Mage’s Legacy: Cursed Seas

by hamilton, rebecca

  Gabriel darted out from beneath the rock overhang and into open water, but he was not fast enough. The rock smashed down, shattering into smaller stones that pinned his ankle to the seabed. Pain shot up his leg. He reached down to free his ankle, but the shifting current snapped his attention up.

  Something massive—so massive he could not put a name to it—swam toward him. A gigantic maw opened to reveal teeth longer than he was tall. Instinct and panic dropped Gabriel flat to the seabed. The bottom of the creature’s mouth brushed over his head. Its barnacled scales scraped the skin off his back. Gabriel dug his fingers into the sand and bit back the cry of pain as his blood spread around him. He counted his heartbeats until its tail passed over him—the monster was larger than a blue whale—and glanced over his shoulder.

  His breath caught. In the distance, the creature was turning around, fluid and graceful in spite of its ungainly size.

  A muscle twitched in Gabriel’s cheek. His eyes narrowed. A monster that large would need time to reset its attack trajectory, which could give him just enough time to get away.

  He gripped his calf and yanked his trapped ankle free. The stones tumbled aside, and momentum propelled him backward. He spared only a glance at his ankle. The agony shooting through his leg was brutal—he did not know if he had bruised or broken the bone—but he could still swim. He raced for the surface, painfully aware that the cuts on his back were leaving a trail of blood any predator could follow.

  The sunlight glittering off the surface of the water offered safety from the monsters that lurked in the depths but ushered in new dangers. A school of sharks coasting lazily in the shallows suddenly banked into tight turns, angling around him. One swept toward him.

  Gabriel slammed the wooden end of his spear into its pointed nose, and the shark veered away. Two others darted in from opposite directions. His gaze flicked between them as the distance closed.

  At the last possible moment, he twisted sharply to the side and jabbed his spear down, striking one of the sharks between its eyes. The shark thrashed. Its powerful body slammed into Gabriel, knocking the breath out of him. He gasped, his peripheral vision briefly blurring.

  The current shifted suddenly. Gabriel kicked away from the still-thrashing shark as a second shark closed in for the kill.

  Its jaws clamped down, tearing through the first shark’s body and ripping out its pectoral fin. The spurt of blood drew the other sharks in around the mortally wounded creature. It drifted, helpless, as it was shredded into flakes of flesh. The water turned cloudy with organic matter.

  Gabriel watched from a safe distance. His heartbeat was still erratic, his mind reeling.

  If he had been a fraction of a second too slow, that would have been him.

  Best to make his escape before the sharks completed their feast and sought out other prey.

  His teeth gritted against the pain pulsing through his leg, Gabriel swam toward the light. His chest heaved as he broke the surface of the water and drew a deep breath. The significantly higher concentration of oxygen in the air blasted alertness through his mind. For the first time in a long time, rationality overrode instinct and panic. He had to sleep. He could not keep swimming on little food, hardly any rest, and with an injured leg.

  High waves tossed him, reminding him why he had chosen to risk the deep instead of battle the elements. His shoulders slumped as he floated, allowing the current to carry him.

  No win options.

  He had been swimming for at least fifteen full days. Was he even halfway to Africa? Possibly, but he could not know for certain. The old maps were useless. The melting of the ice caps had swept massive volumes of water inland, and he did not know how the intervening years had further changed the coastlines. Weather patterns had collapsed into chaos, but the meteorite’s impact on Earth had been the last straw. Many humans, among them Gabriel’s ancestors, had retreated into the oceans, their physiology permanently altered by the mages’ magic and adapted for life in their new marine habitat.

  Those humans—now sirens—had never ventured back on land.

  There was no reason to do so. Life was better under the sea.

  Until now.

  Gabriel frowned as an unfamiliar sound intruded on his awareness. He straightened, treading water as he looked around. That crashing sound—surely it couldn’t be waves washing up on shore? But what if it was?

  He squinted at the whitecaps in the distance as they evaporated into sea foam. It was land! He inhaled sharply and struck out in that direction.

  “Land” was something of an exaggeration, Gabriel realized as he dragged himself onto dry ground. It was scarcely more than a rocky atoll less than a hundred paces across, but at least he was out of the waves. With a sigh, he pulled himself into a sitting position and touched his swollen ankle.

  He hoped it was not broken. There were no protruding bones that he could tell, but neither could he put any weight on it. He leaned against his spear as he tested his balance by taking a few steps. He wobbled, grimacing. He was probably far less graceful than human babies taking their first steps. If only he could blame it entirely on his injury.

  Damn it, how did these humans walk even without injured ankles? How did their minds not overload from the nuances of adjusting all the muscles across their entire body just to stay upright? How did anything move across land without the buoyancy of water doing most of the heavy lifting, literally?

  Reality sank like a dead weight on Gabriel’s chest. He was better out of water than Raphael, but it did not mean he was good enough…or even any good at all.

  It doesn’t matter. There’s no turning back.

  He turned to stare across the endless breadth of ocean between him and Africa. The continent was forever and a day away.

  And my clan could be dead by then. His fingers curled into fists. They will be if I don’t get started.

  There was only one way forward.

  Gabriel hobbled toward the water, but a misstep wrenched his injured ankle beneath him, and he stumbled. Jagged rocks scraped skin off his hands and knees. He slumped on his side. Cursed words tangled in his mind, exhaustion blurring them into incoherence. A rueful half-smile touched his lips; he could not even think clearly enough to curse properly.

  Rest. He had to sleep. Just for an hour. Perhaps two.

  Surely his people could wait that long, couldn’t they?

  They couldn’t, but his mind recoiled, and his body ached at the thought of returning to the ocean.

  He closed his eyes. Five minutes…no more.

  * * *

  Deep voices started Gabriel out of his sound sleep. He blinked hard and tried to focus through the disorientation of waking up—but where? His skin was so dry, it felt as though it were pulling away from his body. Each gasp of air abraded his lungs. Darkness wrapped around him, but balls of lights glowed in the distance, dancing as if alive.

  Shadows surrounded him. Figures moved on the far side of the light, but he could not make them out. The lights drew closer. Pungent scents, nauseating smells, struck him as if they were physical blows. His senses recoiled; his mind reeled.

  “Still alive,” a man’s voice growled.

  Strong arms yanked him upright. He pulled away, as much from the flaming torches held near his face as from the stinking breath emanating from the human’s mouth, but there was no place to retreat.

  Something prodded at his ankle, and he grimaced against the flare of pain.

  “Looks like he’s hurt some,” another voice said. “How’d he get out here in the god-forsaken middle of nowhere?”

  Gabriel tried to speak, but his throat was too dry. The sound emerged as a rasping cough.

  Instantly, the grip on his arms holding him upright vanished, and he crumpled to the rocks.

  “Think he’s sick?” asked a third man. “Maybe that’s why he’s out here, yah?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” the first man said. His boot came down hard on Gabriel’s back. “No one’s gonna bring someo
ne all the way out here to die. He probably got washed overboard in a storm or something.”

  Gabriel fought to steady his breathing. Did they think he was a human? It was an easy enough mistake to make. Sirens and humans looked alike enough at a passing glance. It was only in water where the differences—the sirens’ ability to breathe underwater, their enhanced swimming speed, their ability to sense the currents, and their inherent attunement with the magnetic poles of the Earth—truly mattered.

  “Take him back to the ship.” The boot lifted off his back. “He’s young and pretty enough. If he doesn’t die along the way, he might sell for a decent sack of coin.”

  Gabriel tried to resist when the two men yanked him to his feet, but his disorientation, combined with his injuries, made his efforts futile. They dragged him over the rocks, through shallow water, then tossed him into a boat. The vessel rocked, the mast creaking in the wind.

  He had to get away. He just had to wait until their backs were turned, then throw himself back into the water. Injured, he might not be able to out swim a swiftly sailing boat, but he could dive deep and lose his captors.

  One of the pirates trimmed the sail and the boat turned, its patched sails billowing out in the hearty wind. Gabriel’s frown gave way to a faint smile of relief as his perfect sense of direction reoriented him. The ship was headed toward Africa.

  Good enough. The ride on the ship would buy him precious moments to rest. Pain jostled him, but the rocking motion of the boat steadied his racing pulse until exhaustion settled down over him, dragging him back into the embrace of darkness.

  * * *

  Saltwater splashed over Gabriel’s face, shocking him awake. He gasped, his chest heaving. His hand trembled as he pressed it against his eyes.

  Why was it so bright? Why was everything painted in ghastly shades of yellow and brown?

  A callused hand grasped his chin and twisted it from side to side. The oval grey shape in front of him, its details cast into shadow, had to be a man’s face.

  A voice, as coarse as gravel, rasped. “He’s not looking good. Don’t think he’s going to last the twenty-four hours it’ll take us to reach the port of Ganiaré.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” another man asked. “We didn’t even hurt him none.”

  “We didn’t give him any food or water, did we?” the first man said. “But this isn’t on us. It looks like heatstroke. He’s burning up, but there’s not a drop of sweat on him. His heart rate is going like a war drum.”

  Heatstroke…Gabriel’s thoughts stuttered into coherence. Sirens, like most sea-dwelling creatures, could not handle long, direct exposure to sunlight. They dehydrated too quickly, their skin drying out from lack of contact with water. How long had he been out in the sun? Hours? Days? He was lucky to be alive.

  He wasn’t going to make it to Africa on a boat.

  “Probably just as well,” a third voice grunted. “The mage was never keen on the slave trade anyway. Would have probably hexed us with the pox if she’d seen us pawn him off for a couple of coins.”

  “She wouldn’t have. Ganiaré is fifty miles south of her little piece of land in the middle of nowhere. I heard she doesn’t make the journey through the mountain passes too often these days.”

  “No one in their sane mind would.” The first sailor let go of Gabriel.

  Gabriel slumped back down on the deck. The wooden panels vibrated beneath him as the sailor stomped away.

  “Mountains on three sides and nasty riptides just off-shore,” the sailor continued. “It’s like she chose that place on purpose, protected on all fronts—her slice of heaven on earth.”

  The second man snorted. “I’ve been hearing that her bit of paradise is fading too. The land’s not as fertile as it used to be. Rainfall’s been scarce and the harvest is failing. The surrounding villages are dealing with drought and famine, just like everybody else.”

  “It’s about time they faced up to facts,” the first sailor growled. “First the chicken-hearted sirens flee into the sea, then the weak humans flock to live under the mage’s protection, leaving the rest of us out here, facing reality. They’re just delaying the inevitable. When the facts hit them, they’ll be reeling so hard, they won’t even have a handle on the situation before death swallows them up whole.”

  Gabriel dragged himself toward the side of the boat, but something tugged at his ankle. He glanced back at the coarse rope the pirates had tied around his injured leg. Moving slowly, as much from dizziness as from a desire not to attract their attention, Gabriel leaned forward and tried to unknot the rope, but his fingers were too clumsy from the devastating combination of heatstroke and fatigue. He couldn’t do it, and he had nothing with which to cut the rope.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Three large shadowy shapes clustered on the other side of the boat, their conversation raucous. He pulled himself to his feet and looked over the side of the ship. Sunlight gleamed off the familiar triangular shape of sharks’ dorsal fins.

  The ocean was not the safe haven he would have hoped for, but it was still home.

  “Hey, you!” a voice shouted. Footsteps thudded toward him.

  No hesitation.

  Gabriel leapt overboard, tumbling gracelessly into the sea. The impact shook him; the cool water breathed life back into him. The garish yellow hues faded back into soft blues. He drew a deep breath. For the first time in hours, his lungs did not burn.

  Pressure yanked up on the rope around his ankle. One of the sailors was trying to pull him back onto the ship. Gabriel grimaced, bracing himself for the insanity of what he was about to do, then kicked hard in the water.

  The school of sharks swiveled toward him. Lured by the churning currents, the largest of the sharks swam straight toward him.

  The tugging on his ankle became more insistent, then a great deal stronger, as if more than one man had joined in the attempt to pull him from the water. Gabriel grabbed a length of the rope between his hands, then held it a shark’s jaw-breadth apart right in front of his face.

  Come on… Attack me!

  The shark’s jaws yawned apart, revealing row after row of pointed teeth.

  Gabriel shoved the rope out in front of him then ducked his head and swung his legs up into a horizontal position. The shark surged right over Gabriel, so close that his skin brushed against the shark’s body. The shark’s teeth sliced through the rope.

  Gabriel let go of the rope and darted away, diving deep, and prayed that the sharks, who preferred the shallows, would not pursue him. The short piece of rope still attached to his ankle trailed behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder in time to see the longer piece of the rope jerked out of the water. The sharks circled the ship, their quick, tight turns in the water snapping with peevish irritation over the loss of easy prey. None pursued him.

  For now.

  If nothing else, he was closer to Africa than he had been hours earlier. Rejuvenated by his return to the water, he swam, the minutes blending into hours, day into night, then back into dawn, until the shore came into view. He bobbed in the water, watching silently, almost hypnotized by the brilliant, dancing lights in a distant port. A smile spread across his face. How beautiful it was, like stars, but on land instead of in the sky. There was nothing like that beneath the waves; no flash of light, or glittering sparkle.

  He drew a deep breath and winced; the harsh air, not smoothed by water, hurt his lungs. He pressed his hand against his aching chest. If that port was Ganiaré, then the mage’s village was fifty miles north, its shoreline protected by riptides.

  The sun brightened as he swam on the surface of the water. The combination of the tossing waves and the brutal heat beating down on his back made the final fifty miles as difficult a slog as the hundreds of miles he had covered overnight.

  The current swirled around him, as if momentarily confused as to which way to go, then straightened into a riptide. Gabriel glanced toward the shore and caught a glimpse of a curl of smoke high above the trees. T
here were people out there, and according to the pirates, the mage, too. He just had to get past the riptides.

  He dived deep, but the riptides extended all the way down to the seabed and covered the entire breadth of the shoreline. Gabriel broke the surface. So close… and the only way in was to battle nature itself and force his way through the riptide.

  He glanced around, surveying the coastline. Perhaps he had to battle the riptides, but it did not mean he had to do it head-on.

  Gabriel swam toward the rock cliffs that surrounded the beach like a crescent moon, then clinging on to the rocks, pulled himself toward the tiny stretch sandy shore as the waves battered his face and the riptides tugged at his legs. One handhold at a time, he dragged himself toward land. The sun was high in the sky by the time he crawled onto the sandy beach and collapsed, exhausted.

  How much farther to the mage?

  He did not know.

  He dragged himself upright and hobbled toward the sparse tree line. Sand gave way to gravel, then rock. His injured ankle had swollen to twice its size and could hold no weight, forcing him to stagger from tree to tree for support, resting for a moment before pushing on. The sun mercilessly beat down on him. His skin, then his throat, dried out. His vision blurred, first at the edges, before melting into incoherent shades of yellow and brown.

  Gabriel sagged against something—a tree, judging by the roughness against his bare skin. He raised his hand up in front of his face—or at least he thought he did—but saw only a shadowy outline.

  He had to get back to the water, or he would die.

  But if he turned back, his people would die.

  The mage…He had to find the mage.

  His chest heaved, and he coughed. Was that blood he tasted in his throat? Were his lungs flayed raw from processing air instead of water?

  “Is someone out there?”

  A woman’s voice seemed to come from far away. He staggered toward it, his hands outstretched. A shadow moved in front of him. He blinked hard and almost screamed from the pain of his eyelids sliding against his dry eyes. He stumbled forward, falling onto something soft instead of hitting rock.