‘Why should we follow you,’ Decheal replied.
‘We have already decided this Decheal,’ said Oinoir.
‘Haumea and you have decided, my prime Glaines.’
‘Yes, we are,’ Oinoir shouted.
‘Prime Glaines with no king and no kin.’
‘Decheal!’ Oinoir was furious now.
‘Be at ease Oinoir,’ said Haumea. She ran her hands along the length of the mottled white staff that lay in her lap. ‘Be at ease.’
Aviti thought that Oinoir would strike Decheal, but he remained seated.
‘I go to lend whatever help I can to Wist, so we can heal this land,’ continued Haumea. Decheal huffed and reached into her pocket and pulled out her bones again. She tumbled them on the floor before picking them up and repeating the action.
Ignoring the Giantess, Wist said, ‘There is an ocean of ice out there, and somewhere across it is the Dhuma.’
‘So,’ said Haumea. ‘You agree that this is where we must go, to the Dhuma, to entrap the Waren?’
There was a long silence and all eyes focused on the red man. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. Then he added, ‘And no.’
Oinoir spat, but Decheal laughed as she swept up the bones that lay on the ground before her. ‘I did not need these to tell you that,’ she laughed as she pocketed her prized possessions.
‘What do you mean,’ Haumea asked Wist.
‘I mean... the destination feels right, but, the rest of it, I’m not sure.’
‘But you must wish the world cleansed of this bane?’ pleaded Haumea. ‘We cannot survive otherwise.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Wist, as he shuffled on his spot on the floor.
‘And what of Tilden?’ Aviti asked. She caught a flash of anger in his eyes, but it passed like lightning on a summer’s day.
‘I think he will be there also,’ he replied.
‘Whatever the case, the question remains valid,’ said Oinoir, before she could question Wist further. ‘How do we get across the ice? Can we walk?’
Aviti looked to the Intoli, but they remained passive. ‘No, ‘Wist answered instead of them. ‘I’m not sure how far it is, but it is not a placid surface like the one we’ve just crossed. I don’t think much more than the surface has frozen. It’s constantly moving.’
Silence fell over them again, though Aviti could hear the clack of Decheal turning the bones over in her pocket. As Aviti’s frustration mounted, she turned to Sevika and asked, ‘Can you not help us Sevika? Can you help us get to Prasad and the Dhuma?’
Aviti thought she saw a shudder pass through the Intoli as she asked her question, but there was no reply. ‘Sevika please?’ she said. Aviti knew that speaking to the Intoli in their own language might antagonise the Giants, but she had to try.
Then something occurred to her. ‘How did you get here? When you... when you invaded, you must have travelled here. How did you do it?’
‘We came on a huge ice flotilla. A few humans that we managed to capture on Prasad provided us with the ability to do so.’
‘By enslaving them,’ Aviti said. The Intoli had lost the use of their magic, which was why she had been enslaved; so that the Intoli could use hers.
Sevika nodded. Her facial expressions were so muted that it had taken Aviti a long time to learn to read them. The elongated mouth and eyes only served to help disguise those subtle hints of emotion.
‘That is of no use then,’ Aviti said, leaning back against the walls of the igloo.
‘What is?’ growled Decheal. Aviti had slipped back into her natural language without thinking about it, so she repeated Sevika’s words. This only drew a deeper scowl from the Giantess.
Aviti looked inwards as she began to suspect that she would need to provide a way for them to traverse the gap between here and Prasad, but how? She could not even envisage a way to do it, never mind the toll such a feat would extract from her body, but perhaps that was all she needed to do. Perhaps this was what her father wanted of her, to sacrifice herself so that the world might be saved, but she had lived so little of her life. Was it wrong that she wanted to, needed to, live? She had wrested control of her life back from the Intoli, fought to free herself and the humans, and to a lesser extent even the Intoli. Was this to be her payment?
‘Enceladus,’ said Wist shaking Aviti from her introspection, ‘you helped us in the desert. Christ, you must have guessed at the consequences of your actions. Did you not foresee this moment?’
The Intoli did not reply, so Wist went on. ‘You demanded a price from each of us the last time, so what do you want this time?’
‘Is it blood that you want?’ Wist voice rose as he spoke and the fire cracked and spat as if it shared his ire. ‘Is the blood I’ve already spilled insufficient? Or do you wish to torture us with more visions, more things to entrap us in your oblique purpose?’
And still the Intoli was unmoved. Aviti’s eyes flicked between them, watching for signs of emotion in Enceladus or instability in Wist.
‘Why are you here Enceladus, or should I call you Ravan?’ Was that a flicker in the Intoli’s pale-blue eyes?
‘Still nothing to say, Ravan?’ Wist loaded the name with enough scorn that Aviti could taste it.
‘Are you people alive at all? Are you just heartless automatons, plodding your way towards oblivion?’
Wist stood and started to prowl beside the fire.
‘But you are worse than that, aren’t you? You abandoned your kin. You left them to march heedlessly towards, not only their destruction, but that of the Giants too. You knew what was coming, when we met you in the desert.’
‘Instead of telling us,’ said Wist, his voice growing quieter, full of enforced constraint, ‘you let us charge on into the middle of it. You even helped us get there.’
‘Wist,’ said Haumea, ‘do not.’
‘Help us now,’ demanded Wist. ‘Or damn us to die here.’
Enceladus blinked. Aviti breathed out and waited.
‘Damn you. Help us or I shall tear this bloody world apart!’ yelled Wist. Then the ground began to tremble, and dirt and snow fell from the roof of the structure. A grim smile played on Oinoir’s lips.
‘Dionach, do not,’ said Haumea standing and lifting her staff. She started to bring it down, but she stopped when Enceladus stood and walked to the door.
As the glowing sentinel reached the opening, the world quietened. Wist rose and stretched his crimson stained hand towards Aviti. At first, she looked to Tyla for support, but then she turned her head from him and grasped Wist’s hand.
When they were outside the shelter, they found a land grown wild with the first throes of a storm. Wind swirled around them, lifting any loose ice or snow and throwing it across the landscape. Enceladus moved off, following the same path that Wist and Aviti had trodden earlier, and as they followed him, the Giants, Tyla and Sevika emerged from the shelter to accompany them.
The wind pushed at Wist and Aviti, as if it sought to prevent them from following Enceladus, or to stop them making another mistake. The Giants also laboured against the wind. It forced them to fight for each step up the slope.
They slogged their way past the carcasses of the dragons, the first with its innards on show and the second still concealed under its blanket. The wind built as they moved and the temperature dropped. Aviti’s skin tightened despite the many layers of clothes she had on.
As they crested the slope where Wist had stood and looked out onto the frozen sea, Enceladus stopped. Just as Wist had done, he stared out into the darkness, whilst the others remained at the bottom of the hill.
Aviti and Wist stood and waited for Enceladus to do something, to call upon the ethereal powers he had displayed back on Tapasya. They watched and waited, whilst the weather continued to worsen. Aviti began to shiver.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she asked. ‘I cannot stand out here forever.’
As if that was the command to start, the strange Intoli sentinel extended his arms and hands
, exposing his palms. Wist glanced at Aviti and then he grasped the hand nearest to him.
Aviti’s heart pounded. What was the Intoli intending? His kin had enslaved her, but Enceladus – Ravan as he might be – had aided them and shown her a vision of her parents. Could she do whatever it was he needed?
She looked to the Giants and Sevika, and then she looked to Tyla. Then she took off her glove and grasped the Intoli’s hand.
A blast of wind tried to force them back from the edge, but Enceladus held them steady. Something roused inside her. She fought it at first. It was too reminiscent of what the Intoli had done to her. They used her to gain access to their lost power. Now Enceladus was trying to do the same.
But it was different this time. This time she was in control. If she did not want it to happen, she could withdraw, but what would they do then? They could wait here and perish along with the rest of the world, she supposed.
No. She would let Enceladus in, and trust that he had not deceived them. As she opened the door within herself, her breath was snatched from her. Out on the horizon, lightning kissed the surface of the frozen sea. Seconds later, thunder careered into them, but they stood firm.
Aviti sensed Wist at the other end of the connection as energy started to flow between them. She felt his grim determination holding back a wellspring of something deeper. The energy that Enceladus drew from her, he passed to Wist. Then Wist amplified it and sent it back to Aviti. She tried to emulate him – absorbing the magic, caressing it, adding herself to it – and then passing it back.
The sky exploded once more. Now, the discharge from the sky was closer, and when the peal of thunder arrived, rain accompanied it. This was the first rain that had fallen since the Ghria Duh had swallowed the sun. It was bitter and cold, and it stung Aviti’s face, but instead of letting it distract her, she used it as a goad to spur herself on.
When the wave of power arrived at Aviti through Enceladus, the world stopped. Drops of rain hung in the air before her like captured stars. She could have reached out and plucked one if she wished, but she had to concentrate, she told herself. A mistake now and she could obliterate them all.
She accepted the flow of magic into herself and time began to crawl forward once more. Its glacial pace did not stop her. Aviti flipped the power inside of her, added to it, and then let it flow from her back along the unseen connection.
Her eyes stung as the ocean erupted once more. Directly in front of them, fingers of electricity stabbed at the frozen surface and time snapped back into its proper frame of reference. Then the moon and stars vanished in the presence of the lightning.
Aviti thought she heard one of the Giants cry or shout out, but she could not spare any of her attention. The angular patterns on the frozen sea entranced her. Each stab of light sent thousands of shards into the air, creating a million coloured facets to bathe them.
The colours stopped as the pulse of power returned to her and time collapsed around her again, but everything did not stop. The ice fragments re-integrated themselves in mid-air as she let the magic build within her once more. With a titanic effort of will, she shoved it outward and along the link once more. The particles of ice burst outwards again, returned to their previous path.
Three quick cracks of lightning and the ice split from the coast out towards the horizon with an overwhelming roar. As the magical energy oscillated back and forth between Wist and Aviti, the split widened. Flowing water appeared in the crack. Rain whipped at them and the lightning drew impossibly close. Aviti watched as the flow of time warped around them. Enceladus released Aviti’s hand and the power flowed outwards, pouring from them into the churning water. Then the moon burst through the clouds, the lightning stopped, and the rain blew away on the wind.
‘Blood and bone. Now what?’ came a voice behind Aviti. It was Decheal. She and the others had joined them upon the hill.
The split in the ice was still there, but it would not last. With the rain gone, the temperature dropped sharply.
‘I… I do not know,’ said Aviti.
‘Wait,’ said Wist.
‘Wait?’ Decheal repeated, but her voice was heavy with scorn. ‘Yes, why do we not wait here until the end of time, for surely it hastens towards us?’
‘Decheal,’ Haumea said, but the Giantess would not be pacified.
‘This is a sham,’ she said. ‘There is no power in the land that can save us. This Intoli is either mad or a liar, and his motives are not ours.’
‘And what are yours Decheal,’ said Wist. His voice was deep and sonorous. ‘It has taken me many failures to realise that mine were false. I no longer rail against my imprisonment. I will try, with whatever strength I can muster, to save this land. For Nikka, for Dregan, for Eliscius, for Faric, for the Giants, the Intoli, the Damned and for myself.’
Decheal had no answer for Wist, but the sea responded in her stead. An enormous bubble rose to the surface and Haumea laughed when it burst with a huge pop. Then her laughter failed when a white shape appeared in place of the bubble.
Aviti watched as it grew. The movement of the water distorted its edges, but she could make out lines, both straight and curved. Then it broke through and brilliant white light assailed them.
They all stood in silence and gaped at the vessel summoned from the deep. Water poured from the massive sailing ship, exposing the ice-white masts and decks. The entire thing sparkled in the moonlight as though encased in a thin layer of frost.
8 - The Crystal Ship
The descent to the shore took hours of excruciating climbing. Wist’s hands should ache, but even the intense cold that had followed the ship’s arrival couldn’t penetrate his deadened nerves. The biggest problem he faced on the climb though was a resurgence of his old vertigo. He had insisted on going first, saying that he didn’t want to fall on anyone and take them with him. In truth, he preferred that everyone wasn’t there below to watch him.
His pace had cost them time. Aviti and Tyla had passed him on the way down. Tyla’s prowess hadn’t been a surprise, but Aviti moved like she was born to climb. He had to stop as they passed. Their movements in the corner of Wist’s eye brought his dizziness thundering back.
Climbing with numb hands and feet meant he had to examine each nook and outcropping, before placing his appendages. Upon reaching the bottom, he had developed a tremendous headache. Then he had been so preoccupied with stopping his head beating that one of the Giants had almost landed on top of him. But they had all gotten down.
The beach was full of black slate and frost-encrusted seaweed. The salt in the air brought back memories from Wist’s childhood. These thoughts were pleasant, half-formed things that he neither feared nor abhorred, but accepted now as part of himself. He grimaced and looked skyward as he thought of the other parts of his life, which were not so heart-warming. Those too, he hoped he could accept.
The sea had solidified around the ship that they had summoned. As they gathered at the shoreline, it towered over them. Its spars and beams glittered in the moonlight. Even the keel of the vessel appeared to be trapped in crystal.
Haumea turned from it and said, ‘I will lead, if there are no objections?’ After a few seconds listening to the creaking ice, she turned back and stepped forward. The top skin gave beneath her weight, but it held.
Enceladus stepped out behind Haumea and the other Giants made to follow, but Wist stopped them. ‘Spread out,’ he said gesturing along the coastline. ‘Too much weight in a concentrated area might break through.’ He looked at Tyla for agreement, but he only shrugged. Then he laughed at the absurdity of asking a Lyrat for advice about ice.
‘Stay close to Aviti,’ he added, but before the Lyrat could respond, Aviti shot him a look as cold as the frozen sea.
Wist stepped onto the ice behind the rest of them. He watched as the Giants lumbered towards the ship. Creaking and cracking marked each of their steps, but he followed them anyway. The ice moved beneath Wist’s feet, like the rocking of a ship on a calm da
y. He found that this settled his nerves. He was more at ease now than he had been at any time since he returned to this land… to this world.
On the ship from Tapasya to Pyrite, he had been too consumed by his need to avenge the death of Eliscius to care about where he was, or how he felt. His obsession cared not whom he had hurt to gain his revenge. So, he had torn a hole in reality with his mad rage and now they all had to pay the price, but he would make it right.
The ice rose beneath him, separating him from the rest of his party for a second, but it fell back and he jumped on the same section as the Giants and the Intoli. Tyla and Aviti pushed on ahead of them all, despite Haumea’s wish to lead.
The ship was a hundred yards away now, but the further they moved from the shore, the more treacherous the surface became. It was irregular and moving unpredictably. None of this slowed the Lyrat nor the Masheshi girl, as they sped towards the vessel, using their spikes to maximum effect.
The ice beneath them lurched again, but this time it split. Wist slipped and went down onto one knee as it bucked. The Intoli and humans stopped, but all the Giants fell. As he rose, Wist could see Decheal get up and Oinoir sit and massage his leg, but he could not see Haumea. Where she had stood was only a black circle of reflected starlight.
Wist scrambled back to his feet and yelled out to Tyla, but he was too far away. As he ran towards the hole in the ice, the Giants shuffled forward and looked into the hole. The Intoli had also stopped beside it, although they looked towards the ship.
As Wist approached them, he shouted, ‘Enceladus, give me light.’ Without pausing for thought, he dropped his cloak and pack to the ice, drew in a mighty gulp of air and then threw himself past the Giants and down into the black water.
The all-consuming cold hit him as he penetrated the surface. Though his nerves were numb, they were not dead. At first, he couldn’t see a thing. Impenetrable blackness surrounded him. Just as it had been when he had locked himself away, there was no comfort in the void.
Then a light blossomed above him, overwhelming his vision for a heartbeat. He spun in balletic fashion in the water as he tried to locate the Giantess. As he completed a revolution, he spotted her. She fought against the water, eyes wide and panicking. Huge bubbles of air gushed from her mouth and her arms thrust out in every direction, trying and failing to gain purchase on something that could help her.
The Redemption of Wist Boxed Set: Books 1 - 3: The complete collection Page 67
