Not knowing where to go, but spotting no obvious hiding spots in the small cabin, she moved to the door, ducking her head as she moved forward, the headroom diminishing. Opening the door, she held her breath. Sitting in a small depression in a metal lined shelf attached to the mast was a quafa'shilaar the size of her fist. The only other stone of this size she had ever seen, other than those massive ones powering the sky citadel she had just discovered moments ago, was housed in the Staff of Everilon wielded by the head of her order, Endergot.
This quafa'shilaar was a deep violet, with flecks of amber floating within, swirling through the infinite depths that were quafa'shilaar - magestones by the more common name. She stood hunched over it, as the cabin was quite short. A small chair was nailed to the floor immediately in front of the tray holding the stone. A belt was attached to the chair that appeared to clasp over someone’s lap once seated. Beside the chair was a flared metal tube that ran along the boards overhead, back towards the rear of the ship. She closed the door, stepped around the chair and sat. She grabbed both sides of the belt and clasped it around her. What now?
She could hear noise up on deck, and could hear things shifting as the others tried to get things ready for when she got this thing moving. She tentatively reached out and touched the stone in place. She recoiled as she sensed anger and felt heat through her hand. She looked down to see unblemished skin where she had touched it.
She touched the stone again, this time ready for the response, and gritted her teeth as she held firm against the raw emotion pushing back. She had no exact frame of reference, but she could feel emotions mirroring pain, fear, anger and… loneliness? This never happened with the small quafa'shilaar that the Dar'Shilaar earned when their training was complete. She let the emotions wash through her and past her, and accepted them into herself.
Are you afraid? I am too. I want to leave, and would be willing to take you with me, but I don’t know how to make this work.
Suddenly she felt hope stir within the depths of the quafa'shilaar and the sky skiff began to vibrate, then lurch upwards slightly, then finally lift skyward slowly. Suddenly, it was as if she was the ship, her vision expanded to see all the components of her new ‘body’; her graceful sails, and side ‘wings’; her deck; her passengers; and beyond to the walls of the citadel, and the figures fighting atop the wall.
She watched as arrows from above stuck her Shielding spell, throwing glowing motes in all directions. She watched as Hoyle directed Robart to push out her ‘wings’ and Valena to drop her lower fin. She heard Hoyle call Salrissa’s name as the craft rose towards the battlements as if she were standing next to him.
This new awareness was staggering – overwhelming in its vastness, overloading her senses. She felt like she was falling and there was no bottom. She projected her thoughts at the stone: Please stop, it’s too much, you’re hurting me… almost instantly her senses came back into focus, still from the viewpoint of the skiff, but filtered. She thought she sensed surprise from the stone.
She was now the ship. She was rising past the battlements, and watched as Salrissa’s shadowy form flitted between soldiers along the wall top like she was dancing partner to partner; leave each with a mark; a wounded hand, a broken bowstring, a sliced belt, but leaving nothing of herself behind but a memory. She watched as Salrissa stepped onto one soldier’s back as he was knocked off balance, then off another’s shoulder to the top of the stone battlements. She ran towards the ship and dove, arm outstretched for the rail. Celia could almost feel her fingers brushed the rail, but they could find no purchase. Celia’s breath caught as Salrissa fell.
She fell without a sound, down towards the nest that had held the ship captive at rest, the web of slings and nets. Celia watched as Salrissa tucked herself into a ball and rotated her body to fall feet first blazingly fast for the mass of ropes. Celia sucked in another breath – she would only have one shot at this! If she missed… It was almost fifty spans to the ground. She watched helplessly as Salrissa flipped herself backwards at the last moment. She threw her arms above her head and caught a rope in the crook of her elbows, and twisted her body through a gap in the maze of ropes, and swung back up to rest on top of the contraption, breathing heavy. She lay there swaying in the rocking netting as, unknown to her, Celia looked down from above.
Celia spoke, knowing Hoyle would hear it through the metal tube in front of her, “Salrissa’s fine, she landed in the netting.” She could see Hoyle visibly relax having obviously heard her.
She watched as Hoyle turned the ship, aiming it over the sky citadel, between the observation tower they were on earlier that evening and the central spire that controlled the sky citadel. She watched Captain Keyth’s face as they passed the balcony he was standing on watching them flee, the side jib sail just about sweeping him from his post. She watched as two of the catapult teams on the two nearest towers loaded their projectiles and lit them.
“Incoming!” she shouted as the first released its flaming orb. “Hang on!” she ordered as she asked the quafa'shilaar to avoid the potential threat. The ship lurched to one side and up slightly at her request, tossing its occupants about, but avoiding the threat.
Her new awareness, even filtered as it was, was still staggering. She could see the drake riders and archers making ready to fly in the courtyard below; the archers rushing out of the towers to swarm the ramparts that were in their path; she watched captain Keyth in return watch their flight. She took it all in through the power of this quafa'shilaar. The potential was overwhelming.
Finally the skiff cleared the eastern wall of the sky citadel, archers loosing arrows towards the small target in the dark sky. Suddenly she could see a swift shadow begin moving through the archers, disabling and wounding – buying them time to get away. The shadowy form then vanished from the wall amidst the confusion, stepping from the shadows onto the deck of their ship.
Salrissa strode over to Hoyle, who gave her a fierce hug. He then turned back to the helm of the ship and aimed them towards Karvesh. With Celia’s new awareness she could see the lights of the Goralon capital over thirty leagues away. More importantly, see could see two other things that were a more immediate concern; the mounted drakes that were rising over the citadel wall behind them, and the pitch being lit for the catapults of the Goralonian fort less than a league down the valley. They may not know what exactly was going on, but she suspected that if bells were ringing in the sky citadel, they were following orders to be prepared.
The drakes were on them in less than a minute, swooping out of the black sky, nothing more than silhouettes against the partly cloudy night sky. Celia was able to get a warning to Hoyle through the metal speaking tube in time for everyone to take cover as arrows were loosed from the archers mounted behind the drake riders. They hit the Shielding spell that Celia had cast earlier, creating waves of golden light, like ripples on the pond over the skiff. However, she knew that the spell would dissipate very soon.
“There are bows and arrows in the cabin,” she relayed to Hoyle at the helm, remembering that none of them really had any type of distance weapon.
She could hear him reply in a hollow voice, like it was coming from multiple directions at once. “We can’t afford to kill any of them.”
Robart had obviously overheard her comment to Hoyle as he climbed down the ladder into the cabin, grabbed a bow from the rack and strung it. He grabbed a quiver of arrows and climbed back on deck. Meanwhile, Valena had entered the protection of the cabin and sat on the bench, her hands white knuckled gripping the folds of her robe.
Robart set an arrow into his bow and fired at the large moving shapes terrorizing the small sky skiff. Hoyle was yelling at him to stop, and Salrissa had stepped in front of Robart.
“You think a little arrow is going to kill one of those enormous drakes?” he yelled at them flinging his arm at the sky. Salrissa seemed to consider his point, as did Hoyle. Salrissa stepped aside and Robart fired another arrow into the night sky and was re
warded with a fierce howling cry that could only have come from a drake.
Salrissa had grabbed the other bow and quiver and was working at getting it strung when the deck heaved as one of the drakes latched onto the starboard rail, crushing it to the deck, the side jib sail’s spar snapped, the sail disappearing into the night. Claws dug into the deck boards as the drake gathered purchase, tipping the sky skiff precariously to one side.
Celia watched as all three of those on deck were thrown off their feet to the deck and began to slip towards the starboard side of the skiff. Salrissa managed to brace her feet on the port side of the cabin, her back against the tipping deck; Robart grabbed the open hatch, stopping himself, but dropping his bow in the process, which clattered down the deck and over the side. Hoyle, managed to hang onto the helm, but only to keep himself from falling off the skiff completely. Inside the cabin, Valena had been throw face-first across the cabin, and smacked her head against one of the shelves. She was lying quite still, resting in the groove where the wall met the floor.
Salrissa, still somewhat upright, raised her bow in order to fire at the drake, but the drake quickly snapped its jaws at Salrissa, who barely managed to avoid it. She did manage to smack the drake on the side of the head with the bow, forcing it to recoil. Celia wasn’t sure if it had hurt it, or just made it mad.
The drake rider was hunched over the beast’s neck, making herself as small a target as possible while the archer mounted behind her tried to get a clear shot at Salrissa. With Salrissa engaged in trying not to get caught in the beast’s maw, the archer finally gave up and tried finding another target. He turned and fired, missing Robart’s dangling legs by a small margin.
More arrows rained down from the other two mounted archers as they whipped past on their drakes, finally breaking through the last of her Shielding spell. One pierced the deck near Salrissa’s head, the other lodged into the wood of the helm.
Finally Celia had had enough, hanging precariously to one side, a drake talon piercing the deck close enough for her to physically touch, her breath coming in rasping breaths, the belt holding in her now canted chair cutting off her ability to get a full breath. She lunged the ship upward violently as the drake’s mouth descended for Salrissa’s legs. Instead of her leg, the roof of the cabin drove into the underside of the drake’s mouth and neck, causing the creature to bellow a massive wail of pain and it to let go of the skiff, dropping away into the dark.
Robart had pulled himself partially into the cabin by then and was thrown upwards into the other side of the hatch by the sudden movement, cracking a couple of his ribs. Salrissa was tossed high into the air, but managed to grab one of the lines for the main sail and land gracefully onto the now righted deck. Valena was tossed about the cabin, still unmoving, while Hoyle had swung with the wheel, slamming his legs hard against the deck as the ship righted itself as the dead weight fell away.
Salrissa fired a few more arrows into the darkness, wails from the drakes indicating some hits. Robart fell more than crawled onto the floor of the cabin beside Valena, clutching his ribs and groaning. Hoyle was still steering the ship, but crouched down by the helm now that Celia’s spell had worn off.
Suddenly Celia could hear the alarm bells from the sky citadel, now hundreds of spans behind change. Apparently that was some sort of signal for the drake riders, as she saw the drakes bank and turn back. It seemed that Hoyle understood what it meant as well, since he relaxed and stood upright, even though he couldn’t see the shapes in the sky clearly.
“Finally read the letter, I see,” Hoyle said, mostly to himself. Celia heard him however, with her enhanced senses. Then she heard him grunt and stagger forward against the helm, an arrow protruding from his back. He fell sideways to the deck causing the helm to spin hard to port, forcing the skiff into a steep bank. Salrissa had no problem racing to Hoyle’s side across the slanted deck. She turned him to look at her as blood pooled on the deck below him.
Celia saw him try to say something, but only blood burst forth from his lips. Salrissa yelled for Valena as the healer and Robart were tossed about the small cabin.
Celia could only watch helplessly as events unfolded, for should she release her grasp on the magestone, the ship would surely plummet to the ground.
Chapter 19
Hoyle’s chest hurt. Everything hurt. He was not sure he would ever be the same again. Tears ran freely down his face, his nose leaked causing him sniffles, which he wiped away with the back of his arm, leaving slime trails on the sleeve of his only ‘nice’ jacket. By nice, it was the only one without holes in the elbows. “But what would you expect of a twelve-year old boy?” he had answered Vanda as they looked for clothes that would suit.
Now he stood on the cold ground, looking at the mound of cold earth that now housed his mother’s cold body. Tears continued to run down his face as he looked down, ashamed of the tears. The Daughter droned on beside the grave, Hoyle hearing none of it, just a noise that his thoughts drove him to ignore.
He held Niala’s hand, her ten-year old frame shuddering with quiet sobs beside him in her yellow dress and flowered sweater, Vanda holding her other hand.
Finally the Daughter said the final prayers, and the three of them stepped forward and stuck branches from each of their each favorite tree in the top of their mother’s grave. They stood for a while until their neighbor Haved came up and touched Vanda’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear.
Vanda gathered them both up and herded them towards Haved’s wagon. At the wagon, Haved helped Niala into the wagon beside his portly, but warm-hearted wife, Fradena, and then helped Vanda climb up to sit beside his spot on the front bench, as was her due. That was the tradition after all; the mate or the oldest born got to ride in the front of the wagon. Haved turned to help Hoyle into the wagon, but he shook his head.
He looked at Vanda, who knew him so well. “He’ll walk,” she informed Haved. Haved shrugged his shoulders and gripped Hoyle’s shoulder firmly, “I’m so sorry, she was a good woman.” He then climbed into the wagon and got the ox moving down the slight rise towards town.
He watched silently, without moving, as the few well-wishers trickled back to town, most walking, some in one of the three wagons brought out today. He looked further down the track to the small collection of buildings they used to call home about a third of a league away. He could see wood smoke rising from some chimneys into the cool autumn air. The two-storey inn was the tallest in town, and easily visible from the rise the town had decided to make their cemetery way back in time.
He reflected on those who were here and how few there really were who came and said their good-byes. Their mother’s employer was not there – but of course not, he had been slain too. He looked to his left; to the manor on the hill owned by a merchant who had stakes in several businesses in the town. The manor was the third point on the triangle, the other two being the hill he stood on and the town.
The bandits had left no one alive on the estate when they were finished. Hoyle did not like to think about what the rumors were saying had happened, and since only a few people had been to the manor after the event only a week ago, only those few people knew what might have really happened. Those that had been to the manor to collect the bodies and try to clean up would not talk about what they saw – especially to children. They would talk about a couple of things that were now considered fact amongst the townsfolk; that the manor had been cleaned out of all its valuables and that there was a name scrawled across one wall in blood - Warfist.
The rumor in the parts was that Warfist was a half-orc from the Blasted Lands hundreds of leagues to the north, lands said to be infested with a countless number of the filthy creatures. He supposedly led a group of bandits or mercenaries, depending on who you talked to, that robbed and pillaged as they pleased.
Being a cleaning woman in the household had not spared their mother from Warfist’s wrath, the same fate as the rich merchant and his wife. She was not worth much notice, goi
ng about her day without much fuss and had never hurt anyone in her life, always having a kind word; even for old Bitter Barg out in front of the tavern.
And now she was gone. He did not know what they would do now. Vanda was seventeen now, old enough to take employment with whomever would take her, but not really old enough to look after him and Niala. Hoyle did not know if she would stay in the town, or escape from the memories. The rumor had it that he and Niala would have to go to the orphanage in the city. Which city, he did not know, as no one had talked to him about what he wanted. Being twelve, he was pretty sure they did not care what he wanted. Do I even know what I want?
He jumped as someone touched his shoulder. The Daughter of Shaleesa looked down at him as he turned in surprise. He had forgotten that she was still here.
“Shall we walk back together?” she asked politely. She wore the typical white robes the Daughters wore, the hood up in the chill air. Her black hair framed her face, with a small mouth and button nose under piercing, but kind, blue eyes. She held out her hand to him.
When he put his hand in hers, he felt a jolt, and then peace flowed through him, like he was connected to something greater… His memories were still there, but the burden of sorrow had eased slightly. His chest hurt a little less.
---o---
Hoyle opened his eyes to see Valena kneeling over him, her arms still pressed to his chest, where he felt a receding pain. He looked around groggily, trying to get his bearings. Salrissa knelt beside him holding a bloody arrow in one hand, broken in two pieces. Valena herself had a large bruise on her forehead, but seemed otherwise healthy. He shook his head. Where am I?
Stones Unbound (The Magestone Chronicles Book 1) Page 20
