“A cataclysm is coming that will end the world. Preventing it should be our top priority.”
“Yeah. Right,” I said to her. As if Amandera’s sudden presence wasn’t more of an immediate priority. “Rusk, can we make this thing move? If it’s meant to fly, we need to fly it. The hatch doesn’t lock!”
“Then we’d better work fast,” he muttered, staring intently at the ghost-like diagram above the desk. He sat on the seat in front of it. “You’d better sit down.”
I sat beside him. “An’alepp stuck her hands into the picture.”
He thrust his hands into the image and immediately the diagram of the tooth grew larger, the text shrinking away to a single narrow waterfall on my side of the table.
My attention was focussed on the area between me and Amandera. Six of her guards were rushing towards our Tooth, while the rest ran to the others, pulling open the hatches. There were far too many of them to stop. I swallowed.
“If Rusk can fly this thing, can we get out of this room?” I asked An’alepp.
“The ship bay?” An’alepp asked.
“Yes.”
“You must open the Skyward hatch, and fly to the end of the bay where the chute opens upward to the sky. It was not covered with water when we sealed the ship, so we camouflaged it with debris, but anything could have happened in the years since.”
“Great. Just show me how to do it.”
An’alepp’s hands pulled at some of the words in the waterfall and I imitated her actions, speaking to Rusk while I worked.
“Can you make it move?”
“I think so. I’m just playing it out in my mind first. It makes sense. I think it’s the way a bird would think about flying.”
And how would they think, exactly? Probably best not to ask right now. Amandera’s men would be on us in minutes.
“Do you think you could stop playing it out and give it a try? We’re going to be overwhelmed here in a moment.”
Rusk glanced up from his focus, saw what I was talking about, and then lifted one hand, while the other made a slight sweeping motion. The Tooth lurched, and I flew backwards into my seat, my hands gripping the desk. The men who had been running towards us were flung backwards and rolled across the ground. Across the ship’s bay I saw others turn and point, clearly yelling to their neighbors. The floor fell away and we rose slowly towards the ceiling. I didn’t see Amandera anywhere. She must be in her own Tooth, trying to work out how to make it work. Hopefully her ancestor wasn’t adept at flying.
“Great, let’s hope Amandera’s men don’t think like birds the way you do.”
We wobbled in the air.
“It’s not as easy as it looks. I need someplace to go.”
“Head in the opposite direction to the way we came in.” I glanced down at the small schematic of the ship bay that had appeared. “There’s a chute that goes up to the surface. If it’s still functioning then it should be open and we can head out to open sky.”
“If?!”
“Well, if you see another way, don’t let me clip your wings.” Beside us a second Tooth rose into the air.
Rusk snarled, and made a graceful swooping motion with both hands. The instant reaction of the Tooth threw me back into my chair again. We were flying! Really flying. It was amazing—almost as good as riding the Roc, but scarier. I had never thought that the Roc might fall from the sky, but this Tooth was a different matter. How did it run? How did it stay up?
I hadn’t realized I’d been speaking into Ra’shara until An’alepp answered.
“A mini fusion reactor, water for reactant of course, and aerodynamics.”
“You’re going to have to stop speaking gibberish eventually and explain yourself,” I complained.
An’alepp sighed. “It’s what I’m trying to do, fool girl. And remember, with every question you distract me from coming up with something to stop the cataclysm.”
“Gods forbid I distract you,” I muttered.
We soared down the boat bay, and as the far wall grew closer, and closer still, Rusk soared upward into the chute. It was exactly where An’alepp and the diagram claimed it would be.
“Don’t hit the walls,” I said nervously. Our wing tips were close to brushing the exterior walls. They were semi-transparent and flexible, as if made of cloth rather than glass. Beyond them the crystal waters of the lake were bright and attractive. Dark shadows rippled and danced along the walls of the chute and fish swished close to the slime coating that obscured the view.
Rusk said nothing. His jaw was clenched and a tiny trickle of sweat had formed on his brow. No wonder. He was flying. Controlling a strange machine, like a palanquin with wings, and he was maneuvering it in a tiny enclosed space.
“Flick here,” An’alepp said, pointing to the image over the desk, and when I obeyed an image appeared showing tiny ships running through a chute. It took a moment for me to realize it was the view from behind us. Amandera was hot on our tail.
Her Tooth wove unsteadily up the chute. Clearly no one else had Rusk’s bird-mind abilities.
“What if she damages it?” I worried aloud.
“Then the ship will seal off the boat bay’s end of the chute and jettison the rest of it,” An’alepp replied.
That I understood. At least we wouldn’t need to fear ruining the submerged ship. Its treasures were unfathomable.
“And you’ll be stuck in the chute since the end won’t be able to open. Eventually you’ll drown or die when the Tooth runs out of oxygen.”
Just when I thought I could start breathing again, she drops this rock on my head.
We burst through the entrance into the air beyond and the Tooth flooded with the bright light of the sunless sky. We shot upwards, flying like a javelin thrown by a mighty man. I gasped, my heart leaping into my throat with a combination of terror and delight.
Rusk whooped as energy and excitement radiated from his face. He maneuvered the Tooth into a flight path parallel to the land beneath as we peered down from our great height. Below was the lake on the top of the Rib. The chute yawned black and strange from out of the lake. As we watched one of the other Teeth burst through the entrance, then another, and another, and then something went wrong and there was a burst of light and then a cloud of red and black fire.
“What was that?” Rusk asked, breathlessly.
“I think someone couldn’t fly like you can. We won’t be able to go back that way.”
How many Teeth had Amandera’s men taken out? Were there some trapped in the chute, tangled within its malleable walls and sinking to their inevitable deaths? I shivered.
We circled the emerald green island. From so far up the other Ribs were easy to see, white cliffs and brilliant green foliage clawing up in graceful arcs towards the sky. Around the ribs, the sea was bright and flashing beneath the eye of the sun. One moment it was green and the next blue, and there in the center of the Ribs it was a frothy white, as if something was bubbling out of the depths. Strange, I hadn’t been taught about any anomaly there when I studied geography.
The Teeth of the Gods were something from legend. Looking out I could see that the long, tooth-like vessels had sprouted sleek, carved wings so that they looked like the teeth of a shark. They rolled and dove and swooped like seabirds, glaring white in the bright sun. The awe of them filled me.
“Tylira,” Rusk called and I snapped back from admiring the world below to concentrating on the threat right behind us. “Keep an eye on the schematic of yours. I think they’re coming up on our rear. Whenever I change course I see them for a second, and then they skitter behind my back.”
“Could we dodge underneath them?” I asked. Imagine! The ability to go underneath or above something as easily as running right or left!
“I could swoop down like a bird, but I’d have to bank hard and we’d fall out of these seats.”
I glanced down at the seat. Could we hold on easily? I looked for handholds.
“Press the button at the front of
the seat and the seat will mold around you and keep you contained until you press it again,” An’alepp said impatiently. “And have your man take us to investigate that boil in the sea.”
I pressed the button and the seat shifted to cup my body, shaping itself around my lower body so that my hips and legs were immobilized. I reached over and pressed the button on Rusk’s seat. He grunted as his seat moved.
“There, fly however you want, bird boy!”
We hit the buttons just in time. Beside my window one of the other Teeth zipped by so quickly and so close that I shrieked. Glaring through the window was Amandera, her hands deep in the image on her desk. Was she flying that Tooth? Was there anything she couldn’t do? On her head my heartstone flashed and crackled. I felt a sudden surge of hate. She stole that from me, and I was going to make her give it back.
“They’re on both sides of us,” Rusk said.
“And two behind us,” I confirmed, looking at the projection. “Can you rise higher?”
“Something is preventing me. Amandera’s magic, perhaps,” he said, his face screwed up in concentration. “I think they are trying to drive us into the sea.”
Our Tooth rocked.
“What was that?” I asked.
“They’re shooting at you,” An’alepp said.
“Arrows?”
She laughed. “Considerably worse than arrows.”
“It’s a weapon,” I told Rusk.
“You don’t say,” he muttered, tapping a part of the schematic that flashed yellow. “Do we have these weapons of our own?”
“An’alepp?” I asked.
“Here,” she said, placing her ghost hands over mine and showing me how to move my real ones through the action of calling up our own weapons.
Another weapon hit us and we spun, end to end.
“There are too many of them,” Rusk said, “we can’t keep up.”
I followed An’alepp’s motions and whooped as one of the Teeth behind us flashed gold on the schematic, but Rusk was right, with our current trajectory we would eventually hit the ocean.
I reached for Ra’shara instinctually and was delighted when it came easily to me. How was I doing this without a heartstone? I could see the threads of reality that Amandera had spun from the Common to keep us from flying up or down. They were large and unwieldy, done in a hurry. What talent and power she must possess to weave them at all under these circumstances.
I reached for the threads and grasping one in particular, I tugged on it and set it free. Lightnings streaked out from the place where the thread jumped back and forth as it unraveled. Splitting the air and slicing down to the water beneath and up to the sky above, they arced and spat until the thread fell free.
“Sweet Penspray!” Rusk yelled, rolling our Tooth to the side to avoid a bolt. “Was that you? Because I have enough enemies fencing me in without you making things worse!”
“I cleared the way above us, try going towards the sky,” I said, and when he followed my directions we broke up and out of Amandera’s hold. My hands flew across the desk, following An’alepp’s promptings. One of our followers hit the sea with a massive boiling splash. “You’re welcome.”
“Don’t get too smug. You know as well as I do that you could have hit us with those lightnings. What’s that woman’s goal here? Does she want you dead so badly?”
“She wants my power.”
“Drowning you feels like a foolish way to get it,” he said as we spun fully clear of our enemies and then circled in a wide arc.
“Shouldn’t we be trying to outrun them?” I asked.
“We can’t. They’re flying at the same speed we are, and you saw how things went with them behind us. I’m going to tear down their throats and see how they like that.”
Somehow, he made the Tooth soar faster, rushing straight towards the four Teeth before us. They fanned out, but there was no way to completely avoid Rusk.
“What the ...” he said, and then suddenly our Tooth staggered and began to fall.
I found the weave we were tangled in and unwove it as quickly as I could, letting it free itself and dissolve into lightnings again, but just as Rusk began to right us, there were two more weavings to undo.
“She’s too fast. I can’t counter her quick enough,” I said, wiping my brow with one hand as I concentrated. For every one thread I unwove, two more sprang up. I picked them apart aggressively, not caring where the lightnings went.
“Woo Hoo!” Rusk cheered. “Your lightnings took one down. She’s falling from the sky!”
“Don’t cheer yet. You forget it could be us,” I muttered, picking at a particularly tough one. Was she tying them off now? This felt like a knot.
“Well, I’ll cheer for as long as it isn’t ... oh no.”
“Oh no, what?”
“She’s been herding us. Work faster! We’re going straight for the sea again!”
I picked one apart only to have it replaced immediately by another. Teeth gritted, I focused on that weave, pulling it apart like a feral dog in a butcher shop.
“Tylira, we are feet from the water. I don’t think I can hold this bird in the air!”
I attacked the next and the next in a flurry of effort. She was too fast! She was too much better than I was. It was all going to be for nothing. Finding the Teeth, saving Rusk, finding out about where we came from—it was all for nothing. I was going to die here in the sea. I didn’t want to drown. I didn’t want to die. I barely heard Rusk’s comments. His tone had gone from playful to strained to panicked. We must be close to crashing. I fought on. Terror and imminent loss lent me wings. I glanced at Rusk. He was so strong and so brave, fighting for a girl he didn’t even know only a couple weeks ago. He’d drown with me if I couldn’t find a way to free us, but the weaves were too fast. The power too great.
The side of my neck prickled and I glanced away from my work to my left. Out the window Amandera’s Tooth was so close to ours that she was barely as far away as my tether to Rusk. My heartstone flickered and flashed on her forehead. She was smiling, serenely, at me as her fingers flexed and unflexed like she was weaving a web with them.
My heartstone. The defective one that was full of barriers. Had she woven something to knock those barriers out of the way?
With a flash of inspiration, I abandoned my work, focused on the heartstone, and plunged towards it mentally.
“Tylira, we have only seconds. Please,” Rusk pled, “Please find us a way.”
Yes. There were tiny, miniscule weavings within it. I tugged one apart, and then the next. Like gossamer cobwebs they provided no resistance.
“I’ve put all my hopes in you, Tylira. Don’t let me down, girl.”
And then, on instinct, I reached for the Common through the stone. It shouldn’t work. I couldn’t access Ra’shara through it without it touching me, but maybe if I could just touch it with my own thread of the Common I could make it do my bidding—
“If you pray, now would be the time,” Rusk muttered and then in a voice so low I could barely hear it he said, “my Wild Girl.”
My heart leapt, and I reached through the heartstone and unwove as hard as I could. Threads of Common rushed back towards the stone, as if I was pulling back every single thing Amandera had woven since stealing the stone from me. As if I was clawing back my own self from her thieving hands.
Lightnings danced all around me painting everything white. I screamed with the effort, pain searing through my brain behind my eyes, but I couldn’t seem to shut them. Beneath me the belly of the Tooth juddered and swerved wildly as we grazed the tops of the rolling waves. We were going to crash.
Something gave a terrible ‘crack’ and our Tooth heaved, rolling forward. I was flung against the grips holding me into the seat, my torso shaken like a doll in the hand of a child. We were going to tear apart and die.
Something gripped one of our wings and we spun in a circle and then rolled back over belly like a fish. This was it. This was the end. A series of rap
id-fire memories blazed across my seared eyes. Alsoon caressing me with his trunk. Rusk’s honey eyes. Jakinda’s solemn expression. My mother’s smile.
With a scream like tearing metal, Rusk pulled us upwards, corkscrewing away from Amandera and skyward, like an arrow shot towards the sun.
I screamed with him, fear, pain and the intensity of so much power racing through me, tearing the scream from my lungs. Tears streamed down my face and I sucked in a breath like I’d been under water. The unweaving stopped abruptly and I slumped backwards as the world turned black.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Cataclysm
“Tylira! Tylira, wake up,” Rusk sounded excited. “You did it! They’re all falling away. Your lightnings destroyed them and ... we’re alive. We’re alive and together.”
How many armsmen had been on those Teeth? And what about Amandera? I shook myself and sat up, leaning forward to see out the window and down towards the sea. Sure enough, the Teeth were falling.
The ocean below bubbled like a kettle, steam and fountaining water spewing upwards. The Ribs heaved and danced as if they were being punched, quivering after every heave. I scanned the landscape for Amandera and her Tooth. There it was, falling towards the slash in the ocean. As I watched it hit the water, quivered and then ever so slowly began to sink. Not far from the place she landed, the ocean opened up like the mouth of a monster, water rushing to fill the gap. Amandera’s Tooth, half sunk was caught up in the movement.
“The Cataclysm,” I gasped. How wide would that mouth open? Would we have anywhere to land? It widened by the second, gulping up land and water with a ravenous appetite.
“Sweet Penspray,” Rusk said, like a prayer. “Can you close it?”
Desperately, I tried to unweave the mouth, but the more furiously I unwove, the quicker it grew. It was as if I was feeding it with my work.
“I think you’re making it worse,” Rusk said, his face lined with worry.
We’d destroyed our enemies only to destroy our world, too. What would happen if we couldn’t close that gap? Would it rip our entire world asunder?
Teeth of the Gods Page 23
