“You fucker!” cried the first mate, Mikiton. He wound up to hurl his knife at Cryden, with Meri in his path. She threw her arms in front of her face, but no sharp pains arose. She looked up after another second, and saw Mikiton’s wrist pierced by an arrow and pinned to the mast. To his credit, Mikiton did not scream, but instead moved slowly to rip the projectile out.
“Make a move, you’ll have one in your throat,” shouted Lisan the Arrow from across the roiling deck. She had another arrow notched.
“You fucking traitor!” Mikiton hissed through gritted teeth.
“Me, the traitor? Mikiton, you’ve got nerve, you thieving horse-fucker. You think Resia would be pleased to know that you’ve been borrowing from the shipping coffers to fuel your gambling habit? Or you, Jakys. How pleased would she, or Tennyson be, that you pulled a weapon on a pasnes alna, let alone one with a golden pentagram?”
Jakys said nothing in response, but the intensity behind his eyes conveyed a hate that could not be concealed. His lips peeled back, and Merigold’s vision swam. She was disoriented, suddenly, fueled by the sickness, or maybe a lack of food. Her deranged mind saw Saren’s face there, glaring up at her from the cellar, Pandemonium fueling his gaze. Such awful, awful hate, with the eyes of a Feral. With a cry, she launched herself at Saren, digging her knife into his side once. Twice. A third time.
Rough hands pulled her away, and she slashed at those, too. She quested and drew from one, feeling the clean maenen fill her own internal vessel and holding the power within herself as she desperately tried to shape it into something. No one would lay hands on her! She drew even more maenen, stretching so far beyond herself in the effort.
A brother, lovingly holding her as she lay on the ground, crying out in pain.
A man in a silver demon mask, spiriting her away from a burning barn, with her eyes stinging from the smoke and hot burns lacing her feet.
A vow, to protect, regardless of what happened in their lives.
Merigold dropped her knife, blood dripping from her hands and her vessel brimming with an abundance of maenen. She saw faces around her—Cryden, Lisan, Ill’Nath. People she did not want to hurt. Her body—her spirit—ached to discharge the stolen power. She was at capacity. Beyond capacity. The additional maenen stretched her beyond any semblance of comfort, as if she was ready to give birth to a dozen children. But, she held it. Dear fucking Yetra, she held it.
“Merigold… Meri…” Cryden said, his face drawn and tired as he stood over her. “I am sorry, but you are unwell.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her windpipes was closed as if she were being strangled by Saren. She rolled around on the deck with faces swimming in front of her, black and red spots splattering across her vision. She rolled on her side and the last thing she saw, before darkness took her, was Jakys, his shirt soaked in blood and his eyes staring dully back at her.
***
When she woke, the pain wasn’t in her throat, as she might have expected. Rather, Meri’s arms, bound as they were to her sides, were on fire, the rough wood behind her head telling her that she was lashed to a mast. From the smell, she realized she had gotten sick in her unconsciousness, and her freezing hands felt grimy, crusted as they were with dried blood.
She opened her eyes, squinting against the gray light of early morning. She felt a tin cup against her cracked lips and she gulped down the water, ending in a sputtering cough.
“Merigold Hinter, I have been unkind to you,” Cryden said. His face was painted with exhaustion, as if he hadn’t slept for a week or more.
“What… what did I do?” Merigold croaked. She didn’t struggle against her bonds.
Cryden was quiet. The rest of the ship was silent, too, aside from the creaks and groans betraying the subtle movement of the sea. Meri couldn’t see another living being from her place sitting in front of the mast she was lashed to, facing starboard. The hush was unnatural for this ship, where Meri could typically hear at least the curse or laughter of a sailor, even in her cabin, at all hours of the day and night.
“Jakys is dying, if not already dead. Punctured lungs. Last I saw, he was choking on his own blood, and medical care is hard to come by two days from land.”
Merigold’s head hung limply as she vomited up the little bit of water that she’d just drunk. She had killed another man, another one who’d no longer been a threat. He couldn’t have hurt her, not with Cryden and his powers nearby and Lisan’s arrow trained to his throat. But, her deranged mind had again twisted her reality, spitting her fears across her vision and forcing her to bloody her knife.
Time had done nothing to fix her, and she somehow knew that this was not the worst of what she had done in the last few hours.
She looked up at Cryden through her unruly mop of hair.
“What else? What else did I do, Cryden?”
Cryden sighed like he was offering the gasp of a dying man. “You drew, Merigold. You emptied and collapsed his nerring. You drew the entirety of his maenen, and held it within you. The entire essence of what he was. Remy is a shell. Living, breathing, but nothing behind it. He has been drained beyond his ability to create new maenen.”
Remy. She’d barely gotten to know the man, but he hadn’t seemed a bad sort. He’d been full of life and energy, brimming with personality and humor. Likely, he’d been a great warrior, too, and he had never wronged her. And, the love he’d had for his brother…. She had felt that love; it had equaled what she felt for Ragen. That love was… it was gone now.
“Why do you stay with me, Cryden, when I am such a monster?” she asked.
Cryden gave her a weak smile. “This world breeds monsters, Merigold, though you are not one of them. I have done you a great disservice. Your mind is unwell. I have not considered your life and the impact of what you have experienced. The trauma of losing your town, your family, and your child. I quest, Merigold, and your nerring looks healthy. I forget the impact that all of this has had on your mind. That is not my realm of expertise, my dear lady.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Meri said, and Cryden smirked at her half-heartedly.
“You are a bit different, Meri. The things that you can do… they are not typical. Pasnes alna shape miernes and use it to impact the environment. We do it in different ways, and you will learn more at Agricorinor. But, regardless, the theme is shaping—making manifest the power that we all hold within us. But, recall what you have done. The mercenaries. The Feral. You transfer raw maenen. You have the ability to reverse-fill the nerring of others with the drawn maenen. This is not an unheard of talent, but it is certainly rare.”
Merigold recalled little of the mercenaries, but the Feral was burned into her memory. She had transferred the lifeforce of her unborn child into the near-empty nerring of her attacker, causing the monster to physically burst.
It was sickening to think of.
“That can’t be all, Cryden. I can destroy things. You can destroy things, too. Just the way we do it is different. This magic… it is a curse. A blight. I… I should be put down, as should every other person who can draw and harm those around them.” Merigold clenched her fists and strained against her bonds in an impotent rage at her own being.
Cryden watched her, a gentle frown on his face. “I’m sorry you see it that way, Merigold. Humanity kills, but we are not all weapons. Much good can be done with these powers…”
“Cryden! We are approaching!” Lisan called from over Merigold’s shoulder. Cryden nodded heavily, and then knelt in front of Merigold, placing a tentative hand on her knee.
“Please rest, for now. I will release you later; I needed to assess your mental state. Lisan will watch over you and keep you safe…” Left unspoken, of course, was that she was in danger, likely from everyone on board—especially Mikiton and Marius. Marius may have seemed simple, but there was a fierce love there.
Cryden stood and strode unsteadily from sight. Thankfully, Merigold was not left alone with her thoughts for long, lest she continue down
a dangerous path. Lisan crouched next to her, just out of sight, her presence oddly reassuring.
“I’ve killed people who didn’t deserve it,” Lisan said, almost as if she was talking to herself. “Baern the Holy was a good man, a chief among his people. But, the Day Mother wished him dead, for he was uniting the people counter to her wishes, and I did her will. That was in Piniton, far away from here. And, I once lost my temper and killed a man who did deserve to die. Onious was a pitiful excuse for a human being, treating his slaves as one might treat misbehaven dogs. But he was also a powerful man, one who paid for my food and gave me my orders. One day, he struck a woman with his ring-encrusted fingers, rendering her bleeding and blind in one eye simply because he was displeased with the hanging of her hair. I stabbed him thirty-four times, and he died. I stabbed three guards an additional seventeen times, and two of them died.”
Merigold said nothing, not sure if she was expected to. Lisan was trying to bring her comfort; that was obvious. But Merigold’s own case was different. Lisan, straight as an arrow, had followed her orders in one case and followed her heart in another. Meri killed without reason, without sense. Two more lives were lost now because she could not escape her past.
And then Cryden’s voice came to her from where he looked out over the sea. “This is… this is wrong.”
“Bad luck, this is,” said the second mate, Yukron, who might well be the captain at this point, Meri guessed.
“You ever see anything like this before in your journey on the seas?”
“The wreckage, yes. I have seen many a ship destroyed in pirate attacks or crushed upon the reefs. There are at least three ships destroyed here, which tells me there was a battle. But I have never seen this. Coal black water? This is wrong. This place is cursed. I would recommend, my lord, that we do not linger. I know not what such water will do to our hull.” Yukron’s voice, though respectful, was laced with fear. Whether it was from Cryden, the black seas that Meri could not see, or both, Meri wasn’t sure.
“This shouldn’t be possible. Not anymore,” Cryden said, his words carrying on the wind.
“My lord, you’ve seen it. And I worry about the men—we should be to Polanice,” said Yukron, stepping into view. The Rafónese man, a fairly unassuming sort, was chewing on his lower lip. Cryden stepped in next to him and leaned heavily on the rail.
“Fine. I need samples, though, for study and to bring to Agricorinor. Have your men lower a barrel… wait—someone is out there!”
There was a sudden flurry of activity as Yukron shouted out orders, directing the helmsman to steer toward whomever they saw, and calling out a complicate set of commands for men to yank and pull on various ropes. The boat lurched and stuttered across the apparently dead waters, the motion feeling unnatural to even Meri. The waves, it seemed, did not follow the pattern she was used to hating. And yet, she had no desire to look out and see exactly what the sea, which had shaken both a pasnes alna and seasoned sailors, looked like. She closed her eyes for just a few minutes, ignoring the activity and thinking about the dead.
With a start, Merigold opened her eyes at the sound of a thump and the sound of cursing. At least, it sounded like cursing from the tone of it—the language was completely unfamiliar.
Several sailors, Cryden, and Yukron were scattered around a fallen body, which gasped and sputtered for air as it flopped about the deck. He—as Merigold could see the person was a man—wore only skin-tight black breeches. He struggled to his hands and knees, vomiting a waterfall of black water. The sailors kept their distance, and Yukron eventually waved them off, shouting orders in Rafónese.
The man pulled himself to one knee, but neither Cryden nor Yukron made a move to help him. Merigold had never seen a man like this castaway before, and she had seen Jecustans, Sestrians, Nistlingers, Rafónese, and a variety of mutts traveling through the Duckling. But no one had looked like this man. His skin wasn’t just pale; it was alabaster white, as if he had been untouched by the sun. It was near flawless, in fact, and even as his sharp-featured face twisted, there was no doubt that he was beautiful.
“Get up,” Cryden said. Then, he repeated himself louder. “Get up!”
The man complied, grasping the rail for support. Yukron warily leveled a cutlass at him, balanced and ready to strike, but Cryden made no move.
“Tell me what happened here,” Cryden said.
The man began to sputter a language Merigold had never heard, completely unlike Ardian. He spoke at a rapid pace until he broke off in a cough.
“Tell me what happened. I’ve little patience for your pantomime,” repeated Cryden, anger in his voice.
Shaking on his feet, the pale castaway scrubbed at his face with his hands. His gaze was glassy and exhausted, and he crinkled his forehead in confusion. It was clear that he had little idea what Cryden was saying and was stunned at his turn-of-fate. He had probably resigned himself to the depths, to a watery grave. He reached an arm out to Cryden as if in supplication and then stepped back, hands raised, as Yukron’s sword came an inch from his neck.
Cryden shook his head in frustration. Meri knew that his thirst for knowledge, for understanding what had happened here, was left unquenched. “Chain him below and leave a guard,” he said finally. “We will try a discussion when he’s somewhat recovered.”
Yukron nodded and called out to some sailors. Again, the pale man tried saying something and stumbled forward, and Cryden reached to steady him on instinct. It was a ruse, though, as the man recovered, dashed forward with a wicked hook, and connected solidly with Cryden’s face. The pasnes alna spun and smashed his head on a crate. Yukron brought his sword up, but not before a bare foot kicked the weapon aside, and a second spinning kick sent Yukron reeling. The pale man scooped up the fallen cutlass and glanced around hurriedly. Did he think to take the entire ship alone, and then sail it back? And, back to where, if he did? With the unnaturally fast way that he moved, could he?
Lisan cursed from Meri’s shoulder, and Merigold could see her fumbling with a sealskin bag, retrieving a dry string to affix to her bow. The deck was crowded with sailors, but an arrow could end this much quicker.
Cryden was just heaving his injured and drained body to his feet, holding a wavering hand toward his attacker. The pale man spun, slashing his sword across Cryden’s stomach. The pasnes alna, always so obstentatiously quiet, howled in agony before falling to the suddenly blood-slick deck. Merigold now struggled against her bonds, questing desperately for something that could free her.
As always, she felt her own nerring, her reservoir of power, within her. It was such a familiar feeling that she almost ignored the subtle differences. The ponds of her power were slightly more expansive… there was more to her right now. Not much—it was just as if the pond contained a few dozen gallons more water—but it was there. And, there were still remnants of maenen that she had drawn from Remy. The power even felt like Remy.
She focused, as Cryden had taught her, and made an effort to shape the maenen. She aimed her hand, pinned to her side, upwards, and she envisioned a beam of energy, white and hot. She forced her nerring to expel the power, as if she were squeezing a bladder to force it out. As the power exited her nerring, it was shaped by her will. Untrained, certainly, but strong. She was strong. She had survived so much. She was a killer and a survivor. She could carve her way through a couple lengths of rope.
With a sharp pain, the beam of light shot from her hand and mostly severed the fibers. They fell slack around her and she glanced down at the new burn on her arm. She ignored the pain, though—what was a burn compared to her life, of late?—and pushed herself slowly to her feet.
The pale man turned his head toward Merigold as he finished another sailor with an effortless slash across the throat. His eyes widened slightly, illuminated by a dozen lanterns and whatever waning light filled the sky.
“Maneer?” he asked, clearly. “Maneer, kyoo yaha?” He suddenly spun his sword about in a blur, deflecting an arrow shot by L
isan, who had finally found a clear shot.
“Shit. Get back,” she said, yanking Meri back behind the mast. Meri caught herself before falling, trying to get a glimpse of Cryden over Lisan’s shoulder. All she could see were several motionless lumps, and was even unable to tell Cryden from the other fallen sailors. Lisan shot another arrow, which the pale man also deflected with ease. He was preternaturally fast and precise, moving as if everyone else were wading through water. Lisan tossed her bow aside with a disgusted snort, placing her hand on her sword.
The castaway turned back toward Meri, stepping over a body, and Lisan drew her sword and surged forward without a sound. She met his blade with her own, swinging her short sword with a speed that belied her musculature. The castaway nodded appreciatively as he sidestepped her attack. He set Lisan off-balance with a serious of impossibly fast jabs. She worked frantically to keep the tip of his cutlass from her chest, finding no room to riposte. He caught Lisan with an unexpected and fierce kick to the shin then, and she fell backward, moving with the momentum to keep the bone from shattering.
Ill’nath appeared from the left, swinging a great club with a roar and distracting the castaway warrior from Lisan. Meri darted to Lisan’s side, pulling the other woman to her feet. Lisan, ignoring the battle for a moment, gripped Meri’s shoulder and trapped her with her deep brown eyes.
“This Menogan is beyond our skills,” she said grimly.
“Menogan?” asked Meri.
“A people far from here. Few know of them, but I am extremely well-traveled. Later, though. We need to take him down before more are hurt.” Ill’Nath stumbled over a body, barely holding his own. Only his immense strength gave the Menogan pause. That, and the size of his club. Merigold noticed that he had a deep cut, bleeding freely, from his bare chest.
“What can I do? I’m… I’m without power. I could barely burn the ropes.”
Wisdom Lost Page 14
