Gifts of Vorallon: 03 - Lord of Vengeance

by Thomas Cardin

  “That would explain the explosion we saw.” Moyan winced slightly.

  “Show him your bruise Lorace,” Hethal said with a mischievous smirk.

  Lorace raised his shirt out from under the chain wrapped snug around his waist to reveal the extravagant bruise made by Sir Rindal’s blade, already faded to yellows.

  “Is that from practice as well?” Moyan asked. “Best you try to keep yourself in one piece.”

  “Trust me, this was keeping me in one piece,” Lorace said with a chortle.

  Hethal gave a slight cough and nodded his head towards the west again. Lorace cast out his sight to the distant column of smoke rising to the west. On a sandy, windswept beach with grassy dunes rising beyond, a large fire blazed, casting white smoke into the air. Several men stood near it, facing out to sea, watching the distant square sails of Halversome’s armada. The remains of a small boat, cannibalized for firewood, lay just above the high water line. There was also a crude shelter of stones, grasses, and bits of flotsam. Beyond the dunes were broad flats of low scrub.

  “There are several people marooned on the coast of Ousenar far ahead,” Lorace informed them. “The land is low; otherwise we would have seen it before now.”

  Moyan looked to the angle of the mid-afternoon sun. “If Ousenar lies just ahead, we have indeed made great progress. This is the narrowest point of the Vestral Sea, but it would have taken the better part of two days to traverse without your wind.”

  Moyan stroked his black beard. No longer waxed in a jutting, assertive Zuxran fashion, the beard now softened his face to a handsome cast. “We have come so far so fast I would not have believed it possible, but then that is what you do is it not? You make amazing things happen.”

  “I am not the only one,” Lorace grinned. “Remind me to share with you Iris’s solution to the Sailor’s Riddle, she solved that earlier today. Make all haste toward that smoke if you would be so kind, good General. I think those men are in need of our aid.”

  So saying, Lorace pressed the wind that much harder into the sails of all the ships. Timbers used to the constant strain of the full sails creaked and groaned with renewed complaint.

  Lorace took a moment to pull upon the spirits linked with him, gaining the conscious attention of their persons before sharing his sight of the ragged castaways upon the shore ahead. Moving his awareness closer, he revealed their haggard, half-starved faces. Falraan jolted with unbridled excitement when his awareness alighted on a lean, white-haired man. The implication was obvious.

  “That is Lehan!” Lorace exclaimed. “Captain Falraan’s father—Oen’s brother!” he reached out to extend his spirit link to Oen and share this special vision with him. The flood of gratitude and relief was immediate.

  “Good news indeed!” Lorace clapped both Moyan and Hethal on their shoulders. “Tell me something; what would make these vessels go faster still?”

  “Truly they are not meant to go as fast as they have been,” Moyan said. “A faster vessel must be lighter and higher in the water, so this is about as fast as I can see these galleys pushed. Blow this wind any harder and our masts will begin to snap.”

  Lorace surveyed the ship from aft to bow. “Very well, I shall not blow the wind any harder,” he said.

  Hethal moved over to the rail and grabbed it with both hands. “Better hold on to something brother. Remember what you said about amazing things? You are going to have to change that to completely impossible things.”

  Lorace turned to Moyan. “You know, he really is no fun at all sometimes.”

  Moyan narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing, Lorace?”

  “Nothing at all—yet.” Lorace’s eyes lost their focus as his gaze went elsewhere.

  The galley rocked their feet with a jerk. “Sorry,” he said. “Perhaps you should hold on, it is hard getting a grip on this thing right. Give me a moment to get the feel of it.”

  Lorace carefully arranged the distribution of pressing pads of air just above the outward curving waterline of the hull. He had to adjust his ‘grip’ several times before lifting Moyan’s entire galley from the water. For each hands width he lifted free he adjusted the air again to hold more of the newly exposed timbers. Pushing with as much control as he could muster to keep the vessel balanced and on an even keel, he drew it further upwards, higher and higher in the water, until it lifted free of the ocean’s embrace. He held the ship cupped in hundreds of pads of shimmering air. Each pad formed just as those he made under his feet, but on a much grander scale.

  “Iris wanted me to push myself,” he shrugged while Moyan looked over the side of the galley at the surface of the sea dropping out from under his ship.

  “I would say you have done that, my friend,” the General admitted in astonishment. “How are you doing this?”

  “I am using the air around the ship,” Lorace said. “A great deal of the air around the ship actually, but more is flowing to us. I am squeezing it into shapes of hard pressure with which I can push.”

  “I can only see a strange shimmering reflecting the sea beneath us,” Moyan said as he craned far out over the side.

  “That is the air I have bent to my will. The same force I used to spin my chain during my battle with the demons, the same I used to hold your men motionless when first we met. When it is under enough pressure it becomes visible, almost like a sheet of water,” Lorace explained as he cast his sight back to the other ships. “But as far as pushing myself, I feel I am not quite there yet.”

  Moyan followed Lorace’s gaze and watched as one by one the other ships began smoothly lifting out of the water until they all rode several man-heights above the sea.

  “My pilots cannot steer with our tillers out of the water,” Moyan said with some concern. “If something happens to you to make our ships fall from this height they will break apart.”

  “I will steer our course,” Lorace smiled, but he lowered the ships down closer to the water. “What do you think of our speed now?”

  Moyan gazed at the scintillating sea swiftly passing beneath them. “I would say we are going as fast as a charging horse, but that is by no means an accurate measure.”

  The low land mass of Ousenar now showed as a dark line on the horizon and the column of smoke from the signal fire was far more obvious in the afternoon sun.

  -in Ousenar

  A flock of warped birds flew overhead, southward bound. They arrowed toward Blackdrake as had everything else taken by the hungering thing. The thing that gibbered of insatiable need in Marek’s mind—seeking—always searching for every bit of living essence it could find. He ducked closer to Palla’s side, away from the abominations that hissed through the air. They were the glossy black of crows, which they may well have been during life, but instead of feathers, they had long sharp scales that hooked at the tips and whispered of agony with each wing-beat.

  “They too want nothing to do with us,” Andrigar murmured from the saddle. Marek read confidence in those words, real or otherwise, but he also read exhaustion. They had found no water that day, only a brackish, ice-covered puddle that even Palla refused to drink.

  Every bit of scrub was dead and dry. Not just winter dead, shriveled like desiccated bone. The hibernating germ of life drained away. Their only moisture had come from a dusting of powdery snow that vanished with the rising sun.

  “They cannot see us,” Marek whispered. “Cannot see you. Like everything we have seen, your gift hides us.”

  “If that is true, they no longer see with their own eyes.”

  Marek nodded as he walked alongside the trembling horse, one hand gripping Andrigar’s leg. “I sense no awareness from them, only the hunger of the unseen thing all around us.”

  They resumed their silence as the warped birds vanished to the dim distance behind them. Their path continued to lead generally northward, but now angled west as they descended from the highlands. Andrigar let his weary horse pick his way down the long slope.

  Marek swallowed a dry lump in his
throat. If he and Andrigar were a kingdom of two, Palla was their most loyal subject. Andrigar’s gift prevented him from hearing the horse’s simple pleas, but there was no mystery to the need in Palla’s dark eyes. He longed for Marek to produce a hidden apple, to take the reins and turn him toward a trough of water.

  To abandon the horse would consign the animal to the fate of the birds and the other twisted beasts they had seen.

  “Stay with us, Palla,” he tried to croon the words, but they came out as a dry rasp.

  “Palla has more leagues left in him than either of us,” Andrigar said. The man never showed a hint of compassion to the world, but that was a facade. The spirit of a romantic burned at his core. He was a quiet man who loved his horse, handpicking Palla as a colt and training him with skill and dedication. He claimed to use lore his father had passed onto him.

  Marek’s lips cracked painfully with his smile. The only lore he had ever seen Andrigar use to train his great Palla was love.

  chapter 5

  THE BLIGHT OF UNDEATH

  Twenty-Ninth day of the Moon of the Thief

  -upon the Vestral Sea

  Lorace arranged their small fleet into a close formation until each ship flew within easy hailing distance. He brought his own ship, with Iris and the priests of Aran standing at the bow, alongside Moyan’s so he could jump across on a single pad of air.

  “I am pushing myself a bit harder now,” Lorace told Iris as he folded her into his arms. “How goes your teaching? I have not seen any spells being cast for a while now.”

  “We have ceased for the time being,” she said with her lips curling in a smile. “It seems many of the priests were having a challenging time focusing on the tasks at hand—too many distractions.”

  Oen came up to them both, beaming from ear to ear. “Lorace, this is simply incredible.”

  “Incredible is seeing a star up so close we could almost begin to understand what they are,” Iris said with shrug of her shoulders. “Making ships fly is simply mundane by comparison.” She looked deep into Lorace’s eyes, measuring something within him. “I suppose this feels a bit more difficult than walking and waving your arm at the same time?”

  “A bit,” Lorace acknowledged. “Add balancing a small stone on the back of your other hand and reciting an ode to the Hunter, and you are about there.”

  Oen turned from one to the other with his brows furrowed. “What are you two talking about?”

  Iris grinned at the stout priest. “He is telling me how much concentration it is taking him to do all of this,” she made a broad gesture with her arms that took in the flying ships, “and as he practices, it is all becoming easier, and more natural to him.”

  Lorace tallied everything that was receiving a share of his concentration. “At this moment I am lifting four ships, steering them and propelling them forward. I am linked in spirit with you, Iris, Tornin, Falraan, and Sir Rindal. Additionally, I am watching the distance to the shore shrinking to estimate how much longer it will be until you are reunited with your brother Lehan. Oh, I am also holding my chain wrapped around my waist. That has become so easy I was no longer conscious of it, like breathing.”

  “Is that all, Lorace?” Iris asked.

  “Well, I am also wondering how Tornin’s arm was unharmed, yet the entire sleeve of his chain armor disintegrated when he threw with my assistance.”

  Lorace thought for a moment more before bending down to whisper in Iris’s ear. “And I am thinking about being in your arms last night.”

  She squeezed him tight. “That will do.”

  Oen directed his eyes ahead and frowned. “I hope we can get to Lehan before that storm reaches him, I do not think I have ever seen anything like it.”

  “No!” Lorace cried as he snapped his sight back over the beach of stranded men this time shifting to see the spirit realm. “I am a fool for not watching over it more closely! That is no storm. You are seeing with your gift Oen. It is the blight of undeath, and it is approaching Lehan and the other castaways rapidly.”

  Lorace turned to look across the thwarts of the ship and called out to Moyan. “Your ships are staying here, safe from the blight. I will take this one to rescue Lehan and those other men.” He turned back to Oen. “Prepare your priests, we go to meet undeath.”

  He settled the other galleys gently into the water then pushed his own ship harder until it leaped forward, jarring several sailors and priests to the deck with the sudden acceleration.

  “Lorace, it must be one massive spirit if I am seeing it like this,” Oen said as he clutched the rail. “Can you push it back with your wind?”

  He reached out to push on the blight as he had Lord Aizel’s spirit, and recoiled in pain. The bitter sting was a raw screech to his senses. He withdrew before the shock could do more than cause the galley to lurch beneath his feet. What ARE you? He wondered while his limbs trembled. “I cannot, just trying was more than I could bear. I think you are right, Oen. It is some form of spirit.”

  “Did it sting?” Iris asked, sharing in Lorace’s sight of the wall of roiling black cloud. “That is what being too close to the Devourer felt like on my skin. Let us try our magic. What form of spell should we use to combat it?”

  He studied the black mass. “Oen, what does that look like to your gift? You were the first to see it plainly. To normal eyes it is invisible.”

  The priest scrutinized the horizon. “It looks like a darkness the sun cannot penetrate, with a hint of emerald green in its depths.”

  “That is our answer, Lorace,” Iris said with profound clarity. “We will channel Vorallon’s spirit into the light of life. Burn the blight of undeath away with its opposite.”

  “A blue-white light such as the brilliance of the great star of the Spinneret,” Lorace suggested. “There can be no brighter light than that.”

  He reached out and added the dozen priest’s spirits to his link as Iris turned to them with her instructions. By that time, Sir Rindal, Tornin, and Falraan, drawn by his tug to their spirits, had approached the bow to stand ready.

  “Sir Rindal, add your will to that of the priests,” Lorace directed. “Tornin and Falraan, go back about the ship and tell everyone to shield their eyes or they may be blinded, then return and lend your will to the priests as well.”

  Iris led the priests in their spell, guiding them in their collection of energy from the spirit of Vorallon. With a few brief words, she, Oen, and each of the priests called forth a tenuous nimbus of blue-white light surrounding their hands. That is not going to be enough. He thought.

  “Lorace,” Iris called out. “The magic here is weakened, harder to draw on. Vorallon’s spirit withdraws from this area.”

  “We must keep his spirit with us,” Lorace turned to Sir Rindal. “Give them your will. It must be brighter.”

  The paladin bent to the task, his turquoise spirit flashing in and among those of the casters. He moves his spirit with almost as much facility as I move mine. The brightness grew to envelop the bow of the galley in its blue-white glow.

  “Tornin!” Lorace called to the returning knight. “Raise high your blade and unleash its light, do not let it be outshone.”

  Lorace pulled the magic of the blade into contact with his wife and each priest as Tornin gave Defender of the Youngest its head. Its white flare and the priests’ glow merged into a brightness that covered the entire galley and spread beyond for a full ship length in every direction. Even the bottom of the hull glowed bright.

  Lorace closed his eyes tight against the painful glare. “Close your eyes; see with my sight!” He restored clear, pain free, vision to everyone as he built out his link to include each of the sailors and soldiers of the galley.

  The approaching vessel, floating impossibly over the sea blossomed into a blinding beacon of light. All but one of the four survivors on the beach covered their eyes and turned from the luminance. Men at first excited by the coming rescue now cried out in dismay and fear.

  Lehan, lean a
nd hungry, knelt in fervent prayer to his god.

  “Truthseeker, prepare your companions,” the silver-locked image of Lord Aran said to him. “Your rescue is at hand.”

  “Thank you for preserving your humble servant, my Lord,” Lehan answered.

  “You owe your rescue, and your thanks, to my brother, as do I,” Aran said, sharing a loving smile.

  “I shall give my thanks to Lorn as you wish,” Lehan replied though it puzzled him.

  “No, Lorn prepares for the awakening of the Old Gods. You are about to meet my younger brother, for the second time,” Aran said as he began to withdraw, “though he is no longer the same man as that first meeting. You must trust in your gift and the love of your brother and daughter.”

  Lehan rose from his knees and shielded his eyes from the blinding light emanating from the ship that now floated over their heads.

  “Be not afraid,” Lehan called to his cowering companions. “They rescue us from these cursed shores.”

  Rather than sending down a rope to ascend, someone above dropped down a slender chain and a young man’s clear voice called for them to take hold. Lehan grabbed the chain to steady it for his companions, and a shock ran through his body. It was painful, but the pain gave way to a flood of warmth, strength, and calm. His brother and daughter were in the warmth. Their love struck him like a sudden resurgence of memory. The strength was that of many, like the adulation of the temple full to bursting with townsfolk receiving Aran’s blessing. The calm enveloped all, a single great force like the love of Aran himself. For the first time since leaving his home and family in Halversome, the priest felt safe.

  When his three companions, all refugees from Zed, grasped the chain the effect on them was far more dramatic; darkness flooded out of them, and golden sparks danced up the chain. That was all he could comprehend without actively using his gift before an unseen force lifted him and his companions from the ground and into the opaque brightness of the blinding blue-white light.