by NS Dolkart
The effects were immediate. No sooner had the bolt touched the water than the jellies were yanked toward it almost as if they had been tethered to the end. The huge clumps of sealife that had impeded the oarsmen now unwrapped themselves from the oars and disappeared into the water, leading to cries of relief from the crew. Soon the Atun’s Favor came about, and it wasn’t alone: the whole fleet had come untangled.
Phaedra received no praise, but she hardly expected it; everyone was too busy either barking orders or responding to them. The lookout called down his count of the enemy’s ships – twenty-two in total – and the admiral answered with the exact sequence of flags to raise for the rest of his fleet to coordinate their response. The pirate ships were many, but they were merchant ships not equipped with the Atunaean fleet’s sophisticated weapons, nor were they swarming with a full invasion force of soldiers. With Phaedra’s magic now a proven match for her opponent’s, Sett was planning a board-and-sweep operation to reclaim as many of the ships as possible.
He must be less disappointed in her efficacy than she was. The fact that she had not warded the oars against entanglement was only a tiny piece of a much larger problem: Mura had known they were coming, and he had prepared for it better than Phaedra had. So far, all he had lost were things he didn’t value: slaves; dinghies; the handful of illiterate lackies who had kept all those slaves rowing. He had lost these things, and nearly brought down the entire opposing fleet. If Phaedra hadn’t been sharp, the battle might be over already.
She shuddered at Mura’s lack of qualms. He had probably told his men that he was writing sigils of protection on their boats, when in fact he’d been sacrificing them. That ruthlessness was a major advantage – for all that Phaedra’s God was more powerful, she would never be willing to sacrifice her allies to Him. Unless the Essishans were right and sacrifice was greatly overrated, Mura would be more effective in wielding Karassa’s favor than Phaedra could be at literally anything.
She hoped the Essishans were right.
As the pirate fleet drew nearer, Phaedra prayed to God Most High to protect her and the Atunaeans from whatever trick Mura had prepared next. She didn’t dare augment the prayer with magic, but there was still hope her God might hear and answer it.
“You have protected me from Karassa since I was young,” she whispered. “Protect me now, and the people who have followed me. When the tempest came for me, You kept the clouds at bay. When the road was long and death was at my heels, You shortened my path and brought me safely to my destination. Don’t cast me aside now.”
If God Most High heard her prayer, He gave no indication. The fleets met across from the Southern Crags, the pirates keeping their distance in their more maneuverable vessels while flaming arrows flew back and forth. Phaedra was gratified to see that her wards against both arrows and flames were functioning as planned, but the situation was much the same on the pirates’ side.
“Enough of this,” Admiral Sett growled. “Captain, you see that one? I want you to ram it.”
The captain blinked at him, but quickly recovered. “Aye, admiral.”
The Atun’s Favor had a ram built into its prow, but crashing one’s ship into anything was an inherently dangerous proposition, ram or no. If Atuna’s famous shipwrights had made even the slightest miscalculation, if there was perhaps an unexpected flaw in the guardian wood the ship was made of, then using that ram would be disastrous.
But battles were won and lost on such leaps of faith, and if Phaedra’s strengthening spells had any power at all, they ought to protect the ship’s integrity even through this. It was time to embolden the Atunaean fleet and strike fear into the pirates’ hearts.
At the captain’s command, the oarsmen accelerated their rowing to a furious pace. The Atun’s Favor sped toward its target too quickly to be evaded, for all that the pirates did their best to maneuver their ship out of the way. A slight shift to port was all it took to make the collision inevitable.
All around Phaedra, the crew braced for impact. Only Phaedra stood tall in the ship’s prow, bracing herself with magic so that she could maintain her visibility and make her own impact on Mura’s pirates. She planted her feet and staff firmly on the ship’s deck, growing metaphysical roots and sending invisible tendrils to the front and back for added stability. She knew she would be visible to at least some of the pirates, and she wanted to terrify them. They should not think that Mura’s power was unopposed. They shouldn’t think that it was enough to save them.
The initial jolt barely moved her, anchored as she was, though she felt it all the way to her bones. After that came a viscerally satisfying crunch as the Atun’s Favor tore its way through the enemy ship, casting pirates and debris in all directions. A mast fell toward Phaedra and she swept it aside with a well-timed redirection spell, avoiding even the oars to drop it sideways into the water. Her wards against arrows sent splinters of deck ricocheting off to the sides, surreally beautiful in their flight. When the crew recovered enough to reverse their course and row backward, the pirate ship peeled off the Atun’s Favor with an unnatural ease and quickly foundered.
After that, Phaedra allowed herself some confidence in her wards.
The ramming maneuver changed the battle immediately. The Atunaean fleet quickly closed the distance with the enemy, making clear the advantage that oars provided against opponents who could not retreat against the wind. Soon oars were being pulled back and grapples thrown, and soldiers stormed from one ship to another, slaughtering the men in their paths. The Atun’s Favor, freed of its first target, maneuvered to do the same.
But Mura, wherever he was, hadn’t been defeated quite yet. As Phaedra looked on, one of the many as-yet unmolested pirate ships suddenly burst into flames. She let out a low moan and tried to brace herself for whatever was to come. She had seen these spontaneous fires before, though on a much smaller scale, and she knew what they meant: Karassa had accepted another sacrifice.
The ocean heaved. Giant, angry waves rose up all around, driving toward the shoreline. It felt as if an earthquake had happened somewhere far below, but the waves moved in only one direction. The unexpected tremors caught both fleets off-guard and sailors scrambled to adjust to the raging waters, turning their ships where they could to avoid being wrecked. With a sickening jolt, the Atun’s Favor was swept up and carried aloft, plummeting down the side of the first wave only to rise swiftly up a second. Braced as she still was, Phaedra avoided being thrown overboard, but she did not avoid getting seasick: the nausea was nearly overpowering.
Her vantage point was almost too good – she couldn’t avoid the sights all around her as the sea carried her up and down, up and down. Karassa was gobbling up as much of both fleets as She could, capsizing some ships and hurling others against the Southern Crags. The Glimmering Sea had been grappled to a pirate ship when the waves rose and now both ships were wrecks, foundering while still half-tied together.
“God Most High!” Phaedra screamed into the howling wind. “Protect us from Your enemy! Don’t let Your servants perish here!”
Once again, she added no magic to her words – if her God refused to hear her now, forcing His attention could only make things worse. As she had feared, it looked like her masking spell had only been strong enough for this one vessel, a major failure of her planning. Now ship after ship was being swept toward the cliffs while the Atun’s Favor rode the waves like so much driftwood, its progress stagnant.
Both fleets were being destroyed. Had Mura meant for this calamity to happen, or had he miscalculated? Even if he was safely ashore, it was hard to believe that he had meant for all his ships to be wrecked along with his enemies. Mura was no shipwright; if he lost his fleet, he would be trapped on the island for good.
Prayer magic was too dangerous, Psander had said. Once the Gods got involved, there was no way to get Them uninvolved. Phaedra hoped Mura was learning his lesson, wherever he was.
He was probably on the crags, she realized with a jolt. From the cli
ffside he would have been able to signal both to his rowboats in the harbor and his ships in the southeast, and he would have a vantage point for watching the entire battle unfold. The ship’s motion was too dizzying for Phaedra to spot him, but she knew he was up there. There was nowhere else he could be.
Twelve years ago, Tarphae’s king had stood on those very crags, threatening to jump off if Phaedra and her friends came too near. The islanders had convinced him to abandon his plan and to come with them, but Karassa had done Her best to stop them. They had barely gotten the king halfway down when part of the cliffside had collapsed into the ocean. Phaedra had the image seared in her mind, an image of terror and calamity. But now it was more than that. Now it was precedent.
Phaedra fixed her eyes on the cliffside, adjusting to the rise and fall of the waves. She did her best to project Kestan’s ragged image onto those far-off rocks, remembering how he had stood in his dirty robes looking more like a madman than a king.
“Let Your anger burn, Karassa,” she murmured, drawing symbols of waves and mountains onto her skin with the dry quill. “Remember Your rage when I came here to rescue Your prisoner, how You made the earth shake and the moutains tremble, how You tried to hurl us into the abyss. Past and present mean nothing to Gods – what matters is that I am here, as always, to take what rightfully belongs to You. That’s me up there, casting my spells and ruining Your plans as if this island were mine and not Yours. My legs are unsteady, like King Kestan’s were – can you feel how unsteady they are? – but still I taunt you from atop Your cliffs.”
At first it was hard to tell if her spell had taken effect. The ocean was already tossing her ship about, and her vision was too shaky to tell if the island was moving too, or if it was just her. But dark clouds were gathering above the cliffs with implausible speed, and soon Phaedra could hear the rumbling all around her.
“Rage, Karassa,” she kept repeating. “I stand on these cliffs to defy You. Rage on; do Your worst.”
She could feel the Goddess respond to her goading, searching for the source of her spell. Would Karassa find her, or would She be fooled? Phaedra did her best to imagine herself on the cliffs, to forget herself in the spell and confuse her own location. The ship dissolved around her as her concentration intensified. Of course she was up there on the cliffs. All the world was up there.
Lightning struck. With a crack, a great sheet of rock separated from the cliff face and slid into the sea below. Phaedra exhaled. Were there human figures up there, falling among all the boulders? Phaedra couldn’t tell, at least not at first, but then came all the confirmation she needed: the sea went calm. The Atun’s Favor plunged down one last wave and found no new one waiting for it on the other side. Soon even the clouds had dispersed.
Had Mura’s death driven Karassa entirely off the island? Had Atun or God Most High taken up the fight and slain the Goddess in the heavens? Phaedra didn’t know; all she knew was that the battle was over.
To her great relief, not all her ships had been lost after all. Three other Atunaean vessels had managed to stay afloat far enough from the crags to avoid being crushed, and one desolate pirate ship was drifting mastless and forlorn nearby. The soldiers and sailors of the Atun’s Favor were too rattled to cheer, and simply stared back and forth at each other like lost men. But Admiral Sett had recovered at least enough to march up to Phaedra and demand an explanation.
“What the hell was that?”
“That was us winning the battle,” Phaedra said. “The one here, and more importantly the one in heaven. I do believe Karassa has been banished from these seas for good. She lost Her last western finger just now.”
“If you say so. I say we lost eight good ships and hundreds of good men.”
“I know. Let’s go ashore. There will be some last pirates left there, and their prisoners too. We should free them.”
The pirates’ farming operation had expanded since Phaedra had been here last. What had started as a single farmhouse was now a whole thriving farm town with fields as verdant as they were awash in the misery of their workers. Under Sett’s direction, the last pirates were rounded up and executed and the slaves freed. A few chose to stay to tend their farms, but most chose to return to the ships. With a newly empty pirate ship left to tow back to Atuna, there was plenty of room for them.
But when Phaedra told him she was staying, Sett raised his eyebrows at her.
“You want me to leave you here on this rock.”
“If you could leave a small sailing boat, I would be most grateful. But yes.”
He looked like he was about to say something scornful, but apparently he thought better of it. Instead he just said, “I’ll arrange it.”
Phaedra thanked him and gathered food for herself from the farmhouses before making her way into the forest. With magic to guide her, she found her way to the fairy gate by sunset and went about her preparations for opening it. As she had suspected, the mesh was far thinner than it had been last time. It probably helped that she was here at twilight, but most likely she could have opened this gate at any time now, with no need to even count her hours by elevens. The worlds were coming dangerously close together.
Psander would know how to fix it. Surely she would. Phaedra opened the gate and stepped through.
12
Hunter
Hunter knew what that fog meant, and he was terrified. There could be only one reason for Psander’s gate to open, and he wasn’t ready. He’d been waiting over a decade for this moment and he still wasn’t ready.
Phaedra was coming back. All the words he had rehearsed were useless. He couldn’t even remember them as he rushed down the stairs toward the courtyard, hoping to be the first to greet her but knowing he wouldn’t be. It was too late, just after dawn, and most everyone would be up by now.
Sure enough, there was a crowd by the tower door when he got there, all waiting to get out. Even though Hunter knew and loved these people, it was all he could do not to start shoving them aside. Yes, they were already hurrying to see what was going on, but he needed to get through. The whole world seemed too slow right now, like in one of those dreams where he ran and ran but didn’t move.
By the time Hunter got outside, Phaedra was already there, talking to Atella and a few others. She held a staff carved with spiraling runes, and her clothes were of some unfamiliar foreign design, at once practical and extremely flattering. Her hair was sheathed in a glorious headdress of multilayered cloth, rising like a crown from her head. All he could do at first was gape: she was just as beautiful as he remembered. Maybe more so. Her expressions were as lively as they had always been, her movements so graceful they made him ache. She always gestured as she talked, and right now she was telling Atella of some naval battle she had witnessed or perhaps been a part of. He had caught enough of her story to understand that much, but then Phaedra saw him and trailed off. Hunter froze under her gaze, his legs rooted to the ground.
“Hunter,” Phaedra breathed. She rushed over, throwing her arms around him in an embrace that caught him off-guard. He couldn’t move, couldn’t hug back, couldn’t believe she was finally here in the flesh. At last she took a step back from his stiff body and said, “I missed you.”
“Me too,” he said, embarrassed not to have returned her embrace. “I’m sorry if I… could we…?”
Phaedra nodded her beautiful head. “I need to talk to Psander first, about what’s happening. There was a skyquake back in our world.”
“Of course,” Hunter said. “That’s much more important – I can wait.”
“You should come too,” Phaedra said. “I want you to know–”
“I shouldn’t know,” he told her. “Psander’s had talks with the elves, and there’ll be more soon enough. Trust me; I was guarding the door. The more I know, the more they’ll learn just by proximity.”
Phaedra’s face betrayed her shock. “Psander’s negotiating with the elves.”
“They’ve got more power than we have,” Hunter
said, marveling at this strange reversal of roles. He had never thought he would have to justify Psander’s acts to Phaedra, of all people. Phaedra had been the lone islander who wouldn’t condemn the wizard for bargaining with the Gallant Ones, who was willing to excuse Psander’s callousness and even her betrayal as coming in the service of a good cause. Yet here Hunter was, rising to Psander’s defense against his friend’s negative judgment.
“The quakes have been getting stronger,” he said. “We’re getting less and less time between each one.” He lowered his voice so that only Phaedra could hear. “Psander’s talking like the world might end soon, and if you’re saying there’s been a skyquake on your side of the mesh, she could be right. We need all the help we can get, even from the elves.”
Phaedra frowned. “I should talk to her immediately. She’s inside?”
They excused themselves and he escorted her into the tower, doing his best to ignore people’s knowing glances. Everyone in the village – every human in this whole Godforsaken world – knew that Hunter had been waiting for Phaedra, that he had refused to entertain other romances for more than a decade in his hopes of meeting her again and convincing her to marry him. It did not help to know that they were all rooting for him now.
They should have been rooting for Phaedra and Psander instead. They were all in imminent danger, but on Psander’s advice Hunter had told them nothing about the origins of the skyquakes. As a result, everyone but him had grown used to them, as if they were just another feature of this strange and dangerous world. That was certainly better than mass terror and despair, but it was a lonely feeling being the only one besides Psander who knew.
Well, Phaedra was here now, and she knew too. If only Hunter could be comfortable around her. The problems they all faced were so much larger than him and his desires, but his nervous heart didn’t seem to know that. When they ran into Psander on the stairs, he told Phaedra he’d be in his room if she needed him and fled past the wizard and toward his quarters. He could never be ready for their talk, but he wanted to try.
