Dream Storm Sea

by A. E. Marling

  Emesea nodded and plied the oars. The boat surged and sprayed with every stroke. She kicked an empty gourd toward the enchantress. “The boat feels sluggish. We’re riding low in the water. Bail out some of this.”

  Hiresha tilted the gourd so bilge water flowed down its neck. She upended it over the side. She glimpsed something that startled gourd out of her hand. A segmented eel of jaundice yellow swam beside the ship. Except it ended in a stinger, a spike that flicked up out of the water as the creature wormed forward. That’s no eel. It’s a tail.

  A giant scorpion swam with the boat. And more than one. Fluorescent bodies bigger than men flowed beneath the waves. One reached the bobbing gourd. A claw cut from the water, and spines clamped down on the gourd, shattering it to flakes.

  Emesea held out another gourd. “Drop a few more, and you’ll be bailing out the boat with your hands.”

  “What are they?” Hiresha cringed at the scorpions. They shed a light reminiscent of mushrooms rotting in cellars.

  “Fisherman’s bane. Their sting makes a man feel he’s burning alive. Jumps overboard to douse himself, and that’s the end of it.”

  “Can’t you kill them?” Hiresha bailed water over the edge of the boat. She took care to hold only the base of the gourd. It was well she did because a stinger struck the gourd’s neck. The force knocked it from the enchantress’s hands.

  Emesea snatched the gourd from the water. “Best not to squash them. Their blood eats away at wood.”

  “Have they followed us since the terror croc?”

  A claw latched onto the side of the boat, tipping it. Emesea flicked the pincer away with an oar. “You have to admire their persistence.”

  “Will they damage the ship’s hull?”

  “No, but they’re calling something that will.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Put your ear close to the water and you’ll hear their claws clacking up a song.”

  “I’ll abstain from being stung in the face, thank you very much,” Hiresha said. “Not that the scorpions will be able to follow us on land in any event.”

  A dream storm shimmered green to their left.

  Hiresha asked, “Wait, why is the shore no closer? We’re heading the wrong way.”

  The ship had no rudder. To turn it, Hiresha dipped in an oar. The ship started to angle toward the darkness of land to their right. She was clouted by Emesea.

  “Guards will be waiting for us in Oasis City.” Emesea returned to her rowing. “Those camel lovers will be patrolling the desert. I couldn’t put down more than two at a time, and you’re sensitive about killing.”

  The enchantress rubbed her numb shoulder, where the other woman had punched her.

  “The land won’t take us anywhere you want to go. At sea, we only risk our own blood.”

  “I’m against senseless killing, and the same is true for senseless dying,” Hiresha said. “We’re surrounded by scorpions clicking their claws for dinner. Oasis City has to be north of us now. I should think it the lesser risk.”

  “Was a day away from being executed there in a sand pit, myself. And didn’t you have some trouble in the city tombs?” A sea scorpion clawed at an oar but Emesea wrenched it free. “These fisherman’s bane will tire soon enough, the hungry darlings.”

  While Hiresha was thinking how she could force the landing, she noticed one scorpion lagging behind. The boat scooted away from the segmented body of sickening yellow. Its stinger dipped out of sight into the water.

  Might we outrace these scorpions? And all the sea’s dangers? Hiresha would prefer not to land only to meet a patrol of city guards. Not without gems.

  The enchantress found herself bailing out the boat. She shoved netting away to scoop out more water. Despite her efforts, a pool of bilge remained to chill her feet.

  “The prow is riding too low,” Emesea said. “Something is wrong.”

  Hiresha moved her hands over the splintery planks. “It’s leaking.”

  “Boats always leak.” Emesea swung her oars up and propped them on a bench. Her hand closed on her sword. She squinted around then up at the dream storms. They looked less like clouds than veils of light blowing in the wind. “Maybe they’re too close. I’m itching.”

  The scorpions flopped away, tails slapping droplets upward in their hurry to flee. Seeing the fisherman’s bane retreat disturbed the enchantress more than if they had swarmed the boat. She felt as if the bottom of the vessel dropped away, and when she spoke, she could only manage a whisper.

  “Are the scorpions circling us?”

  The whites of Emesea’s teeth shone as she smiled. Her hands were a blur on the ropes, pulling down the sail. The boat drifted.

  “What’re you doing?” Hiresha asked. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Don’t think we can outrun this.” Emesea stood, and the tooth-like blades of her sword glistened.

  Hiresha crouched between two planks. Every part of her body was shivering. The stars seemed to simmer with a green dread.

  “What is it?” Hiresha asked.

  “Whatever it is, it’s below us.”

  16

  Entrances

  The enchantress peeked overboard. Waves were black. In the sway and heave of the darkness, shapes rippled in and out of sight. Great spines of fins. Fangs like white stakes. Tentacles thick as pythons. Orbs of inhuman eyes.

  Each glimpse sent freezing cramps through Hiresha. She did not know if she had seen anything real or if her fright had bled into her vision.

  The thudding pulse of blood in her ears drowned out the sound of the water. She would have welcomed any monster over the pain of waiting. The swaying stillness of the sea crashed against her composure.

  She clutched an oar like an axe, and she felt even more vulnerable, even smaller, even more fragile. If I had any gem, so much as a zircon….The boat was a leaf drifting above the roaring infinite.

  Emesea rested one foot on the side. “If I don’t come back up, row to shore.”

  As if I’d do anything else. Politeness kept Hiresha from saying so. That, or she was too scared to speak.

  Emesea dived in, and the boat listed from side to side. The enchantress sat on a plank, but that made her feel too exposed. Too watched. She crouched in the hull. The moments cut her with their passing.

  Hiresha could not say if Emesea’s courage was admirable or horrifying. What sane person leaps into these waters? With a smile, no less.

  The enchantress examined the pattern of the waves, tried to think if their swells hinted at any creature below. In doing so, she soon convinced herself that a school of giant sharks prowled beneath the surface. She shook her head and dug a palm against her temples.

  How long has that fool woman been down there? It felt like five minutes already. Or ten. Hiresha could not believe a person could hold her breath so long. But Emesea is nothing if not an exception.

  The enchantress fitted oars into the pegs on the sides of the boat. She could find no hope that Emesea still lived. No one deserves to be buried in a sea monster’s belly. I will always remember her as the woman who dove headfirst into darkness.

  Hiresha's rowing was uneven and desperate. Bubbles popped beside the boat, and she lifted an oar, ready to bludgeon whatever slimy aberration appeared.

  Emesea shot kicking from the water and tumbled onto the boat. She spat. “You’re as patient as a hornet. That was only three minutes.”

  It had felt like half an hour. “I am rowing to the shore. Only a fool would stop me.”

  The enchantress braced herself for Emesea to strike her. The woman with the sword only nodded. “Something is wrong with the boat, and whatever is below us is too cautious for my liking. Where are you, my shy beauty?”

  Emesea stood watch. The dunes above the shoreline looked like silver hills. The enchantress’s eyes sagged closed as she rowed. Her heart pounded, but so did her head from her sleepiness. Whenever Hiresha managed to look about her for bearings, she could not help but notice the yellow sco
rpions still circling them from a distance.

  The boat flipped prow over stern.

  “God’s claws!” Emesea cried out, alongside what sounded like a gasp. Hiresha supposed it must have been her own.

  The enchantress looked up and saw the water. They were upside down. The mast was spearing into the waves. Netting sagged between the plank benches, leather sacks secure in the woven rope. Hiresha was less fastened. By the time she thought to let go of the oars for a better hold, she was choking on sea salt.

  It stung her eyes. It burned her throat. Every moment Hiresha expected to be seized, to be gobbled between monstrous fangs. Submerged, she heard a Tha-thump! Tha-thump! The water churned, and Hiresha felt the undertow alone might kill her.

  Tha-thump!

  It sounded like the heart of the sea. It sounded too close, too all around her. Hiresha sensed a nearby vastness.

  Tha-thump!

  She had kept hold of the oars. Their buoyancy pulled her upward; her dress dragged her downward, and Hiresha stretched between them. She kicked and sucked in foamy air when she broke the surface. A feeling of helplessness made each second in the water an agony.

  The black blades of a sword lifted from the sea. Emesea said, “Ha! She tipped our boat and swam off. This is a playful one.”

  “No. It’s—” Hiresha gurgled and spluttered. “—below. Can’t you hear it?”

  “Say what? No, those are eddies. She’s gone.” Emesea scrambled onto the mast of the capsized boat. It was drifting on its side. Emesea leaned outward on the railing, tugging a rope. “Help me right this.”

  Emesea didn’t hear anything, Hiresha thought. Are her ears still ringing? Or was I scared by the palpitations of my own heart?

  Emesea motioned Hiresha to the boat with a wave of her club. “Maybe the weight of your ego will be enough.”

  “I don’t swim.”

  “Not in that dress.” Emesea tossed the rope.

  Oars wedged between elbow and ribs, Hiresha pulled. She reached the boat. Emesea urging her on, Hiresha used the last of her strength to haul herself and her waterlogged dress up the hull. The boat rolled over, dunking her. She towed herself from beneath, coughing brine.

  The back of the boat dipped, and Hiresha was certain the monster was flipping it again. Emesea scowled, and the boat leveled out as if by the power of her glare alone. She caught the rope, tugged Hiresha to the side. A small hand as firm as stone clamped on the enchantress’s arm and began to pull her aboard.

  Hiresha would remember the next moments forever. Water dripped from the tip of Emesea’s hair. The hauled-up sail drizzled in a line across the boat. In the sky behind the mast, the dream storm was a branching stream of fluorescence that cascaded in ghostly waterfalls.

  The sea moved beneath Hiresha. Emesea beamed.

  A current wrapped around the enchantress. It tightened, and it was not water but something of cold sinew. Her ribs cracked. Her head jerked forward as she was yanked. She was torn out of the water, one arm trapped against her side. The bones of that limb snapped. She knew no pain, only the clarity that she was about to be squeezed in two.

  Foam and froth swirled around Hiresha’s midsection. A white snake seemed to be pulling her through the air, a serpent made of sea spray. It was crushing her, even if Hiresha wanted to think that impossible.

  Emesea had held onto the enchantress’s other arm and had been flung over the waves. With a scream of bestial joy, Emesea swung her serrated sword. Its blades whistled as they cut. The sea snake gripping Hiresha split in a gush of fluid. It felt cold as the sea, but it stank with the greasy sharpness of a coppersmith’s shop.

  Hiresha fell into the waves and blacked out.

  Consciousness returned in a shock of pain. Her left side pulsed in agony, and barbs of orange and green crisscrossed her vision. She breathed in water. Coughing set her ribs afire.

  “Stop your fish-flapping.” Emesea was swimming and pulling Hiresha. She swung her sword into the waves like an oar. “You were easier limp.”

  What was that thing? Hiresha meant to ask it but ended up just spluttering. Her heart pumped panic.

  “I cut her. She might be gone for good.” Emesea said. She smacked aside a fisherman-bane’s stinger. “Timid little humongous thing, despite all the gore tales told about her.”

  Another scorpion may have needled Hiresha’s leg with its claw. She was not even certain through the jangling throb of her pain.

  The boat was pointed toward them, bobbing closer as if wanting them back aboard. Hiresha assumed the Fate Weaver had given them a favorable current. One small mercy.

  Hiresha flopped a hand over the vessel’s side. She was in no position to pull herself up with her other arm dangling in an unnatural position and the muscles of her chest twitching over her broken ribs. As soon as she was aboard she would go to her dream laboratory to heal herself.

  Tha-thump!

  She hoped the heartbeat was her own, that it had not come from the waves. Anything but that.

  Emesea rested the shaft of her sword on the rim of the boat. She swung her feet up. The stars reached down and grabbed her.

  Hiresha had no other way of describing it. Emesea’s legs winked out of sight, replaced by blackness speckled with pinpoint shines. It was as if the night sky had taken offense and clamped her in a vice of its own design.

  “You sneaky girl.” Emesea lifted her sword.

  The stars lobbed her away. Emesea hollered as she flew, and she landed so far from the boat that Hiresha could not even hear the splash.

  Half of the enchantress burned with pain. The other half tingled with the freezing realization that an unseen monster was out there. It could crush her, and Emesea could never swim back in time to help.

  Tha-thump!

  Screaming in defiance, Hiresha hauled herself one-handed into the boat. She had not believed she could manage it. Pawing around the netting, she searched for anything she could use to defend herself. Any knife—even a greatsword—would seem a puny thing now, but she had to fight.

  I will live.

  The night reached toward her with star storms. The waves spit out pythons of seaweed and salt water.

  Hiresha lifted a waterskin and tossed it aside. She was alone and weaponless in a boat about to be torn to driftwood.

  And now I die.

  Except she was not alone. A man appeared beside her. His coat glared with crimson velvet; lace hung from his cuffs like torn spider webs. He lifted his hand from the rigging to brush Hiresha’s hair from her eyes.

  Tethiel, the Lord of the Feast, said, “Let us hope I’m the greatest terror out tonight.”

  An illusionist stowaway? Hiresha did not have time to say it.

  Tethiel sprang overboard. His coat lit with the shades of twilight, and he transformed into a silver-haired titan. His bulk shielded the boat from the shooting stars and the tidal serpents.

  The Lord of the Feast waded in the sea. Water cascaded when he lifted his hands. His fingers straightened and narrowed, turning spindly and into fangs. His right sleeve became scaled, and his hand opened as a dragon’s maw. The reptilian head spewed flames of green death.

  The half-seen thing of stars and froth fell back, hissing into the sea.

  The Lord of the Feast reached with his second arm. That sleeve smoothed into an oily wetness, and his fingers bent into the triangular teeth of an eyeless worm. The slobbering coil of a head plunged into the waters, in search of whatever creature attacked them.

  Monster fighting monster, Hiresha thought. How apt.

  She knew Tethiel had crafted himself after mankind’s greatest fears. He was the three-headed lord who stalked the night. The center head was a godly brow crowned in hair the color of starlight. The right-hand head, a dragon of poisonous fire, and the left, a sea monster.

  Hiresha had not wished to see Tethiel so soon, especially in these dangerous waters. She had sworn against his help. Yet his touch had spread a feeling of drunken relief through her, a numbing dizziness. She
no longer felt trapped in a body crippled with pain. She floated above herself on a breeze.

  Hiresha had not wanted this. Still, she hoped Tethiel’s illusion of a sea monster proved potent enough to frighten the real thing.

  The sea lunged at the Lord of the Feast. A misshapen wave smashed into the titan’s back, and whitewater coiled around his chest. A spasm ran through the Lord of the Feast. The monster that had bitten him must have injected venom. Ooze glowing like day-blue sky ate through his spine. He dissolved into wisps of night. The toxin splattered down to pool atop the waves in a slick of glittering oil.

  Tethiel appeared back in the boat. He slumped, his limbs shaking, his coat drenched. His bare feet spoke of defeat. “What a rare delight, for reality to overcome man’s illusions.”

  Something thumped against the boat and sent it hurtling. They tumbled end over end. Stars flipped into starlit waves and back. Gourds and oilskin bags tumbled out of the netting and flew away. Hiresha clung one-handed to the mast. Tethiel had twined an arm around the rigging. The boat skipped off the surface. Boards cracked. They landed upright, and a curtain of droplets sprayed.

  Tethiel swayed to his feet then toppled back to one knee. He waved his hand, and the world distorted in the wake of his embroidered gloves. Shadows crawled over Hiresha, and she had trouble seeing herself. This is how Tethiel hid onboard for so long.

  She could still feel the knotty roughness of the boat, but its planks had turned to mist. She could see lapping waves beneath her. An illusion of their vessel drifted away in another direction.

  “A decoy,” Tethiel said. “And concealment for us. But I fear the hunter is well used to camouflage.”

  Hiresha propped herself on one arm. “It’s the Murderfish, is it not?”

  The sea rose around the illusion of the boat. The waves foamed with long spines and closed like a flytrap plant. The false boat was torn in half and broken into dark sludge.

  “The Murderfish it is,” Tethiel said. “A sea god worthy of fear.”

  Hiresha had thought she had known terrors before. Now dread was a pin that pushed through the flesh of her back leaving a trail of trembling hurt, scraping against the bone of each vertebra.