by Ember Lane
“Scout,” she told us, standing midjetty. “Me and Billy figured it all out last night, and we decided on scout. So Billy sticks to you like glue mostly because if I’d given him two hundred thousand gold, I wouldn’t want him out of my sight. Meanwhile, he sends me ahead to scout for baddies, food, decent trails, that sort of thing.”
“Have you done any scouting?” Sutech inquired.
“Nope, but it can’t be too hard. I can go invisible for any length of time, well, nearly—slightly wispy, so that should help. Plus the Cers are all ghosts, so both me and Billy will be able to fight them with you.”
“Have you done any fighting?” Mezzerain asked.
“Nope, but it can’t be too hard. Choppy choppy, stabby stabby, that sort of thing. Trust me, my main advantage comes in protecting your investment.”
“How come?” Faulk asked.
“Because Billy Long Thumb won’t be going anywhere without me.”
“I like her,” said Pog.
As there was really nothing to decide, we all boarded the yacht. As Billy was quite capable of crewing it himself, we left him to it. Faulk set up his lines. Charlotte stayed within a few feet of her once lost fiancé, and the rest of us retired below.
“What a strange turn of events,” I said.
No one argued.
Chapter Twenty-Three
An Unlikely Partnership
By the middle of the afternoon, reaching shadows started creeping over the sea’s tranquil surface. Ruse was still a ways away on the horizon, its crown of black sporting an underbelly of glowing orange as Belved’s ire simmered away. The closest I could describe the land would be a hurricane-volcanic-eruption continent hybrid. Ruse sat there waiting, confident, and sapped at our willpower without doing anything.
The shadows that extended from that dread place had their own peculiarities. I noticed the first crawl over the yacht’s gunwale like a probing tentacle from a mythical sea monster. It was tangible, odd. Mezzerain rose quickly, his sword ready to strike, but Billy stayed his hand.
“It’s Ruse reaching out, seeing who nears its wounded carcass. We may land without ShadowDancer or Belved knowing, but Ruse itself will be aware.”
That didn’t make sense to me. Surely Ruse was now Belved, and Belved Ruse. Looking closer, the tendril was unlike a shadow in some ways, more like the peculiar absence of the light. It even had a gloss to it. Imagine a molten, metal-like quicksilver and then add a good degree of translucence, and you would be close to its look. The finger both fascinated and terrified me as it felt blindly around.
It also gave me something to do or at least gave me the hope of something to do if, as I reasoned, it was more than just a shadow.
I moved away from the others and sat close to the yacht’s bow—as near to Ruse as I could get—and I took out the shadowmana vial that Curmeyder and Company had made for me. My thoughts were simple. The inquiring tendrils had to be powered by something—that was my deduction, not fact. Ruse was the source of shadowmana. Again, I had no proof of this, but it had been a thought that had been growing on me for a few reasons.
Shadowmana had been fairly sparse in Mandrake, mostly consigned to the underground. I had first encountered it when I’d defeated Aragnoor the dwarven king in his city under Grim Valley Falls. He had been possessed by a wraith called a katrox, and in defeating the katrox, I’d received the black knight's dagger and access to shadowmana with the message: hate is the key. Both those gifts came from Ruse.
Since Striker Bay I’d concluded that shadowmana naturally existed below the land in the chaos and maelstrom of Sakina’s new world, and that it was supposed to be rare above ground. When disaster had struck Ruse, all of its land-based light mana had been destroyed, and its shadowmana had burst up from its hidden depths, smothering the land in darkness like some suffocating smog. As with all things highly concentrated, it now sought dilution and reached for us, tried to draw us through its meniscus and absorb us.
I had no backup for that, but it made perfect sense to me.
So if my wild theory was correct, this current situation was perfect for me.
If I could begin to capture dribbles of shadowmana from the fingers of Ruse’s influence, then when we closed in, I might just be practiced enough to be able to fill my vial to the brim and be as ready as I could be when we landed.
Of course, the only problem with my idea was that the sails were flapping away, the boat yawing, and Billy had suddenly found his god-awful voice, so concentrating was going to be difficult.
I made myself as comfortable as possible, sitting cross-legged and creating an imaginary shield behind me. I hugged the lyre-like vial close and closed my eyes, beginning my meditation and sinking my thoughts down to the depths of my groin. I sought out my source, my mana, both types, and began coaxing them into action. The light mana moved grudgingly at first, sludgelike, having lost its previous fluidity. Was it one day’s neglect? Perhaps two? I cursed myself, knowing I should be good enough by now to keep it going subconsciously—like Zenith had taught me all that time ago in Beggle—the tree may differ, but the channels bore a remarkable similarity to each other.
Eventually, like a sulking child, my light mana began to move. I imagined a small boy stamping his feet on the floor, bottom lip hanging down. While I was actually fishing for shadowmana I encouraged the other first, knowing it made a good foundation to spur the deeper, darker mana into action. To my surprise, I began to harvest a little of the light mana from my surroundings. Billy’s yacht had a good coating of it, and a steady, if thinly spread, amount came from the sea itself, almost like it was escaping from the water’s thriving surface.
Once my light mana was all backed up and running, I began coaxing my shadowmana out from its hollows and hidey-holes. This time, rather than stifle the flow of my light mana and then encourage my shadowmana out, I used the light mana to draw its dark counterpart out, like a vortex might pull in air. At first, the light mana shunned it, but as I fed more and more love through my channels, into the plates and chambers of my centered groin, I gently asked for its help, and it grudgingly gave it, drawing tendrils of dark mana out from my darkest recesses. They flowed together like crystal-clear water laced with strands of oil.
Satisfied that both would now cycle, I turned my attention to the vial.
Unlike before, I didn’t have the luxury of recently spent dark mana being spread all around. Before, when I’d filled the five-hundred-mana vial, I’d been sitting atop the ruined tower in Striker Bay and was essentially collecting up my own spent shadowmana from the devastation of my own blasts. I’d had the sense it was familiar and that it actually wanted a way home. Here I had to try and capture it, to harvest it if you will, and it was unfamiliar, untrusting, and cautious.
I needed to imagine myself floating above the yacht, searching out Ruse’s false shadows, for that was what they were. The shadows that Billy’s yacht cast were defined, a stifling of light, and therefore distinctly different. Those from Ruse were imposters, fingers of darkness spilling out from its core. It was these I needed, these I sought, so I focused on their crawling power.
At first they eluded me, licking out from the dark land, like they were tasting Billy’s yacht and retreating fast to report to some shadowmana master. I imagined them to be like radar scans, coming in cycles, locating and passing on, satisfied they had us mapped. But as we closed in a little more, they slowly became more adventurous and tried to encapsulate us, own us, and draw us toward their dread power. During this transition, the tongues flicked over me and inspected me more closely, and I tried to at least start off my vial, aiming for a sole droplet—anything. But for some reason I failed. It was as though the dark mana didn’t recognize me, like I wasn’t interesting enough.
I knew instantly that I needed to change things up. At the moment I was just an intruder, nothing more—a fish to be hooked and landed—probably perceived as no threat, and therefore no interest.
Reaching inside myself once more
, I checked my manas were still flowing. With that done I teased a little shadowmana away from its mixed stream and simultaneously opened my palm, trying to coax it from my under the skin without it exploding forth in some magical blast. It rose up like a gray mist, and I encouraged it to form a tight, glistening, and spinning ball that resembled a uniform sphere of shiny mercury.
I asked it to drop into the vial’s neck and nestle where it wished and hold fast for a moment. Holding the vial up, I inched my perception into the vial, seeking out the sphere of shadowmana. Once I’d assured it that it wasn’t alone, that I hadn’t abandoned it, I joined with it and focused both my will and love within its core. I then attempted to radiate my awareness from the sphere’s center and offer a comfortable sanctuary to any roving, lost, lonely shadowmana.
Satisfied that my beacon at least asked a question, I started pouring more of my will into the spinning orb and then increased the range of my invitation. Once I had pushed the boundaries as far as I could comfortably be sure might work, I let my meditations hold all my thoughts in place.
I was fishing. It was a long shot. The small sphere of shadowmana was my bait. The vial was my short-handled net, and I was Faulk. Now I just had to wait patiently, like a fisherman, like Faulk. I had to close my eyes to stop me from searching out my prey. This sort of thing was so alien to my nature—way too passive.
But I understood it had to come to me.
The first encounter was like a knock and run. Even though miniscule, a single particle flowed into the neck of the vial, sniffing around, getting close, and then scooting back out again. My hopes rose; they rose higher, and then they fell as it fled.
I waited again but nothing more came apart from thoughts of failure. I redoubled my meditations, determined not to become crestfallen. My manas were cycling well now, flowing through me and flooding every inch of my flesh, filling me with warmth and goodness. I split a little more of my focus away and into my quicksilver bait, but I didn’t increase the range of my awareness. I upped its intensity, warmed its welcome.
More waiting then followed. It took all my concentration to keep my hopes in place. Doubts niggled me. Was my path correct? Should I be more direct, more proactive, perhaps even order it to come. But before those doubts consumed me, a small mist encroached into the vial’s neck, coating its side and then amalgamating into a silvery bead before splitting again as if they were unwilling to sacrifice a whole, but happy to risk parts. They slid into the banana shaped part of the vial, and then, one by one, reached out, touching my bait, orbiting around my shadowmana and steadily joining its rotation before finally coating it, amalgamating with it. My sphere grew and with it, my smile.
To my surprise, my consciousness then ranged a little farther and with it, my invite. Small droplets then began to spill in intermittently. I imagined they came as the tongues of influence flickered through my invite and that was what caused the randomness, but I didn’t peek—I resisted the urge. I had to be satisfied it was working, even if slowly, and somehow understood that this fragile bridge we’d established could easily vanish.
The vial’s contents registered in my mind, but time didn’t. I only had a body-clock’s idea of its passing. So far, I had collected twenty shadowmana, and I guessed it had taken about an hour.
I had quite a ways to go.
Fortunately, I had the time.
Droplets started to slide in more regularly. At first it was one venturing in, molding to the sphere and then a wait until the next. But at some point, they began to drop in one after the other. My spinning ball became a small pool in the vial’s crook, and it slowly grew.
Four hours, or thereabouts, and I’d collected two hundred. Even though the lyre-shaped vial could take ninety-five thousand, I didn’t lose heart. I found I could leave my invitation hanging, roaming out there, while I attended to my other meditations, to the mana inside my body.
The combined effect was that I not only collected the shadowmana, but I also worked on my channels and very slowly began to increase the speed of my flow, and in so doing, I understood I could dispatch my mixed magic faster and harvest my mana quicker. Even more important, I confirmed there was no limit on my mana storage barring its collection, and there was no ceiling on my casting speed. That was merely a function of the velocity my mana cycled at.
I settled in. My immersion in my own meditations were complete. For the first time I felt my body, soul, and mind working in absolute harmony. I had the feeling I was giving off a shining aura from my light mana and a slick shadow from my ever-growing shadowmana. Power entered every organ in my body. I felt my strength grow, my wisdom expand, and my intelligence sharpen. My muscles positively glowed, felt heated as though they were in mid workout.
Both manas now sought harmony—almost one to contract my power, one to expand and relax it, yet that wasn’t quite it. One gave energy, released power, and that was, surprisingly, my darker mana. The other absorbed the spent force, cleaned, and renewed, and then readied the muscle for its next exertion.
My awareness altered too. As my intelligence grew, I could sense my surroundings much more clearly. At first, it was just a small perimeter, no more than a few feet or so, but that edged out, albeit slowly, as the sheer volumes became larger. It reached around me, above and below me in a sphere of awareness. I could see into the boat’s bow and under into the gray sea. Above me, the shadowmana tongues all now bent toward the vial’s neck almost like an infinite number of genies returning to their bottle.
As my consciousness expanded farther, it surrounded Billy’s yacht. I anchored it as a point, intent on centering my awareness on it. From there, I let my awareness radiate out, ready to feel any danger, any threat that might encroach.
Doubt filled me momentarily. Where was this new power coming from? But I secretly knew, and I definitely understood. Ruse’s shadowmana had accepted me. The katrox had invited me all that while ago, and now that Ruse recognized me, it welcomed me home.
Looking down from my awareness, I saw Billy’s yacht as we sailed parallel to Ruse’s coast, around fifty miles out. That in itself was unremarkable. What intrigued me was the gray blanket that reached out—the solid hand of shadowmana that guided us. It was at its darkest at the bow. It surrounded me now. I knew it wouldn’t let me go.
The vial filled.
Though I wasn’t overly sure I needed it anymore.
For the first time my manas were equal. The shadowmana no longer skulked in my recesses, it was to the fore, brash and confident, and nearing its home turf. After all this time, it shocked me a little. I’d grown used to, even fond of, its shyness. Now it mingled with my light mana, no longer oil and water, still separate, but definitely symbiotic.
I’d mixed the unmixable. I understood that. In doing so, I also knew I’d fulfilled some unknown quest, some untold destiny—not mine, but something someone had seeded an age ago. Pog had told me we were being manipulated; now I truly understood the lengths that interference had taken. Something clicked within me as if to confirm my suspicions. A drop of shadowmana spilled from the neck of my vial, running over my grasping hand and leaching into my skin.
I opened my eyes, aware that the vial was now full. Stoppering it, I quickly stashed it away. A gray mist enveloped me as though the yacht was traveling through a thick fog. I could just make out the tip of the bow as it yawed up and down. Sea spray pulsed past me rhythmically, it too vanishing into the shadowmana cloud. I bade the mana to disperse, to go back to Ruse, and though its disappointment was palpable, it followed my command and retreated after I’d reassured it I was coming.
Pushing myself up, my knees weak at first, I took my first close look at Ruse. As I’d seen from afar, we were tacking parallel to its craggy, black coast. It reminded me of a lump of coal rising up, seemingly that bleak. Clouds still hung low, though their fiery underbelly was now more muted, just cracks of glowing amber filling their growling black. A sheen of gray separated the land from cloud. It was the color of my shadowmana,
but I doubted such an amount of the magical stuff existed. More likely it was merely a lighter shade of night in the encompassing darkness that was Ruse.
When I turned and faced the yacht’s rear, I was surprised to find just Billy above deck. Edging my way carefully back, sea legs still not quite my thing, I sat with him by the tiller.
“We’re making good time,” I said, surprised that we were so close.
“That depends,” he replied easily, his manner immediately morphing to mischief.
“On?” I took it he was in one of his cryptic moods.
He pulled out one of his cigars. I was beginning to think it was the same one every time. After lighting it, he rested his feet up on a ledge, crossing them and taking a long puff. “How long you think we’ve been sailing for? You might find you are quite hungry, almost certainly thirsty.” He chuckled to himself, enjoying his own joke.
I was missing something. Billy was right. Once he’d said it, my stomach began growling like a feral dog. “How long?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “You spoil my pleasure too quickly. Alexa, the trip to Ruse takes a day and a night. Its near circumvention takes another two. We are halfway through that, and that is roughly where we need to be. You, Alexa, have been adorning my bow for two days and one night. If we had a sun to measure the day’s passage, it would soon be setting. I have to say, if I were ever to get a tall ship again, I would quite like you to become its figurehead: so strong, so powerful, so stoic, and always facing forward.”
“I was out there for two days?”
“Two.”
“No wonder I’m hungry.”
I didn’t bother with any further inquest, ducking below deck into the sumptuous galley. There, Charlotte, Mezzerain, and Sutech were sharing some wine, while Pog and Faulk were attending the stove and cooking up what I presumed was their evening meal.
