by Ellyn, Court
Only when the glass stopped falling and an astonished silence filled the room did Rhian realize what he’d done—and what he was.
~~~~
Fiala dabbed the blood off her son’s chin and smeared silverthorn ointment on his swollen jaw. He felt too numb inside to stop her from fussing over him. His teeth and his knuckles throbbed. The taste of blood lingered in his mouth, and the tingle of that raw power lingered in his hands. They gripped the edge of the trunk that doubled as a chair. His mother set the medicine bottles aside and tenderly tucked his shaggy hair behind his ear. He shook it loose again. A common routine, even if he wasn’t embarrassed by his eyes in front of his mother.
How had he done it? Wondering if he’d be able to do it again, he rubbed his fingers together. A life of labor had calloused them, yet tonight they felt sensitive, tender, almost sore, as if he’d chaffed them in the sand.
Angry shouts rose from the street. Fists pounded the inn’s front door. “Listen to them, will ya?” Fiala muttered with a nervous chuckle; the tension on her mouth and between her eyebrows gave her fear away. “You’d think you killed their friend, rather than just tossing him out on his arse.” The two Evaronnans had lifted their unconscious friend out of the glass and carried him through the streets, rousing their shipmates with shouts of “Attack! Sorcery! Rally!” A short while later they returned to the inn with the rest of the crew; half a hundred outraged sailors wielded wooden slats for clubs and ropes tied into tidy nooses.
“I saw Mackry the tanner out there and Forber the eel-fisher,” Fiala added, cramming the cork back into the ointment bottle. “Other neighbors, too, as if they’d never heard the word ‘loyalty’.”
Shark and a few towners did what they could to barricade the entrance and the windows until the authorities arrived and sorted out the ‘misunderstanding.’
Fiala put the bottle back into the medicine box, her hands quick and shaky. They returned to sweep the hair from his eyes, but he batted them away. “What did Grandma do about … being … ?”
“Nothing!” Fiala hissed. “Sure she never told anyone outside the family, and we never let anyone know. I was your da’s wife five years before they trusted me enough to tell me, and only then because she was dying and she wanted to warn me that you might … well.”
He jumped from the chest and paced. The tight room allowed him only a couple of steps before he had to turn and go the other way. Giving up, he sank into a chair under the window, dropped his head into his hands, and groaned. The sailors would break into the inn sooner or later and no monstrous weapon hiding inside him could stop such a mob. He’d hang for sure.
“You should leave,” his mother said.
“Hnh, right,” he replied, sarcasm all too comfortable in his mouth.
Fiala knelt before him. Her hands rested heavily on his knee. “Sure I thought you’d flee Sandy Cape long before now.”
“But I can’t leave you here—”
“Of course you can. The inn’s not ideal, but it’s a roof and company. And don’t lie to me and say you’ve no longing to leave this place.”
Rhian stammered, feeling pinned between the mob and a great gaping gulf. “But where? Where will I go?”
Ma smiled, and for an instant she glowed again, young and full of laughter. “Anywhere, Rhian.” Such an enormous word, full of nothing and everything. She patted his knee and tucked the hair from his eyes. “And maybe, in some far-off land, you’ll find a lovely girl and marry well. Like Grandma Raysa’s sister.”
“Mother, she married a pirate.”
“But it’s a duke’s brother he was first.”
“He was still a pirate. His family disowned him. That’s why we’re stuck in this hellhole and not living in a palace.”
“But out there,” she argued, waving at the window, “you never know what might happen. All our girls have been passed around, and we’re all practically inbred anyway.”
“Mother!” he cried. “Breeding is the least of my concerns! All I care about is dodging a rope.”
Fiala shrugged as if his concerns were marginal and picked herself off the floor. For a long while she stood staring at him. He read affection on her face, and sadness. It was more than he could stand. He lowered his head and stared at the floor between his feet. Fiala reached around him and forced up the window to let in a fresh sea breeze. “I’ll let you think about it,” she said, heading for the door. “Sounds like Shark needs help shutting up those madmen.” She stopped with her hand on the latch but didn’t turn around. “Son? Don’t forget your mother.”
Forget her? Before Rhian could argue that he wasn’t going anywhere, she slipped out the door.
How in all the great black Abyss had this disaster happened? Maybe if he made it happen again, he could scare off that mob. But who would come to eat Vella’s chowder then or stay in Shark’s flea-infested rooms? There had to be some way to convince the roaring crowd that he meant no harm.
A rhythmic thudding shook the wall beside his bunk. A woman squealed. Business as usual, despite the threat downstairs. Wasn’t she scared? Didn’t she care if he lived or died? Rhian ground his teeth and hammered a fist into the wall. “Shut up! Goddess, Vella!”
The wall stopped shaking. “Goddess Vella, that’s me, Eyes.” The wall was so thin that it barely muffled her voice. The thudding resumed, joined by grunts and laughter.
Rhian smashed his hands over his ears. He had to get out of here. He tiptoed into the hallway and peered over the balcony railing.
“The authorities are coming to sort this out … ,” Shark shouted over the mob’s demands. Fiala helped the kitchen wench nail boards over the broken window.
No good, Rhian decided. If he tried sneaking into the kitchen, the mob would see him. Men likely kept watch on the backdoor anyway. Trapped. And tomorrow he’d be dead, his neck several inches too long.
He retreated to his room, shoved a chair under the knob and fell into it. For a long, forlorn moment he stared out the window before he realized the depths of his stupidity. “Eejit!” he hissed at himself and ran to the window. What Sandy Caper had ever needed to escape an enraged mob before? It wasn’t as if he had tales of his neighbors’ daring-do to learn from.
Below, Prince’s Street lay empty. The mob had gathered at the main entrance, around the corner on Flood Way. The window was small, but he managed to wedge his shoulders through. Sitting on the sill, he paused to consider if he needed to take anything, but he owned nothing of real or sentimental value. He’d be back in a few days anyway. By then, the Evaronnan merchanter and its angry crew would be long gone.
The beach. He’d go to the beach and think a bit, plan … something. If nothing spectacular came to him, he’d walk the rest of the night and hide out in Rystia.
Carefully, he lowered himself to the street. The sea wind had blown out half the lamps along Prince, and the flames in the rest burned too low to cast a decent shadow or light up his face. Without a backward glance, he raced away through the alleys.
The squall flung a jagged net of lightning across the horizon. The tide echoed the low roar of the thunder. South of town, a pair of sand dunes shaped a deep bowl that tilted toward the night-black sea. Rhian slid down the ribs of sand and crouched among the broad-leafed dune flags and blue-flowered sand whips. The stems of the whips scored whelps on flesh during strong gales, and the wind began gusting ferociously ahead of the squall. Fine sand lifted off the dunes, like spray off the billows, and lashed as painfully as the whips.
Rhian didn’t notice. Despite the tumbling surf and whistling wind, he found peace. Amid the chaos of the storm, a sense of order. It calmed him. Helped him think.
Avedra! Avedra? Admit it to yourself, eejit. It makes sense. The diving, the unnatural ability to withstand the depths, even the ease with which he knew exactly where the oysters would be. Earlier that afternoon, when Bones said he’d felt the pressure dropping before the storm, Rhian had felt more than that. He could’ve told Bones precisely when the storm
would arrive. When the lightning would strike. Now. And now.
The energy tingled along his arms and fingers, even across his eyelashes. These sensations were as natural as breathing; he’d never thought to question them.
Had his father been avedra, too, like his mother? How many other people in Sandy Cape had the same secret lurking inside them? Practically inbred anyway, Ma had said. Maybe his neighbors had considered this as well. Maybe that’s why they were so quick to band with the sailors in their demand for Rhian’s neck. They were afraid they might be accused of possessing the Old Blood, too. By shaking a noose, they distanced themselves from the probability and the blame.
Abnormal. Impure. Mixed. Elvish. Dangerous.
Once he returned to his people, how many would spit on him, shun him, because he forced them to look at themselves with different eyes. No wonder Grandma Raysa had chosen silence.
Ah, damn it, what am I to do?
Sunrise. Seek.
The words whirled through his head. He reeled, felt the dune slap him in the back of the head and found himself sprawled on his back and staring up at the roiling clouds. The dizziness was the same he’d felt that morning when the seal spoke. When the seal spoke. He was certain of it now.
He sat up and searched the billows hammering the shore. In the next blue flash of lightning he glimpsed a pair of eyes and a round, wet head bobbing with the tide.
Swim. Seek. Sunrise. Seek.
“Seek what?” he shouted into the wind.
Them.
Rhian scrambled to his feet and slowly approached the seal, but rather than flee, it splashed and dived excitedly among the waves.
“Them who?”
Swim. The seal darted away, northward along the shore, gradually taking to deeper water.
Rhian ran alongside, kicking up clouds of sand. “Wait! Tell me!”
Swim!
Like hell he was swimming in that enraged water. Ahead, the Harlot’s Hand lay moored inside her stone slip. Rhian untied her and shoved her into the sea. The wind was too wild for a sail, so he undocked the oars and rowed with all his might to pull free of the rolling breakers. Beyond them, the sea was hardly calmer. The skiff rocked with the billows, and Rhian came to his senses. “What am I doing? Madness!”
No. Seek. Swim, the seal insisted. Her slick, round head popped out of the sea beside the boat, her black eyes so certain.
“You’re crazy,” he accused the seal. “I’m crazy. I’m turning around.” He worked the oars in opposite directions to turn the skiff, but before he could aim the bow for shore, a wave lifted the Harlot onto her side. Something struck the planks below his feet, sending the gunwale spinning over his head. The Harlot dumped him into the cold, black sea.
He surfaced spitting salt water and gasping for air. A wave bashed him atop the head, rolled him over, and flung him back into the darkness. His swimmer’s legs and arms fought to find the surface, but the sky and the sea looked the same, black and cold and angry. The waves pitched him down and down again, giving him no time to suck down a gulp of air.
Gonna drown, just like my da, he thought. Panic urged him to breathe despite the sea in his mouth. No! Ma needs me. Can’t. Breathe.
Swim, said the voice in his head. Warm, luxurious velvet filled his flailing hands. He clenched onto the seal’s fur, wrapped his arms around her neck. With strokes of her flippers, she propelled him upward. They broke the surface just as the rain began pelting the sea. Breathe. Swim. Sunrise, the seal said. Her body expanded as her lungs filled, and down she dived, carrying Rhian with her.
Surfacing more often than she required, the seal seemed to sense her passenger’s need for air. Still, she pushed Rhian to his limits, rising only when he was certain he couldn’t go another second. He cast dazed eyes over his shoulder, and in the instant before he was submerged again, he saw only blackness. The storm-churned ocean seemed to have swallowed the beacon lanterns of Sandy Cape. The rocks spiking over the oyster beds flashed blue in the lightning, but they too lay far behind. On his left, the lighthouse at Westport beamed steadily. Ahead, nothing but darkness.
Down they dived and on they swam. Forever they swam. So cold. So dark. Oh, stop. Let it stop. Let me drown.
No. Swim. More. Swim.
At last, Rhian felt solid rock under his left foot. The seal rolled and dumped him like an oyster from a creel basket. Her nose nudged him in the ribs, urging him up the rock.
Hand over hand, he climbed the slope while the surf tried to suck him back down. The rock sliced his hands and shins, and the seal urged him higher still. About the time he decided he couldn’t move another inch, sand gave way under his fingers. Still sand, dry sand. Rhian collapsed face first, hugging the sand, curling his fingers around it so that it filled his fists.
Rest, he heard on the edge of consciousness. Rest. Seek. Them.
Then all was wind and wave and silence.
~~~~
In 997 After Elves, Rhian, Son of the Sea, woke upon a foreign shore. He spat sand from his mouth and scraped it off his face and shook it from his hair.
He found himself on a high promontory with the sea swirling below on three sides. Torn kelp and sea foam and other flotsam swirled in the eddies. The seal was nowhere to be seen. He squinted toward the western horizon. Where the Isle of Rávalin should be, a hazy, gray smudge divided sea from sky.
A fit of conscience slapped him with the force of a whale’s tail striking the sea. “Bones is gonna skin me for losing his rake … and his Harlot. Sure he won’t press Ma too hard for payment. He won’t risk her tray atop his head.”
He heard a scuffing on the rocks and turned to find a bent old man in rough homespun approaching. Driftwood and broken planks filled his arms up to his unshaven chin. He eyed Rhian with suspicion. “I ‘eard o’ shipwrecked sailors talkin’ to theyselves. Where’d you come from, lad?”
Rhian strained his ears to understand the man’s speech. Only a few leagues of water separated the Islands from the continent, but Rhian could barely make sense of the words. He rose slowly, stiffly, bones and muscles aching as if Shark had beaten him with a table leg. “Not a ship. ‘Twas a seal.”
The old man frowned and chomped toothless gums. “Mmm, you’d best come wi’ me. Get some food and fire in ya. And grab that plank there on your way.”
Rhian retrieved the broken plank that the storm surge had pushed halfway up the promontory, then hurried after the man. Despite his age and rickety legs, the man scuttled over sand and stone with the steadiness of a crab.
“Am I in Evaronna?” Rhian asked, catching up.
“Aye.”
“Is Westport far?”
“Nope. ‘Bout three leagues north’ard, ‘long the Highway up top these cliffs.”
“Where can I find an avedra?” Rhian didn’t know what the seal had meant by “seek them,” but he did know he needed to find someone who could tell him a thing or two about the power sleeping in his hands.
The old man stumbled and dropped his armload. “You did suck down too much seawater. What you want one o’ them for?”
“Just curious?”
“Forget it, lad. Avedras is ill luck. It’s all them eldritch airs ‘anging about ‘em. Deadly.”
Disappointment sank into Rhian’s belly. He’d hoped the reception avedrin received on the continent would be more civil than in Sandy Cape. “You know of one or two, then? Where they are?”
The old man gathered his driftwood and piled most of it in Rhian’s arms. “I ‘eard tales come out o’ the last war. But no one can find ‘im.”
“Him who?”
The old man’s face wrinkled up as if he’d bitten into rotten meat. Beckoning with sharp gestures of his knotted hands, he scuttled along a widening stretch of beach to a small boat turned keel up. He piled the wood beside a low fire. A small tuna roasted on a spit, and a bucket of pitch simmered in the embers. He handed Rhian a skinny, curved filet knife. “ ‘Elp yaself while I tar me skiff.”
Rhian sliced off a si
de of the tuna and savored the meat like he’d never eaten before. When he had his fill, he watched the old man paint a thick coat of pitch along the hull of his boat. “It’s a fisherman y’are?”
“Netta,” the old man replied.
“A what?”
“Make nets, I said.”
“Ah, a netter. I’m a pearl fisher—or was.”
“Aye, ‘ad you pegged for an Islander. Shouldn’t be much trouble finding ya a boat ‘ome.”
Rhian glanced at the gray smudge on the horizon and was surprised to feel an ache of homesickness. “I need to stay for a while.”
The old man’s brush paused. Rhian lowered his gaze to the embers and stuck out his hands to look busy warming them. All the while the old man’s eyes clung to him like a gull on a bobbing carcass.
“Set a dry plank on the fire, will ya, lad?” The tar-gummed brush started swiping again. Long strokes, short dabs in the grooves and niches. “ ‘Is name was Thorn. The avedra, I mean. Tales aplenty of ‘im in these parts. But who can say what’s true, what’s tale. ‘Is name is all I know for fact, mind ya. You want to know more, ya gotta look elsewheres. But be careful what ya believe. Folk in Windhaven say they knew ‘im, but the mountains is rough to cross on foot. In Westport ya might get a boat if ya got money. If not, forget Windhaven. Try Brimlad. It’s a long day’s walk, south ‘long the ‘ighway. And a word o’ warnin’, should ya keep goin’ east, make sure ya pass by Avidan Wood in the daylight. That’s where the evils dwell.”
“Evils?”
“Aye. Dragons and such. No reasoning man enters the Wood, day or night.”
Rhian thanked the man for the fish and the information and apologized for being unable to pay for it. The old net-maker wished him luck and waved him off. A narrow cliff-side trail led Rhian onto the broad, well-tended length of the King’s Highway. Having not a single copper to weigh down his pocket, he headed south for Brimlad. He came to a rise in the road, stumbled over his own toes, and gasped. To his left, snowy mountains marched away in an unending chain. Below the blue-and-white slopes, the foothills flattened into greening meadows studded with flocks of sheep. Beyond the meadows stretched more meadows. To an islander, land was a limited treasure, a tiny haven perched in the middle of the uninhabitable and hostile ocean. If this expanse of land had a far shore, it was too distant to concern him. How old would he be if he kept walking until he came to the end of east and had to go west again?
