Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Mother Speaks

by kubasik

  The blow dropped J'role to the railing, and I slipped out of his grasp, falling a second time. J'role caught me, this time by the shoulders of my ragged black slave robe.

  At the same instant my spell drew a lightning bolt down onto the creature, for as long as he remained manacled he could not strike an ally of mine without being hit by lightning.

  The monster shouted in pain and cried up to the sky, its body arching in pain.

  I grabbed J'role's wrists as my robe began to rip. He shifted his grasp and took hold of me by the arms. Again he began pulling me on board.

  The creature struck once more, and again lightning crashed into it. It let out a high-pitched scream and stumbled back. J'role was prepared this time. He winced from the pain, but his grip on me never loosened. I looked down and saw a dizzying void that faded into rain swept gray. Looking up I saw the face of a man who, for a moment, looked like no one I had never seen before. J'role was simply frantic in his desire to save me. His eyes were wide, his mouth muscles pulled back in a grimace. It seemed likely he would begin to cry the moment I either fell to my death or finally reached safety.

  With the monster momentarily stunned, J'role hauled me back over the railing. The catharsis I expected him to experience did not come, however. Instead he whirled toward the other slaves gathered in a semicircle several yards back from the elemental monster.

  They held their swords up, but all quaked with fear.

  "What are you doing?" he screamed at them. "We've got to fight it! Not hold it off! Kill the thing!"

  The creature roared and struck at J'role's turned back, sending your father sprawling across the deck. I pulled back, preparing to shackle the creature's ankles, when the second creature floated over the ship's central castle, arms wide, claws and teeth gleaming with bright blood.

  A scream went up from the slaves. "Back! Back!" I cried, waving my hands at them, directing them toward the doorway of the central castle. They scrambled without hesitation.

  "J'role and Releana!" I shouted, protecting the two of us from the spell I would be casting. I had sent the other slaves away because I didn't know any of their names, and didn't want to harm them. I raised my hands even as the second creature raced toward me.

  J'role jumped forward, swinging his sword at the monster. The blade shimmered silver as he swung and caught the monster in the belly. The edge struck home, and the monster cried out as it drifted up to the riggings.

  My arms swept wide and I gathered magical energy and changed the world. The raindrops around us suddenly transformed into drops of sizzling heat. They pelted the creatures, and the things cried out as countless plumes of steam rose from their flesh.

  The first creature, already shackled, flew into a rage and charged J'role and me. J'role blocked me with the sword, and I cast shackles on the thing's ankles. It twisted a bit, surprised once more, screaming with rage, steam rising from all over its body. Dozens of red welts lined its blue-white flesh. As J'role swung his sword I heard another scream from above. The second creature raced down toward us. I rubbed the rain water between my fingers once more, and cast the storm manacles on the wrists of the second thing.

  The first creature attacked J'role, the second attacked me. We both jumped out of the way of their claws, but they tore flesh from us just the same. The pain from their claws was like hot metal against my skin.

  Twin bolts of lightning slammed into the creatures. They screamed with rage and retreated from the ship. Thirty yards off port they floated in the air, bobbing and staring at us. We had moved out of the area where I had cast the death rain, and I wondered how much further I could push my luck with another spell. Losing so much blood from my wound had begun to make me dizzy.

  The creatures charged at us, their horrible screams roaring over the wail of the storm winds. I called forth a death rain once more. The creatures entered the range of the spell and immediately the rain burned at their flesh.

  They screamed in pain, but I had little time to feel relieved. I felt something slide through my thoughts, like fingers passing under my skull and massaging my brain. A Horror.

  23

  Whatever was happening around me no longer mattered. I had cast too many times, taken far too many chances without the safety of a magician's robe. I clutched at my head, thinking blindly I could somehow force the thing out. It slithered through my mind, breathing heavily, like a fat man with lechery on his mind, picking its way through my memories and fears.

  And there the Horror found the two of you.

  I really can't tell you what it did to me. Words would not do. It turned thought and memories into muscle spasms and physical pain. Everything I'd ever thought I'd done wrong by either of you came crashing up into my skull, like boiling water escaping a covered pot. Foremost in the nightmarish thinking was the possibility that I was somehow responsible for whatever was happening to you now. That somehow I didn't do enough to keep J'role at home. That I should not have left you two in Tellar's care. Then it bounced back to your births, and it seemed horrible that I had even given you life. How could I have done so if only to let such terrible things befall you now?

  I thought my eyes were bleeding. Hating myself so much at that moment, I clasped my hands over my face and began dragging my nails down my cheeks, scraping into my flesh. I could think only of you two dying somewhere, wondering where I was, wondering why I had betrayed you. I should have died for you!

  The thing in my head drove me to my knees and I began beating the stone deck with my hands, and then with my forehead. Anything to drive the pain away. I would keep doing it until I was dead.

  Suddenly someone was holding me, embracing me. Rocking me back and forth. "Shhh, shhh," someone said.

  The creature hissed, dragged me away from the comfort. Seared my thoughts with more pain. J'role's departures. Memories of our bloody lovemaking. My loneliness.

  "Here," a distant voice said. "Here. Releana. Comeback here. The world, the real world, is not wrapped up in your thoughts. The love of others waits for you here." I floated toward the voice, recognizing it as J'role's. The Horror clawed at my thoughts, but J'role's pull was stronger.

  The sky above was gray. Raindrops fell against my face, cleansing me. The wind howled.

  "Shhh. It's all right." I looked up. My back rested against J'role's chest. He held my hands, and I let him comfort me. "It's all right," he said. "They're gone. Your rain and lightning— you frightened them away."

  I spoke quickly; a child trying to get a word in edgewise. "Yes, but in my head. Too many spells..."

  "Shhh," he said again. "I know. I know. Is it gone?"

  I nodded. "I think so."

  In his voice I heard clearly that he did know. But he had never told me of any encounter with a Horror. As he was not a magician, his encounter with one would not have been one of the brief strikes the creatures often make against spellcasters. It would have been a longer torture. But J'role had never mentioned it. Why?

  24

  Why has he never told me? Why did he keep so much to himself?

  25

  The storm carried us another hour toward southern Barsaive. The golden sunshine of daylight drifted ahead of us, and we eagerly anticipated getting out from under the thunderheads. An hour later, when we had finally cleared the storm, the absence of pelting rain and roaring wind created a delightful aural void. Too weary to attempt to figure out what to do next, we lay on the deck, wallowing in the lack of danger, tending to wounds, listening to the delightful silence, letting the sun dry and warm our wet skin.

  Some of our group even slept.

  After this we were up and about. Free from Theran supervision for the first time, we made awkward, and nearly useless, stabs at communicating among ourselves. Out of the original forty, twenty of us were still alive. We discovered later that one of the monsters had entered the lower decks and slain most of those waiting for instructions. Of the twenty, six were from Barsaive, and roughly five other languages were spoken by the rest
of the group. We broke up into our local groups for a while, exchanged names, and found out who had sailing skills.

  Of the representatives of Barsaive there was J'role, the small red-haired woman, who came to be called Aunt Wia by you boys, an ork, a dwarf, a human male, and me.

  None of the twenty survivors had experience with airships, and only some of the bronze-skinned slaves who spoke a harsh language of nasal vowels had any sailing experience at all. They became our captains, and put the rest of us to work. We raised the sails, learned how to set them for maximum speed, and soon controlled the ship well enough.

  It didn't take long, however, to realize that none of us knew how to get the ship down.

  And the moment the realization hit, a silent, subtle panic gripped our motley crew. The thought of sailing endlessly through the skies until the ship's supply of elemental air ran out and we finally plummeted to whatever terrain lay below, far from any of our homes, sent us pacing, searching the skies and the land below, as if some sort of knowledge waited for us, scribbled in the earth or air. The Theran sailors had obviously used some sort of adept talents to control their ship. We could never learn these, for we had no teacher. To the south was the red glow of Death's Sea. What if prevalent winds carried us there? Could a stone ship withstand the heat of the molten sea?

  Ultimately the decision was never ours to make. We spent the day floating in the sky, deciding finally, after much pointing and hand-waving, to put as much distance as possible between Sky Point and us. This meant traveling southwest, for that seemed to be the direction in which the winds gave us the greatest speed.

  We traveled without incident, and night fell. After we split into two watches, those of us from Barsaive took our turn sleeping during the first watch. Weary beyond belief, I went below deck with the others to find a bunk.

  We had cleared out the bodies hours ago, though blood still stained the walls. I pushed open a door of a cabin, found that it held a bunk bed, and stepped inside. J'role was at my back, and said, "Let's find something bigger."

  I paused, uncertain what to say, because I did not want to sleep with him. I could not say exactly why. But with freedom mine again, I don't know... The rules of being trapped allowed me to enter his arms. Without those rules in place, there was no need to pretend everything was all right, to stifle myself at the expense of risking being alone.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "I just don't think we should... Right now..."

  "Did you see how everyone was working so well up top?"

  "Don't do that."

  "What?"

  "That changing... I'm too tired to fight."

  "Who wants to fight? Let's find a bed."

  Wia arrived then. "Any room in here?"

  "Yes," J'role said. "All yours."

  "Good," she said, and squeezed past J'role and me into the room. "Oh, good," she said to me. "You want the top or the bottom?"

  A wave of relief washed through me. "Top."

  "But," began J'role.

  "Let's all just rest," said Wia. "We've got to go on watch soon."

  She pushed him out gently and shut the door behind him. But I didn't see him go out. My back was turned and stayed that way.

  We stretched out in our respective bunks, the ship rocking gently, the cabin's darkness comforting.

  "Don't you hate that, the way they think they can just sleep with you any time, just cause you've done it before."

  "Yes," I said quickly, happy to have a sympathetic ear. And then suddenly I was uncomfortable, embarrassed by the love-making—if that was the term—back in the Theran cell. I didn't know this woman.

  "You two knew each other from before. Before being prisoners."

  "Yes."

  "Sorry. I'm prying."

  "No."

  "Yes, I am. I'm doing it, so I should know." A silence fell, and then she said, "I got to tell you. He's attractive. But there's something about his eyes. Kind of spooky."

  "Yes."

  "You like that, don't you?"

  I laughed. "Somewhat."

  Here's my question to you: if you saw those eyes on someone else, not this man you've known for so long, but a stranger, would you still find him attractive?"

  Another long pause. I thought of J'role's eyes. They hung in the darkness before me, large and luminous, separated from J'role, from all the memories of joys and adventure and laughter. They frightened me.

  "No. I don't think so."

  "I know what you're feeling. My first love. He and I... I thought we were destined. But ever so slowly I figured out things were wrong. That they weren't going to work. But it's hard..."

  "Yes. Hard. Giving up something you think is right and..."

  "So you think something's wrong with you, because you keep thinking it should be fine."

  "But it's not."

  "That's hard."

  "I want it to be right."

  "It's good to want it to be right. We all want that." She paused. "But is it?"

  "I don't know," I answered. But I saw J'role's eyes, and all I could think was, no, things are not all right.

  We remained silent, each sunk in our own thoughts, the pause lengthening and lengthening until I dropped imperceptibly into the well of sleep.

  26

  Some time later—it seemed only minutes—a woman with long hair tied into elaborate loops shook me awake. I didn't recognize her at first, then realized she must have changed her hair while up on deck. A cultural custom of a different land.

  I staggered out of the room with Wia, and we made our way to the deck. Surrounding us on all sides were stars, dipping down even below the ship's hull so that from the center of the ship it looked as if we had entered a world consisting only of star. The effect was at once chilling and exciting.

  With words I was beginning to recognize—and many, many gestures—our resident sailors gave us quick reminders of how to keep the lines taut and the wind in the sails.

  Speed was imperative, for the Therans would, of course, send ships to recover our vessel.

  We all knew a flying stone airship was not something anyone would give up easily.

  We settled in for our watch. J'role and I stood on the ship's rear castle. My rest and talk with Wia had relaxed me, and I did not feel uneasy in his presence. J'role stared up at the sky, drawn by the stars, as he had been since first we met.

  "Still looking for your destiny?" I asked.

  "It might be there," he answered without looking at me His theories had always bothered me. I always picked on him for them. "What makes you think there's any truth about you or the future in the stars?”

  With his back to me, still looking over the edge of the ship, he spread his arms wide, like a wizard showing off his newest, most amazing creation. "I can't imagine all of this is just for show!"

  "What if it is?"

  He turned, smiled, did a cartwheel or two across the deck, and ended up beside me.

  "Then I'm wrong. I've been wrong before." He took one of my hands from the wheel, brought it to his lips, kissed it lightly. Still holding my hand, he looked into my eyes.

  "But not about many things."

  I pulled my hand away. "But about enough."

  He twirled away, oddly back to his blithe self despite our circumstances and the fate of you two. I tried to ignore him. But he leaned against the railing and I wondered if in his carefree attitude he would lean back too far and fall to his death. The thought frightened me at first, but then filled me with a smug pleasure. It would serve him right.

  We remained silent for a long time. The stars were indeed beautiful.

  "Why can't you just be happy with me?" he finally asked.

  "I'm not in a happy mood."

  "We'll find the boys."

  "And what if we don't? What if they're already dead?" I spat the words out without thinking. The moment I did, I felt despair rise in me. Giving the fears voice seemed likely to make them truth.

  I was not prepared for the horror
of your father's reply. "If they are, they are. There's nothing to be done about that."

  My hands dropped from the wheel, and I stood staring at him, my flesh feeling frozen.

  "How can you say that?"

  "Because it's true, Releana. If they're dead, then they are..."

  "Please stop. You're chilling me with your casual words of death."

  His voice became very serious. "They are not casual."

  "They sound casual."

  He shrugged. "I speak the way I speak."

  "I don't think you love them, you know." He opened his mouth, but I raised my hand to stop him. "I know you think you do. You really think you do. But that's not the same thing."