Dream Storm Sea

by A. E. Marling

  “No boats dare follow you,” another man said.

  “That’s the point.” Emesea upended her purse, and coins and rings fell on the sand. “Take the day off.”

  A wave crashed, and foam sliced over Hiresha’s slippers. Coldness smacked up her ankles. The men scooped up the valuables then bolted.

  “Now, Hiresha.” Emesea rested her sword in the lead boat, the one without the carcass. She smacked her shoulders against the side planking and heaved. Her torso was shaped like a column and looked as sturdy.

  Even so, Hiresha could not believe they could move the boat. “It’s too large.”

  “Size never frightens me.” Emesea winked.

  The enchantress was not certain if she helped or not, but their next push sent the boat sliding into the surf. A wave lifted the vessel and smashed it down on top of her. Hiresha’s mouth filled with bubbles and sand. She beat against the bottom of the planks until she could stand, spluttering.

  A hand shoved her rump and tumbled her into the boat. The enchantress righted herself in her waterlogged gown and found a bench.

  Emesea pressed an oar into Hiresha’s hand. “Ever rowed before?”

  “I have now.” The enchantress found a second oar.

  The boat bobbed. Hiresha thought that Emesea must have jumped in with her, but the bare-backed woman had slogged off toward the other watercraft, carrying a rope.

  The enchantress could not believe she made any headway rowing against the flow of waves. She strove just to stop sliding back toward the beach and its flickering lamplights.

  Emesea dragged the second boat into the water, the rope around its prow. She splashed and swam her way to Hiresha. After tying the cord to the back of their boat, she slung herself inside. She fitted a second pair of oars into notches on the planking. The wooden blades cut into the water, and the boat skipped over a wave.

  The rope connecting the two vessels stretched taut and lifted from the water. Emesea’s strokes slid the boat backward. Beyond, on the land, the pinpoints of lamps edged from the slum to the shore.

  “The sacrificial boat. It’s impeding us.” Hiresha pulled an uneven stroke on her oars. “Can we leave it?”

  “We’ll anchor it soon, with this.” Emesea kicked at a rock in the base of their boat. It rolled over netting and the discarded red dress.

  A black wake was spreading from the gore-filled boat.

  Hiresha asked, “It’s to prevent pursuit?”

  “Any biggin’s nearby will swim to sniff it, and by then we’ll be far….” Emesea dropped the oars and stood. The boat rocked, but the woman kept upright. Her shout had notes of pleading joy. “Inannis?”

  “Emesea.” The spluttering answer came from a figure flailing his way through the water. He caught hold of the rope between the boats.

  The sight of the thief made Hiresha hope for Fos, but she saw no trace of the spellsword among the waves. She felt unbalanced and not only because the vessel was tilting. She leaned to the other side.

  Emesea pointed to the rope. “Pull your stick-bug butt to us. Can’t have you soaking up all the sheep blood.”

  As much as the man disgusted Hiresha, the thought of him handing over her diamonds made her spirits surge. This voyage will feel ever so much safer with a few potent enchantments in my hands.

  “No.” Inannis’s croaking shout could only just be heard over the waves. “Eme, this is wrong. Bring your boat back.”

  Hiresha froze, her oars still.

  “There is no back.” Emesea waved to the lamplights advancing to the shore. “Join us. She’ll make a gem to cure you.”

  “Hiresha….” Whatever Inannis called out to the enchantress was lost in the slap and smash of surf.

  Emesea slung one leg over the side. “Don’t make me dive in to bring you aboard.”

  “Try and I’ll sting you. Eme….” A wave dunked Inannis. One hand slipped from the rope.

  Emesea clenched the boat with both hands. Wood creaked.

  His head broke the surface. “Come back or everything between us is done.”

  “Enough farting excuses. You’re going with us.” Emesea thumped back onto the bench and hauled on the oars. She rowed out to sea.

  Hiresha peered around the mast to watch the figure clinging to the rope. After three of Emesea’s mighty strokes, Inannis let go. He dragged his way through the surf toward the shore.

  An oar of Emesea’s bludgeoned the water, spraying eye-stinging droplets. “That maggot-eating blood spittle!”

  “My diamonds.” Hiresha bowed forward, feeling the full clammy weight of her soaked dress. “I presume he didn’t approve of the backup plan.”

  Emesea rowed, her spine a series of knobs on her slick skin.

  “Might we still meet him at Oasis City? Him and Fos?”

  She rowed, heat wafting off her. Steam rose from her shoulders.

  Hiresha did not ask the questions she most feared. Does Fos even know to meet us? Is he still alive? The icy possibility dug into her, that Inannis and Emesea had murdered him, left him under some floorboards the night they had escaped together.

  Emesea rowed, her hair flicking to the side.

  The enchantress consoled herself that she would not have to work with the jewel duper. If not for her diamonds, she would have been relieved that he disapproved of their plan.

  And just what is the extent of this scheme? Hiresha eyed the muscles shifting along the back of Emesea’s arms and shoulders. The boat lifted higher in the water each time she hefted the oars. The sword club rested against her bench. Hiresha wondered if she had let herself be kidnapped.

  I am no child. Hiresha took comfort in knowing that she could attempt to draw Emesea into the dream laboratory and overpower her there. The enchantress could also Lighten herself and float away, though she feared to try with guards patrolling the shore.

  Hiresha remembered she had not bid farewell to Tethiel. The thought did not sadden her as much as she expected. She felt as if she might meet him again any moment, as unlikely as that seemed at sea.

  I must be content to be rid of him.

  The breeze swirled, chilling her face. The folded sail fluttered on the boat’s mast. The wind is changing directions

  Hiresha looked over her shoulder. She gasped. The sea was alight.

  Stars shimmered on the black-mirror surface. Beneath the rippling reflections, schools of green ghostlight flitted. Jellyfish shone like red wax lanterns at festivals, and some of the crystalline creatures ignored gravity, puffing their way into the air, trailing tendrils.

  A sense of fresh purpose filled Hiresha’s chest. Feelings of peace and rightness settled in her stomach. I am where I need to be. She took pleasure in pulling on the oars even though the wood scraped her hands.

  No one died today. I made the right choices.

  A billowing orange lit the distance. Hiresha stared at the glow. Her heart raced as she watched its colors shift to teal then magenta. She thought it some luminescent monstrosity with a humping back that stretched across the sea. She was about to ask Emesea if this could be her dragon, when the enchantress remembered one lecture in her Studies of Astrological Phenomenon.

  “An essence tempest, a dream storm.”

  Her class in the Academy had debated their existence. Hiresha had been of the opinion that the sea’s namesake had nothing to do with human dreams, if the storms were real. She had never thought to verify them firsthand.

  A reek of gore hit Hiresha straight in the gag reflex. The changing wind blew the stench of the dead sheep out to sea.

  “Shouldn’t you have anchored the sacrificial boat?” Hiresha asked.

  Emesea panted through her clenched teeth. She did not seem to hear.

  Hiresha shivered, at once feeling too wet and too exposed in the boat. She found herself glancing around.

  The waves had grown gentler this far from the shore. One caught her eye. This wave was narrower, and it changed directions. The crest swayed to the right then rose again to the left.
When Hiresha noticed that it moved faster than any other wave, she clutched the oar butts against her chest.

  The wave sped past. The boat surged upward and listed to the side. Hiresha had the skin-tearing sensation of something massive beneath her.

  Her next three words were blurted out as fast as one. “What-was-that?”

  Emesea cut the rope and pointed her obsidian knife toward a frothing stretch of water. A fin broke the surface, then another and another in a winding procession. Only when the sea sluiced aside did Hiresha realize they were not individual fins but ridges on the back of one giant.

  15

  Terror Croc

  Fangs flashed white in the starlight. Water flowed into a long maw that closed on the sacrificial boat. The vessel was whisked into the air by a sinuous momentum. A glimpsed leg—tiny compared to the length of the creature—then a waterfall of spray.

  The boat splintered with the sound of a house under the weight of a flood. The creature shook its snout, and a piece of planking whistled by Hiresha.

  The enchantress found herself unable to move. The water sloshing in the bottom of the boat froze her feet. She could not help but think their vessel was the same size as the one pulverized. The creature could gobble us faster than a tea cake, and the mast wouldn’t do more than scratch the roof of its mouth.

  “Gorgeous!” Emesea grinned and leaned over the side. “Look at her sunbeam markings. Wish we could’ve seen her at day. And watch her move! What a ripple of muscle. Sends shivers up your thighs, doesn’t it?”

  A curving wall of leathery flesh plowed whitewater into waves. Alternating shades of light and dark sped by on the flank of the creature. Its head had plunged out of sight, but water was being disturbed in a line toward the boat as if a god had thrown a spear.

  Hiresha gasped a breath. “Is this your dragon?”

  Emesea snorted as she tied something around her wrist. “Left this croc a tasty blood trail to shore, and now I’m going to have to bruise her. A shame.”

  Hiresha scrambled against the far side of the boat, knowing she could not fall asleep in time to escape.

  “Row!” Emesea pointed to the bench. She bent to wrap a rope around her ankle.

  Hiresha rowed.

  Emesea lifted the anchor stone above her shoulder. Her body undulated to keep balance in the shifting boat. “Pull me out if she booms.”

  “If what?”

  The sea opened in a cavern of fangs. The reek of a thousand dead fish wafted out in a hot gust.

  Emesea lobbed the stone at a tooth. It shattered in pulpy fragments.

  The creature roared. Waves lapped against the boat in time to the sound.

  Emesea dove off, towing an oar. She disappeared into the blackness and did not resurface. The rope spooled out after her.

  Coils of the creature slanted out of the sea then slammed down. Whitewater covered everything and rocked the boat away.

  The enchantress threw her back into the paddling. She reflected on her chances of reaching the coast south of Oasis City alone. Not if there’re more specimens of that size.

  Sea spume hid the creature’s head, and Emesea had not surfaced. Hiresha expected the former to devour the latter. She could not bring herself to feel too sorry for Emesea. This was her idea, the maniac. More concerning was the rope attached to Emesea’s leg. Once the woman was gobbled down, the line would reel in the boat.

  Emesea had left her sword for some reason. Blades of obsidian were fit into a lengthy block of wood. Hiresha could use it to hack off the rope.

  I should stop rowing and do it now. She was as good as dead when she jumped in the water, with only an oar besides.

  Something held Hiresha back. The oars seemed to grip her hands.

  Part of the creature flared, and a tree-trunk-shaped organ within its length shone an angry red. Ribs blocked the glow of magic in black curves. Water boiled around the creature, frothy spikes of white. A shock-wave burst outward, and the boat tipped then crashed. The timbers creaked. Leaks spurted. A rattling pulse traveled up Hiresha’s body, shaking loose her oars, and when it reached her head it pummeled her ears with sound.

  Hiresha had thought the creature had roared before, but that must have been but a growl. A rumbling explosion like the cacophony of a collapsing tower, it split her world in two. By the time her vision refocused, Hiresha was dry-heaving over the side of the boat.

  Fish floated to the surface, belly-up. Some fluoresced green or pink, but those lights faded. The sea turned into a swaying graveyard. Hiresha searched for signs of an oar bobbing into view, for sight of Emesea, but saw nothing.

  “The rope.”

  The thought came to Hiresha as if spoken. She kneeled and pulled. Water flicked into her face with every tug. She did not savor her task of towing in Emesea’s body, but the woman had asked it of her. As reckless as Emesea had been, she had stopped the sea creature from chomping the boat to bits. At least for the moment.

  The creature had wallowed away. The curving crest of a wave warned of its returning. Its maw opened, and schools of dead fish flowed inside. The banquet of casualties did not spread all the way to the boat. Hiresha had rowed far enough that she could entertain hopes the creature would miss her. Her arms spun about each other, wrapping the rope around hand and elbow.

  I can save Emesea’s remains from being digested. I owe her that much. Hiresha could only be amazed how Emesea had not hesitated to dive in to her death. Curious how hard it is to distinguish bravery from insanity.

  An oar popped from the water. A cord bound it to a slack hand, and Emesea’s eyes stared without seeing. Trying to pull the body aboard threatened to tip the boat. The enchantress noticed two grey stones tied to the woman’s belt. Hiresha freed them, and they sank into the darkness.

  Hiresha wrapped the rope around the mast and levered her legs against it. After that, dragging in the corpse by herself proved easier than she would have thought possible.

  The body landed on a bench, and water sprayed from its mouth. It gasped. Emesea breathed in and pushed herself upright, her face beaming like a newlywed bride. She punched the enchantress on the shoulder, still smiling.

  “Sorry you couldn’t have been down there with me.” Emesea’s words sounded groggy and faint in Hiresha’s buzzing ears. The woman clapped her hands to her belt. “By the liver-gorging gods! What happened to my stones?”

  No person should have been able to face that creature and live. “The blast—Your survival is an offense to probability.”

  Emesea wiped a dark fluid leaking from her ears and tasted it. “Just hearing a chord of bliss right now, but you better’ve said sorry for tossing my ballast stones overboard. You did, didn’t you?”

  “I had to—”

  “Poor dumb beauty,” Emesea said, gazing at the creature that was scooping the dead fish into its mouth. “She can’t look down. Just stay below her and pummel her ribs. Must’ve broken a score or more. Would be too easy if not for her boom.”

  “I suspect your heart stopped for a minute there. Or is that your definition of ‘too easy?’”

  Emesea seemed not to hear. She let down the sail and tied a few ropes. Wind filled the patchwork cloth, and the boat traveled away from the creature’s feeding grounds.

  Hiresha collapsed against the mast, not even caring about the bilge water soaking its way up her dress. She expected sleep to carry her away. She remained in a state of dazed exhaustion, a giddy sickness of whirling stars. The enchantress could have led herself to her dream laboratory, but she hated to think of waking up to find herself in a stomach without even knowing what manner of gilled beast had eaten her.

  “Was that creature the Murderfish?”

  Emesea lifted a hand from a rope to cup her ear. “I almost heard that. Speak up. This isn’t a doily-choked parlor.”

  The enchantress’s chest hurt as she gathered her breath. “Did we just escape the Murderfish?”

  Emesea tilted her head back and laughed. She kicked her legs in mirth. Af
ter calming herself, she opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out were giggles.

  Hiresha picked a crustacean off her dress and flicked it from the boat. “You should try not to move so violently after a concussion, if you’re the type to avoid brain damage.”

  “Sorry but—heehee—that was just a darling terror croc. The Murderfish is a legend. My dragon told me about her.”

  “If that terror croc was endearing, I’d hate to see your ‘modestly offensive.’”

  Hiresha sat up and scanned the horizon, hoping to spot land. A darkness without reflection stretched to their right. To the left, dream storms had crept closer in shifting clouds of tangerine and fuchsia.

  The enchantress frowned at the storms. “We should return to shore.”

  “We need to go further. Jaraah will send out riders in the morning.”

  “It’s reaching the morning that concerns me,” Hiresha said. “And if you have any gems for me I could enchant this boat to fly over the sands to Oasis City.”

  “I have a few more ballast rocks.” Emesea nudged a leather sack. “And you should keep your voice down. Sound travels far underwater. My dragon could hear a great platehead’s belch from a mile away.”

  “Tell me, how far away might some abyssal monster hear a woman’s incessant laughter? Far enough to build up an appetite on the swim?” The quickness of Hiresha’s thinking surprised her. She had never felt so lucid when awake, except when near Tethiel.

  Emesea’s mouth puckered with embarrassment. “You should’ve stopped me.”

  “Oh, so I’m responsible for your semi-voluntary mirth eruptions?”

  “I can do anything but hold back.” Emesea hefted her sword, tossing it past the prow then catching it as the boat caught up. “That terror croc is going to make this voyage more exciting. One of ‘em booms, and the whole sea hears it.”

  “Might the sound encourage other predators to avoid this coast?”

  “Some will be curious what could make a terror croc squeal. Might be hungry for scavenge.”

  The breeze washed coldness over Hiresha’s damp skin. “All the more reason to return to shore.”