Torrahs took a deep breath to begin anew and hopefully re-inspire his cohorts, but when he looked again at Dehlyn, he stopped. She stared at him with those haunting green eyes, trapping him in her gaze. But where he’d otherwise seen anger and a searing contempt gazing back at him, there was now only a deep, pervading anguish. The woman neither pleaded for mercy nor denounced his efforts; she merely held him in place with the contemplation of one who recognized that to live was to suffer heartbreak and endless torment of the soul.
This almost made him question his own aim, it was so anathema to what he thought he knew of this creature. Her eyes glistened, and the first silent tears broke from beneath her lashes to trickle down her cheeks.
At nearly the same time, Lorraii moved from her place against the wall. The Ouroke was quick, silent, fueled by purpose. Then she disappeared behind the massive expanse of the amarach’s wings, and a foreboding weight sank in Torrahs’ gut. Only a few seconds had passed, but they stretched for an eternity. The amarach reached out to place his hand on Dehlyn’s shoulder, but before he could touch her, he lurched backwards with a roar. The sickening noise of a blade butchering flesh filled the tower, and if amarach had bled, this room would have been covered in it. The dark celestial fell to his knees, revealing the image of Lorraii standing behind him. She raised the curved blade and brought it down once, then yet again and again, and the immortal’s eyes blazed with shock and pain. Then the tattooed woman ceased her attack, eyes wild with the heat of both fury and satisfaction. A golden glow lit her face, rising from the damage she’d inflicted.
With a grunt, the amarach pushed himself toward the back of the chair on his knees and still managed to place a hand on Dehlyn’s shoulder. The white light returned, but it flickered now and managed only to slide Dehlyn’s wrists and ankles through the closed irons as though she were made of air.
Still staring at Torrahs, Dehlyn reached up to cover the amarach’s hand with her own, as if she were calming an over-eager child instead of lending strength to her fallen protector. The amarach attempted a second time to carry them away, the blaze of his white light dimmer now and fading. It sputtered once more, then grew briefly and vanished, taking both immortal and vessel with it.
Now only the chair remained between Torrahs and Lorraii, displaying her fully with the blade held aloft, her chest rising and falling quickly. The Ouroke let out a ferocious, curdling cry of triumph, and every man gawked at her and what she’d just done.
Torrahs acted in rage and without thought. He moved as quickly as he had so long ago, when there had been need, and his sudden movement brought a jolt of surprise from the Brothers on either side of him. In a few long strides, he skirted the smoking wooden chair and the empty manacles to bring his staff down swiftly across Lorraii’s upper back. She grunted, but he did not give her time to react. When he struck her again, she fell to her knees, and his staff cracked a final time against her temple before she hit the floor.
“SO, YOU BEND THINGS to your will?” Uishen asked, eyes wide. “With your mind?”
“That’s not... quite it,” Kherron replied, wincing at the foolishness in his companion’s words. “I imagine it would be more than helpful if I knew what I was doing. But most often, I can’t control it, and if I manage to at all, it’s only for a short time and never in the way I intended.”
Uishen uncorked the barrel of mead again and filled his cup. The drink poured slowly from the cask; it was almost empty, and Kherron had stopped after his third. “What of...” Uishen took a long drink, then wiped his mouth. “What of moving mountains? Felling armies? Can you command other men?”
“No,” Kherron replied quickly. He knew the man was drunk, but he hadn’t expected such an outrageous line of questioning. “I cannot move mountains. Only stones. Metal. Trees.” He thought of the clearing to which he’d laid waste when the amarach had attacked him, and it made him both proud of such a feat and ashamed for wanting to boast of something not of his design alone. “And it’s not that I command anything,” he added, wishing to dispel that guilt. “It’s more a communion. A partnership, I suppose.”
“To what end?” Uishen bit his lip and eyed Kherron with puzzled intrigue.
Shrugging, Kherron let out a dry chuckle. “That, I find, is still a mystery to me.”
“But it will help you find Dehlyn?”
“Yes.” Kherron tilted his head to look at the ferryman, perplexed and yet somewhat amused by the man’s suspension of disbelief. It was most definitely because of the mead, but no doubt part of it also stemmed from his surprising tale. He’d told Uishen somewhat of his journey’s purpose—to find Dehlyn and release her from her captors and the danger they posed. He’d relayed the encounter with the Roaming People and Torrahs’ betrayal, his tense comradery with Siobhas and his unexpectedly gracious host in Hephorai. He’d even revealed glimpses of his life in the Iron Pit, when Uishen had asked, and had felt little discomfort in speaking of those memories otherwise better left unshared. Somehow, for these reasons and undoubtedly others he could not grasp in the moment, he felt neither shame in his tale nor judgement from his companion aboard the Honalei.
He could not relay everything, he knew. Kherron did not describe the terrifying depth of who Dehlyn truly was, nor the intimacies of their brief time together; he had not made mention of the celestial prophecy, the subject of which those like Zerod and Mirahl claimed him to be. He had not shared the true burden of his purpose, but he found extraordinary relief in voicing aloud the things he had chosen for Uishen to know.
Perhaps these things had made it less difficult for the ferryman to accept Kherron’s final revelation—the unseen and only partially tapped abilities he possessed. Of all people, Uishen was the least likely to write off Kherron’s tales as the pure fancy of drunken babble; the man himself had been shunned and rejected for his own ideas and knowledge, though his inventions like the Honalei and fishing with gold had proven just as successful as they’d been in his mind. Kherron found the greatest comfort, however, in the fact that the ferryman knew nothing of the secret world his new friend inhabited. While Kherron was connected to prophecies and involved with amarach, having vowed himself to an otherworldly vessel of the world’s secrets and bound by an inescapable duty, Uishen was not.
The men sat together in silence for a moment longer, Uishen chewing on his lip. “Show me,” he finally said.
Surprised by the request, Kherron gave a tense chuckle. “You want me to prove my story?”
Uishen still gazed at him with wide, curious eyes, lit both by the mead and by a desire to be shown the unimaginable. “It’s precisely because I believe you that I wish to see it,” he replied, nodding with an eagerness Kherron interpreted as encouragement.
“I can’t promise anything will happen.” Kherron grimaced. “And if it doesn’t, you’ll likely take me for a fool and a liar.”
“Never.” The ferryman offered a surprisingly serious frown, then wiggled his eyebrows in anticipation. “If you’re a liar, so am I.”
Somehow, that was enough for Kherron. He could not understand the faith Uishen had placed in him or his tale, but it was just as genuine as his interest in what Kherron could do. And what did it matter, in the end? Their friendship had formed quickly—odd and surprising though it was—but they were likely never to see one another again after Kherron disembarked for Eran’s Crossing and beyond.
He shrugged and took a deep breath, then removed the Sky Metal dagger from its sheath. He felt nothing from it beyond the cool steel and the weight in his palm—no whispered request or gentle response. But he closed his eyes anyways and tried to conjure the connection he did not quite know how to grasp.
“Show me,” he whispered, the breath barely leaving his lips and making the words nearly impossible to hear. The blade lay still in his open palm, and for a few seconds, nothing happened. He’d meant the words as an invocation for guidance, for the object in his hand to reveal how he was to go about summoning these abilities at will. In that moment, he did no
t think of showing Uishen the truth of his secret; he wished only to understand what he needed to do.
A few more seconds passed, and the humiliation rose in him like hot, sour bile. What had possessed him to think it would work this time? But as soon as he opened his eyes, the dagger rose on its hilt and spun, standing upon his palm at an impossible angle as if someone dangled it from a string above him. Uishen groaned in awe, and the blade stilled, pointing toward the western sky behind them.
An unexplained terror filled Kherron then—a warning dread he did not recognize. He spun around on his knees to face the Sylthurst’s western bank, and the dagger clattered to the deck, momentarily forgotten. When he looked up toward where the blade’s tip had pointed, all the warmth of mead and comradery drained from him, as though he’d opened the door from inside a warm tavern to let in the blistering cold of a raging winter storm.
“Incredible,” Uishen whispered. “You didn’t have to stop. You—” Only then did he seem to notice that Kherron’s attention had shifted. “What is it?”
Kherron swallowed in a suddenly dry throat, unable to move.
“Kherron?”
His arm seemed to weigh as much as an anvil when he raised it with unbearable slowness and pointed. Uishen gave a low whistle, and Kherron found himself grieving at the sound; the man had no idea what was coming.
“What is that?” the ferryman asked.
It took a few seconds for Kherron to find his voice. “Nothing good.” An enormous, dark mass surged toward them from the west, roiling and angry. Against the night sky lit by moon and stars, it stretched out in inky, nefarious blackness, consuming the light around it and threatening to snuff out everything in its path. He heard Nina’s voice in his head, remembering her troubled gaze when she’d reached out to shake his hand before he left Gileath Junction.
The black cloud. It searches for you.
It seemed at once leagues away and just behind the Honalei, moving much like the intelligent, conscious swarm of moths that had attacked Siobhas. That seemed forever ago, but those creatures had only been playing games compared to the foreboding destruction of this awful thing heading towards them.
“Never seen a storm like that,” Uishen said.
“It’s not a storm.” Finally, Kherron found his ability to move, and he moved swiftly. He retrieved the Sky Metal dagger from the deck and stood, finding the direness of the situation had sobered him completely. He looked down to see Uishen frowning at the approaching host, intrigued and apparently trying to place its source. That would be impossible, Kherron knew, but even if he understood himself what this thing was, he did not have the time to explain it. “Get up,” he said.
Uishen turned and gawked up at Kherron, who realized then just how far into his cups the ferryman had ventured. His glassy gaze repeatedly strayed from and flickered back to Kherron’s face, and though his movements were slow, he seemed aware of Kherron’s panic. “What—”
“Do you have any weapons?” Kherron didn’t want to let the man finish; he didn’t want to answer any questions, despite the certainty that he had no answers. Whatever came for them now—came for him—he wished to be as prepared as possible to face it. And that would be very little.
Uishen grunted and tried unsuccessfully to push himself to his feet. Kherron stepped in to help, hoisting the man up beneath his arms and steadying him upon the deck. “Whatever you have, get it,” he said quickly, and with a bobbing nod, Uishen turned toward the cabin.
Kherron glanced back to gauge how much time they had, and his gut churned when he realized none remained. Impossible though it seemed, the black cloud was upon the Honalei, tendrils licking at the hull and curling over the railing. A buzzing whine filled his ears, dampening all other sound, and within the billowing drove appeared a face. Though the smoky movement of the dark thing blurred its features, it was unmistakable; Besoran of the Roaming People leered at Kherron from the churning blackness, dangerous intent behind his murky eyes.
In a surge of surprise and fury, Kherron brought the Sky Metal dagger singing through the air toward that face. He swung it as he’d swung his hammer for so many years, cruelly aware of the fact that he did not know how to use such a weapon. Though he admittedly couldn’t guess what would happen, he had not expected the raging cloud to jerk away from the blade, pulling back into itself as though he had, in fact, wounded it. The force of his strike landing on nothing but air threw him off balance, and he stumbled forward with a shout of anger. A dull roar rose from within the writhing black mass, at once like the rumbling of a thousand vicious, laughing voices and nothing like it at all.
When he regained his footing, he spun toward Uishen. The ferryman had barely made it more than a few paces toward the cabin, stumbling in the growing darkness. The black haze moved toward Kherron once more, more faces of the Roaming People flickering into sight and disappearing within the swarm just as quickly. All of them sneered at Kherron with hunger and desire, now unreserved and far less hospitable than when he’d stayed in their village. If that had been a lure set for him, patiently awaiting his submission, this was now an attack; the Roaming People had hunted for and found their prey.
A new wave of panic overwhelmed him, and he wondered how he could ever face an enemy as dissoluble as this—abilities or no. A tendril rose from the lecherous host, stretching toward him in crazed yearning, but it did not reach him.
The sky lit with a brilliant flash, illuminating each tiny particle of the creature in front of him before a white streak fell from behind Kherron. It sliced into the blackness, better than any dagger, cleaving the mass in two and pushing it away from its victim. The whine of the churning cloud rose into a dissembled screech, and Kherron reeled backward. As if a lightning storm had materialized from within a clear sky, the night was suddenly ablaze with flashing bolts of light. They fell like rain around him—rain with direction and purpose—cutting into the writhing host of the Roaming People and filling the air with furious wails and battle cries alike.
He heard Uishen shout from somewhere behind him, but when he turned, he could not find the ferryman. The black cloud and the streaks of light warped around him, blinding him to anything else. It made him dizzy, immobilized by the chaos, and he thought he might wretch upon the Honalei’s deck if the flurry around him did not end. But when he finally thought to stop, to stand still and cease his attempts to focus on the movement, he found the images all too clear.
Within each glaring burst of light, time seemed to freeze. He saw amarach raising swords and daggers, locked in combat with the half-clad, dark-skinned figures of the Roaming People. Furious cries contorted their faces, their screams silent in the brief, fleeting moments of these visions. The battles raged everywhere—on the deck of the Honalei, in the air above him, downriver just above the surface of the water. The crash of blades on spears echoed around him, swallowed by the fierce hum of both forces, too swift and too terrible to comprehend. Another blaze of light exploded just in front of him, lighting up the battle-crazed image of a man, his unruly beard and black, paint-smeared face contorted in pain. An amarach with golden hair had plunged her blade through his back, her eyes glowing with triumph.
Kherron stumbled away from the terrifying sight, and that movement ended his ability to see the battle, as if a door had once more been slammed closed in his face. The flurry of swarming darkness and blazing light raged everywhere around him, and while the fighting persisted, it now had given him a much wider berth, and the black cloud had been divided. Thus far, neither force had touched him, but he could not be sure if the immortals who had come to his aid had done so to protect him or with the intention of seizing him as their own. With a tight grip on the Sky Metal dagger, he stood at the ready upon the deck, knowing full well he could do very little.
In a few short seconds, it seemed the celestial beings would succeed in driving back the Roaming People, perhaps even defeating them. Kherron had seen no bodies collapsing from within the skirmish, no dead to mourn or serve as
evidence to their fight. But the roiling host of darkness, even split into so many parts, looked smaller, swirling with less density. He allowed himself a thin, wavering moment of hope, but this too shattered in an instant.
A piercing wail of agony coursed through the sky, composed of a sonorous multitude of mourning voices, all crying out at once. From each battling amarach rose the most blinding lights of all, stretching out in all directions until they converged and consumed everything with glaring intensity. Kherron tried to shield his eyes but found he couldn’t see his own hand—did not know if he’d even closed his eyes. His ears rang, some unheard force deafening him until he wondered if he no longer existed at all. But then the light faded once more, plunging him back into complete darkness aboard the Honalei before his vision returned to him in the night. It took much longer than it should have. His hearing was even slower to reappear.
A strained, shocked stillness had descended upon the Sylthurst. Though a few more bursts of light illuminated the black cloud that had not yet retreated, it seemed the immortals had withdrawn from combat. He could not be certain—he could never be certain—but it looked to Kherron as if they’d suffered defeat, and something pressed heavily inside him, warning him that that defeat had not been delivered here. When he turned around, hoping to find an explanation for what had happened, a beam of light hurtled toward him from the sky. At the moment it blinked out, the Honalei’s deck shuddered beneath him, the wooden barge groaning in protest, and an amarach stood before him in its place.
The creature gazed at him with incalculable sadness, his brows drawn heavily and the corner of his mouth creased, as if any minute grief would overcome him. He hefted his glimmering spear and slammed the butt of it onto the deck, drawing himself up into some form of salute as his slate-grey wings folded against his back. “He is slain.” The amarach’s voice rumbled, burdened by both sorrow and obligation.
Kherron gaped at him, rendered speechless by the fact that he would be addressed amidst such violent chaos. “Who?” he blurted, feeling blank and empty.
Secret of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 2) Page 14
