“So he has no fate or future?” Aisa finished, unconsciously.
“How could he?” said Tan. “I do not know where to plant him yet.”
“So he could be … anything,” Danr said. “Mortal or immortal. Stane or Kin. Shape mage or not.”
“Well, yes,” said Nu. “But that is true of all children. Even Fell and Belinna were formless to us until they emerged from Grick’s womb.”
Danr dropped back on his elbows as a great weight lifted from him. He hadn’t realized until now just how frightened it had made him to look at Aisa’s belly and see a formless nothing around their child. Hearing from the Gardeners that this was normal relieved him so quickly it made him light-headed.
“You are naked again, my Hamzu,” Aisa said, “and covered with dirt. I cannot begin to tell you how attractive that makes you.”
He grinned at her. “Is this monster stuff going to happen every time we come here?”
“It also happens when you are not here.” Nu leaned on her hoe. “We are simply unable to fight.”
“Unable to repair.” Tan folded her seed sack.
“Barely able to work.” Aisa retrieved her sickle. “It’s getting worse and worse in here.”
“And you’re getting more powerful.” Danr sat up. “Why is that?”
“She is not fully connected to the Garden yet,” said Nu. “The corruption does not affect her as badly.”
“But we can feel the Tree tipping,” said Tan. “The Garden is sliding away. Can you not feel it?”
“The ground isn’t level,” Danr was forced to say. “I can feel it.”
“Anyone can,” Aisa said. “What do we do about it?”
“Find the Bone Sword,” said Nu.
“Free Pendra,” said Tan. “Time is running out. In a week, perhaps ten days, all will be lost.”
This brought Danr’s head around. “What? A week? We thought we had months, maybe even a year.”
“Things have become worse,” Nu murmured. “The elf queen is draining more power from Pendra than we knew. She creates unnatural Twists, reaches through iron in ways the Fae were not meant to do. And she continues to create the flesh golems. The imbalance of her power speeds the corruption of the world.”
“We are seeing earthquakes,” whispered Tan. “Soon, we will see much worse.”
“Can’t you help us?” Aisa said. “It would go faster.”
“If we would, we could,” said Tan sadly. “But we cannot fight simple mud, let alone raise a hand against the elven queen.”
“The Tree tips,” said Nu.
“Why does the Tree have to tip at all?” Danr burst out. “Every thousand years, Ashkame tips. It shakes up the world and creates wars and Sunderings and disasters that kill thousands of people. Why can’t it just be anchored?”
Nu sighed. “It is the nature of being.”
Tan shrugged. “It is how the universe works. Three Gardeners tend the Garden. Two pivot around a third, and therefore the Tree must always tip. So it is, and so it must be.”
Danr shot a glance at Aisa. Now that he was going to have a child who would inherit this world, Danr found the idea of a constantly tipping Ashkame more and more repugnant. How could he leave a world of constant upheaval and strife to his son? Or his grandson? Or any of his descendants? Resolve filled him, and he put a dirty arm around Aisa. If he had to die one day, let it be trying to ensure that his children would have a better world than he did.
“What did the mud men and the new plants do to the Garden?” Aisa asked, adroitly changing the subject. “We should look.”
“Many new lives have entered the world,” said Nu.
“A burst of births,” agreed Tan.
“They balance out the deaths,” said Aisa, leaning over to examine some of them.
“Hey!” Some distance away from the mud monster area, Danr knelt by a bright red spineflower, its prickly blossoms and sturdy scarlet stem standing defiantly amid a patch of fingerlike pickleweed and smooth cord grass. “These grow on the shore, don’t they?”
“In the Garden, anything can grow anywhere,” Aisa said, joining him.
“This spineflower seems … familiar. I can’t say why.” Danr reached down to brush it with his fingertips and a rush of impressions washed over him: a tall, half-troll girl wrestling with her human older brothers, the same half-troll girl grown to womanhood boarding a ship for the first time with a simultaneous sense of awe and homecoming, the woman getting into a fight with four sailors and knocking all of them flat, the woman weeping over the death of the first mate and being startled at receiving his position herself, the woman putting on a heavy felt hat against the sun and taking her ship’s helm as captain herself. Startled, Danr snatched his hand away.
“This is Captain Greenstone!” he said. “The plants around her must be the crew of the Slippery Fish. Incredible! I haven’t thought of her in months.”
“Delightful woman,” Aisa murmured. “Always with a soft spot for you.”
“You aren’t jealous, and don’t pretend you are,” Danr said, still lost in memory. “I did like her. The first other half-blood I ever met. I’m glad to see her plant is blooming. She must be doing well.”
“I think we have had enough of the Garden for a single night,” Aisa said. “The new plants will slow the corruption, at least a little.”
“Ten days,” said Nu. “That is the most you will have.”
“Ten days,” echoed Tan.
“Ten,” said Aisa. “Come, Hamzu. Back to Xaron.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Can you Twist us out now?”
“I can Twist us in and out of the Garden when we sleep, but not elsewhere,” she said. “I cannot explain it now, but I can, and I can do it without help from the … Two.”
“This is a fine thing,” said Nu, sinking to the ground. “We have little power left.”
“We are weak,” agreed Tan, settling beside her.
“We will hurry,” Danr said, earning him an odd look from Aisa. Before he could ask about it, she took his hand.
There was a wrench and salt water filled Danr’s mouth and nose. He coughed and spluttered and flailed about, but there was only water beneath his feet. Vik! What had happened? Panic squirted through him. Trolls tended to sink more than swim. Then he remembered he was human. That wouldn’t help him breathe. He tried get his bearings, but had no idea which way was up. Already his chest was growing tight.
A pair of arms wrapped around him from behind and hauled him to the surface. He broached and sucked in sweet air, then coughed out salt water. Frightened, he looked around. Blue ocean stretched in all directions under a cloudy sky. Aisa in her mermaid form was holding him up. Her fierce, tattooed face looked as serious as he felt.
“I am glad you took your human form,” she said. “I doubt I could carry your birth shape for long.”
“How did we get here?” Danr spluttered.
“I am unsure. I aimed for Xaron, where we entered the Garden. I cannot imagine how we came to be here. Or even where here is.”
“Take us back to the Garden!” Danr said.
“I do not know how.” Aisa looked around desperately. “When I am half-asleep at night, the Garden calls to me and I can find it. Now—”
A wave washed over them, plunging Danr underwater. Aisa brought him back to the surface again. “You can’t hold me up forever,” Danr said. “Can you change into a whale or something?”
“I can.” Aisa’s long black hair trailed in the water behind her. “But I do not know what that will do to the baby.”
A pang went through Danr, mingling with the salt in his mouth. “You took your mermaid shape.”
She gasped. “I did, and without thinking. Was it a mistake?”
Another wave washed over them. This time Danr was ready for it and was able to hold his breath, but Aisa still had to pull him to the surface with firm strokes of her tail. Worry for the baby, however, made him heavy and he wondered if it would pull him back down again.
What if something had gone wrong with him? What if he had changed into some kind of monster?
“Let me look,” Danr said when he could breathe again. He closed his right eye. For a heart-stopping moment he saw nothing. Then he saw it—their son was still there, undamaged, and Danr still couldn’t tell if he was mortal or immortal. “He’s fine. He’s perfectly fine.”
Aisa let out a soft cry, and he knew she’d been just as worried as he’d been. She threw her arms around Danr and kissed him, which had the effect of sending them both beneath the waves. There was an explosion of golden light, and Danr found himself clinging to the back of something cool and slick—a great whale. Water rushed past his head and they broached the surface. Aisa blew a fine mist from the blowhole just in front of Danr, and he laughed. He didn’t know whales, had no idea what kind she was, but her skin was a grayish blue and her body was a good thirty or forty feet long. Danr pressed himself to her back, glad the day was warm, for all that it was cloudy.
Warm. The water and the air were warm. That meant …
“We’re in the northern part of the South Sea!” he called to her, not knowing for sure if she could hear. “We must be pretty close to land, too.”
Aisa’s massive tail flukes slapped the water behind him, though he couldn’t tell if that was acknowledgment or disagreement. She swam carefully off with Danr trying to maintain a handhold on the ridge on her back.
After a fairly short time, Danr came to the conclusion that riding whale-back was far from a comfortable way to travel. It was slippery, so he was always fumbling for a handhold, which was tiring, and the wind turned even the warm air uncomfortably chilly. He was thirsty from the salt water, and he wished the sun would come out.
And they had to find the Bone Sword. A week, the Gardeners had said, or ten days at most. How in Vik’s horrible name had they come down here, in the middle of the ocean, when they should be on a pair of wyrms, running to Alfhame to find the Bone Sword? Gwylph was poised to invade Balsia with her horde of flesh golems while the world crumbled around her, and the only people who could stop her were a half troll and a pregnant whale. He would have laughed at the absurdity of it if he weren’t so worried. Aisa swam with strong strokes of her tail, though he had no idea where she was going. Perhaps she had none, either.
Danr became hungry as well as thirsty. His hands and arms ached from keeping his position on Aisa’s back. At least in his human form, the daylight didn’t bother him. How far away from land were they?
A terrible smell wafted past. It reminded Danr of rotting meat and festering sores. His eyes watered. He wondered if Aisa could smell it. Maybe something had died in the water and was floating on the surface. The smell faded but returned a moment later. Danr turned his head, trying to find a way to escape it, but it wouldn’t leave him alone. It was like sliding through a cloud of awful insects that insisted on following him.
The smell abruptly vanished. A speck appeared on the horizon. The speck grew. A tiny mast climbed over the edge of the world and grew larger. White sails appeared like little clouds. Danr drummed excitedly on Aisa’s back. “A ship! Do you see it?”
Aisa was already swimming toward it. Her speed increased, and he had to work harder to cling to her back. Wind sang in Danr’s ears and blew his dark hair back. The ship rushed toward them now. When they were forty or fifty yards away, Danr managed to stand up and wave. One of the sailors waved back and tossed a rope ladder over the side. That was when Danr recognized the vessel.
“It’s the Slippery Fish!” he shouted. “Aisa, it’s Captain Greenstone’s ship!”
Aisa slapped a fluke in acknowledgment, circled around, and swam up alongside it, bringing Danr under the ladder. Several sailors were peering over the gunwale now.
“You all right, mate?” one of them shouted.
“Vik’s balls! That’s a whale!” said another.
“We’ll get you some clothes,” called a third.
Danr remembered then that he was naked—his oversize clothes had peeled off him when he squirmed out from underground in the Garden. At least the ocean had washed the dirt off him. He grabbed the rope ladder, and Aisa sank beneath the surface, leaving him to scramble onto the rung. A moment later, Aisa burst above the surface, flinging the hair from her face. Her tattoos were gone, which meant she was human again. The sailors shouted in consternation and surprise.
Danr hauled himself up the ladder to board the ship, then turned to help Aisa aboard. Something to his surprise, none of the sailors made a single remark about a wet, naked woman heaving herself over the gunwale. Then he caught sight of the females among the crowd of sailors and remembered where he was. Of course they wouldn’t say anything. Not with—
“You!” bellowed a familiar voice. “Vik’s thundering ass cheeks, what are you doing here?” A big woman, as tall as Danr himself when he wore his birth shape, rumbled across the deck and hauled both of them into an embrace, one in each massive arm. Her jaw jutted forward, letting her lower fangs poke upward just a little, and her swarthy face was hidden under a wide felt hat from which peeked a lot of coarse, dark hair. She wore her habitual loose white blouse tucked into red trousers with a curved sword sheathed at her waist. No boots. Like Danr, she preferred to go barefoot. As did most half trolls.
Danr and Aisa had met Greenstone almost two years ago. She was one of the few female ship captains on Erda, and the only one to hire female sailors. Her ship had taken them to the Iron Sea and the Nine Isles on their search for the power of the shape. More than once she had saved their lives. At first Danr had been a little put off by her gruff manner and expansive personality, but later he had warmed to her and now counted her as a close friend. Privately, he occasionally wondered what kind of turn their friendship might have taken if he hadn’t already fallen in love with Aisa.
“Captain Greenstone!” Danr said into her shoulder. He was grinning with relief and happiness, though no one could see it right now. “You have a talent for showing up just in time.”
“And you and Aisa have a talent for showin’ up naked in the most amazing places,” she said, releasing them and turning to her first mate, a tall, wiry man with receding sun-bleached hair. “Harebones! Our friends need some clothes! And probably food and water, yeah?”
“Indeed, yes,” said Aisa. “I do not believe I have ever been so glad to see you, Captain.”
“I’d say the same about you two,” Greenstone said, releasing them, “if I knew how you got out here and why the Vik you ended up on my ship. And why you’re in human form again, Danr-boy. I thought you’d gone back to your trollish ways like the rest of us. And where’s Talfi? If he’s gone and gotten himself killed again, I’ll beat his regi ass.”
“It was the Garden!” Danr said in sudden realization.
Greenstone scratched her head beneath her heavy felt hat. “Garden?”
“I found your plant in the Garden just before Aisa and I left,” Danr said, not sure whether to be excited or mystified or both. “It was a spineflower. I must have been still thinking about you and the crew, and that pulled us here, close to the ship.”
Harebones showed up with a pair of cloaks, which he dropped over Aisa and then Danr. Danr pulled his more tightly about himself, but Aisa barely seemed to notice hers. The deck moved up and down beneath Danr’s feet and over his head creaked the tall white sails.
“That would be … odd,” said Aisa. “Only a Gardener or Death can Twist to and from the Garden.”
“I didn’t Twist,” Danr protested, accepting a mug of water from one of the sailors and taking a long pull. “If I did anything, I just … pulled us.”
“Hmm.” Aisa took her own mug. “We will have to discuss it later. We have bigger problems.”
“What’s going on, then?” Greenstone demanded.
Danr and Aisa gave a quick sketch. Greenstone’s eyes grew wide, then narrow, then wide again. “Ten days to find the Bone Sword,” she repeated at the end.
“Where are we, exactly?” Aisa ask
ed.
“About halfway between Flor and Briat,” Greenstone replied. “We’re heading to Briat right now.”
“Can you change course? Take us to Balsia?” Danr said. “Or maybe even sneak us up the coast to where the Sand River meets the sea? We can get to the Lone Mountain from there.”
Danr and Aisa exchanged frantic looks. “That won’t leave much time. The Tree is tipping.”
“Then we’ll sail like Vik himself is coming for our tits and testicles.” Greenstone raised her voice to a bellow. “Harebones!”
They sailed five, six, seven nervous days. Danr barely slept, wondering what Kalessa and the orcs must be thinking, but there was no way to let them know. Aisa refused to enter the Garden for fear she would emerge only to find the Slippery Fish had moved away while she had not, stranding her in the middle of the ocean and unable to find the ship again, but she was plagued by visions of creatures rampaging through the Garden, and Danr smelled rot on the air almost continuously. He became certain the smell was connected to the Garden, and Aisa agreed.
On the morning of the eighth day, a great gout of water spouted into the air and a dozen forms vaulted over the edge of the gunwale. They landed gracefully on the rail. Everyone, including Greenstone, jumped back. Merfolk. Men and women both. Their spiky scarlet and cobalt blue facial tattoos were seeded with pearls, turning their faces into ferocious warrior masks. None of them wore clothing, and they carried wicked two-pronged spears or thin, curved swords. Their strong tails gleamed like living gems.
“Are they your family?” Danr breathed in Aisa’s ear. “Maybe they can help.”
“They are not here to help,” Aisa breathed back. She looked as though she wanted to be anywhere else.
“The merfolk are always welcome aboard the Slippery Fish,” said Greenstone, stepping forward. “I already paid the toll back in—”
“Aisa,” hissed one of the women. “I am glad for this day. I have waited a long time.”
Aisa let out a short breath and straightened her spine. “Imeld. It is good to see you.”
Imeld. Danr had never met her, but the name sent a chill through his veins. Just before the Blood Storm, he and Aisa had rescued a mermaid named Ynara from slavery and returned her to her people. That was when Aisa had discovered she herself was half mermaid on her mother’s side. In gratitude, Ynara’s mother, Imeld, had welcomed Aisa into their home. Later, after Danr and Aisa’s showdown with Grandfather Wyrm, Aisa had brought the power of the shape to the merfolk, including Ynara. The power had granted its shape-shifting magic to Imeld, but it had killed Ynara. Aisa had fled Imeld’s wrath and had not visited the merfolk since, not even to see her own rediscovered family.
Bone War Page 27
