The crew exchanged tense mutters again, and some even reached for weapons, near to panic as they watched the waves rise.
“Enough now,” Mother said, and heated exchanges died on chastened lips. She did not raise her voice and did not need to; hands drifted away from cutlasses and knives. The line of her shoulders was taut as she turned toward the gryphon. “Ellisar, is it?” The massive beak dipped in the smallest of nods. “You can speak to the ocean. My daughter can, as well, but she is untrained.”
Ruby stiffened, breath catching in her throat.
( I can teach her, in return for your hospitality. ) The waves did not cease their onslaught, nor slacken. Ruby’s heart leapt with them, with possibility.
“That would be most agreeable,” Mother said, and turned back toward Ruby. The heady, looming wave broke over her, washing her in euphoria—to be trained to the sea.... “Ruby, establish him in the main hold.” With that and not so much as a sniff more, she returned her attention to the crew and gave rapid orders that sent them all scrambling, if not without backward glances.
The gryphon tucked his wings back to his shoulders. Ruby just caught the breathed word of a command she couldn’t identify, and the waves at last smoothed, lowering the ship. Her heart didn’t subside with them, but continued to hammer with guilty elation. Here was a chance to learn the ways of the sea she loved—but what then? To return afterward to the command her mother dreamed for her would most certainly be more agonizing than never learning in the first place. But speculation, as usual, was moot; Mother had ordered, and so she would obey. “This way,” she said, and pointed toward the hold.
* * *
Chin resting on folded arms atop the curved rail of the Viere’s slender bow , Ruby sighed as she watched the last edge of the storm drift off toward the horizon. The gryphon had seemed particularly un-mythic as he staggered into the hold, braced himself against a wall, and curled up like a very large cat to sleep. Ruby had watched him for a solid hour, then crept back out to the deck for a breath of fresh air.
She closed her eyes and reached out to the water again, sifting through its soothing presence, letting it smooth the rolling waves within her. Down she drifted into emerald coolness, salt and life.
( You’re a natural, you know. )
Ruby whirled, pulling her mind away from the depths so wrenchingly that her head spun, but the curved knife drawn from her boot cuff did not. She clenched her lips together in an attempt to calm her pumping breath, and even through the absurdity of holding a palm-sized blade up against an only-recently-non-mythical monster, felt a powerful wave of protest against a creature that large being able to move that quietly. And how had he gotten the hold’s hatch open, much less crossed the deck to loom not half an arm’s length away?
“Sorry?” she managed.
( You’re what they call a ‘natural’. The priestesshood would kill to get their hands on you. Especially now. ) The gryphon did not seem to be concerned by the blade or even aware that it existed.
Ruby re-sheathed her knife. “‘Priestesshood’?” Faint memories from itinerant tutors, towers and books spoken of with zeal by old men who hated the sea. “What do they do? I’ve never heard of their ships.”
He chuckled in her mind and leaned close enough that she caught the peppery smell of his feathers, warm and rich like sun on fresh-cut timber. ( They sail, but never far from the shore. ) The huge head cocked toward her like a curious gull’s, bizarre at such a scale. ( Most of them are afraid of the open ocean. )
Ruby looked out over the waves, laying her palms on the rail again. “They’re right to be,” she said softly. The darkness of the water sang to her, tickled under her fingernails, pulled with gentle but unrelenting insistence.
( Yes, ) he agreed. She could feel the alien eye sharpen on her, a flash and pin of huge black pupil. ( But you’re not. )
“I couldn’t leave it,” she said, instinctively answering what he did not say.
( If they catch wind of you, you might not have a choice. They can be very persuasive. )
“Let them try,” she growled, waves within beginning a churning spiral at the thought of dusty scholars chaining her to land. It almost seemed that the sea responded, leaning in against the Viere’s hull.
Sunlight flashed off of Ellisar’s suddenly widened eye and parted beak. ( Such force, such recklessness in you! And only sixteen! What a power you could be. ) He rustled his wings, but abortively, flinching.
“Is your wing all right?” The gryphon was hitching his right wing back up toward his body with awkward care.
( Fractured. ) The word had a bitterness to it like salt pork nearly turned. ( I won’t be going anywhere for awhile. )
“I’m—sorry,” she said, uncertain.
( Don’t be. This will be a pleasant—holiday. And rarely do I have the opportunity to instruct such a promising prodigy. The Priestesshood thinks that they have a monopoly on elemental ability. It would please me to prove them wrong. Their ways are not the only ways. They would limit you, for instance, from your true strength, your true potential. )
His tone filled her with a strangeness. Some of it was pleasure at his diffident compliment, some of it was fear, and some more elusive tendril buried in the emotion was something unsettling, like watching a shark drift up out of the depths and vanish again. Sternly she told herself that all of this was normal, and Mother wished her to learn from this creature, who, certainly, above all other things, would be strange! She would not let fear master her. In protest to her own weakness, she reached out toward the water again, let her mind flow along with it.
From the corner of her eye she saw the flick of Ellisar’s tufted white tail, and then, sleek as a dolphin slicing through summer waters, there was another mind there with her, coursing along the waves.
Her eyes widened. The steady presence, rather than merging itself with the waters, moved solidly underneath them, and then pushed. Ruby’s stomach dropped and she stumbled away from the rail, banging her elbow on the varnished wood for her trouble. She knew even before she pushed herself to her feet that waves would be creeping up the Viere’s hull as they had when Ellisar threatened the sailors.
( Do you fear drowning, Ruby? )
The question was so odd it brought her up short, made her forget her aching elbow. The answer was ‘no’, but that lack of fear had never made sense. The sea terrified her, deeply, but she had never feared drowning. And never really known why. “No,” she said, finally.
( The oldest priestesses, nearly before they even knew their goddesses, did not fear drowning, either. The sea would never swallow them, for they spoke its language. )
Her throat was suddenly dry and she licked at cracking lips, savoring the sharp, grounding pain. Passion for the sea welled up in her again, and would not, this time, be denied by doubt. “Can you… teach me how to do that?”
( I can. )
* * *
She wouldn’t tell him that she wasn’t ready for this. She wouldn’t.
When Ruby stepped onto the main deck, under the creak of rope and sail and pulley, her breath caught, not pulled by the brisk salt wind, but at the sight of the challenge Ellisar had prepared for her.
The boots were heavy, worked with metal long frosted with salt, and despite her training the sight of them sent an instinctive quiver through Ruby’s belly. They were known with tense affection as “peacekeepers”, for they had a certain way of making a sailor very cooperative—and terrified of walking the top deck. An oddity from a plundered ship, they had never actually been used aboard the Viere.
( You have nothing to fear, Ruby, ) Ellisar said, and by the strange copper focus of the words she knew he spoke to her alone. Gathering strength from his quiet confidence in her, she approached the peacekeepers, passing Mother and the silent gathered crew as she did so. She steeled herself against a flopping stomach as she worked her feet into the boots, yanking too hard on stiff laces, clenching her hands tight around fasteners as she closed them.
/> When she straightened, the rush of the sea beneath the Viere’s hull sang of danger in her mind.
( Now, ) Ellisar said, a burr of excitement deepening his alien voice. ( As I showed you. )
The boots were strange and outbalancing to feet long accustomed to sandals or bareness. With an effort she lifted her knees higher than she needed to, determined not to stumble. When she reached the rail and pulled herself onto it, tilting precariously for a moment, she heard Mother’s sharply indrawn breath, and the brief absence of Ellisar’s touch on her own mind said that he moved to reassure her.
The steadiness of her hand surprised her as she lifted it out across the waves. Again the sea welled up inside her, eager to flood her salt blood with itself, to make them one. As Ellisar had taught her, she pulled it close, but held it back, keeping always a tight boundary between them. But up, she told it, up, to the sky and—
A column of spinning water rushed up from the surface of the sea, green at the center and wrapped ‘round with bubbling foam. As she watched it, Ruby almost turned back, but felt the press of Ellisar’s encouragement against her, and did not.
Forcing her eyes to stay open, she stepped out onto the burbling top of the water column.
Standing atop the water was unlike anything she’d ever felt. It gave beneath her footstep at first, sending wild adrenaline surging up from her stomach, but only half a handspan, and then it held her weight. It moved with her, subtly, with a gentle force that anticipated her every movement, pressed against her mind and knew her closest thoughts. It was alive, but not alive, something beyond life, beyond mortality—ancient and comforting and treacherous and wild. It was as if something she had been separated from, something that had been missing, now suddenly coursed all around her—the sea, out of reach, though so near, now wrapped her in its immortal embrace.
A surge of strength and pride welled up in her, heady and sharp and blood-warm as fine whiskey. She was strong, she was swift, she was invincible. Smiling, she called across the waters, throat tight, “I have you to thank for this, Ellisar. I—I don’t even know how to thank you.”
The gryphon laughed, a high, almost whistling sound, the feathers of his neck ruffled with mirth. He twitched out a talon, and a great swath of seawater fountained up from the waves in a silvery spear. Ruby instinctively took a step back, heart jumping into her throat when she stepped onto nothingness and nearly fell backward, but she threw her weight forward, recovered, and with a lifted hand directed the spray of water back down into the sea. Then she sent a returning volley slicing across at Ellisar. The gryphon deflected it without so much as a gesture, but he bowed his beak in a little salute, cheek-feathers roused with approval.
Below, on the deck, Mother’s eyes were shining.
* * *
A storm was coming.
On watch in the crow’s nest, Ruby felt the approaching winds as an anxiousness around her spine even before they filled the sails. She touched the waves with a questing mind and staggered as the breath was pulled from her chest. The storm was closing faster than she’d ever seen, with a power behind it that was not the wild selflessness of the sky and sea, but calculating. Intelligent.
She forced herself to reach again, this time stretching up into the sky and to the thin but furious water there.
Three. There were three minds, distinct and sharp and—angry. And strong. Where Ellisar had been a squall, furious but short-lived, these three were rolling typhoons.
Ruby felt her insides starting to shake. She knew down to her bones that the Viere could not survive the onslaught of this storm. Nor would the crew believe there could be a storm they could not ride out or escape. But if there were minds behind it, moving it.... And, her mind whispered, if there were three gryphons guiding it, there could only be one reason....
Stretching herself across the nest’s narrow rail, Ruby reached for the sea.
( What are you doing? ) Ellisar suddenly loomed up in her thoughts, for the first time his closeness seeming a threat.
“If that storm gets any closer, we’ll be pulled to flotsam. We need to talk to whatever’s controlling it.” She pulled water from the sea, lifting it upward, then felt pressure, like a hand on her wrist, resist the pull of her mind.
( If you touch them, they’ll know you for a natural and take you to the Nistran priestesses, ) Ellisar said. Ruby looked down, searching for a large mass of white feathers, but did not see him.
“Then you should talk to them. They’re gryphons, aren’t they?”
He didn’t answer. The coldness, the wildness, the strangeness she had felt when first she had spoken to Ellisar bloomed, the shark in its full and terrible clarity.
“Ellisar,” she said, “Your wing. It isn’t broken, is it?”
( We could find a solution—you and I—together we could—)
“You betrayed us. You brought this on my ship and my crew.” Accusation put a wild note in her voice, but she couldn’t stop it. Her chest felt as crushed as if the Peacekeepers had dragged her to the bottom of the sea. Not quite knowing how, she shoved him away with her mind, and, to her surprise, felt him release her.
( It should have been safe out here. It still could be. They’ve come so far from dry land that they must be exhausted. We need only resist them. ) Frantic urgency laced his voice, a scent in her mind like ozone, lightning-struck tar.
She looked down the mast at the helpless figures standing below. Her mother, white face upturned, red curls down her back, unmoving. The crew. Her crew. And the vastness of the ocean all around them. She and Ellisar might defeat these gryphons, stood a good chance of succeeding, wearied as their opponents were; but they would not save themselves and the ship and crew from the gathering storm at the same time.
Ruby raised her arm, reached out, and lifted a column of water from the churning sea.
* * *
All trace of Ellisar vanished from her mind as she rose on the water column into the embrace of the storm. Cold wind sliced her face, first quartering, then following, then quartering again—and then the tempest overtook them in full, catching her in the eerie stillness of the storm’s eye. There they waited, three of them.
The gryphons did not ask, did not pause, but forayed into her mind as though they had every right to be there. Ruby rocked back on her heels, but held her ground, fending them away from certain memories, certain thoughts. They did not press, but seized on the image of the great white gryphon that had fallen from the sky.
( We are sent to destroy him, and any who had sheltered him, ) the first of the gryphons said. He was tall and lanky, supple like a silk flag in the wind, and he called himself Urri, placing the name in her mind with unsettling ease. All were thinner, smaller, lighter, more precise creatures than Ellisar.
“We did not know he was hunted,” Ruby said. “What is his crime?”
( Negligence, ) the second gryphon said, her voice like cinnamon and innocence. She was broad of barrel and her eyes were deep and blue. ( Negligence that killed three of his apprentices. And cowardice, that he would not face their pridemates. Lastly, the obstruction and defiance of due justice. ) Giving two quick wingbeats to lift herself above the other two for a moment, the gryphon fixed her with one large, searching eye. ( It seems also that he has been attempting to deceive pursuit—by hiding behind you. )
“What? Behind me?” Ice in the pit of her stomach. She longed sharply for the cool reassurance of the ocean, whose dangers did not hide.
( Yes. In teaching you to move waters without proper balance training, he has sent ripples through the world that mask his presence. We should have found him days ago were it not for this. He sought to distract us with your performance, which looked from a distance to be the wildly dangerous flailings of a powerful natural. We came here, away from our task, we thought, to contain you. )
( Ellisar’s sentence is death, ) Urri said. ( Him we must execute, and you deliver to the human Daughters of Nistra. ) The gryphon’s calm talk of execution rippled over her,
but the thought of being torn away from the Viere crashed like a typhoon.
But she did not have time to register surprise at her attachment to the ship that bound her, for his next news was far worse. ( Your ship must be destroyed to set an example for those who harbor criminals. We are sorry. )
Ruby’s hands clenched and unclenched as she fought for control. She breathed determinedly, gripped herself for what she knew she must do. First in negotiation: the bargain she knew they would not accept. “He has taught me all I know of the sea. I can’t let you take him.”
( Child, it is simple, ) the second gryphon said gently, and Ruby knew the bitter victory that she had won. ( You do not have the power to resist. This is not your choice. And your ability must be properly trained. )
“I never used it before Ellisar came here. You would never have found me. Spare my ship and crew, leave me here”—she paused; second in negotiation: the true offer that they would not refuse—”and I will carry out his sentence.” Ruby fought around the lump in her throat. “Alone.”
The gryphons fell silent, but by the flashing of their eyes she knew they were in heated conference.
( She is sincere, ) the third gryphon, whose voice filled Ruby’s mind with the scent of clean herbs and surprise, said finally. ( The code of this people is such that they will adhere to their word long after we are gone. )
( They’re privateers, ) Urri said, voice like clumping algae. ( Pirates. )
“We are a people of swift justice,” Ruby said, glaring a challenge at the three creatures. She breathed deep, recited her mother’s words in her head. “We do this to survive, Ruby. We look beyond our fears and pains and we see how many would suffer for our inaction. When we must, we act, and we ask neither permission nor forgiveness. We are separated from landers because we do not flinch from reality. This is our freedom and our curse.”
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #14 Page 3
