by Lisa Daniels
The knowledge of a “bet” going on with Janus Ruthe made her interactions with him far more interesting. Knowing he had interest in her spiked up the adrenaline, and reminded her just how long it’d been since her last romp. Sex had been nothing that lasted long for her in the profession of an air witch. She didn’t exactly have a laundry list of sexual partners, but enough to understand what she liked, and how to take precautions to make sure nothing happened that she didn’t want.
It kept her smiling, right until the moment that they made it to the continental seas, crossing the treacherous body of water to a place people only whispered about.
Turned out, the seas were horrendous places for hurricanes to form. Evelyn knew something about weather, since her job relied on it, but she didn’t know just how powerful storms were at sea. Three days into their crossing over the continental sea, they caught the suggestion of a monumental storm. The captain didn’t think they’d outrun it anyway, but cautioned Rukia and Evelyn to be on deck. Rukia had been up all night, and she looked slightly out of it.
“I just hope it’s not a big storm,” she’d said—right before the howler struck. Darkness fell. Wind pressure dropped. Even at their height just above the clouds, there was no escape. The weather battered them. Evelyn clenched her jaw and diverted all her magic into maintaining the bubble of calm around their ship, since Rukia probably didn’t have the energy to do so herself. Poor woman was running low, she could sense it.
“Thought I was being smart, taking the extra shift,” Rukia hissed, steering the ship to higher heights, though they didn’t know how high the hurricane reached. “You seem to be better at concentrating long distance. I could have rested, you’d still have plenty of energy left over when it was my turn again...”
Even with the bubble Evelyn placed around the ship, she couldn’t stop everything. Winds came through her bubble in bursts, icy and strong and tearing at the sails. Rukia, usually so cheerful, held onto Evelyn’s arm tightly and didn’t let go, and her entire body seemed to shake. The captain had strapped himself to the wheel, and took sheets of rain and wind into his body, although partially obscured by a shelter. Crew members fought to take down the sails, so that Rukia could power them with no assistance, since the wind breaking through tore at their attempts to stay straight, lurching the ship from side to side.
Sound became chaos, with the constant scream of air, the relentless beating against their ship.
“It doesn’t feel like a natural storm!” Rukia shouted at Evelyn—she needed to, given the strength of the noise.
The wind continued to beat at Evelyn’s bubble, and she barely managed to snag one terrified crew member as he went flying off the deck—she seized him in a fistful of controlled wind and dumped him back on solid ground. To his credit, he persisted straight away with tucking in the main sail, and managed it with one other helper. For a moment, Evelyn risked incredible damage to the ship, focusing her safe bubbles only on those struggling crew members and the captain, hoping she and Rukia would be safe in the alcove. Not that it provided a complete barrier of security anyway, but it was better than nothing. They were sheltered from three directions, but not the one that faced the captain, who was also only partially sheltered from three directions.
Rukia gave a little gasp, and Evelyn realized too late she hadn’t warned the other tired witch what she planned to do. The sails went down, but the storm grew ferocious. Large objects slammed into the ship, like parts of buildings, and lodged into the deck, squashing an unfortunate crew member underneath.
“Protect the whole ship!” Rukia screamed at Evelyn, and she hastily expanded her power again, cursing her decision.
The main mast was slammed by something small and gray, and it splintered upon impact, before being whisked away by the deadly storm. Their upward ascent became a sudden, suctioning descent, with Rukia screaming that she wasn’t controlling the ship anymore.
Fine, I’ll do it, Evelyn thought with a snarl, trying to take over the role of wind direction as well—only to discover that there was something far more powerful yanking on the winds, out of her control. Her heart beat a frenzied rhythm of fear, as she was unable to wrench control from the mysterious entity.
She could only protect the crew from the brunt of the damage, as Rukia joined her with the task, though not without some significant effort on her part.
The storm howled around them as if it were an entrance to the underworld, with nothing but darkness and sound and cold. Nothing safe or warm in sight.
* * *
Crash. Hours of being tossed in the storm ended with a sudden impact into dark, barren ground. The ship skidded along, sloughing out a trench as dead and blackened trees were plowed out of the way, and the voice of the storm was drowned by the creaking groan of the forest. They shuddered and jerked along the shadowy forest floor until slowing to a halt, then bobbing back into the air, only floating a few feet or so above the ground. Rukia and Evelyn glanced at one another.
The storm still raged, but it was calmer, quieter than before, and muffled by the trees that grew with black leaves and vines twisting around them. A black forest, with ashen-colored soil, as if torched by wildfires a long time ago, and the leaves had regrown, soot-dusted. A few leaves and broken twigs fell onto the deck, and the wreckage that pinned someone beneath where the former main mast stood was now dribbling blood, no longer washed away by the rains.
The captain unstrapped himself and dashed into the heart of the ship, and came back out a moment later with Alex, Meridas and Janus following. The life witch checked under the rubble for the injured, possibly dead, crew member.
Rukia let out a soft groan next to Evelyn, and her eyes sank shut. She slumped, unconscious, and Evelyn helped drag her into the small bed just behind their main sitting alcove. She’d be fine. Just magically exhausted. She did very well, despite being low on magic all that time. Evelyn’s own magic felt low, and she moved with a certain lethargy onto the deck, as more people emerged.
“What happened?” the captain asked, his mustache bristling. “Did you lose control of the ship?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said with a wince. All attention focused on her. She didn’t want to alarm them any further, but withholding information was pointless. “Something took over control of the ship’s winds. Rukia and I combined couldn’t stop it. We were dragged here by something we don’t yet understand.”
“Cursed!” One of the crew members appeared ready to faint, though a couple of the scholars seemed pissed off about the cursed announcement. Meanwhile, Alex’s magic flared. People dug through the rubble enough to reveal the crew member, whose chest rose and fell.
“He’s lucky to have survived this,” Alex said. “He lost a lot of blood, but where he was impaled—it just missed his heart. Might have still bled out if we didn’t land.”
Janus gave Evelyn an appraising look as murmurs of relief or fear rippled through their group. Twenty-five people strong for now. The main crew itself was only fourteen people, including the two cooks. Not including Rukia and Evelyn. The scholars made up seven in total, with Janus and Meridas as the patrons of the trip.
“We need to assess the damage,” Captain Eswick said with a frown, “but we’re going to need repairs if we want some smooth sailing back. I don’t suppose anyone spotted a nearby town or something when we were descending through the storm…?”
“On Zamorka?” a crew member Evelyn vaguely remembered as Bennen scoffed. “You think these savages have anything other than curses and cannibalism?”
“How would you know what they are if you’ve never visited the place?” one of the scholars snapped, with an expression that suggested he was done with the idiocy of others.
“The stories exist for a reason,” Bennen said, now indicating the black forest around them. “Or are you suggesting that this looks like a nice, ordinary forest where nothing can possibly go wrong? Did you forget what the air witch said? That we were pulled here by something more powerful than the two of t
hem combined?”
He made some good points, Evelyn privately thought, but the growing panic served no one.
“Be calm,” Janus said, in a voice laced with both authority and menace. It cut through the group like a knife, and the dissent dissolved into silence. “At this point, we know nothing. Making assumptions and fear-mongering serves no one but that which can kill us. We must keep our heads, formulate a plan, and somehow do what we came here to do. If we can find a place to repair, fantastic. Otherwise, we’ll need to work on repairs ourselves.”
“We can move the ship as it is,” Evelyn said. “But it’ll take more energy from us.” And without the main sail, pushing the ship forward would drain them of power at a faster rate, requiring more breaks.
But it was possible. Just as long as they didn’t get caught in a storm like that again. Moving would be safer than having them all trespass on foreign soil and be picked off by whatever wild creatures lingered in the territory.
Could it have been due to the influence of the island? All around where she looked, she saw only ashen ground, black trees and leaves, and gray rocks. The trees reached hundreds of feet into the air, and some were wider than several people standing next to each other.
“Perhaps we should have invested in bringing a light witch,” Janus muttered to Meridas, but within hearing of Evelyn.
“Fascinating,” one of the female scholars said, picking up a black leaf. “This shouldn’t be possible. The chlorophyll in a leaf and the green coloring are all a direct relation to being able to absorb sunlight. Yet these don’t seem to be fed by sunlight at all… perhaps like a fungus?” She passed the leaf around to the other scholars, who huddled together like sheep, excitedly discussing the single black leaf. The now-healed sailor gave Alex a huge bear hug, thanking her in a weeping voice for his life.
“I wonder just how much danger we’re in,” Janus said softly, hands clasped behind him as he regarded the dark expanse of the Zamorkan forest. If the crew wanted to be convinced that Zamorka was a perfectly ordinary land without any curses lodged within it, a black forest wasn’t the best way of representing things.
“I don’t think anyone should go wandering alone, for sure,” Evelyn said, stepping beside him. “I am concerned that whoever took control of the ship during the storm is watching over us right now.” And I can’t sense them at all.
It was a horrible implication to consider, but they had different priorities to sort out. Checking how much damage their ship sustained was one. Reinforcing the notion that nobody traveled alone was another, though Evelyn thought the sailors were too terrified of being in a cursed land to even want to leave the ship. In the meanwhile, she was on the hunt for foreign magic, trying to trace if any of it was latching onto them still. Eventually, their battered ship trundled into the air again, with both air witches pushing it forward.
It moved just above the treeline in the rains, until they saw, unmistakably, what looked like a settlement within a mountainous valley. And other airships, much, much smaller than the Elegant, leaving and entering a docking platform towering from the ground, which was multilayered and well organized, and very, very different from the ports Evelyn had seen in her travels.
Much to the alarm of Rukia and Evelyn, something came hurtling from the skies towards their ship, far faster than their present traveling speed. The something turned out to be a red-haired man, who alighted himself on the deck with practiced ease and strode up to the captain, holding what looked like a clipboard and a pen. By the time Janus and Meridas made it to the deck with Alex and a few other nervous crew members, the captain had finished his conversation with the stranger.
“Uh...” Eswick said, after Rukia and Evelyn stopped pushing the ship forward and came to listen, “This uh, man, is part of… docking security. We are to state our purpose, how long we intend to stay, what services we require… and he will give us a platform number for us to dock at. Hem.” Eswick clearly seemed unnerved at being addressed by a Zamorkan male—especially one that appeared to be an air witch. Was witch appropriate? Evelyn had never heard of a male practitioner before. Or anticipated anything in Zamorka being organized. She would have gone so far as to say the whole thing was an elaborate trick, but the signs of civilization simply couldn’t be ignored.
Meridas appeared equally flummoxed by the apparent organization. “May I… ask your name… sir?”
“Perryn,” the man said with a little smile. He also had a musical accent, unfamiliar to Evelyn’s ears. “I take it from the captain’s reaction and yours that you have never visited Leavenport before?”
Meridas and Janus shook their heads mutely, wary, fully aware that if one man could so casually land upon their ship, many more could swarm them in moments. Evelyn caught the smaller forms of other air witches flocking around arriving ships.
“We’ve never, uh,” Eswick said, clearing his throat, “been to Zamorka before.”
Perryn’s slack-jawed mouth hung open in a little o. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise! We don’t get many of your type over here.” His green eyes raked the dark-haired, dark-eyed, and darker-skinned crew with some admiration. “No wonder there is so much black hair in your crew! Your colorings are very rare here. Our people would find you exotic, with your accents, and your beautiful dark hair.”
“Yes,” Eswick said, his brown eyes narrowed in concentration. Evelyn wasn’t sure if she liked Perryn’s observation of them. “We have heard… adverse things about Zamorka.”
The air witch nodded sagely. “Yes, I know as such. You’ll be safe in Leavenport, and the coastal towns and cities. You don’t want to be heading to the center. That’s where the wild magic is.”
“Wild magic?” This time one of the scholars spoke. She held a pencil and was eagerly scribbling down every word said. She was huddled in blue robes, and had very short black hair.
“We can explain more of that later,” he said to her with a faint smile, “if part of your intention of staying at Leavenport is to collect information about wild magic.”
All in all, the interaction with the Zamorkan witch went absolutely nothing like Evelyn had ever dreamed. They declared they were staying for information-gathering and repairs, estimating a month, maximum, of time, depending on how successful their information-gathering was, and to explore Leavenport, possibly beyond. They were given a dock number, and their ship was able to park near the bottom of the huge docking platform, completely covering one side where normally three smaller ships might have been able to settle in.
It felt so strange, observing so many air witches casually drifting through the city, some of them even responsible for steering smaller vehicles that could only host a few people at a time. In the Undercity and the Six Isles, they limited flying to only going between above and below, and for the skyship expeditions, because they didn’t have that many air witches. But here, magic was… commonplace.
However, what wasn’t commonplace, apparently, were the two dragons in their midst, and the life witch. Leavenport had its own scholars, who flocked around Meridas, Janus, and Alex incessantly. Since no one wanted to offend their current magical hosts, they agreed to most of the demands given to them, such as staying in a hotel, allowing themselves to be interviewed, and promising not to go into the wild magic without a thorough understanding of it first.
Janus seemed to be stressing at all the sidetracking. He obviously wanted their problem back home to be solved as soon as possible, and all this to him merely served as a distraction. If she had been closer to him, she could probably have comforted and assured him, but instead, she just awkwardly sidled up to him just outside the hotel they were presented at, and said, “Don’t worry too much. It may seem like we’re wasting time now, but this should save us time and lives in the long run. Remember, we thought we were going into wild lands. No one expected to find a civilization living and thriving.”
He gave her a wry smile in return. “I understand that, logically. But I can’t help but feel like we’re wastin
g time all the same.”
She wondered if she should do something comforting, like pat him on the back. Would that seem condescending? Like she was trying too hard? Would he even welcome it? She settled instead for holding his shoulder for a couple of seconds. The only other person who seemed even more nervous than Janus was Meridas, who kept glancing around as if expecting them to be assassinated at any moment. “It feels a little strange to me to see so many air witches. And male ones. Why d’you think we don’t have male ones back in the Six Isles?”
“Simple,” a low voice drawled behind them. They whirled to see a tall, ghost-white male with gray-white hair staring at them through hooded eyes. Barely any muscle seemed to complement his wasted appearance. “The male magic is recessive. If a Zamorkan man mixes with anyone not Zamorkan, any males born to him will have little chance of power. It can happen. It’s just very rare. Zamorkan females, however, are dominant in their genes. The magic originates with them. They say one single woman went deep into the wild magic, and returned with power so vast that it could blot out the sun.” He seemed to be enjoying his unasked-for history lesson to them.
“Would this be the Red Woman?” Janus asked, and the man blinked in surprise, clearly not expecting the outlanders to know anything about Zamorkan history.
“Yes. She lived for hundreds of years and had many children, before vanishing to distant lands.” He squinted his eyes suspiciously at them. “One might ask if your trip here has anything to do with the Red Woman.”
“Yes,” Janus said, while Meridas, now eavesdropping, let out a soft groan. People passed them, many stopping to gape openly at their crop of dark hairs. Seemed people from the Undercity and the Six Isles were really rare. As for Zamorkan colors, they went from blond to red to sheer white. “That’s part of the main reason we’re here.”
“He might be the enemy,” Meridas hissed between clenched teeth, after dragging Janus away from the stranger. The stranger, however, appeared to hear perfectly.
“I assume the Conclave’s been giving you issues,” he said. “We have much to discuss, it seems.”
