“Don’t worry, we’ll get him.” Tsai swung into the saddle and rode away.
Nice words, but the kid needed lots more than words right now.
Blood in the Weave. She should’ve told Tsai to herd the gelding back to the wagon before she left.
She glared at Periwinkle.
He fluttered his nostrils at her.
They could fuss at each other for days.
The kid never had no trouble getting the harness on the roans, once he figured out the straps. For that matter, they never gave her much trouble. Until she tried to ride them.
Lorel strolled back to Poppy, lifted up Periwinkle’s harness collar, and held it high.
Periwinkle snorted, but ambled back into camp, right up to where his traces were laid out.
Sing to the Weaver, the horse was still willing to work for her. She got him under harness in record time.
She checked everything twice, jumped up onto the driver’s platform, and grabbed the reins. “Move out! Run, you thread-snipping nags!”
The team reared like they were startled, but leaned into the harness and galloped like a pack of serdil was after them.
Cliff walls loomed to her right. To the left, the miswoven ocean crashed and roared and hissed like a villain in a magician’s tale. Green waves, green peaks, green valleys. Greenish-white foam near the shore.
Where in all that cold green water was the kid?
***
The treacherous wave dumped him back into the depths, and another pounded him even deeper.
He frog-stroked his way back up to the surface and managed to get his head high enough to glimpse the mountains. He gasped for breath and fought to swim in that direction. He could feel the riptide dragging him sideways, further and further south.
His cloak felt like a sail. He’d become an underwater ship.
He tried to untie the cloak fastening, but his fingers were far too numb to untangle the leather cord.
Cold. But not so cold as before. A quiet part of his mind recognized the silent numbness that he’d felt before, when he’d cleaned his serdil wounds in the icy ocean.
He had to get out before he stopped caring. Poppy couldn’t rescue him this time. The warmth of the lava lizard’s skull couldn’t protect him from the icy ocean.
A wave lifted him briefly, allowing him a glimpse of the beach. He was far south of the Hreshith graveyard, and even farther from the shore. Hopelessly far from the shore.
He fought the numbness and the cold, knowing he had only minutes before he lost this war. He couldn’t lose. Too many people counted on him. Sea empress, I wish you could help me.
‘I wondered if you needed assistance.’ The tranquil voice echoed inside his head like a singer inside an empty hall.
Inside his mind? Was he hallucinating? Who – or what – could help him this far from shore?
Chuckles surrounded him. ‘I can, little one.’
A vast shape rose beneath him until it just broke the surface of the ocean, easing him inches above the water. He found himself snuggled between two long, warm spines.
Wind almost as icy as the ocean slashed through him, but wherever his body touched his rescuer’s, warmth seeped into him.
The wind changed direction. The behemoth carrying him appeared to change course. He peeked around the pearly spines in front of him and saw land, far, far away.
Too far away. He clung to the spine sheltering him. Shudders wracked his body. His heart felt heavy, frozen solid, like the rest of him. Sleep stole over him.
‘That won’t do. Stay conscious, little one.’
He jerked awake. Warmth oozed over him, through him. His brain started to reengage. Or he thought it did. Nothing made sense.
The shore sped closer.
Pain focused in his crotch. No wonder; the flute crossed up his left pant leg to his throat. The angle was worse than sitting on it. He tried to move it from between his legs without falling off his rescuer, but quit when he slid to one side. Pain was better than falling off.
But nothing else made sense. “This is one thundering strange death dream.”
‘I am not dead.’ Amusement tickled his brain. ‘Are you?’
“I’m not sure. I ought to be.” Could his rescuer be real? Where did it come from? “Why did you save me?”
‘You called me.’ The voice sounded surprised. ‘You are kin. You are but an egglet, a…’
The conversation sounded familiar. “A hatchling?”
‘Yes, precisely. A hatchling. You have met other kindred, I presume. For now we are your elders, your protectors. The day will come when you shall protect us.’
Viper shivered from more than cold. “I fear I’m liable to let you down. I’m not worth much.”
The voice in his head laughed merrily. ‘You are worth what you choose to be worth. If you belittle yourself, you shall be small. If you puff up yourself, you shall be air. Be what you truly are, and you shall be all that you are worth.’
Another teacher? Under these circumstances? “You’re worse than Trevor and the Kyridon combined.”
The voice laughed again.
The shore stopped rushing at him. The leviathan turned its body parallel to the land. ‘You must swim from this point. I do not desire to beach myself. I wish you well, hatchling.’
“I wish you well, elder brother.” Viper slid into the water with the sound of gentle laughter echoing in his mind. Praise the Thunderer, sheltered from the worst of the waves by the behemoth’s body, he could cope with swimming for a hundred feet.
He staggered to the beach as quickly as he could, but when he turned back, the Hreshith was out of sight.
That meeting would not go into any of his notebooks. No one would believe him anyway. Maybe Lorel was right, maybe he shouldn’t write about the Hreshith at all. Maybe.
He pulled the flute out of his waistband and rested it over his shoulder. Somehow it had stayed with him through this mad adventure. The quest was still on schedule.
How could a quest have a schedule? That didn’t make sense, not from everything he’d ever heard in hero tales. But this wasn’t a magician’s story. This was real life. His life.
Viper shivered. The icy wind cut through his soggy clothing, even his painfully heavy cloak, as though he wore nothing at all. If he were in a hero’s tale, he’d have a handsome reward for his success. He wouldn’t be freezing on a desolate beach.
His foot was bare. And his stump lurched directly on the cold sand. Maybe he could find a walking stick. He certainly wouldn’t use the flute as a cane. The Kyridon's weapon deserved more respect.
He’d saved that weapon. He’d succeeded. No more whining.
Wait a minute. He’d seen a live Hreshith. He’d talked with a Hreshith. It had even made a weird sort of prediction for him. That was more reward than any sorcerer should hope for. He certainly had a lot to think about. Even if he shouldn’t write about it.
Could he start a secret journal?
Gulls swept down and inspected him before shrieking abuse and flying away. He trudged onward. Clouds drifted overhead, pushed by the cold wind. He hoped a storm wasn’t following them.
It would be a few hours before Lorel arrived, at best. Assuming she didn’t write him off as dead. No, the Kyridon would tell her he was still alive. They’d come for him. Sooner or later.
Well, no matter what she did, he had to get dried out or he’d freeze.
Piles of driftwood dotted the beach. A shelter made out of driftwood? Yes, he could manage that. But farther inland, away from the Alignment tides. A rocky cliff lay ahead. He’d camp there. He’d make a lean-to, and use his wet cloak to block the wind.
His belly hurt. Too much salt water, he suspected. His stump burned from staggering across the icy sand. He had to get warm. That meant a fire. Had the match case hidden in his jacket pocket stayed watertight?
Misery rose up his chest. He coughed, and sneezed, and hawked up snot and salt water. How disgusting.
Reeling like
a drunken dancer in Zedista’s New Year’s parade, he dragged his aching body up the beach to the cliff.
***
By sunset, her eyes burned worse than from her last go at cooking griddle cakes, just from staring out at the miswoven ocean. A fraying cold wind gusted around her, blowing sand into her face.
She hadn’t gotten another glimpse of the kid.
Loom-warping waves crashed up the shore, one after another, all day long. Sometimes they even touched the cliffs. How could the kid survive that?
She kept the wagon close to the cliffs, since she couldn’t run inland as fast as Tsai on her little mare. The team hated slogging through loose sand, but they moved lively when they reached wet, hard sand.
Tsai was in the distance, riding back toward her, but real close to the ocean. Too close for safety, as crazy as the waves were all day. Looked like the girl was still searching for the kid. Good. Her friend wasn’t no quitter.
The sky burned red and copper. The ocean sparkled like melted gold. If gold sloshed around like beer in a drunk’s flagon. Out there the waves were tall enough to drown Zedista’s clock tower. But the water looked darker.
Soon it would be too dark to see anything.
Maybe later there’d be enough moonlight to keep hunting. No way was she giving up. She’d let Nightshade down. She couldn’t let the kid down, too.
A sick owl hooted like it was trying to cough up its guts. That was weird, seeing as she’d never heard an owl… oh, since Padue. Maybe not since they’d left Zedista.
An orange glimmer lit up a smidgeon of the cliff face.
Was that a real fire, or a reflection of the sunset? It was worth checking out. It couldn’t be the kid, though. He didn’t have no fire magic, he told her that often enough. And after swimming for miles and miles, he couldn’t have no matches that still worked.
The horses slowed to snatch at tufts of grass.
Maybe it was time to camp. No point in letting the nags go hungry. She’d check out the light on foot. She reined the team in at a grassy patch and swung down from the driver’s bench. She eased their bridles off and started to stow them in the bottom rear trunk.
Her breath stuttered to a halt.
Nightshade’s saddle glimmered orange in the twilight. How had that gotten inside the trunk? She never put it there. Never thought to take it off the lad’s dead body. Tsai must’ve gone back for it. Bless her thread on the Loom.
She wanted to stand and admire it, nicks and scrapes and all, but security came first. She closed the lid, brushed away tears, and strode toward the cliff.
Smoke drifted in the wind, smelling of wet wool, wet fur, and burned seaweed. Had Tsai made camp before heading back to the beach for one more search?
She walked faster.
More wheezing honks echoed across the beach. Now it sounded like a goose with a sore throat.
A huge, soggy serdil pelt hung over one side of a pile of driftwood that leaned against the cliff wall. That couldn’t be the kid’s cloak. It looked way too big.
Lorel jogged closer and peeked around the edge of the pelt.
A shivering sea creature crouched near a small fire. Seaweed was snarled in its matted hair. Ribs showed through its pebbly hide. Stick-thin limbs jutted out at sharp angles. A huge pipe poked out of its head. It didn’t look human at all, except for it wore soggy cotton smallclothes.
Her heart thumped so hard it nearly broke her wishbone. “Kid?”
The awful tooting stopped.
“That you, kid?” She looked back at the ocean and waved. “Tsai, over here!”
“I’m glad you came,” he croaked.
Like she wouldn’t come for him. Didn’t he trust her none? “You sound half dead.” She ducked under the dripping fur cloak and crawled over to the fire. “Something sure was making a racket over here.” She eased the seaweed out of his tangled, slimy hair.
“I was teaching myself to play the flute.” His hands shook so hard she was amazed he could hold onto it, much less get so much noise out of it.
“I’d thought for sure we’d lost it. So that’s why you went swimming.” She plucked his nearly-dry shirt off a driftwood branch and handed it to him. “Listen, do me a favor.”
He blinked up at her without reaching for the shirt.
His face was so empty, she forgot what she’d meant to ask him. He couldn’t give her a sensible answer, no how. Might as well turn it into a joke.
“How about you forget the flute and stick with playing the mandolin? Please, kid?”
He kinda managed a smile.
Chapter 25.
When Viper crawled out of the wagon again, dawn lit pink and lavender clouds above snow-capped, green mountains. Beach sand glimmered in coy rose. Even the horses, grazing near the cliff face, looked pink and purple. The waves slapping against the shore appeared a deep, shimmering turquoise.
He was surprised he recognized any part of the landscape. His eyes were as gummed up as Trevor’s oldest, most dried-out specimen jars, and the icy wind blew grit into his face, making everything even harder to see.
Simply breathing was a trial. He barely made it to the ground before he coughed convulsively for the third time in ten minutes, and hacked up more thick mucus. If he hadn’t met the Hreshith, breathing wouldn’t be worth this much misery. But the joy bubbling inside the sea emperor helped him keep going.
“You’re up early.” Lorel thumped him on the back so hard he’d have fallen face down in the sand if Tsai’dona hadn’t grabbed his arm. “You oughta stay in bed, kid.”
“I don’t have time for sleep.” Today was the spring equinox. Sick or not, the ceremony had to be completed that day.
Today was his fourteenth birthday. Fourteen had to be a luckier number than thirteen, didn’t it?
On his thirteen birthday, Trevor had died. And it was his fault. Or the fault of the scrying spell they’d found in RedAdder’s grimoire.
He shivered, and fought to hide his shakes from the girls.
It wasn’t as if he were cold, thanks to Tsai’dona’s sewing efforts over the winter. His serdil-fur trousers were almost too warm. His serdil boots were blessedly comfortable. His stump slopped around on the new padding, but he could walk upright again. Maybe his back would stop hurting.
Even his cloak and wool coat were miraculously warm and dry.
Last night, when his brain thawed out enough to function a little, he’d harassed Lorel into driving the wagon to the north end of the Hreshith graveyard, and to park it as close to the shoreline as he dared, given the height of the Alignment-driven waves. She’d been furious about traveling in the dark, but Tsai’dona rode ahead with a torch. They’d gotten here in one piece.
For some reason, Tsai’dona had refused to enter the wagon. He’d been too tired to care. He’d stowed his poor chewed-up boot in his private cupboard and curled up on Lorel’s bunk, wracked with shivers until the Kyridon shed its fur coat and coiled around him.
Last night, or indecently early this morning, he’d convinced the girls to collect firewood for the ceremony. And they had. Four tall piles of driftwood. Not manzanita. Not even oak. Rotted, worm-eaten driftwood.
He limped from the closest woodpile back to the wagon, about thirty feet. The fire shouldn’t get big enough to threaten their home. “I hate using junk wood to dedicate anything this important.”
“We gotta use the wood we got.” Lorel prowled around the camp as if she were looking for enemies. Or watching out for serdil. “There’s no point in wishing for manzanita when there ain’t none for thousands of miles, sing to the Weaver. We’d ruin all your precious war axes trying to chop that stuff.”
Tsai’dona looked up from mending his ocean-battered wool trousers. “What’s manzanita?”
“My war axes? You’ve got your kidneys switched with your brains. I’ll remember whose axes those are when I go counting the profits.” He reached up to the driver’s platform and stroked Nightshade’s severed hoof. “Kyridon, where are you?”
The Kyridon poked its head under the wagon door. “This one attends the hatchling.”
“I assume that this hoof is intended to lure Nightshade’s ghost into a weapon.”
The Kyridon nodded solemnly.
“So how are we to call in the other ghosts?”
“The hatchling must analyze and discern the pattern.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Viper sighed, gagged, and coughed up another bucketful of snot. “I think the shark’s tooth will stand – or swim – as water’s warrior.” If the creature was dead. Too late to worry about that. “But we don’t have any ‘air lord’ bones whatsoever. Assuming you mean a dragon.”
The Kyridon tilted its head. “The hatchling possesses an air lord’s talon.” It retreated back inside the wagon.
“I do?” He turned to the girls and ostentatiously patted his coat pockets. His hand thumped against the grimoire. “Nothing here.” Nothing dragonish, anyway. He was getting as bad as a magician, with his theatrics. But joking eased the terror growing inside his chest.
He reached inside his coat and flamboyantly searched his tunic pockets. “And nothing here.” His fingers met hard edges of the lizard skull and the shark tooth, but he ignored them. He waved his hands about like a conjurer. “Where am I hiding a dragon’s claw?”
Lorel threw back her head and laughed. “Only dragon claw I’ve seen was the rock ones on the wood dragon you messed up. They made decent swords, though.”
Tsai’dona tied a knot and bit off the thread. “I think they look like real dragons’ claws.” She left his trousers on the driver’s bench. What was with her and the inside of the wagon? She hadn’t shown any fear of the Kyridon in lunars.
He drew an arc in the sand with his padded boot. “One dragon’s claw. Made of stone. Sandstone.” He walked around the blurry arc. And froze. No. It wasn’t possible.
“What’s wrong, kid?” Lorel paused in her wanderings and crossed her arms.
He threw her a haunted look and scrambled into the wagon, dragging his mended trousers with him. He emerged a moment later with the larger of the two stone swords. Was Tsai’dona right? He turned it over and over, studying it from various angles.
Serpent's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 3) Page 34
