great idea to remove the sea creatures from the ship by disappearing it, but it was not so great for the land creatures now that they were in their enemy’s domain. Another wave crested beside her, and she took a full breath before going under again.
Elayne pushed off the sea floor and coughed as she broke through the water. Her toes bounced off the ground—she just wasn’t tall enough—and then she felt the warmth of another body behind her, and she shrieked.
Twisting around, she slapped at the water to keep the sordid sea creature away. Despite being splashed in the face, Frederick still managed to grab her and hold her up, not a sea creature at all. He spit out a mouthful of salt water. “Fat lot of good that elven half is doing you now.”
“I’d really prefer you not say fat right now,” she managed to choke out between gulps for air before her words drifted off once she got a better look around. There were too many to count, the heads of dark things bobbing around them, closing in. One had broken through the low-lying mists, and its features were clear: the face of a man with a ray over its nose, the wings flapping, the eyes sunken, and the skin waterlogged, grey and wrinkled well beyond its years.
She dug her fingers into Frederick’s shoulders as it came closer, but an arrow zipped through the air and caught the creature squarely in the face. It sunk below the water, hopefully dead. Rel was standing atop the banister of the wrecked ship, expertly loosing arrows at the sea creatures in a flurry, dark lines cutting through the darker sky. That had changed too. She shivered, pulling Frederick closer. The miasma was all around them, heavier, concentrated, and it was beginning to make her feel sick—sicker than the stench of rotten fish and the sight of mucusy guts.
They waded over to the wreck, Rosalind and Neoma reaching it first, and pulled themselves frantically up out of the water. A breeze swept over them, and Elayne hugged herself against the freezing cold. Rel grabbed for another arrow on his back, but came up empty, and even Bix had run out of small enough shells to slingshot at the creatures that were closing in. She shivered, her heart thumping wildly, then straightened. The others were closing in, back-to-back with one another, eyes darting across the water at each new, dark shape coming toward them. They would never fight them all off. But Idris could.
Elayne wrapped a hand around her necklace and stepped to the edge of the wreck. Fredrick shouted at her to get away from the water, but she didn’t stop. She knelt into the puddle and lay a flat hand on the black sea. She was already shivering deep in her bones, but something even more bitter and biting roiled up inside.
From her hand, a spark shot out across the water, and like against the seawall in Bizgain, hundreds of lines of purple shot off of it in all directions, rippling through the water, coursing on the backs of the waves. The sea lit up as Elayne connected with the aether in it, wild, chaotic, and her insides churned. She fell harder on her knees, trying to keep steady, but did not release the thaumat stone. If you can hear me, she said in her mind, you have to help us. Please.
The waves rose up, bright against the night sky, giving off a lavender glow, and crashed in on each other, spraying the rest of them on the wreckage as they huddled together. The water whipped around, wind rising up off the sea and ripping at Elayne’s face and clothes, but she held still. And then, as quickly as it began, it ended. The ocean crashed once more, the water sloshing up over her and soaking her, and then it settled. Elayne blinked out at the calming sea, the forms gone.
***
Elayne gripped her knees against her chest, smashed in with the others while Kurz and Bix evened out their weight at the other end of the canoe. Despite that it likely was the safest, least conspicuous option, the tiny vessel that Gaul, the fae, had turned herself into was cramped with nine bodies. And sure they might not be seen coming, but packed in like this, Elayne thought if anyone were out on Heulux’s cliffs, they’d almost certainly smell them.
The cliffs were unscalably tall with their smooth faces. They reached up into the sky, the moon blotted out by swirling clouds above so that the stone Elayne remembered being white didn’t reflect any light. It was surreal, the memory of walking along the thin shore at their base coming back to her. Her father had brought her there once when the tide was out and they walked, just the two of them. She picked up shells and smooth stones, each more valuable in her eyes than the last, and he chatted to her about things she didn’t remember at all now but desperately wished she could recall.
The shore was gone now though, and the canoe bobbed along to be swallowed up by a crevasse in the cliffs. The darkness inside was all encompassing. Gaul’s gentle glow hovered at the nose of the boat to light the way inside, the sound of the ocean replaced with the hollow echo of water dripping from somewhere deeper inside. Elayne squeezed her knees, looking up at the low ceiling of stone. She’d had so much time to consider this moment, but looking back it seemed to have all gone in an instant.
Kurz threw a massive arm out to grip a pointed rock formation that rose up from the water to stop the canoe as it bumped against the shore. The rest of them turned to her expectantly, but Elayne hesitated as she twisted around to look at where she would disembark. This was it, she thought, and gripped the edge of the canoe, found her footing, and stepped out.
Elayne took in a deep breath as she stood on the smooth rocks that were Heuluxian land. She expected to smell something familiar, to see something beloved, to feel something like being home, but instead there was only salt and rock and darkness. The whole place would be like this, she knew, and she also knew she couldn’t ask them to follow her. It was too dangerous.
But when she turned around, Frederick was helping Neoma out of the canoe, and Rosalind and Bix were already beside her.
“Wait.” Elayne held up her hands so that they would stop. “We’ve made it so far together, but I’ve already asked too much of each of you. I can’t—”
“Nope.” Rosalind pointed at her. “You can’t convince us to turn around now.”
“It’s not safe. I mean, it hasn’t been safe, but—”
“El, our minds were made up long ago,” Frederick said coming up to her, “You’re stuck with us now.”
She looked on their hopeful faces, relief that they wanted to stay, but terror too that she might lead them to doom.
“Well, that’s just beautiful.” Captain Corin had a hand outstretched to her from inside the boat. “But this is where we’ll be leaving ya.”
Bix rummaged in his satchel and dropped the necklace into the pirate’s hand.
He held it up before his face, blissful, then quickly tucked it into a pocket. “You won’t be forgetting about us now, will ya, miss supposedly important person?”
“Oh no, Captain.” Elayne rubbed her temple. “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble remembering being dropped into the ocean.”
The pirate grinned. “You got here, and that’s what you asked for!” He was right, in the end, and there was no arguing with a pirate when they were actually right.
She glanced at Rel who was perched lightly on the canoe’s edge like an elf, but with his
knees spread like a human. He really had this crossblood thing figured out. She looked at him a moment longer—perhaps too long—and made his face blanch. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I can.”
She nodded, unsurprised, but still disappointed, and the canoe was swallowed up by the darkness headed back out into the sea, Bryllin and Rosalind calling goodbyes to one another.
As they started off into the cave, it quickly became wider and taller and didn’t snake about or rattle on into endless corridors. By the light of Frederick’s sword it was fairly simple to follow the stone path at a gradual slope upward, deeper into the duchy. A million feelings coursed through Elayne, muddling into a determined frenzy: she couldn’t stop for even a moment for fear one of the worse ones might bubble to the surface, so she pushed on, harder and faster than the rest even when her legs burned and her chest heaved.
But then they were stopped by a force none could really see. Elayne’s limbs were suddenly heavy, her breathing shallower, and she looked at the others to see if they felt it too. Neoma held her head in her hands and Rosalind was rubbing her eyes. Frederick nodded at her, the light of his sword dimming.
“Gramps?” Elayne knelt down so that Bix could stumble up to her with the pipe. “Help me out here.”
“The crystal,” his voice said, “You’ve already connected with it, with him, let him guide you through it.”
She looked down at the thaumat stone around her neck, suddenly afraid. “But, Gramps—”
“You can do it, Elayne,” he said, and in that moment she could see his wrinkled face again, looking at her with all the faith in Maw. “Together.”
She stood on shaky knees and turned back to where the barrier was. Idris, she said quietly in her mind, Let’s go home.
Elayne stepped forward like she was moving through thick sludge, the sound of the ocean far off in the cave swallowed up behind her. She glanced back to finally see it, the thick cloud of miasma running from floor to ceiling, a break where she had crossed over. She motioned to the others, her limbs suddenly lighter, her head clearer, and she urged them to hurry through the space she had left. One by one they followed, visibly relieved though not completely healed, on the other side. Then the miasma closed up again behind them.
She's All Thaumaturgy Page 26
