by Jen Williams
‘I am a wandering hermit, come from the island,’ said the man with the blue light. He had a strong accent but his words were well spoken and clear. ‘I go where there is suffering, and alleviate it if I can. I am a holy man, if you will accept such an arrogant assumption.’
The babble of talk from the crew increased, and then Ristanov appeared on deck, striding across to the guardrail, her back stiff. The red moss had grown along her hairline and in a thick clump under her ear. She didn’t grin as often as she once had.
‘What cure do you bring us?’
‘My name is Terin. To my own people I am a seer, and I bring you knowledge that will cure your affliction.’ He slipped the blue light into a pocket. ‘May I come aboard?’
‘You know this is a diseased boat, and yet you would come aboard?’
It was difficult to read the man’s face in the shadows, but he seemed to grow solemn. ‘It is my destiny to do so.’
‘Fine. Bring the fool. I will gut him myself when he proves to be useless, yes. It will give us some entertainment.’
The man, who called himself Terin, was brought on board. Devinia watched as he was marched up to the forecastle where the Banshee received him; now that Kellan stayed largely below decks, Ristanov seemed to prefer being under the open sky. Devinia edged as close as she dared, her guard too distracted by his own woes to call her back into line, but the conversation between the pirate and the strange man was too low to make out. Some long moments passed, during which Devinia half expected to hear a blood-curdling scream as the man was gutted, or a splash as he was simply thrown overboard, but eventually he was led back to where she and Augusta sat. His arms had been bound behind his back, and the burly pirate pushed him towards them with a grunt.
‘Well, I don’t reckon that went how you hoped,’ said Augusta. ‘What are you, some sort of lunatic? Did you bargain for gold? Believe me, you don’t want any of the gold they’re carrying.’
‘Not at all,’ the man called Terin nodded formally at them both. Up close his body glistened with a film of sweat. ‘Ladies, I had a vision that I would lead these good people to their salvation – the completion of my destiny is all the gratitude I require.’
‘Oh, I bet Ristanov loved that,’ said Augusta.
‘But the captain requires that I be firmly restrained in the meantime. She is very cautious.’
‘What have you promised her, exactly?’ Devinia lowered her voice. ‘These people are dying. It’s possible you could catch whatever it is they have.’
‘But it appears you have been untouched, which I am glad to see.’ There was an edge to his smile – a sense he was hiding something – but then he cleared his throat and the moment passed. ‘There is a lagoon, not far from here, with extraordinary healing properties. I have promised Captain Ristanov that I will lead you all there.’
‘A magical lagoon?’ hooted Augusta. ‘She really must be desperate.’
‘I would say she is, wouldn’t you?’ said Terin, that shine to his eyes appearing again. ‘Desperate enough to go ever deeper into this cursed island, in the hope of undoing what has been done.’
‘You’re one of those northern people, aren’t you?’ said Devinia. The pieces had suddenly dropped into place. ‘My daughter spoke of your tribe. From what she said, it would be very dangerous for you to come this far south.’
‘It is true, I am less than comfortable in this sweltering place. And when the sun comes out again, I may have to hope that Captain Ristanov is kind enough to provide shade.’ He settled back against the barrels and smiled at them both. ‘But for now I believe I am exactly where I need to be.’
Ephemeral had never been in a place so saturated with life. It filled the trees, thrummed in the air around her, shifted under foot.
She was cutting across the way they’d come to head towards the great basin of still water they’d passed some days back. It was perfect for their plan, or at least she hoped so. It was difficult to keep her thoughts in line, with so much life pushing at her every sense.
Her foot splashed into shallow water, half hidden by the dark canopy of leaves overhead, and she paused. All at once she felt as though she had stumbled into someone’s home; the bushes here had been clipped short by blunt teeth, and stumps of trees, the raw inner flesh pale and exposed, sprouted everywhere from the cool green water. Someone had methodically pushed the trees down, carefully clearing them away until there was room to cultivate this muddy space of water and green plants. She thought of the homes she had invaded as part of Y’Ruen’s army, beating down doors and slaughtering the frightened people inside. It felt like part of someone else’s life, a story told to her by a friend, perhaps, or more likely, an enemy. If she let her mind settle on it, the details would come back: the boy who had said it was his birthday, whose throat she had torn out with her claws … It was different, she told herself; where once she had invaded, now she explored. The difference was important.
‘I have made a choice,’ she said aloud. ‘The choices are mine.’
She took a few more splashing steps through the water and came up short as her boot knocked into something solid beneath the surface. At the exact same moment, a delicate silver echo shivered through her blood.
‘Who is here?’
She peered down at her foot. Next to it was a large bulbous shape, dark blue in colour, and covered in raised ridges. There was another one next to it, and beyond it, three more. With a start she realised that the entire pool was filled with the round blue shapes. Without thinking too closely about why she was doing it, Ephemeral knelt in the water and gently pressed her hand to the object, taking care not to rake her claws across it. It was leathery to the touch, and as warm as her hand. And when she touched it, she sensed a new life within – new dragon-kin life – a faint silvery presence that seemed to reach out to her own blood. Unseen by anyone, a wide smile split her face.
‘It is an egg,’ she said to the hum of the insects. ‘They are all eggs.’
She straightened up and looked around. There had to be around twenty eggs in this shallow pool. She was very aware that it was vital she get to the lagoon before Terin did. He would be leading them there now, using his charm and mysticism to bring the pirates into their chosen place of ambush. It was important that she was there first, so that she could lie in wait. Only then would they have a chance to save blood-of-Wydrin, and perhaps learn more of where her father had gone.
Still, the pirates were ill and moving slowly. They would have to follow the twisting waterway to the lagoon, putting days on their journey, while she could cut directly across the island.
Sinking to her knees in the water and mud, Ephemeral placed her hands on the two nearest eggs and opened her mind to the silvery presences within. They stirred, instinctively reaching out to her, and she felt the curling of their minds around her own. It was, she realised with delight, like being back in the birthing pits below the Citadel, her sisters all pressed in around her, closer than skin. For these creatures, this was the birthing pit, these were their sisters. And they accepted her as if she were one of them.
Ephemeral closed her eyes, glorying in the contact of their burgeoning minds, and reached out to the others in the pool. The lagoon could wait for a little longer.
41
Frith stood by the wide windows, looking out across Krete. It seemed the city had once been a near-civilised place; the streets neater, the air free of smoke. It was possible, if he half closed his eyes, to see what it would become, in a thousand years or so. The sense of displacement was huge and unnerving, doubled by the men and women they’d seen in the courtyard. They had all worn the mages’ words around their arms, just as he had done, when the Edenier burned inside him. For a moment, the feeling of loss was so enormous that he had to lean on the window frame as the ground seemed to drop away from his feet. To be here, in the golden age of the mages, when he had so recently lost that power himself … What could he have done with the power here? What could he have achieved? Wi
th a shiver he recalled Joah Demonsworn’s ravaged face, twisted beyond all recognition. Sometimes no power is the wisest choice, he reminded himself. Power led to a knife in your hand, a series of empty rooms, and blood. Always blood.
‘Are you all right?’
He turned at Wydrin’s hand on his shoulder. Her face was dirty, the leather armour she habitually wore even muddier and more scuffed than usual. He felt his heart lighten at the sight of her.
‘I never thought to find myself here,’ he said. ‘If I’d known, when I first met you in this city …’
She smiled lopsidedly. ‘If I’d known, when I first saw your grumpy face—’
The door behind them banged open, and a tall figure stepped through. Frith opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it rapidly. He looked to Wydrin, who was grinning.
‘I am Commander Battleborn.’ Xinian stepped into the room and dismissed the guards with a terse nod. ‘You have been caught trespassing at a time of war. Do you want to give me a good reason why I shouldn’t have you all executed immediately?’
‘By all the gods.’ Wydrin came forward eagerly, as if greeting an old friend. ‘you’re taller in real life, Xinian.’
Xinian frowned. In the bright daylight of the well-lit room, Frith could see traces of mud and dust on her brown skin, and her eyes were bright and full of life. When he had first seen Xinian the Battleborn, she had been a confused collection of grey shadows, an echo of a person in a place drenched with magic.
‘You’ve heard of me, then,’ she said, looking uncomfortable. ‘That will not save you.’
‘Of course.’ Frith watched Wydrin put away her smile with some difficulty. ‘Commander, we need to tell you something very important, and we don’t have much time—’
‘You have no time at all,’ snapped Xinian. She looked over them all, her eyes narrowing. ‘None of you are mages. What were you doing in the sacred grove, and, more to the point, how did you get there? Who are you working for?’
‘Commander,’ Sebastian stepped forward. He looked like a wild man – his beard was tangled and his clothes were little more than rags – but Frith saw Xinian take in his military bearing and the even tone of his voice. She seemed to relax slightly. ‘Our story is, I am afraid, an unbelievable one, and we have very little time to tell it. What you must know, first of all, is that you are all in great danger.’
‘A greater danger than the gods that threaten to destroy us at any moment?’ snorted Xinian.
‘It’s your defeat of the gods that’s in danger,’ said Wydrin. ‘Please, Commander, we’re here to help you.’
At that moment, the room filled with a deep blue light that pulsed on and off, while a high-pitched wavering shriek sounded from outside.
‘The southern wall is breached.’ Xinian turned to the door immediately. ‘Guards, put these four in the dungeons and report to the wall. We’re under attack.’
She marched out the door, and the guards came back in, hands raised.
‘We don’t have time to be stuck in dungeons right now.’ Wydrin sighed. ‘Sebastian?’
The big knight stepped forward, but before he could reach them, Oster had slipped into his dragon form, nearly filling the wide room. The guards staggered back, their faces slack with shock. With one flick of his tail Oster threw them both to the floor, their cries of alarm lost under the strange wailing noise from outside. Before they could get up, Sebastian neatly knocked them both unconscious with the pommel of his sword. Oster shook his great dragon head from side to side, before the lights consumed him and in the dragon’s place was a tall man in gleaming armour once more.
‘No human is putting me in a dungeon,’ he said. ‘Bad enough that they think to confine me in this room.’ Sebastian, Frith noted, had seemed unsurprised by this move; they acted as though they were warriors with a battle-forged bond, and yet surely they had only known each other a few days.
‘We should follow Xinian,’ he said. ‘We need more of an idea of what’s going on.’
They emerged into a stone corridor filled with men and women running in all directions. Frith saw more mages, hastily tying silk strips around their wrists, and men and women in more conventional armour too, swords at the ready. They followed the corridor east and down a wide spiral staircase, until they emerged in a wide hall that had seen better days. There were enormous oil paintings, covered in a thick layer of dust as if no one had had a chance to clean them for some time, and other arcane items were left in corners, half covered in dirty sheets. They followed the crowds out into another spacious courtyard, small white stones crunching underfoot. A pair of wide black iron gates had been thrown open, and they filed out into the city itself.
The wailing noise was even louder out here, and seemed to be emanating from a row of squat stones along the top of the city’s southern wall. They pulsed with the same blue light that had filled the common room. Out here they caught sight of Xinian again – she was already on top of the wall, standing with about twenty men and women wearing deep crimson vests and leggings, their arms bright with bindings. She was barking orders at them and pointing up at the sky.
‘What is it?’ asked Wydrin. ‘I can’t see a threat.’
‘There is someone nearby,’ said Oster in a toneless voice. The man looked faintly puzzled, as if there were a sound just on the edge of his hearing. ‘It is … so old.’
The wail of the alarms was suddenly drowned out by thunder from directly above. Frith looked up in confusion to see dark clouds billowing out of a blameless blue sky. Sheets of lightning shimmered threateningly, and around them the bright day turned as dark as late evening. Xinian was still shouting orders, and the mages on the wall shuffled into a formation of some sort.
Wydrin’s face was turned up to the sky, her skin lit with flashes of white light.
‘What the fuck is that?’
The dark storm clouds twisted apart and a huge, snarling wolf head pushed its way through, eyes rolling and jaws agape. It was an ephemeral thing made of light and darkness, of swirling vapour and crackling lightning, but as it loomed above them Frith found himself half crouching as if it might reach out and snap them up with its teeth. He thought of the towering Judgement of Res’ni in the sea beyond Turningspear, a monument to a lost city and a warning to fear the god of chaos.
‘Don’t let it manifest!’ called Xinian from the walls. As she spoke, the rows of mages, with one practised movement, sent a barrage of blue light arching up into the dark clouds. The bolts of light fizzled there, seeming to land like errant falling stars before winking out, but for a few seconds the vision of the wolf faded. Then it howled.
‘Hold your lines!’ called Xinian over the noise. Next to Frith, Wydrin was holding her hands over her ears. ‘It’s Res’ni, she will try to confuse you!’
The pitch of the howl increased in volume and discordance; this wasn’t a single wolf, these were hundreds, and they all ran for the sake of blood lust. Around them, a rough wind began to blow, as though they stood in a very localised tornado. Debris and litter from the city began to shoot around the cobbles in circles, and then larger objects were thrown into the fray. Frith saw a leather-bound book go flying past, the pages fluttering madly, and a sack of straw, spilling its contents in all directions. The items were spiralling up and out, crashing into walls and the mages under Xinian’s command. Frith staggered, and he realised it wasn’t wind at all; it was a storm of pure magic.
‘We need to get out of here!’ he said to Wydrin, shouting over the deafening howls. ‘Find something to hold on to!’
The giant manifestation of Res’ni threw its great lupine head back and forth, eyes rolling in their sockets. The mages threw up another volley of the blue energy, but this time it seemed to have little effect. Frith felt Wydrin grab hold of his arm, and then a cart, fully loaded with sacks of grain, spun into the air in front of them. They both stumbled backwards, feeling the pressure of the force-storm battering them back and forth. Men and women were screaming, some at
tempting to flee, but then forced back as the confusion of debris grew thicker. With the dust in the air it was becoming difficult to see. Xinian was a smudged figure on top of the wall, occasionally lit by her own magical energy.
A wooden bucket flew towards them out of nowhere and struck Frith high on his shoulder, spinning him away from Wydrin. He looked up to see Sebastian crouching over a pair of terrified-looking children, using his body to shield them from the worst of the storm.
‘Form up! Now!’ It was Xinian’s voice, carried to them briefly on the wind and then snatched away again. ‘All of you, I want all of the Edenier focussed here, on the back of its throat! On my mark!’
He saw her raise her arm, the one that ended in a stump, and watched as a thick fork of purple light snapped out of the end and up towards the image of Res’ni. It flickered deep inside the beast’s mouth, and then was followed by many more forks of bright energy, from the hands of the men and women gathered on the walls and in the courtyard. The dark clouds that made up the wolf’s head suddenly paled, as though they were ink washed away by water, and for a few moments the pitch of the howling increased.
‘She’s bloody done it!’ cried Wydrin. ‘Look, I can see pieces of the sky again—’
As she spoke, a spike of lightning from the dying clouds stabbed down and struck the wall just to the right of where Xinian stood. There was a deafening crack and the sky was full of flying red rocks, raining down on them all with lethal force. Frith saw a jagged chunk flying towards them, a smear of red across his field of vision, and then everything became momentarily darker, as though he stood under a great shadow. He thought of the spirit in Euriale, who had promised to open him up to magic again. The flying rocks, the panicking people; all was still. He looked at Sebastian, who had grabbed the two children to his chest and continued to shelter them with the bulk of his body. Oster stood just beyond him; he was staring at the place where the wolf had been with an expression of confused horror. And Wydrin. A shard of the wall, no bigger than a penny, had already hit her, catching the skin above her temple and cutting her. Her blood was redder than the rock, a bright shout in the shadow. He remembered the fight in the great hall and how Leon had gone down senseless from a single blow to his head.
