Hiresha’s chin jerked upward from her chest. She had nodded off sometime between monkeys and fire.
“This age, we can change the pattern.” Emesea wiped her face with a corner of the red dress. She watched the sun rise above the dream storm mists. “We give the gods their milk of honor, and we can stop the Winged Sun from turning the world to ash and bone.”
Hiresha massaged her forehead with three fingers. “And my works can honor your gods?”
“You can build us ships to sail over the desert. Then all the lands will know the true gods, and the empire’s milk of honor will satisfy the Winged Fire.”
“I hesitate to ask, but ‘milk of honor?’”
Emesea brushed the edge of her knife against her thumb. Blood welled over the grooves in her skin. She lifted the bead of trembling red toward the copper glare of the sun.
Hiresha had expected nothing good, and the confirmation still disappointed. “Why would you ever think I’d help you make war?”
“Thought I might convince you. Knew it wasn’t likely. Knew we might get gobbled up on the journey. But wouldn’t you take a wild swing if it could save the world?”
“The greatest threats to this world are ignorance and bloodlust.”
Emesea shrugged, and muscles rolled beneath the skin of her shoulders in intimidating lumps. “Not that it matters much. I had to swipe the Murderfish to save you. Doubt we’ll ever reach shore now. She’ll let us get close, then she’ll break us. The ol’ girl can hold a grudge.”
“Tethiel’s illusions can trick the kraken again.”
“Maybe.” Emesea’s tone suggested she thought it more likely the sky would catch fire.
“Could we reach shore tonight?”
“If the wind goes right.” She gave the mast a thoughtful punch. It wobbled. “If there’s a break in the dream storms.”
“And if I’m the optimistic one, we’re in trouble.” Hiresha thought back to the song Emesea had played on her pipes. At once the salty thickness of the sea air choked her up. “I—I’d like it very much if you could tell me Spellsword Fos is free. That he’s well.”
“Should be.” Emesea’s foot lifted behind her as she leaned forward to gaze out to sea. Her skirt flapped between her corded thighs. “Was with Inannis last I saw him. Inannis didn’t like the big man much, so they might’ve split.”
That’s everything I could hope for.
Emesea tied a rope around the prow. “He wasn’t afraid of the danger.”
“I know. Fos believes he’s destined for greatness.”
“No, Inannis. The sea didn’t make him a coward. It’s war he didn’t want. He was afraid of what needed to be done for the gods. That’s what made him a coward.”
Hiresha was not comforted to hear that the jewel duper agreed with her on any point, nor that her companion’s blood ran with such zeal.
“He was a coward I loved.” The warrior tied the rope to her belt and dove into the sea.
The enchantress watched as Emesea swam. The rope pulled the prow. The action confused Hiresha until she realized that without oars or wind, they had no better way to steer the boat.
The blue dream storm shifted position to behind them. Hiresha frowned in thought. “And why’re you pointing us south?”
Fish shimmered by the warrior. One school of red fins parted around her then merged together on the other side of the boat. They all were going the opposite direction.
Taking a back stroke, Emesea said, “Because that’s where the rogue is.”
“Excuse me?” Hiresha glanced up. The sea stretched smooth with a horizon of white. The air was still, but wind growled nearby.
“Rogue fish.” Emesea spat out water. “Must’ve drifted into her territory. Can’t blame her for being angry.”
A pair of sky skates shot from the water, startling Hiresha. The flying fish were diamond shaped with pink lips on their undersides. The skates looped higher.
The enchantress gazed once again to the south. “Where are you seeing—Oh, goodness!”
The white horizon was the crest of a wave. The growling turned into a roar of water.
“It’s tall as a pyramid.” Hiresha backed against the mast, her hands clinging to it by reflex. “Turn us, turn us!”
“Think I can outrace that?” Emesea kicked them closer to the monstrous wave. “Can’t take it on our side. Have to top it.”
A trench opened ahead of the wave. Water rushed in to fill it, carrying The Paragon toward the village-crusher. The rope slacked between the boat and the warrior.
Tethiel staggered to his feet. He took one look at the wall of water. “This is why I hate waking up early.”
Helplessness dissolved Hiresha from the inside out. She knew she could not even fall asleep before the wave struck. She grabbed Tethiel’s hand, fitting her fingers between his twisted ones.
A school of dolphins was swimming ahead of the wave but losing ground. The sea fell into the trough closer and closer to their beating tails.
“They’re good-luck fish.” Emesea gripped the side of the boat.
Tethiel said, “No wonder we haven’t seen them before.”
The lead dolphin chirped and dove. The school followed, their tails grey streaks fading into the deep. Hiresha expected not to see them again in this lifetime, but one reappeared on the far side of the trench, rolling fin over fin up the hill of water.
“Her luck ran out,” Emesea said.
The top of the wave was a frothy blue, but its bulk was black. White tears ran up its side. The dolphin flipped itself around and started climbing, cutting in and out of the dark slope.
A deeper shadow swam within the wave, toward the dolphin.
“Do you see it?” Emesea flailed her arm to point. “There’s the rogue!”
The wall of water bulged. It snapped open in a gateway of fangs. Two front teeth curved like scimitars, the rest daggers. The smallest could impale the dolphin.
The dolphin slid across the length of the front fangs, beat its tail, and launched itself off the ivory spears and upward. It would drop into the maw, Hiresha was certain. The rogue fish would devour the dolphin and, next, the occupants of the boat.
The grey nose of the dolphin plunged into the water just above the gaping mouth. The fangs snapped down. The dolphin swam to the top of the wave, leaped, and somersaulted in the air.
“Lucky.” Emesea’s shout puffed out droplets.
I wish I could say the same for us. Hiresha spoke the words aloud but could not hear them over the wave’s bone-shaking rumble.
The sea ahead of the boat vanished. They plunged down a waterfall. Emesea grappled with the prow, her feet dangling toward the sail. Hiresha and Tethiel held onto each other, which was a poor idea, all things considered. They began tipping out of the boat. The enchantress caught hold of the mast, and the Feaster hooked his legs under a plank.
The Paragon slammed into the bottom of the trough. Water sluiced over the prow, and they lurched to the side. Emesea shouted something that nobody heard. She kicked alongside the boat but could not keep up. They whisked sideways up the black-water gorge.
Hiresha’s stomach looped. The mast tipped, and the boat verged on tumbling over, a dip from dashing her into the wave with the rogue fish. The enchantress clung to the prow. She had a perfect view of the curving monument of the wave, and from her perspective it looked flat, a field of basalt veined with white.
The boat turned. Emesea was steering it from the rear.
The waters darkened. Hiresha caught the jagged outline of a fin.
The back of the boat now pointed upward to the crest of the wave. Between The Paragon and that frothy summit, fangs curved outward. A pit gnashed open. The fish’s cheeks spread like sails, green mouth, blue tongue, and red throat.
A barbed harpoon appeared in Tethiel’s hand. He hurled it toward the maw, but the illusionary weapon melted in the sunlight.
Emesea cut the waters with her hands, trying to reach the rogue fish first.
&nb
sp; Hiresha had just enough time to reflect that relying on others was most exhausting.
The Paragon shifted in the water, its hull sliding over the fangs. The enchantress felt herself crushed into the hull, followed by a sensation of whirling weightlessness and flying.
She assumed the vertigo would subside only after her death. She was wrong.
Sky surrounded them. A gull squawked and flew beneath the boat. Somewhere, Emesea was laughing. Fighting down a bubbling sense of impossibility, Hiresha peeked over the side of the boat.
The sea was far below. The rogue fish and its wave had passed. Emesea climbed up the rope, water drizzling around her. The Paragon seemed to float, and Hiresha could not imagine how. Something had saved them, lifted the boat.
I’m awake. I couldn’t have Lightened us, could I?
“She’s a jealous one,” Emesea said. “Won’t let anyone else eat us.”
Hiresha noticed a wrinkle in the sky, a white crease in reality. She feared she knew what it was. It looked close enough to touch. When she did, her fingers found a cold slickness. The empty air felt leathery and solid as a tree.
May the Fate Weaver spare me! We’re being held aloft by the Murderfish.
She was touching a scar in the kraken’s hide. Her hand jerked back, and the tentacle shifted into view in a flare of colors. A skin of sunrise orange with eyespots of indigo, the appendage boasted colors as bold as a viper’s. That was, apart from the giant crimson suckers.
The entire kraken was visible beneath the waves. Two tentacles carried the boat, the rest swaying together behind a bulbous head. Eyespots moved over the octopus, overlapping and merging like ripples in a pond. The circular patterns also shifted hue to teal, to violet.
Before this colossus, Hiresha was a tiny thing, an insect adrift. She had the same awestruck breathlessness as when visiting a grand monument dedicated to a god. Except this sea deity’s mercy felt like a promise of future cruelty.
Tethiel rested a hand on Hiresha’s shoulder. He said, “Now you also know how it feels to be carried away by a lady of overwhelming presence.”
Emesea swung herself onto the boat. “So gorgeous! Ah, ha! Hold on.”
The tentacles flipped over the boat. With a slurping sound, the suckers let go, and they fell face-first toward the waves.
During the drop, Hiresha had the chance to see the Murderfish disappear. It looked like water rushed into its dome head, washing out the color, and invisibility flowed down its tentacles until even the tips were gone.
The enchantress braced her head before the sea’s impact.
25
Harpoon Swarm
Repairing the cracked mast with only ropes was a task made no easier with a kraken capsizing the boat every hour.
The terror of falling in the water receded into numbness. Hiresha’s insides felt turned to stone while waiting for the next dunking.
“As a child did you ever place a beetle on its back?” Tethiel dragged himself into the newly righted boat then offered Hiresha a hand to grasp. “To watch its black legs dance in the air is to feel like a god. And to feel like a god longer than two minutes is to be bored.”
“I’m not accustomed to being defined as a plaything,” Hiresha said.
“Better that, my heart, than a delectable,” he said. “I fear tonight will be our last chance to depart the sea. We are guests here, and the most welcome guest is he who leaves soonest.”
“The gods withhold their winds from our sail.” Emesea pointed her obsidian knife at Tethiel. “We could offer him to the Flayed Lady. She’d understand his wrinkled hide was the best we could find.”
Hiresha covered her mouth with a hand and motioned the warrior to put away the blade.
“The gods, their winds, and their digestion are not matters mortals should attempt to influence,” Tethiel said.
The enchantress spoke to Tethiel. “Have you thought of improvements to your illusions of concealment?”
“The best way to hide is to make everyone afraid to look. I intend to tailor a nightmare for the Murderfish.”
“Is that possible?” Hiresha remembered how the kraken had ravaged him as the Lord of the Feast.
“This morning I dreamed with Feaster Celaise, and her specialty is preying on beasts. Other than men, that is. And no need to look so astonished, my heart. Enchantresses aren’t the only ones who can conduct business while asleep.”
“So you’re confident?” Hiresha asked.
“I leave declarations of confidence to the cowardly.” Tethiel’s face was a patchwork of peeling sunburn, bloodless skin, and triangle tattoo. “For my work to be a masterpiece, I must know how the Murderfish perceives the world. Does she smell? How does she hear?”
Hiresha and Emesea discussed it with him. The warrior also offered Tethiel a handful of fish oil, for his skin. She winked at him. “Need your hide lovely. Hiresha might change her mind about the sacrifice.”
The enchantress worried what would happen if Tethiel’s illusions failed. She searched for alternatives in her dream laboratory.
She had no offering for the goddess of creativity and innovation, the Opal Mind, except labor. Hiresha tried enchanting Emesea’s lump of obsidian, not an approved substance in the Academy. Only after fifty-eight attempts did Hiresha admit defeat. She could instill it with magic in her dream, but it would always fade upon waking.
“Its crystal lattice is too irregular.” Hiresha spun the rough obsidian out of her hand, and it vanished from her dream.
The enchantress tucked her arms behind her back and gazed up at a mirror of the Murderfish. By habit, Hiresha started moving various shades of topaz over the glass, aligning them with the color of the kraken’s eyespots.
“The diameter of its head is over thirty feet at the widest part of the oval,” the enchantress said. “To overcome a creature of that magnitude will require more than an innovation in enchanting baubles. It’ll take a paradigm shift.”
“To live, you must be willing to kill.” The voice of the Jeweled Feaster called out from the depths of one mirror.
“The boat has enough killers, though I may make an exception for sadistic seafood.”
Hiresha awoke to find the sun setting and Tethiel transforming.
A mane of hair shimmered to his shoulders. His stubble fell out, and his mottled skin turned into what looked like white marble. His torn sleeve regenerated in a sleekness of crimson. He stood as tall as the mast. His stilt-long legs and arms bent, and he cupped Emesea’s chin with fingers that were black fangs.
“What do you say, my heart? Has she outlived her usefulness? I could fortify myself with a Feast.”
Emesea slapped at his hand but could not move him.
Hiresha worried that if she denied him this, he might fail against the Murderfish. The enchantress was afraid, but she found some encouragement in the sail. It swelled with a breeze. Better yet, she could see a channel between the dream storms to the north.
She said, “Kindly save your appetite for the main entrée of kraken. Emesea, attend to the sail.”
“It’s blowing west.” The warrior bounded to the ropes. “But I can tack us north.”
Emesea adjusted the rigging first one way, then the other. The Paragon zigzagged northwest by northeast. With each turn they washed too close to an essence tempest for Hiresha’s comfort. The waves beneath the storms heaved with sea life.
The enchantress pointed to a purple tempest. “That one looks like a sandstorm of amethyst shards, does it not?”
Emesea hummed as she yanked a rope. Tethiel sniffed the breeze as a connoisseur might a wine glass. The Paragon sailed on as in a canyon with cliffs of light.
“So we’ll catch a land breeze before reaching shore,” Emesea said. “We’ll just swim the last stretch.”
Hiresha did not know how to swim. “Is there another option?”
“Could wait until midmorning tomorrow.”
Hiresha resolved to learn to swim before she died.
The warrior
told Hiresha to pack her clothes in an oilskin bag. The enchantress had no choice but to undress in front of Tethiel, and the experience felt like dancing on diamonds barefoot. Yet when she shouldered her way out of her clothes, a second gown gleamed beneath in spirals of amethysts.
“A most marvelous illusion,” Hiresha said.
“An illusion that pleases you is real.” Tethiel clicked his fang fingers together.
Knowing his crippled fingers made the task of undressing himself difficult, Hiresha helped him. As she had hoped, he also wore another layer of false finery. Stuffing his garments into the same oilskin sack alongside hers felt scandalous.
“A curiosity,” he said, “that undressing yourself is the least intense activity, and undressing another, the most.”
Hiresha could not agree just then, worrying as she was about something more extreme. Her fears proved all too justified when Tethiel scented the Murderfish.
“She comes.” He waved spindle fingers and gleaming cufflinks. Shadows flowed and stretched.
Harpoons took form in the air. They gathered in flocks, in all shapes. A long pole with bronze beak and curving barbs; a stone-tipped arrow with rope bound to the end; a spear of ebony, it tips sharpened to a wicked thorn. The harpoons hovered with their points tracking something in the deep.
Tethiel held the last harpoon like a staff. Its onyx head was carved into a dragon with sharp snout and barbs of frills and spines. He brandished it at the sea, and the host of harpoons dove.
They hissed into the water, and the dark surface whitened to foam. Cords and chains spiraled after the harpoons. Tethiel bound these to weights of stone and anchors of lead.
“She’s changed direction.” Tethiel moved his dragon staff to point to a further span of sea. Lines of froth followed through the water. “She’s running from them. I have her. She believes….”
Dream Storm Sea Page 15
