Sweet Black Waves

by Kristina Perez

  Relief broke on Tristan’s face. “Excellent news!” He leapt from his stool and shook Morgawr’s hand. “I never doubted you.”

  The veteran sailor’s expression remained grave.

  “We will have to pass through the House of Dhusnos.”

  Essy gasped. “The Sea of the Dead?”

  “I didn’t think followers of the Horned One put credence in Ivernic gods,” said Branwen hotly. Nothing motivated her so much as her cousin’s fear.

  The captain didn’t meet Branwen’s eyes, casting his gaze instead at the waves. “I’ve witnessed enough things on the sea I can’t explain to not discount other people’s gods.”

  “Is there no other course?” Tristan maintained a calm veneer but Branwen recognized the hesitation in his question. No laws of this world or the Otherworld governed the Sea of the Dead. After his rift with Goddess Ériu, Dhusnos was shunned by the other Old Ones—and he shunned them.

  “No, my prince,” said Morgawr. “Not before we starve. I don’t know who’s been steering this ship, but it isn’t me.”

  Essy visibly shuddered at his response. Tristan set his mouth in a grim line. “Then we sail and may the Horned One protect us.” Glancing at Branwen, he added, “And the Old Ones.”

  “I’ll take their protection today,” the captain agreed. “We should make haste.” Slashing two fingers in the sign of his god, Morgawr barked a few commands at the crew. Boom! The sail swung around. He took a few paces toward the helm, then called back, “Hanno would be proud of you, my prince. He was a fearless leader. I see him in you.”

  Tristan nodded, color rising in his cheeks.

  “Prince Tristan, we can’t do this,” said Essy in her most imperious tone, pushing out of her seat. “I’m to be your queen and I demand you tell the captain to find another route. Being from Kernyv, he doesn’t understand the danger.”

  “I understand your fears, Lady Princess. And believe me, Captain Morgawr is aware of the risk. For the time being, however, I still outrank you aboard this vessel. I can’t risk the crew starving to death—or you and Branwen.”

  Tristan let out a heavy breath. He would always put his people above himself. Branwen could only hope King Marc would be an equally benevolent ruler now that Iveriu was no longer his enemy.

  “No.” Essy grabbed Tristan’s forearm, her nails like claws. Ever since they were girls, the princess was most ferocious when she was frightened. Yet Branwen had never seen her quite like this.

  “I’m sorry. We must push through,” Tristan said, determined.

  Essy jerked him closer. “Just when I was beginning to think not all Kernyvmen were brutes!” She released his arm with a forceful shove. “Apparently, I was wrong.”

  Tristan pitched Branwen a beseeching look. “Essy—” she started.

  “Don’t. Of course you would take his side!”

  She launched to her feet. “I’m not. But we don’t have a choice.”

  “Lady Princess,” said Tristan, dropping to one knee. “I swear to you that you will be safe as long as I still draw breath.”

  “And I told you the oaths of Kernyvmen mean nothing to me.” Essy hooked Branwen’s elbow, spinning on her heel and towing Branwen behind her as she strutted toward the royal compartment.

  Branwen snatched a glance at Tristan from the top of the stairs. He remained on bended knee. A pallid expression drained his face.

  Goddess Briga, Goddess Ériu, protect us, she prayed.

  All she could do was pray.

  * * *

  That night passed without incident, and the following day. Wind finally gusted in the sails of the Dragon Rising with no storm on the horizon. Branwen began to wonder if the legends surrounding Dhusnos and the Sea of the Dead were nothing more than rumors employed to keep precocious children from swimming too far from shore at high tide.

  She and Tristan watched the rose-hued sunset together while Essy refused to leave the cabin. He kissed the bare skin of her wrist beneath the promise bracelet and it sizzled hotter than the Hand of Bríga. If this was death, she thought, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

  Branwen didn’t return to her cousin’s bed until the first stars appeared in the sky.

  * * *

  “Wake up! Branny, wake up!”

  Panic propelled her into consciousness. The princess tore at her nightdress, fingers tearing at the linen.

  “What is it?” she breathed. “What’s happened?”

  Essy’s lower lip trembled, her brow drenched with sweat. “I’m scared, Branny.”

  Branwen pulled her cousin into her arms, making a shushing noise. “There’s no need to be scared.” Half asleep, she kissed the top of her golden head.

  “It’s these dreams. Since we left Blackford, they won’t stop.”

  An ill wind blew down Branwen’s spine. “What dreams, Essy?”

  “Every night, I dream this great black wave is chasing the ship. Tonight, I saw blood on the sail and the wave crashed over the hull, splitting the ship in two. We began to sink. I was drowning—I couldn’t breathe.” She pulled at her messy hair as she spoke, her speech becoming more agitated. “I still can’t breathe.”

  Essy’s shoulders heaved in Branwen’s embrace, her violent reaction to crossing the Sea of the Dead becoming clear. You should have told me, Branwen wanted to say, but she quashed the reproach. There was still much distance to be bridged between them.

  “Shh, Essy. Captain Morgawr has never lost a ship,” Branwen murmured in her ear. “We’re all right. We’ll be in Kernyv before you know it. On dry land.” The promises sounded weaker than she intended. How could both Branwen and the princess be dreaming of the same great wave?

  Essy continued to shake. “I can’t breathe down here. I need fresh air.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Please, Branny.”

  She considered a moment. Nothing of note had happened during the past two days and sometimes walking helped alleviate her cousin’s nerves before they overwhelmed her. Branwen kissed her cousin’s temple. “Only for a few minutes,” she said.

  They dressed quickly, covering their nightdresses with woolen cloaks, and padded upstairs to the deck. It was eerily quiet. Most of the crewmen were in their quarters. Only the night watch was up top. The full moon had reached its apex over the midnight waves. Branwen raked her gaze over the dark expanse but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  The knot pulling Branwen’s shoulders together released. Linking her arm with Branwen’s, Essy took a deeper breath. An admiring smile lit her face. “The stars are saying hello,” said the princess.

  “I think they are.” Out here on the open sea, the jewel-like stars studded the silky black sky above and glistened on the water below, making Branwen feel as if she had been wrapped in a mantle of stars.

  “What are you ladies doing on deck?” Tristan asked in a hush. Branwen started, then instantly relaxed—until she spied moonlight shining on the hilt of the sword that dangled at his hip. He was prepared for combat.

  Essy didn’t deign to answer, simply regarding him with contempt. One step forward, two steps back, thought Branwen. She sighed.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she said to Tristan, tilting half a smile skyward. “Thought we’d look at the stars.”

  “But I see them in your eyes,” he teased. Essy snorted and rolled her eyes so hard Branwen thought they might get lodged in the back of her head. She pressed a finger to her lips, suppressing a laugh. Tristan winked.

  “Not much sleep going around, I’m afraid.” Lifting his chin, he said, “That’s the Evening Star,” and gestured toward the brightest star in the sky. “Navigators call it the Queen.”

  “Master Bécc taught us it’s named Wenos, after the Aquilan goddess of love,” Essy corrected him as haughtily as she could. “And her twin brother, Wenesnos, is the god of poison. Seems accurate.”

  “Right you are, Princess.” Tristan coughed into his hand. Again, Branwen muzzled her amusement.

  Essy tur
ned up her nose. Relinquishing Branwen’s arm, she strode toward the railing. “And those?” she called over her shoulder. “What do you call that small cluster of stars?”

  Tristan lifted a hand to his brow, squinting. “Which cluster?”

  “That one.” Annoyance bled through her voice as Essy stabbed a finger at the blackened horizon.

  Branwen narrowed her gaze at the spot and hope gushed through her. “I think they’re fires. Along the coast,” she said, unable to contain her excitement. “It’s the fires of Kernyv!”

  Tristan turned toward her like quicksilver. “That’s not Kernyv.”

  At the same moment, Cadan called out from the rigging.

  “Pirates!”

  NOT YOU WITHOUT ME

  A CLOUD SLINKED AWAY FROM the moon, and all at once the other ship became illuminated. The design was unlike any Branwen had ever seen from the cliffs of Iveriu, and its sails flickered in and out of her peripheral vision. It was there one instant, gone the next, like sunlight on a spider’s web.

  A line of tiny fires—torches, she supposed—dotted the starboard side of the pirate vessel. Two seconds later, a fireball whizzed overhead. The pirates weren’t holding torches. They were aiming arrows. Flaming arrows. The ambush of Branwen’s parents had begun just like this.

  Another arrow sailed through the air with a bloodcurdling hiss as it planted itself in the mast of the Dragon Rising.

  Essy shrieked and Tristan leapt from Branwen’s side, dragging the princess away from the railing and shielding her with his body from the trajectory of arrows. He did not shield Branwen. Their eyes met and a bitter taste filled the back of her mouth. Tristan was Essy’s Champion. Not hers.

  The specter-white ship soared across the water toward the Dragon Rising with incredible speed. Unnatural speed. A third volley of fire-tipped arrows riddled the bow of their ship. The conflagration sang to Branwen, entreated her to join it. The flames called her cousin.

  “Get the princess to her chamber!” Tristan roared, unsheathing his sword. There was a new ferocity to his tone. Tristan was a prince but he’d never made Branwen feel she was anything less than his equal—until that moment. Protecting Essy was his most important duty.

  For Branwen, too. Of course it was. Only—for less than the space of a breath—she wished Tristan would toss the princess aside and gather Branwen in his arms instead.

  Great hooks, shaped like horrifying talons, caught the side of the Dragon Rising, hauling it toward the attacking vessel. Branwen stood, dazed, as if trapped once more by the glare of a kretarv.

  “Move!” Tristan shouted angrily, yanking her by the elbow. Determination galvanized her. She wanted to fight. With Tristan at Essy’s front and Branwen at her back, the three of them shuffled together like a crab toward the staircase leading belowdecks. All of the crew members who’d been asleep rushed up it, a geyser of furious men, weapons brandished.

  The Princess of Iveriu was their most precious cargo. Everyone aboard would die to protect her. Could these pirates be here for Essy or did they choose this ship at random to plunder? Did they lurk in the House of Dhusnos, waiting for someone brave or desperate enough to enter?

  As the attacking vessel drew closer, Branwen could spy no colors flying at the top of its mast. The sails continued to shimmer as if they weren’t quite there. But the force with which the hooks dragged the Dragon Rising closer was all too real.

  She screwed up her eyes yet she couldn’t discern the forms of the men launching the arrows that assailed them. It was as if they were invisible.

  The howls of the crew assaulted Branwen’s ears, bleating and terrible. With each flame that landed, she felt more alive. She rubbed the inside of her palm. She would have believed she’d carried the Hand of Bríga all her life.

  Too late she saw one of the pirates solidify on the deck of the other ship. Branwen clutched her throat, wanting to retch.

  “They’re not ordinary pirates,” she rasped.

  These were the souls of those abandoned by the Land, indentured to crew on Dhusnos’s ships until he released them. These were his Shades.

  Essy stopped in her tracks. She pulled Branwen closer, gripping her hand so tightly she thought it would bleed.

  “My dreams,” she said in a strangled whisper. The Old Ones had sent both cousins dreams, but Branwen had been convinced the nightmares of Keane were no more than she deserved.

  Branwen and Tristan shared a heavy glance. Trepidation brightened his eyes. He must have reached the same conclusion about their attackers—they were something more than human. Or less.

  Branwen didn’t get the chance to offer her cousin any false assurances.

  A great wave of Dhusnos’s Shades crashed over the side of the ship. In her mind’s eye, she saw Castle Rigani demolished. The peak of the whitecap would have been beautiful if it weren’t so petrifying. The water dissolved into a sea of men—men who were part animal.

  Their chests were bare and freckled with small, gaping mouths—beaks. Dhusnos had transformed these forsaken souls into half-men, half-kretarv. Black feathers stippled their backs and forearms. And the hungry cry of their many beaks was enough to stop a heart dead.

  Tristan’s fist tightened around his sword. “Get the princess to safety!” he shouted as he charged into the fray. His face twisted with a rage that had been absent even when fighting Lord Morholt. Immediately, Branwen threw Essy behind her.

  Scintillating golds and pulsating oranges enlivened the scene of carnage.

  Branwen watched, aghast, as Tristan swung his sword straight through one of the Shades. The Shade vaporized in a mist of blood and salt water—she could taste it on the wind. Not a heartbeat later, the Shade coalesced behind Tristan once more, unharmed.

  “Watch out!” she yelled.

  Tristan ducked and tumbled like he had at the Champions Tournament, narrowly averting a severed spine.

  Smoke permeated the air, blurring the edges of the fighting men into ferocious shadows. Fire and sea and fighting men. Had Branwen been warned about this moment since childhood?

  The crew of the Dragon Rising struggled to breathe. Essy doubled over in a hacking cough, as if her chest itself was on fire. Only Branwen appeared unaffected.

  She hooked Essy around the waist, half dragging her toward the stairwell. Dhusnos had been the enemy of the Goddess Ériu since as long as anyone could remember. The Land needed Essy to arrive safely in Kernyv. Nothing would delight Dhusnos more than to ruin her plans. He must have caused the storm on Samonios Eve and becalmed the waters for weeks on end.

  The Dark One drove the ship straight into his carefully laid trap.

  And now he had sent his Shades because they were getting too close to securing peace. Kernyv must not be far. Essy just needed to survive the night.

  What happened next seemed to take a millennium, and yet it was over within the blink of an eye.

  A black-feathered arm clutched Branwen’s throat from behind. The hand was more skeletal than flesh and at the center of the palm was another ravenous beak. Her jaw dropped when she glimpsed the emerald ribbon tied around the wrist. Her ribbon.

  Gasping, she felt the greedy mouth begin to suck the life from her. Branwen had never believed the farmers’ tales of their animals dying where they grazed. Now she understood. The Shades sustained their living death by stealing the strength of others. This was strangulation from the inside out. So much worse than in her dreams.

  Branwen would not go easily. Resisting with everything she was, she managed to whirl around in her attacker’s arms, facing him head-on. His countenance was more of a skull than anything resembling a man. As she stared into his burning eyes, the Shade’s visage morphed into one she recognized. Its red eyes chilled to winter blue.

  Keane smiled a viper’s smile. Had Branwen truly condemned him to this living death as a half-beast? Morbid fascination compelled her to take in every feature. She almost couldn’t blame him for stalking her nightmares. Almost.

  He smiled wid
er as horror saturated her, then threw out his arm again, seizing her neck. He clenched his bony knuckles tight around her throat and wrapped his other arm around her waist, hoisting Branwen closer. The ribbon flickered in the breeze, taunting her. Keane had retained the piece of her she’d given him even in death.

  It’s how I found you, snarled a voice in Branwen’s mind. Not Keane’s voice. The newest of my warriors, felled by the Hand of Bríga. Not seen since ancient times. How curious.

  Branwen shook her head vehemently but Keane’s face wouldn’t dissolve—nor would he let go.

  You call out for me, Branwen of Iveriu, said the voice. She went cold all over. You have felt my call—the wild call of the sea—since you were a babe. You are drawn to my House.

  Dhusnos. This was Dhusnos. He was using Keane to speak to her. How had Branwen attracted the Dark One’s attention?

  I’m sorry. She didn’t have the air to apologize. I’m sorry, Keane. Let me go. Her vision grew spotted.

  He can’t hear you, Branwen of Iveriu. Dhusnos laughed. He is little more than a beast, fueled by rage. Thank you for gifting him to me. His lust for your death allowed me to find you.

  Branwen moaned. This, all of this, was her fault. She had led death itself straight to Essy’s door. To Tristan. To everyone aboard the Dragon Rising.

  Destruction runs in your veins. When the Land abandons you, when She asks too much of you, Branwen of Iveriu—it will be time for you to join me.

  Branwen was running out of air. She won’t! she cried silently.

  The Keane-creature hissed through bloody, ulcerous gums. “She will.” He hauled Branwen toward the stern of the ship.

  “Branny, no!” A desolate cry.

  The princess charged toward her and the Shade. Branwen saw a new, steely resolve on her cousin’s face. Tristan was running after Essy but he lagged too far behind. Branwen thanked the Old Ones he was still alive.