Rath and Storm

by Peter Archer (ed) (retail) (epub)

  “I believe so.”

  Looking out over the foredeck, she noted at a glance that Orim had finished taking all of the wounded belowdecks. Starke and Terrance were stationed at the front of the ship where she and Ertai could see them. Mirri, Squee, and the unwounded portion of the crew waited with machetes and other weapons to help the ship’s progress through the trees. They looked as ready as they would ever be.

  “Prepare for descent!” Hanna announced into the speaking tube. “I’m taking the ship down now.” She feathered back the ship’s long wings delicately. “Starke, Terrance, we should be heading for that dip hidden by the fog. In about five minutes, we should be over it. Wave to me just before we reach it.”

  She moved over to the navigation station to prepare the controlled fall that would be necessary to sink through the trees. When they had first passed over the fog-filled dip in the trees, she had noticed that it seemed to be one of the few areas with less trees clustered together. She hoped they would be able to sink to earth without causing too much damage to the ship.

  “Ertai, please stand over here and be ready to push the green lever all the way down,” she told him after setting the wings into a flat position. “I’ll take over the command station now.”

  Ertai nodded and moved over. Now she had a few minutes to think before she needed to implement the navigation changes on the command panel.

  In the past Sisay had stood at this panel, ready to translate her navigation commands into reality. Even further back in time, she remembered, it was Gerrard who had stood there. Now, both he and Sisay were gone to fates unknown. Although she missed them both intensely, Gerrard’s questionable fate caused her more pain than Sisay’s absence had.

  She remembered her first meeting with Gerrard. Sisay had brought him on board, accompanied by Mirri and Rofellos. He was sulky, almost like a child. Yet she somehow knew that he would be important to her. Past battles taught her to rely on his steadiness, while causing her to worry over his well-being.

  Most clearly, though, Hanna remembered the moment when she realized the true depth of her feelings for Gerrard. Those feelings had given her the most joy in her life as well as the most pain. The joy came from the knowledge that he was someone she could love without reservation and that he seemed to have warm feelings for her. Her pain had come in a sudden jolt when, just as she and Gerrard were on the brink of full understanding, he deserted both her and the ship.

  At first, she’d thought that she was somehow responsible for Gerrard’s decision to leave the ship. In time, her usual good judgment and wisdom prevailed. She was not, she thought wryly, the center of the multiverse—even if she wanted to be for him. Gerrard’s decision had been reached out of his own agony of self-doubt; she was no more than one of many factors in his calculations.

  Once she got through the phase of self-blame and self-doubt, however, Hanna had to deal with the pain of his absence. As in the past, when she had to confront the pain of anger that her father dealt her, Hanna fell into her old solution: work.

  Since childhood Hanna had been intrigued by puzzles. This was one of the reasons she had pursued the study of artifacts so avidly. Because Weatherlight was part of a collection of artifacts, it sparked her interest. After Gerrard’s departure, Hanna, with Sisay’s enthusiastic support, threw all of her spare time into trying to understand how the Thran crystal worked. The time that she spent on this puzzle brought her even closer to the ship.

  Occasionally she found herself thinking of the ship—a part of the Legacy, after all, and thus possessing some deeper destiny—as having some type of base intelligence, perhaps a very low-level self-awareness. She would suddenly understand what function a certain control performed, and the leap of understanding felt like more than just an instinctual guess; somehow it seemed guided. Of course, Hanna never shared these thoughts with anyone else. Telling people that a ship, even an artifact ship, had an intelligence might cause them to doubt her sanity.

  Once again, Hanna’s brow furrowed. She had tried to grab for Gerrard as he fell over the ship, but he’d been out of her reach as he battled the monstrous commander of that other ship that had fallen upon them so suddenly from above. Images of him falling to his death caused a renewal of that familiar yet sharper pain. If he were dead, as Crovax had suggested, what would she do? What would they all do? He was the key to the Legacy.

  “Hanna, Starke is waving his arms,” Ertai announced. “Is there something I should be doing?”

  “Not yet.” She immediately implemented the new navigation instructions and set the control station to manual control. During the early years on Weatherlight, Sisay had flown it completely by manual control. However, as Hanna discovered more about the navigation and control stations, she learned that it was possible to set long-range courses so that the ship could automatically move on course without someone guiding it at all times. With the situation they were in now, though, Hanna needed all the control she could muster over its movements.

  Outside, Mirri, Starke, and the others were already cutting or knocking away branches as they reached for the ship. Hanna moved the ship slightly to starboard just before Starke waved her in that direction. As they passed further down, tree limbs bounced back into place above them, sometimes rocking the ship violently. Hanna found herself tossed from side to side, clinging to the wheel as she tried to steer a course.

  “Hold on, Ertai,” she warned. She gritted her teeth against the nerve-wracking sound of scraping branches and continued their descent. After Starke waved his hands in an effort to direct her to the right, and Hanna quickly adjusted her course. The trees continued their protest at the ship’s descent, but not quite as vehemently. Broken branches from above fell onto the decks, knocking crew members hard into the railing, but thankfully not over it. After a few more moments, Hanna moved the ship to port and then hard aft again at Terrance’s behest. With a last bit of protest, the lower limbs of the trees gave way with much yawing and scratching. A shuffling of leaves and flurry of branch was Terrance’s only warning before a particularly large damaged branch fell from above, hitting the crewman and flinging him against the railing. Hanna saw that his head had been knocked against the ship’s wood before she turned her attention back to what she needed to do. I hope Orim can get to him in time, she prayed.

  Hanna adjusted the speed of the ship’s descent. Like some damaged bird, its wings broken, it floated down to the ground. Hanna let go of the levers and stood back from the panels with a sigh. She felt drained. “Go ahead and pull that lever down, Ertai.”

  The door to the command center slammed open as Squee rushed in. “You did it, Hanna!” He slammed against her legs and held them in a tight embrace. “We’re down. But not inna good place,” he warned in a somber voice. “Mirri is gettin’ ready to find Gerrard. I’ll stay on da ship with ya.”

  “Yes, you’ll stay on the ship,” Hanna announced as she walked quickly out of the room, “but I’ll be going with Mirri to find Gerrard.”

  * * *

  —

  Outside, the crew were already collecting the broken tree branches that had fallen onto the ship to throw them overboard. Mirri was poised on the railing and looked as if she were about to jump to a nearby tree and shinny down it. “Wait!” Hanna cried out. “I want to go with you!”

  Mirri turned around. “It is not necessary. You should stay with the ship and direct repairs on it.”

  Hanna leaped over a limb and ran to stand beside the cat warrior. “The others can handle the ship’s repairs. Once they get the decks cleared, the crew can start working on repairing any hull damage while Orim, Crovax, and the others bury the dead.”

  Orim, who was standing nearby, turned when she heard her name. “Of course we can take care of this. Go find Gerrard,” she said brusquely, immediately turning back to direct the crew in the removal of a large tree branch covering Terrance. The crewman was apparently unhurt, but his b
ody was pinned against the deck. Several of the crew strained as they pulled at the heavy branch. Suddenly, with an impatient grunt, Crovax brushed them aside and with little apparent effort lifted the branch and tossed it high over the side. Orim stared at him and started to say something to Hanna, who was, however, too absorbed in her argument with Mirri to hear the healer.

  “Well?” Hanna asked. “The crew knows what they’re doing; Sisay trained them well.” Mirri stared at her, her green eyes large and unblinking. “I need to see him—dead or alive,” the navigator added softly.

  Mirri shook her head. “With Tahngarth gone, I am ranking mate of the ship. You must have my permission to leave Weatherlight,.”

  Not that I wouldn’t leave anyway, Hanna thought.

  Mirri, as if she read the navigator’s mind, gave a slow nod. “Yes, we are sisters in this concern of ours,” she said. Then she turned and with a fluid movement leaped from the ship onto a nearby tree.

  Before Hanna could follow, Orim came up behind her and placed a water skin into her hands. “You’ll need this. If you need food, you’ve been gone too long.”

  Hanna nodded her thanks, threw the strap of the canteen over her shoulder, and gathered herself for the jump. Fortunately, the tree consisted of two main trunks, forming a V that allowed her to get a foothold. Once she made the leap, scraping her hands on the rough bark in the process, she cautiously made her way down to the ground. The “ground,” however, she discovered consisted of the twisted roots of the trees and murky water. Looking around, she saw that Mirri had already moved several trees away from the ship. Carefully jumping from root to root, Hanna moved to Mirri’s side.

  “This place is strange. I don’t see any dirt—just roots and water,” Hanna declared, a hint of wonder in her voice.

  Now that Hanna could look around, she noticed many more details about the forest in which they found themselves. Thanks to the hole knocked into the forest’s canopy by Weatherlight, she could see several yards out from her current position. After that, the tall, thick trees allowed little light to filter down. If the whole area consists of tree roots growing from water, Hanna thought, the lack of light could prove to be a problem. She bent down to look more closely at the water pooled between the roots. Startled at what she saw, she glanced up at Mirri for confirmation.

  “Yes, the trees grow out of deep water,” Mirri stated. “Don’t fall in. Things probably live down there.”

  Hanna straightened up and nodded a little fearfully. In the murky depths of the water, she had seen something staring up at her—and it wasn’t her reflection. “Let’s keep moving,” she suggested. Inwardly, she was grateful that she always carried a small dagger. Mirri’s sword might not be the only weapon needed if they met something hostile.

  Once they left the lighter area of the watery forest, Hanna found the going tougher still. Mirri, with her cat eyes, could see in darker conditions. Hanna, on the other hand, found herself stumbling. Fortunately, the trees grew so thick in this forest that she was able to regain her lost balance by grabbing onto their trunks before she fell into the water. Scraped palms, she thought, were an easy price to pay for not plunging into the depths of the swamp and encountering whatever lurked down there, whatever was still watching them with unseen eyes.

  Mirri continued to move ahead of her silently, her cat’s grace allowing her to keep well hidden in the shadows. Hanna attempted to move the same way, but gave up when it made her even more clumsy than before. Mirri glanced back occasionally with her normal inscrutable expression. Hanna imagined that the cat warrior was regretting her decision to allow the clumsy human along. Or, Hanna thought to herself, she has the same sense of being watched that I do.

  As they moved farther away from the ship, Mirri pointed out some characteristics of the forest that Hanna missed in her efforts to maintain her footing. “Those trees you keep hugging form part of the canopy,” she said. “Since they need the light to live, I would think they sprout up quickly and don’t form branches until they approach the height of their older relatives.”

  Hanna noticed that these infant trees were a strange, mottled gray color with pulsating roots. She theorized that the trees must have a source deep below the water for their nutrition for the first year of growth. After that, their roots probably solidified into the huge, gnarled walkways that the two of them were currently traversing.

  Other trees grew in strange tangles. “This type of tree might grab part of Gerrard’s clothing—if he were still alive and walking,” Mirri pointed out.

  Hanna stopped for a moment, staring at the dappled figure of the cat warrior. Was it possible she believed Gerrard still lived? Hanna had seen him fall. No one could survive a fall like that.

  The limbs of these trees held many sets of branches, causing them to spread out instead of grow up. Since they tended to grow in clusters that acted as obstacles to forward progress, Mirri led Hanna around these trees instead of into them. The leaves on these tangled trees ranged from light gray to ebon black in shade, causing occasional whitish blurs in the distance to Hanna’s eyes.

  “Mirri, he’s dead,” Hanna said, a deep ache resonating within her. “He fell a long way.”

  “Do not make assumptions,” Mirri declared. “I’m looking for signs of his passage without judging what might have occurred.” Hanna shrugged her shoulders and doggedly followed.

  Mirri stopped abruptly. Hanna froze, following the cat woman’s gaze. Moments passed, and Hanna could see nothing. Suddenly, Mirri started forward again at their normal pace.

  “What’s wrong?” Hanna whispered to the cat warrior.

  Mirri turned back and said merely, “Watch for watchers.”

  * * *

  —

  Mirri and Gerrard had joined the crew of Weatherlight at the same time, but Hanna knew little of Mirri’s past. Gerrard had once mentioned that Mirri had been abandoned when she was young, but that was the most that she had been able to discover about the cat warrior. Since Gerrard and Mirri had returned to the ship, Hanna sometimes felt that Mirri disapproved of her. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what made her think this, but Mirri clearly trusted no one but Gerrard. Indeed the cat warrior had once said as much to Gerrard within earshot of Hanna.

  Ahead of her, Mirri paused again. This time, as they waited, something winged in front of them and continued on into the darkness of the forest. A mournful cry echoed off the trees and water for a few moments, and then the forest swallowed it up. Once again, silence took over. Mirri turned back to Hanna.

  “Something besides us startled that creature,” she whispered. “That is strange if our watchers are as skilled as I think they might be. Keep an eye out.”

  Hanna nodded shakily and followed Mirri.

  They walked for some time before Mirri stopped them again, putting out a hand in warning. “Something is following us closely,” she whispered back to Hanna. “Remain still.”

  They stood still long enough for the navigator’s muscles to start cramping. Around them, the forest remained silent. Then there came again that mournful cry, echoing through the vastness of the swamp. Hanna noticed that now and again bubbles rose to the water’s surface at their feet. Before she could bring this to Mirri’s attention, the cat warrior motioned them forward again. As Hanna stood up, she noticed that the bubbles beneath them were growing larger. Something white glimmered below the surface of the water, slowly growing in size. She saw a humanoid form with light-colored hair moving upwards. “Hanna!” Mirri whispered.

  She looked up for a moment and then back down. The form was gone. Shaking her head, she moved over to Mirri.

  “We’re still being followed, Hanna. Please stay close by. I don’t wish to lose another comrade so soon.” The cat warrior gave her companion a look of startlingly intensity.

  Hanna was surprised to hear this sentiment. “I wasn’t sure you’d care that much,” she whispered in return
without thinking.

  Mirri turned away for a moment and then looked back at her. “I didn’t like you when we first met, I admit that. But I changed my mind about you a long time ago.” Then, with an abrupt change of subject, the cat warrior said, “Now that you’ve figured out how to walk in this forest, watch our backs for us. Something strange is happening.”

  Hanna did her best to look behind while moving forward, but it took every ounce of her concentration. They traversed several hundred yards of the forest, with no sound but the steady drip of moisture from the leaves overhead.

  There was a whirling blur of motion from before them, and a wave of water that swept against the tree trunks with a sound that beat back the silence. The two companions staggered back, as a feral snarl filled the thick, damp, heat-laden air.

  Mirri’s sword was out in an instant. Hanna watched as the cat warrior nimbly moved over the roots of the tree, taking her first strike at their foe. A clang sounded throughout the forest as the enemy flourished a sword, refuting Mirri’s blow. Mirri danced away to avoid the counterstrike, allowing Hanna to get her first glimpse of the creature.

  It was Mirri! And now Hanna! And now it looked like a nightmarish combination of them both. Hanna’s mind refused to acknowledge it at first, but the foe that they were facing seemed to be a mixture of both her and Mirri. Mirri was also evidently taken by surprise at the shifting form of their foe. Her momentary hesitation allowed the creature’s sword to slip past the cat woman’s guard and cut her left arm. With a hissed exclamation, Mirri stepped back, barely managing to retain her footing on the gnarled roots.

  Hanna pulled out her small dagger and made as if to move forward, but Mirri hissed angrily, “Stay back. I can’t worry about you.”

  The shapeshifter—for that was what it was, Hanna decided—mirrored Mirri’s form exclusively now as Hanna stepped out of its range of vision. When Mirri pressed another attack, it seemed as if she battled against herself. Each fighter launched a flurry of attacks and counterattacks. Finally, parrying a low, wicked thrust, Mirri—the real Mirri, Hanna reminded herself—lost her footing and staggered. The shapeshifter’s sword bit into the cat warrior’s left leg.