Isiilde showed him her hands. “Only cuts,” she murmured. She was cold and wet and it numbed the pain. “I grabbed onto the Leviathan. It dragged me out of the current. What about the others?”
“I don’t know. The wave tossed our boat too.”
A knot twisted her gut as she looked at the channel. Flotsam and wreckage swirled past. And bodies. Her gaze skipped from one to the next, searching for white hair, or a giant with a black beard. But the passengers in the other longboats had long floated past. These were sailors from the cutter.
She tore her eyes from the channel, and crouched beside Kasja, salvaging what supplies she could. Anger rose in her throat. If Kasja and Elam had only stayed in Mearcentia, they would be alive.
Rivan watched her practical desecration without a word. She dumped the belongings beside him: a pack, a decorated pouch, and a number of knives, including a sling. The paladin wiped his eyes, and slowly climbed to his feet, gathering Kasja’s things. He had lost his own pack, shield, and longsword, but the arming sword he had found in Vaylin was still in his baldric.
Isiilde summoned a flame. It sizzled and spat on her bloody palm, and she whispered to the flameling, giving it strength. It shed light on the stench.
Carcasses littered the rocks. Rotting sharks and older bones of whales, picked clean and white. A massive turtle shell that could have fit Oenghus was wedged in a tide pool.
The sea had carved a path through the middle of the cave, leaving a ledge on either side. Balancing carefully on the slick rock, she followed its path, her flame hissing in the wet air. The cave kept going, deep into the cliff.
“Isiilde,” Rivan’s hushed whisper brought her around. He stood on a rock that jutted into the channel. Sea spray misted his body with every crashing wave. When he removed his baldric and started unbuckling his breastplate, she hurried back.
Rivan pointed across the water. A wash of debris floated by: barrels from the cutter and other more ominous remains. But she did not look at the water. Her gaze was fixed on the opposite cliff wall. A small form struggled for purchase, clinging to a slippery crevice like a frantic cat. Elam.
Rivan reached for the laces of his boots.
She grabbed his arm. “You can’t.”
“We can’t leave him there.”
“Look at the water.” It swarmed with life, hungry carnivorous scavengers feasting on flesh.
He eyed the expanse. “I can make it.” Determination screamed from every muscle. Rivan would not leave a child in trouble. No matter the risk. And neither would she.
Isiilde eyed the black sea. “I’ll get him.”
“You’re not going in there,” Rivan argued. His voice boomed in the cave, and he flinched, lowering his voice. “I won’t let you.”
Before Rivan could dive in, she summoned the Lore with a chant. Her ears flicked in irritation over the grating language. It was coarse and guttural—so human. Sick of it, the nymph changed her tune, nearly singing, weaving new words. Power lay in the breath between thought; words were the consequence, not the heart.
Focusing, she wove a feather rune, bound it to the boy, and sent it drifting across the water. Air and spirit followed, traveling along her ethereal tether. Words flowed from her lips like music, a hypnotizing song that captivated her attention. The nymph was a poet lost in her muse.
With a deft hand, she plucked Elam from the rock, and with a gesture, lifted him over the water. A frantic scream tore from the boy’s throat as he tried to claw his way back to the cliff. When the water beneath him churned with eels, the boy stilled.
Isiilde tugged at the tether. But she moved too fast. The weave tore like a fraying rope, and each strand began to unwind. Her control slipped. Elam fell at the mouth of the cave, splashing into the sea.
Rivan threw himself in, swimming over to the boy with skillful strokes. He grabbed Elam’s collar and dragged him through the water. When he was close enough, Isiilde reached down and hauled Elam onto the rock.
The water turned white around the paladin. Rivan bit back a cry, and grasped the rocks, scrambling onto land with frantic need. Long black eels hung from his legs.
Isiilde ran over to him, tearing the eels from his flesh. Each one made a resounding splash. She searched his person for more.
Rivan grit his teeth. “It’s fine.”
Elam was on hands and knees, shivering and shaking. The boy kissed the ground, and then he saw his sister. Everything that had come before vanished. He crawled towards her, taking her face in his hands, yelling at her in his tongue, shaking her body. His echoes bounced off the rock, amplified and thrown into the channel.
“Quiet,” Isiilde pleaded. Elam did not hear her; he did not stop.
Desperate, Isiilde clamped a hand over the boy’s mouth. Tears ran over her hand, and she pulled Elam towards her, holding his head against her breast. He shook and shuddered, but at least his wails were muffled.
The fight with the sea had drained her strength. Isiilde sat down, taking Elam with her. As his grief battered her senses, she stared at Kasja, a husk of flesh devoid of life. There was nothing to do but shiver, and breathe the stench of rotting fish.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Footsteps whispered in a narrow hallway. It was nowhere, and everywhere. It was endless time; the vast sea; a maze of moments. A lone man dragged his long fingers over stone. Pebbles cracked and flaked, skittering on the floor under his bare feet. The stones were soft as ash, and cool, a snowfall of destruction. His fingertips brushed a door, one of a multitude.
The door was bright as spring, and he smiled at the emotion that pulsed from its wood. A festival and a fiery-haired nymph whispered in his mind. The door was locked, not to keep the moment inside, but to keep the outside from entering.
Memories had a way of escaping, and some were not civil.
The traveler glanced up, looking at the shimmering water. The ceiling was endless, a brilliant ocean that flowed nowhere. It cast the dark hallways with light, a peaceful, soothing blue that deepened shadows. Long white hair gleamed in its reflection. The man who stared back wore a white robe, tattered and torn, singed with fire and time, and streaked with blood.
The man remembered his name. “Marsais,” he whispered. That helped, but not much. He closed his eyes, feeling the ash beneath his bare soles. Why ash, why stones?
Having no answer, he continued down the long hallway. At the end, the corridor split. His fingers stilled. Right or left?
Marsais turned left. Another lonely, door-lined hallway stretched into the dim. He passed a rusted door that creaked with age; a rough door hewn from bark that sprouted leaves; a steel one that pulsed and clanged, throwing off rage.
His memories were endless.
Marsais stopped in front of an ivory door. The handle gleamed gold. He pressed his palm against its surface, listening. Whispers returned. This door was not a vision but memory. In a flash, he saw a river rock and a swirl of runes—Vaylin. Marsais gripped the handle, opened the door, and stepped into the recent past.
Light pierced his eyeballs. One was cloudy. Marsais reached up to wipe the cloud away, but his head gave a mighty throb. He sucked in a breath. Rot clawed down his throat, and he gagged, coughing into the stench. Where was he? He had been talking with the Guardian of Life. Vaylin? No, he blinked, reeling, searching for some sign of place and time. Grit and sand were under his fingers. Where was the rock and river and the silver-eyed god? What had happened to the moon? A vision, then? Most visions did not have him staring at sand. Mearcentia? A girl?
He shook his head, wishing he could give it a sound kick to get it working, but from the feel of it, something had already kicked him, and it hadn’t helped a bit. Marsais pushed himself up, but stopped. He was pinned. The ancient froze. Stench, sea, sand, rot; the words tumbled around his scattered brain in a sing-song fashion. He might have drummed his fingers to the tune if every fiber of his body had not been shouting at him to play dead.
Steeling himself against what he would fin
d, he craned back his neck. A massive wall of barnacles danced in his peripheral vision.
Marsais waited, and when it did not disappear, crush him, or sprout a portal and pour out fiends, he tentatively touched the wall. It breathed. The seer squeezed his eyes shut, counted to twenty, and opened them, hoping to find his chambers in the Spine. But he was still on a putrid beach.
In a blink of an eye, the beach fell away, and a howling wind slammed into his ears, bringing a wall of swirling sand. He stared at the sandstorm, aware that he could breathe. That was not right. Paladins strode from the storm with a horde of Fomorri at their backs. The paladins were chopped down like wheat.
A head rolled his way, coming to a stop in front of his eyes. Oenghus. The eyes were missing, picked clean. Marsais considered his friend’s head with cool detachment. He saw at least three such visions every day. Oenghus had a knack for escaping certain doom.
He looked back to the sandstorm.
It ripped the Fomorri apart, but when it howled over him, he only felt a slight breeze. Definitely a vision. The sand dissipated and cleared. A crab had replaced the severed head of Oenghus.
Marsais squinted at the crustacean. He held himself still, waiting, wondering what the crab would transform into. A fiend?
It reached out a clawed appendage and snapped his nose. Pain watered his eyes. He flinched, and ripped the crab off. That was real. Still pinned, he tossed the crustacean as far as he could manage. It started coming back for him.
“Blast it,” he muttered, clawing at the sand. But he was pinned solid, like an ant trapped under a shoe—not crushed, only stuck. The wall of barnacles moved.
Marsais stopped his struggling. Slowly, he twisted to the side. The sea lapped at the narrow beach, and the wall of barnacles disappeared under the water.
Memory flooded back. He remembered being battered, churning in the sea, rolled by waves, and frantically tracing a weave, binding air to his lips. Something had knocked him, and then darkness. And now here he was, washed up on a beach, surrounded by dead things and trapped under a Leviathan’s tail. The crab returned, and Marsais groaned, planting his face back in the sand.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“We can’t stay here,” Rivan whispered.
The cave was bleak with grief and death, but Isiilde was loathe to startle the boy. Elam’s tears had dried up, and now he was planted by his sister’s body as if he were part of the earth.
She eyed the water, still swarming with the flesh-eating eels. The tide was rising, and if she and the others remained, they would be added to the bones caught in the cave.
“Maybe there is a way out,” she said, glancing at the long tunnel of darkness. Her voice was calm, but her heart galloped. Isiilde did not like the dark nor the sound of dripping water. The dank mold and echoing space reminded her of Stievin. And that brought rage. She stood suddenly, clenching her fists, glaring at the dark sea.
“Can’t you just float us up to the top?” Rivan gestured towards the opposite cliff.
The nymph looked at him as if he were a simpleton. “It’s not as simple as that. A weave takes considerable concentration.”
“Then concentrate.”
She glared at the man. “Can you juggle?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you just concentrate, then?”
“It’s harder than that,” he said defensively.
“Exactly. You’re asking me to juggle three cumbersome objects. I dropped Elam in the water, and he’s only a boy. Marsais makes the weave look easy, but I assure you, it isn’t. Most Wise Ones can barely manage to levitate a rock.” Her voice was dry and brittle as ash. Isiilde turned to Elam. “We have to go.”
The boy did not move. She reached for his hand, but he threw himself on his dead sister.
Rivan crouched across from Elam, handing over his sister’s belongings. When the boy began gathering the items up in his arms, Rivan took out his Sacred Sun, clasping the symbol between his hands. The emblem glowed gold between his fingers. “May Chaim guide her spirit safely to the ol’River. May she find peace. Be at rest.”
“May she piss in it and claw her way back,” Isiilde added with strength.
Elam looked up at the nymph, and although he did not understand much common, he recognized Oenghus’ words.
“We have to go, Elam,” she said, pointing down the tunnel. “I’m sorry.”
The boy frowned, glancing from his sister to the dark cave. With a sigh, he rummaged through her belongings, and unsheathed a knife. He spoke softly, a litany of words that held the weight of ritual. Reaching out, he brought the blade against a lock of her hair—one interwoven with beads and bone. The strand gave way, and he tucked it under his shirt, close to his heart.
Still speaking in his lilting tongue, he rubbed his hand over the grimy rock, collecting mud. Elam touched Kasja’s forehead, smearing the mud over her face. When he was done, he dipped his fingers in her wound. Fighting back tears, he drew lines of mud and blood on his own cheeks and nose. His voice fell silent, leaving an echo of his grief.
Elam stood, stowed the knives and pouch, and slung the pack over his shoulder. His brown eyes were sad and mournful, but resigned. Since there was no place to bury Kasja, the sea would have to take her.
“Why are there stairs?” Rivan asked, voicing their concern. Paladin, nymph, and boy stared at the stone stairway.
“They look old and worn. Maybe they’ve been forgotten.” Her voice was hopeful, but she didn’t believe it anymore than the others.
Rivan drew his sword and Isiilde whispered to the flameling in her hand, feeding it with her voice. It expanded, growing into a palm-sized orb of flame. On a whim, she wove an air rune around the orb, and bound it to the flame. Isiilde stopped humming. The flame held. But only for a moment. The wet air choked her fire, and without her voice, it spluttered out and died. It had been worth a try.
Before she could weave an Orb of Light, Rivan touched the Sacred Sun symbol around his neck. “May Zahra guide us,” he murmured.
Isiilde snorted. “Doubtful.”
Light flared from the sun. Rivan gave her a smug look. “It’s glowing.”
She stuck out her tongue and pushed past the paladin, bounding up the stairway. If anything came down these steps, Rivan would only get in her way. Fire did not distinguish between friend and foe, much like her berserking father.
The thought of Oenghus in the sea and possibly dead, made her heart heavy. She had lost him once, only to discover that he still lived. She tore her thoughts from that dark hour, and focused on the slick stairway. It was cut into the rock and had a rough-hewn look to it. Someone or something had formed this tunnel, and while that thought made her uneasy, it also meant that there was a good chance it led to the surface.
As she climbed the stairway, the wash of sea faded, leaving a dim purr of its presence, and eventually the stairs gave way to a passage that rose sharply into darkness. The tunnel was tight and damp, and Isiilde hesitated. Fear clutched at her throat. It felt too much like a cage—like that washroom. With a sharp whisper, she summoned her fire, and hummed until it blazed over her hand.
Rivan cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how much air we have in this tunnel.”
She looked at her flame. He was right. She clenched her fist, snuffing the comforting light. Bracing herself, she trudged on. With no sun or stars, time lost meaning. She did not know how long they walked, but when her calves began to burn, Rivan’s divine light touched a dead end. Rubble and ruin crowded the tunnel.
“Blood and ashes,” she cursed.
Rivan frowned. “There weren’t any side passages.”
“Are you going to ask Zahra to move the rocks?”
Rivan sheathed his sword. “No, but I might be able to manage. Can you weave one of those bobbing lights?”
With a murmur, she traced an Orb of Light, and it flared blue in the dark. As soon as Rivan let go of his holy symbol, the ritual light dimmed and faded. Rivan stepped forward, and hesit
ated. She was in the way, and the tunnel was cramped.
“Don’t set me on fire,” he said.
The paladin wasn’t much older than she was, but his shoulders were broad and he towered over the nymph. Rivan held up his hands, and flashed her a smile. Flame stirred in her veins, and she quickly swallowed down the urge to combust, pressing herself against the rough stone.
As Rivan squeezed past, his body brushed hers, but he did not reach out—did not crush her to the stone and clamp a hand over her mouth. The paladin climbed up the slope of rockfall and peered at a space in the ceiling. “Stand back.”
Isiilde pulled Elam away as Rivan wrestled with debris. Rocks and earth skidded down the steep passage, tumbling past. Sweat glistened on Rivan’s brow as he huffed and panted, working at the rocks until he was covered in grime. Muscles stood out on his arms, and the flickering light cast shadows on his jaw.
Rivan threw his weight against a large rock, his feet slipped, and his knees crashed on the pile, but he gritted his teeth and renewed his efforts. After a strenuous few seconds the rock gave, and the paladin fell forward, nearly rolling away with the stone. Dust clogged the passage.
When the air cleared, Rivan looked back at the two. “I think we can make it through.” The paladin disappeared, shimmying his way over the rubble to the other side. Elam climbed up, and disappeared.
Isiilde frowned at the narrow gap between ceiling and rock. The weight of stone pressed on her head. The air was thick, and breathing came hard. Before she could ponder the pressing stone, she sent her orb ahead, and scurried after.
There was room enough to turn for her, but Rivan must have had to fight his way through. She coughed and choked on dust until the space opened. The nymph slid down a slope of scree, coming to an abrupt stop on the tunnel floor.
Rivan offered a hand, and she took it without thinking, letting him help her up. The touch of his skin froze her. She looked into his eyes, and he met her gaze, then looked down at their joined hands. She snatched hers away, taking a step back.
The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3) Page 15
