First they retrieved a mooring rope from the wharf, tying one end around the submersible’s cabin. The other end was then given to Lilia, whose agility took Joss by surprise as she hopped onto Bhashvirak’s back and quickly secured her end of the rope to the great shark’s lifechamber, linking it with the submersible.
‘Ready!’ she called, dodging around falling rocks as she tugged on the rope to make sure it held. With Joss’s guidance, Bhashvirak circled back around to the wharf, where the other prentices lent a hand to load Lilia’s patients onto the giant shark.
‘Careful …’ Joss muttered to himself, watching the infirm hostages struggle into place. When they had finally made it across, Lilia then helped them into the lifechamber, which she sealed shut behind them.
That left Drake, Hero and Edgar to clamber into the inoperative submersible, with Joss still clinging to the pillar in the middle of the harbour, the water so cold it felt as if it was biting him through his boots. The waves only grew larger as Bhashvirak swam past, spraying Joss with speckled foam. He stole one last glimpse of Lilia and the others sprawled inside the glass lifechamber before the great shark dived beneath the dark marbled surface of the water.
The rope that Bhashvirak was trailing behind him pulled tight, dragging the submersible from its dock. The rudderless craft whished past, and with the last of his strength Joss sprang from the pier just as the cavern rumbled and sent the largest salvo of rocks yet crashing down.
‘Gah!’ he grunted as he landed clumsily on the slippery metal, a small but sharp rock hitting him on the back of his knee. The rest of the rocks pinged off the submersible’s riveted surface, while Joss grabbed one of the protruding steel rungs to pull himself up and into the hatch, which he quickly slammed shut behind him.
Inside, he sealed the door tight before dropping down into the main cabin. Drake, Hero and Edgar were waiting there for him, cheering as he emerged beside them.
‘Welcome aboard!’ Drake said, clapping him on the arm.
‘I can’t believe we made it!’ Edgar grinned.
‘We’re not in the clear just yet,’ said Hero, and pointed out the porthole. The shower of rocks was becoming a hailstorm, with loud bangs and thumps echoing off the cabin. One large boulder rolled down the cavern wall, bounced into the air, then smashed into the window, spraying a web of cracks across its surface.
‘Merciful liege!’ Edgar yelped, his eyes bulging.
Squeezing past him, Drake gently ran his fingertips along the glass to inspect the damage. ‘It hasn’t penetrated the whole way through.’
‘Will it hold under the pressure?’ Joss asked. The cabin was already suffocating enough. The last thing they needed was gallons of water rushing in to drown them all.
‘Can’t say,’ replied Drake, drawing back his hand.
‘Then I guess we’ll find out,’ Joss said.
He and the others watched as the rope drew them ceaselessly towards the mouth of the cave, paused, then dragged them under. The glass held. Still, nobody took their eyes from it as Bhashvirak towed them through the underwater cavern, the submersible banging against the rocks with alarming regularity. With nothing left to do but wait and pray, Joss settled back into one of the padded seats. Though he stared at the porthole window the entire time, he couldn’t help but think of Thrall.
Now that the terror was at an end, it didn’t seem real. And yet there was no denying it. He’d seen the man consumed with his own eyes. But it was another man who loomed larger in Joss’s mind and, as the submersible bounced its way through the tunnel, he found himself wondering where that man was right now …
His breath ragged and his hand clutched tightly to his side, Naveer limped into the city square. Blood was oozing from the wound the remaining pyrates had bestowed upon him before he’d managed to escape. He could hear them now, somewhere off in the distance, shouting for his head even as the earth continued to rumble and fracture.
It wasn’t just the island that was breaking apart. The energy dome that had long kept Daheed preserved was rapidly weakening. Torrents of black water were rushing in, drowning the ruins. Looking up, he saw a great shadowy figure gliding past the dome. It was dragging what looked to be the last of the submersibles, the rest of the fleet having already made its escape. Naveer sighed with relief. Josiah was safe. There was nothing left to do but destroy the last protective sigil and bring this madness to an end.
But first he raised his hand. Touched his cheek. His firm brown skin was gone. There remained only the ashen, waxy skin of his true form. His memory, however. That remained. He looked down at the sigil beneath his feet. He could remember the day that he’d inscribed that mark, the chaos that demanded it. But the memory was evaporating, bit by bit, bubbling away like foam on a sandy shore. His wife’s face. His son’s birth. His every blessing, every brightest moment. They were disappearing into the ether. Soon all that would be left was a mindless husk. A memory of a memory, quickly forgotten.
He refused to let that happen.
‘Let the past be past,’ he murmured to himself as he hefted the last pot of liquid fire from his satchel. He squeezed it tight, imagining it to be a hand as small as a ripening fig, wrapped around his own.
And then he dropped it.
The clay pot burst like a falling beehive, unleashing a swarm of flames that set the sigil ablaze. Overhead, the dome quivered, then ruptured. The black water came tumbling down in vast curtains, drawing to an end the dream of Daheed, while the man who called himself Naveer Sarif closed his eyes and waited for the darkness to take him.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AN OPEN GRAVE
JOSS watched from the submersible’s window as the dome surrounding Daheed disintegrated, its purple lights flickering to nothing, leaving the city to be crushed under the surge of water. The vortex opened up like the mouth of a ravenous beast, swallowing whatever hadn’t already been decimated by the deluge. Stone by stone the island was consumed. Every street, every home, every last pebble. All of it went tumbling into the void, where it was devoured.
Joss felt as if it was his own heart that was being eaten piece by piece. He imagined Naveer down there, lost in the wreckage of the city. The thought was so sharp and painful he pressed his hand to his chest. But still he stared, watching as his island home was taken from him for a second time, watching as the void claimed it for itself.
With every piece the vortex consumed it grew smaller, until all that remained was a rift the size of a small lifeboat. And then, when the last chunk of rock had been consumed, the rift began to eat itself. The shockwave it unleashed slammed into the submersible, tossing the prentices around like beans in a tin can.
‘Hunting herbivores, that hurt!’ Edgar muttered as he rolled over and rubbed his skull, while Drake and Hero both pulled themselves up beside him.
‘Daheed …’ Drake asked, rotating his shoulder. ‘Is it –’
Joss peered again through the window. They were flying from the trench now, its maw wide open and empty, iridescent jellyfish lighting their way.
‘Gone,’ he said, finding the answer hard to believe. ‘The city, the island. Even the vortex. All of it. Gone.’
It was true. As if nothing had ever even been there. As if it had all been some grand illusion, some dream now faded. The City of Night Neverending. The Gleaming Isle. Home. It was a place that had been called many things, and had meant even more, but all of that was past now. Joss sank to the cabin’s floor, his strength spent. He was alone again. The last survivor of Daheed, same as it ever was. The idea made him want to weep.
‘We’ve got trouble,’ Hero said, leaning past him to take her own look out the porthole. She pointed to the towrope that linked them with Bhashvirak, and the halfway spot where it was fraying apart.
‘Muck!’ Edgar gasped. ‘It’s going to snap any second!’
‘Joss, can you talk to Bhashvirak?’ asked Drake. ‘Maybe he can swing around and snag us.’
Joss cleared his mind to focus on Drake�
��s question. ‘I don’t know.’ He tried reaching out to the great shark. ‘Mighty Bhashvirak – can you hear me? Mighty Bhashvirak, this is Joss – this is the mortal boy. The rope is breaking! We need you to –’
The cabin shuddered, then jerked as the towrope snapped apart, whipping up a trail of bubbles. It coiled in the water before them, then sank. And Bhashvirak didn’t notice at all. He just kept swimming, his tail beating against the tides as he gradually disappeared into the distance.
‘Bhashvirak! This is the mortal boy. Bhashvirak! Can you hear me?’ Joss tried and tried again, but there was no response. The great shark could barely be seen now through the dark water. Its fin was little more than a fleck of grey on a black canvas. It flashed one last time through the gloom and then was gone, leaving the submersible to fall towards the open grave of Daheed.
‘Ganymede, quickly! Can you get this bucket running?’ Joss leant over the navigator’s chair to jab blindly at the control panel. The craft was picking up speed, sinking into the trench with the velocity of an anchor thrown overboard.
‘I tinker with machines, I don’t pilot them,’ Drake replied as he sat down to run his eyes over the wide array of instruments.
‘Will we be able to catch up with the others?’ Edgar asked as he and Hero crammed in alongside them.
‘The rudders were damaged, remember? We won’t be able to steer it anywhere,’ Drake said, still studying the controls.
‘We don’t need to steer,’ Joss told him. ‘We just need not to sink.’
Tentatively, Drake began to poke at buttons, tap gauges, switch levers, but nothing happened. Not until he balled up his fist and punched the console. Then the whole thing sprang to life, its readouts lighting up, the engines humming into operation. Even the external headlights switched on, lighting the water and revealing the drifting algae and all the little microbes that rushed past as they continued to fall.
Joss, Hero and Edgar all looked at Drake, each of them astounded.
‘We were overdue for a little luck,’ he said, reaching for what looked to be the accelerator. ‘Let’s hope it holds.’
The cabin screeched with effort while the motor grumbled, sputtered, farted a cloud of bubbles. A chopping sound emanated from outside as the rotor blades kicked into gear, keeping the vessel from falling any further. The submersible bobbed in place for a moment before, miraculously, it began to ascend. The prentices let out a whoop of victory, each of them rushing in to give Drake a congratulatory hug.
‘That’s one problem solved,’ he said, his grin fading. ‘Then there’s the issue of being stuck out in the middle of the ocean with nobody to rescue us.’
The cabin fell silent again.
‘Maybe –’ Edgar ventured, thought better of it, and shut his mouth.
Joss watched him for a moment, then reached into his pocket to pull out the necklace that Naveer had given him. His father would have known what to do. Between his years of sailing and his natural resourcefulness, he would no doubt have had some kind of plan, some failsafe strategy. Joss turned the thunderbolt pendant around in his hands, considered its radiance, felt dull by comparison, then reached up to place the necklace back in his pocket. And as he did, his fingers brushed against another recent keepsake.
‘I’ve got it!’ he said, jumping up from his seat. Everyone looked at him with puzzlement, Drake most especially as Joss said, ‘If you can get us to the surface, I can get us home.’
‘How?’ Edgar asked.
‘With this.’ Joss smiled, producing the Scryer that Qorza had given him.
Drake’s face lit up, elated and relieved. ‘Then let’s get out of here, shall we?’ he said, and turned back to the controls to begin their ascent, carefully controlling their speed to avoid decompression sickness. Nobody spoke. They barely even breathed. They simply watched as the water outside brightened one excruciating shade at a time, while the receiver signal on the Scryer gradually ticked upward. When it finally beeped in his palm, Joss fired it up and activated the emergency beacon, just as the submersible breached the surface.
The vessel bounced around on the waves like a cork in a wine barrel. Edgar moved quickly to unlock the top hatch and fling it open, letting in a gust of fresh air. Everyone sighed with relief, the sound of circling gulls as musical to the ears as chamber hymns. Then, crowded together, they poked their heads up through the open hatch to stare at the twin shades of perfect blue that were the sea and the sky.
Joss closed his eyes. Leant his head back. Felt the kiss of the sun on his skin, the wind’s caress. Daheed was gone. So was his family. But he was alive. And he would never forget.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Edgar, his joy at seeing the bright blue world above dimming at the prospect of being left marooned at sea.
‘We wait,’ Joss said.
After all, there was nothing else to do but hope they wouldn’t be waiting long. That hope diminished as the first hour passed, shrank even more as the second hour drew to a close, and all but disappeared as the third hour wore on past the point of counting. Until Joss spotted a hulking black mass on the horizon.
‘There!’ he shouted, pointing it out. The others clambered up to see.
It was the Behemoth, its sails full, its smokestacks pumping, its prow relentlessly cresting the waves. Within moments it was upon the submersible, circling the crippled vessel in a wide loop.
‘Ahoy there!’ Captain Gyver called out as she waved from the railing, with Qorza smiling beside her. ‘Need a lift?’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
A GOOD MAN, THROUGH AND THROUGH
JOSS sat on the bow of the Behemoth, looking out at the horizon with his father’s shadowscope in his pocket and his thunderbolt pendant in hand. His legs were dangling between the rails, his knees knocking against the beams, his heels brushing the monstrous figurehead. Qorza was doing the same, shivering through her fur-lined coat now that they’d passed beyond the Veil of Frost. They had been sitting together for an hour as Joss told her everything that had happened, from their arrival in Snowbridge to their swift exodus from the drowning ruins of Daheed.
Though he had ended up explaining Naveer’s true nature to his brethren as they’d waited for rescue, he knew it was only Qorza who could offer him any true insight on the matter. Though for all her knowledge, she looked just as stunned as the others had been.
‘The changeling sacrificed itself to save you?’ she remarked with surprise.
‘That’s not something they might normally do?’ asked Joss, fairly certain he already knew the answer.
‘Not at all,’ Qorza said. ‘It’d be like having a tyrannosaur as a loyal mount. It’s just not in their nature. They feed and they move on. That’s all.’
‘He said –’ Joss hesitated. ‘He said it was a parent’s love. That it proved stronger than any other instinct.’
Qorza smiled with appreciation. ‘What a lovely notion,’ she said. ‘But that was your father. A good man, through and through. Clearly that rubbed off on the creature. Though I doubt it would have if not for you.’
‘Me?’
‘The ties that bind us reach both ways. Your memories were strong, Joss. Buried, hard to retrieve, but strong nevertheless. You may not have had your family for very long. It may have hurt to have been without them all this time. But there’s a joy at the centre of all that – a pure and particular love – that ensures you’re never lost in the world. The pain of your past may initially have drawn the changeling to you, coupled as it was with the beacon of the wisp’s mark. But it was the light you carry inside that truly transformed the creature. Love conquers all, in the end.’
Joss’s nose wrinkled of its own accord; he was unaccustomed to hearing such open sentimentality. Folk in Thunder Realm seldom if ever spoke in such a way. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t pleasant to the ear.
‘When we first met, you said our running into each other had something to do with fate,’ he said, thinking now of another matter that had been weighing on his mind
. ‘Do you believe that?’
‘I’m an ethereon, Joss. It’s my job to believe.’
‘What about prophecy, then? Can it be trusted?’
‘It depends.’ Qorza shrugged. ‘Who’s making the prophecy, for starters.’
Joss explained the discovery of his mother’s journal, and her notes regarding the Rakashi Revelations. Qorza listened with rapt attention, her interest only intensifying when he showed her the book itself. ‘Fascinating,’ she said, examining each page in detail. When she was done she handed the journal back to Joss, and he tucked it away again. ‘Clearly I have some research to do.’
‘Whatever you can find out, I’d appreciate it. Especially if you can work out the translation of those words.’ Joss had known that if anyone would be interested in his mother’s research, it would be Qorza. He could only hope that she’d be able to shed some light on the mystery.
‘Of course. But for now I must get on with my duties,’ she said, pulling herself up. ‘I’m glad, though. That you got a chance to meet your father. However unusual the circumstances may have been.’
Joss pondered what she’d said, then looked up at her with a soft smile. ‘Me too.’
Returning the smile, Qorza crossed over to the stairs that led down onto the main deck, passing Drake as she left.
Drake came to a stop beside Joss, sharing the view with him for a moment before he spoke. ‘We received a message from Stormport. Salt arrived with all the submersibles in tow. Everyone’s safe. Even Bhashvirak showed up – I can only imagine the reaction. We’ll be there soon enough, but in the meantime they’re serving supper down on the main deck if you’re hungry.’
‘I’ll be along in a moment,’ Joss said.
‘Something on your mind?’ asked Drake.
Joss kept his eyes on the horizon as he thought through his reply. ‘It feels silly now, but when we were back in Snowbridge with your family …’ Joss risked glancing at Drake before quickly looking away again. ‘I envied you. Even with everything you’d been through – the heartache, the anger, all those lost years – I was still jealous that you’d had any of it in the first place. Does that make sense?’
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