by Zoe Marriott
Bottomless walls of dark water rose up around us as we sank down, down, down – the air vanished from my lungs and my stomach lurched as my body floated upward, suddenly weightless. Uldar let out a yell as he too came unmoored from the planks. Only his red-knuckled fist on the rail kept us from flying right off the deck.
The ship landed. I was rammed into the deck once more, submerged for a terrifying moment as another wave frothed over us. The wind was a shrill scream that made my ears feel numb. Uldar was crawling dazedly away, his grip on my sleeve lost. I floundered through the foam, flailing until my left hand found and clamped onto the brass rail.
The ship is going to sink. The ship is going to sink. We’re going into the water.
Fingers shaking and fumbling, still on my knees and clinging to the rail, I began to drag off my heavy, water-soaked robes.
“What are you doing?” Uldar demanded, his eyes almost popping out of his head as my body emerged from the layers of cloth. He seemed more alarmed by the sight of my soaked silk shift than the fire raging behind us, the unpredictable movements of the ship or the water crashing over the sides. I wanted to scream at him, but only a harsh croak emerged when I opened my mouth. It was only the two of us left. Everyone else was either dead or in the sea already. He had helped me. Now I had to help him.
Locate yourself within your body, not your emotions.
The planks were heaving and buckling beneath my knees – the ship was beginning to break apart, tossed back and forth between the battering waves. Rapidly frizzing hanks of hair were writhing around my face. My back throbbed with the heat of the fire, even as my skin pebbled with the icy cold wind and the needling spray of the ocean. My hand was clenched stiff around the brass rail. My hip and elbow and knees hurt from the impacts with the deck.
Now locate your mind within your body.
This was me. My mind. Myself. My thoughts were within my mind, under my control because they were mine. They were a still, calm pool across which only a single ripple moved. And the ripple said:
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I met his gaze squarely. “We’re going to have to swim.”
Uldar shook his head frantically as the ship’s next violent lurch sent him sliding toward the bulwark. As he collided with it I caught hold of his upper arm, trying to get him to focus on me, to look at me – but he was staring over my shoulder, transfixed. Against my will I looked back. The remnants of the central mast had begun to fall. Tangled, flaming sails and ropes broke free around it, lashing at the wind. A tiny form, silhouetted against the raging curls of orange flame, toppled from some place of desperate refuge near the top. The man disappeared before I could flinch. Into the water? Into the fire? I couldn’t even hear the scream that must have left his throat.
Uldar shook himself free of my grasp and heaved himself to his feet. “No – no. We’re too far from land, the water is too cold – the icebergs – we have to find a – a lifeboat – ”
I am not afraid.
“Your Highness – Uldar. Listen to me. We’re going in the water, so you have to take your robes off, do you understand? Or you’ll drown.”
It was no good; I could see his gaze going distant, his mind slipping away somewhere else, somewhere bleak and hopeless. “You don’t understand. I can’t swim.”
I felt my mouth fall open. “What?”
Blue black water was rising again, dwarfing the flaming, falling mast, dwarfing the whole of The Black Tern. An obsidian cliff thrusting up from the sea. Chunks of ice hung inside it, white-green, nearly as long as the ship itself. The wave hung in place, impossible, solid, motionless for an endless instant. How could water do that? How could water –
The sea swallowed the ship.
I lost my grip on the rail and was swept up, tossed head over heel. Something hard, sharp, bounced off my temple. Pain arrowed through my skull into my neck. My vision went blurry again, silver-black at the edges, and the deck was turning, the ship was turning, turning over. Capsizing. Triple Gods, the deck was above my head.
The ocean was beneath me.
I was overboard.
The sea tried to eat me whole. Its black maw was cold, so cold, colder than anything I had ever imagined. Within a single frenzied moment I could barely feel my limbs, let alone find the strength to move them. The light skirt of my shift tangled around me like iron chains, dragging me down. I was a good swimmer; I had learned on those happy afternoons with Aramin and my Father, when he was allowed to visit us, splashing and diving in the warm, turquoise bathing pools of the Palace. But no human could swim in this.
The waves plunged me down and dragged me up again, tumbled me round and round until my head broke the surface. I gasped and choked and coughed on the salt spray, eyes and throat burning. I couldn’t see Uldar. The ship – the ship was gone, either sunk or already miles away. The thunder of the storm and the waves deafened me and it was so dark that I could barely tell the churning sea from the rippling, wind-torn clouds. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet.
Uldar had been right. There was nothing to swim for. No land in sight. Only the storm and the icebergs. All I could do was fight the sea, kick and punch and thrash at the water, fight my own weakness and the ruthless tide trying to pull me toward the Numinast, battle the dangerous exhaustion and numbness that urged me to close my eyes and just give up.
No. No. I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I howled my denial into the storm. I will not die here, like this – in the cold – in the dark – miles from home. Not like this. No!
Then I saw it. The distinctive, narrow shape of The Ice Blade, its gleaming sides and serpent figurehead illuminated by a flash of lightning. Somehow still afloat.
5
I struck out toward The Ice Blade, forcing my leaden arms and legs to move, no matter how clumsily. The ship seemed to hang in the water ahead of me, never getting any closer.
Am I moving? Am I even moving at all?
A wave rushed over my head. I clamped my mouth and eyes shut, hands clawing desperately above me, searching for air. In the next instant I was propelled up again, sobbing wetly for breath – and the ship was there, right there, surging in my direction, tossed my way by the capricious sea.
I raised both heavy arms and with a desperate effort slapped my hands onto the edge of the low bulwark. Pain flared in my torso as I collided with the ship’s side, but I clamped my fists closed and didn’t let go. My face was out of the water, protected from the flying spray by the bulk of the ship. Dry air excoriated my lungs. I clung, flinging one arm right over the top of the bulwark, and breathed one full, frozen breath.
Then the narrow ship spun, describing a dizzy circle in the waves, like a leaf in a stream. I choked on a scream as the force of the movement nearly pried me off. The sea sucked at my legs greedily, trying to drag me under. I couldn’t pull myself up any higher, couldn’t shake off the weight of the water. The ship’s sides weren’t low enough. I was too tired. My body was too numb.
The sea might have stolen my strength, but not my stubbornness or my will to live. I hung on grimly as The Ice Blade bucked and whirled, then tipped toward me, dropping me inexorably back down into the water until the ocean threatened to close over my face again. The ship was going to capsize. I would be trapped beneath it and drown –
My head snapped forward as we abruptly heeled in the other direction. Suddenly I hung flat against the side of the ship, lying pressed against the bulwark. Only my feet were still in the water. My blood surged: I wouldn’t get such a chance again. I forced my straining shoulders to drag me a little higher, twisted, felt the ship begin to shift – no no no – and flung my legs up desperately.
My left heel found the top of the bulwark. I hooked my ankle over it with a bruising impact, curled my upper body in at an angle that sent agony tearing through my bruised ribs, and flung myself forward, head first. I tumbled heavily over the side, hit one of the rowing benches, and landed with a s
plash in the icy water at the bottom of the ship.
I latched shuddering hands onto the legs of the same rowing bench – bolted down in a neat row alongside its fellows – which I had hit as I fell. The hasty movement sent jagged pulls of pain up and down my battered body, but I didn’t care. I would snap each of my own fingers off one by one rather than go back into that vicious water. Resting my head wearily against my arm, I groped at my chest with my free hand. A heaving sigh of relief; the heavy silver chain and the large, round locket were still around my neck.
I will survive this.
“Help!”
The shout roused me, like pins and needles lighting up my brain. Blinking blearily, I peeled my salty face from my wet arm and struggled upright. The lethargy which had enveloped me was alarming.
I hunched myself up out of the pool at bottom of the boat, and forced my reluctant limbs to drag me in a clumsy, soggy crawl to the bulwark. I transferred my grip from one leg of the bench to another as I went, never entirely letting go as the ship continued to rock.
By the time I reached the low wall of the boat I was panting, shivering and feeling the cold again, wondering why I had bothered to move. I had imagined the sound. There was no human alive out there; it was impossible. Everyone from Volin’s ship must be dead. I hadn’t even recognised the strangely accented voice.
I raised my eyes cautiously above the edge of the boat, squinting against the cloud of spray that flew into my face. No. Nothing. I had dreamed it, or heard the cry of a seabird.
Lightning flashed, turning the tops of the dark waves white. There was something moving in them. Through them. Not tossed and rolled about as The Ice Blade was, but slicing smoothly across their curling peaks just as easily as I might stroll across a field of desert grass.
Thunder filled the air as the lightning pulsed again. I gasped, dragging myself up higher. The moving thing was an orca, a killer whale. Before I could panic at the thought that it was coming to overturn the boat and eat me, I saw – a person. That strangely shaped blur was a person. Clinging to the triangular fin on the creature’s sleek back.
Another flash of lightning.
The person was Uldar. Even sodden, the vivid red and gold of his coat was unmistakable.
Before I could feel anything, hope or happiness or sheer astonishment, the killer whale dived through a crashing wave, sending fat droplets pattering over my face and body, and appeared alongside The Ice Blade. The animal snorted air out of the hole on top of its head, manoeuvring so that Uldar – draped, apparently unconscious now – over its back, was nudged up against the side of the ship. The animal was offering him to me.
For a split-second I didn’t react. My body seized up, paralysed by instinctive refusal. If I let go of my grip on the rowing bench. If I knelt up. If I leaned over to try and pull Uldar over the side. I could fall overboard again.
I would not escape the sea a second time. It would never let me go. I would sink beneath the waves and drown, I knew it.
Forcing my fingers to open, my leg muscles to tense and lift me, my arms to extend, was more difficult than climbing aboard the ship had been in the first place. My own muscles, tendons and bones seemed to fight me. I felt as if I were moving in one of those odd nightmares where time slows down and, struggle as you may, you cannot seem to break free. I was too slow.
The orca, riding the swells and crashing waves that moved the boat, seemed to agree. It veered away abruptly into the sea, taking Uldar with it, and my heart broke into a panicked gallop. Without thought I released the bench to reach out one beseeching hand. The boat bucked. I fell back into the bottom with a thud and a splash.
As I clawed my way back up again I saw that the whale was only circling the boat. Circling the boat – as if to give me time to make up my mind.
Animals could be intelligent, but this was almost frightening. Who ever heard of a wild animal, a predatory animal, saving humans this way? Could this be some kind of strange hunting behaviour?
In another crash of thunder and lightning the killer whale arrived back at the place where I crouched. This time I did not hesitate. I lunged over The Ice Blade’s bulwark and seized the back of Uldar’s coat.
Lightning flashed again, and again, illuminating stark images of the orca, the sea, and the Prince. Uldar’s lifeless face, his flopping hand, and his hair, dark with seawater. The white markings on the orca’s cheek as it reared back amid the waves, manoeuvring its great body toward me, rolling the deadweight of the body into my arms. The terrible moment when I thought that weight was too much, and Uldar would slip down into the sea and drag me with him.
There was a sudden, indescribable blur of movement. In my panic I had somehow, impossibly, lost track of the vast shape of the whale. I couldn’t see it. But there was something new in the water; something slender and pale, streaked with black. A long, white branch – driftwood – bleached by the ravaging sea? But when it brushed my own brown arm it felt warm, pliant. Like skin, but rougher, with a texture like the sharkskin scabbard of my Mother’s sword. Like something alive.
Or something dead.
I saw – for an instant, I would have sworn I saw – a blur of a face, a black drift of hair. A woman. There in the water. There in the sea.
“Sereh?” I gasped, not knowing whether to shy back or plunge desperately forward. Was she alive – ?
Uldar seemed to leap upwards from the grasping ocean into my arms. I tumbled back into the boat with a splash, pinned down by his limp form.
I struggled under him, straining upward to keep both our faces out of the pool of water. He would breathe it in and drown in his stupor! By the time I managed to heave him off, get him onto his back and propped up safely, the sea was empty. Empty of the orca. Of white branches. Empty of – anything. Anyone. It was just us and the tiny boat and miles and miles of water. And the storm. And the icebergs.
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
6
Voices. There were voices – somewhere close – and splashing sounds, like oars hitting the water. A boat?
A boat!
I flailed stiffly back to consciousness through a haze of exhaustion, pushing away from Uldar’s side in the cramped, humid space beneath the decking at the back of The Ice Blade. My hands fumbled with the layers of waxed canvas – the tattered, tangled remains of the tent shelter that I had dredged from the bottom of the boat, and swathed around us in an effort to protect us from the cold.
Frigid blue light streamed into my face, along with icy air that instantly chilled my damp skin. I crawled forward, realising for the first time that the winds had gone quiet. The boat lay peacefully in the water. The storm was over.
I felt Uldar’s hand brush my bare ankle and heard him groan as I dragged myself through layers of salt-crusted material and out into the light. This was more of a sign of life than I had received from him during all the dark and terrifying hours of my vigil over his unconscious body last night, and it gave me a small spark of hope. But I had no time to turn back, slap at his face, or shake him again. The voices were getting further away – they were leaving. Why were they leaving? Couldn’t they see us?
Sheer desperation propelled me from the makeshift shelter and up into a standing position. My teeth chattered over a whimper as I was fully exposed to the cold in nothing but my damp shift, and felt what small warmth huddling with Uldar had preserved instantly leach away. We wouldn’t last much longer out here.
Eyes still puffy and half-closed, I sucked in a breath that burned with frost and then bellowed at the top of my lungs:
“Here! We’re here! We’re alive – we’re here!”
My voice echoed and flew back at me painfully. I clapped my hands over my ears and stared as my eyelids finally came un-glued.
We were surrounded by – by ice. A great, luminous arch of ice, curling, curving and spiking overhead, alight with pale green fire that stung my eyes as I stared. The Ice Blade had drifted inside
one of the Numinast’s icebergs, and butted up against the inner wall of a sort of cave of ice. I shuddered as a delicate prickling sensation spread down my scalp and into my eyebrows. Ice crystals forming.
“We’re here!” I screamed, watching my breath turn to vapour. The cold scraped at my throat with diamond claws. “Among the icebergs! Here!”
I snatched up Uldar’s red coat from where I had abandoned it after wrestling it off him and bundling him into the shelter I had made. It was still sodden, so heavy with water I could barely lift it to thread my arms in. The fur trim crackled with frost. But I could not meet any future subject of mine dressed only in a nearly-transparent silk undergarment. Even if they were about to save my life.
Somewhere out of my sight I could hear shouts of acknowledgement and excitement, along with that same rhythmic splashing. Shivering now so fiercely that I feared I would bite my tongue in two, I nevertheless took in another painful gulp of breath and forced out another cry.
No more was needed. As I clutched at the low bulwark, my feet and lower legs numb from the ice water pooling among the crumpled tent material, struggling to keep my back straight and shoulders squared, a tiny rowing boat, one of those they called a dingy, came into sight. The six sailors let fall their oars and let out whoops and whistles of greeting as they caught sight of The Ice Blade.
“The Prince’s ship! The Prince’s ship!”
Towed, I assumed, by the same current which had carried us here in the wake of the storm, their small craft drifted into the arch of ice. They collided with The Ice Blade’s prow with an impact that sent me staggering.
“That is the Prince’s coat!” one of them cried as the rest hurried to drop anchor. He clambered aboard, reaching out as if to take hold of my shoulders. I took a sharp step back and stopped abruptly as my bruised hip hit the top of the deck where we had sheltered.
“I recognise it!” the man ranted, still reaching for me. “Who are you to dare wear it, Llamansser? Where did you steal it? Where is he?”
