The Rising Tide

by Sarah Stirling

  “It’s beautiful, is it not?”

  Viktor scratched his head. “It looks pretty, sure.” There was also the fact that it was a deadly realm full of spiritual creatures that would happily eat him but he wasn’t sure whether it was worth mentioning. “How do you plan on getting through?”

  “It worked for me last time. I wanted it enough and so it let me through. Just imagine it, Viktor. A world that works on willpower alone.”

  “That doesn’t sound dangerous, at all.”

  Ziko gazed at him, eyes an unsettling, shining gold. “Is this world not dangerous? Do the many not suffer at the hands of the few born with power? I would make it more equal for all of us.”

  Viktor rubbed at his nose, grimacing when he pulled his hand away to blood staining his skin. Sometimes his body wanted to reject the host within but if it rejected it fully… He still didn’t understand how any of this worked. Even to Vallnor these secrets had mostly remained a mystery, frustrating him when his powers did not come to him easily. But the phoenix was a fickle creature, more so than even Vallnor or Viktor, or the flickers of their various past lives.

  “Where do you plan on going?”

  “I wish to return to Nirket. The city is familiar enough to me that I think I can safely conjure it in my mind. It will take me far from here.”

  “Oh.” Viktor had little desire to return there.

  “If you would rather go home, then you should think of your sister instead.”

  “Yes.” Viktor wasn’t sure if he wanted to return to Tsellyr, either.

  The clouds rolled sluggishly across the sky, heavy and swollen. With it came the rumble of thunder in the distance and a surge in the wind whipping at his hair, howling through the spindly branches of the trees and the stone arch before them. He could sense a build up of spiritual energy, the thrum beneath his skin growing stronger and stronger until it overwhelmed his senses, forcing him to push back into his own nest of power to alleviate the burden. The golden scars running down Ziko’s neck and the stripes etched into his cheekbones began to glow, his skin such a pale white he looked like a wraith against the black of night.

  Viktor found himself taking a step back as the currents of energy raged and sparked, riftspawn gathering around the arch as if summoned by the raw power Ziko channelled through himself. The brightest amongst them was the green fox with the white mask, her three tails blooming with flame as she waited by his side. He took a step forward and then another, a hand reaching out to touch the swirling lights of the rift. So much energy flared out that the lights burned bright enough to blind, a wave of energy pulsing outwards with enough force to send Viktor reeling.

  “Let’s hope this works.”

  Viktor blinked up from the floor, rubbing his scraped palms together. As his vision filtered back, eyes struggling with the darkness after such a white light, he felt his heart leap into his throat. Ziko had disappeared. There was not a trace left behind, except for one brass button that must have fallen from his coat. He picked it up and nearly dropped it, yelping when it zapped his finger. Glancing up at the stone arch, he found that the natural pattern of the rift lights had settled, as if nothing had happened. Strange, that he could just disappear like that. That somehow Ziko had managed to do what no one else had; traversed the otherworld and returned alive.

  Perhaps it was not so difficult, provided he could discover the trick. Viktor reached down and pulled up as much power as he dared, shying away when the phoenix’s anger began to bleed into his thoughts. It was enough to sharpen his senses, sensitive to the interweaving currents of energy all around him. The pattern before him, in violets and greens and pinks and shades he could not even begin to describe, solidified into a clearer picture, almost resembling the strange writing inscribed around the stones. Surely if Ziko, bonded to a normal albeit powerful riftspawn, could pass through into the otherworld then Viktor with his bond to a guardian riftspawn would be able to do the same.

  His hand reached out, fingers unfurling to touch the veil between the stones. Pain shot through his arm, up to his brain. He swore he could feel his teeth in his throat. Thoughts jumbled in his skull. Vallnor cutting down an enemy with a blast of green fire. His head vibrated, blood gushing from his nostrils. Everything ached, as if he had been dropped from a great height and all his bones had shattered. The boy summoning the phoenix to the gate. Something was trying to pass through him but the phoenix shoved it back.

  With an anguished cry, Viktor wrenched his hand from the rift and tumbled back in a heap on the ground. His head spun and his limbs felt disconnected from his body, forgetting how to make them move at his command. Staring up at the sky with the mist coalescing around him, he shut his eyes and let himself have a few minutes just to rest. Viktor was so very, very tired. Tired enough to just let go and fall asleep upon the stone and mud upon which he sprawled, heedless of the way the rock jutted into his back. Even a rock could be a bed fit for a king when he barely had the energy to pick himself off the ground.

  A voice echoed from somewhere in the distance, just loud enough to be heard over the caress of the wind. Eyes snapping open, Viktor attempted to sit up only to find his vision swimming, managing to catch himself on his hands just in time as he crashed to the ground. When he opened his eyes once more all he could see was the blood staining his fine silk kobi, now torn and shredded.. Fyera would have a fit if she could see it, he mused hazily. Viktor himself would have been devastated, if he had still been that naive boy back in Nirket, to know he had owned such a fine thing and ruined it so irrevocably.

  As it was, Viktor had so much else going on in his head he didn’t really have the room to care. The voices – two now – were growing louder and he recognised them as belonging to the two Riftkeepers they had fought, presumably returning to the stone cottage they resided in next to the rift. Gulping, he looked back at the rift and wondered if he really wanted to try again. Simply touching it had nearly knocked him out, his whole body feeling as if it had been ground into paste.

  But the curiosity ate away at him. Ziko had managed it, somehow. If he could do it, why couldn’t Viktor, a prince and guardian of the realms? It had been his purpose, to be the link between both worlds. The guardians were supposed to bring some kind of order to a lawless land like the otherworld, so by all accounts the one able to pass through should be Viktor himself. The frustration bubbled to the surface, catching the attention of the phoenix. It was the tool it needed to dig into his psyche, until he was nestling into the anger, flames dancing in his palms.

  “Can you feel that?”

  “It’s the prince,” said the woman. Jenya.

  Footsteps echoed through the mist and then their figures parted the haze, two sets of eyes pinned upon him. But Viktor wasn’t about to let himself get captured. He’d had enough of people pushing him around and telling him what to do.

  So he turned away from them and stepped up to the rift, focusing on his sister. She would be wondering where had went to; he should be trying to get back to her. There was a rift in the centre of the city but he wasn’t sure if that would be any better than here, surrounded by soldiers who were looking for him. Even so, it would be better than getting caught by the wardens behind him.

  Feeling the first tugs of that numbing signature and the way his powers faded in response, Viktor flailed in panic. Take me out of here. You know how to do this. For these rift sites – these ancient tears between this realm and the next – had once been doors. In ages past they had been used as such, to take the strongest of the strongest between the portals so that they might travel where they were most needed.

  Touching the swirling lights, a buzz travelled up his arm, tickling rather than painful. Behind him someone swore, the symbols etched into the circle of stones lighting in a deep blue green. His head felt like it could slip right off his shoulders and melt away, everything spinning around him in a blur of colour and sound. For a brief moment he saw that terrible creature, long neck curving down to gaze into his eyes
with a huge green eye of its own, black beak sharp enough to pierce him through. Viktor felt himself unravel, memories unspooling around him. Intertwining with other memories that he had both lived and had not, he found himself swimming through the torrents to catch the pieces of himself floating amongst the debris. There was no room for distractions.

  Take me to the next door.

  The more he pictured it in his mind’s eye, the more it came into fruition. The light spilled from a rectangular shape in the darkness, a handle appearing out of nowhere. Gradually the details filled out, until he appeared to be standing before an actual wooden door, the handle cold metal beneath his grasp. Wrenching it open, Viktor stumbled out to an icy landscape, hit by the freezing cold. He shivered, gathering the thin silk of his kobi around him, and gaped at the unfamiliar snowy mountains cutting into a sky splashed with unnatural greens and purples.

  He had done it. Somehow, Viktor had passed through the door.

  *

  “Have you even slept?” murmured Makku as he sat down beside her.

  Kilai glanced at him without looking, eyes sliding back to the relentless sway of the ocean stretching out before them. Light squeezed through a thin gap between the blanket of clouds above and the rolling grey waves below, spilling gold across its glassy surface. They were still sailing west because no one had any idea what to do. The captain and his second in command were both dead, as was the ranking soldier, leaving behind a small band of terrified men and women, and the two of them.

  “I can’t sleep. It’s like my brain won’t shut down.” Sweat dripped down her temple, causing a full body shudder. Gripping her shins, she pulled them tighter to try and control the trembling in her body that would not stop.

  Makku’s eyes widened. “It must be the effect of that stuff.”

  Kilai wiped at her running nose. “What was that stuff? I’ve never felt anything like it. It was like I had the strength of Rook when she was using her abilities.”

  “I don’t really know. I just know that Captain Kallan thought it important enough that she risked her life to ship it across the sea. We carried so many things that I didn’t think anything of it but Nogan had seemed so desperate… Are you all right?”

  She attempted a smile that was more of a grimace. “I’m coping.”

  They lapsed into silence, watching the ship glide over the waves. Gulls cawed overhead, water slapping against the sides of the ship. Behind them the remainders of the crew argued over the best course of action but she didn’t have the energy to get between them. She felt drained; completely and utterly bone weary. She did not feel particularly compelled to go forward but neither did she wish to turn back. That, despite all that had transpired, felt like admitting defeat.

  “When we reach the continent, what do you plan to do?”

  If she reached the continent. For days she had shivered in her hammock, staring at the leaky ceiling as she waited for sleep to find her. It never did. All she could do was replay the events of that night. Even now she could feel hot blood pulse between her hands.

  “I mean, I know a lot has happened and I understand if you don’t want to talk about it only it’s just us and we don’t have the vial anymore and I don’t really know what’s going to happen to us or if we’ll find Kallan’s –”

  “Take a breath, Makku.”

  He sucked in a rattling breath and rocked back on his hands with a sigh. “I’m just concerned about meeting our contact without the thing we were supposed to bring.”

  “They’ll understand.”

  She could feel the weight of his gaze upon her, even as she stared out at the listless waves. “Mistakes happen. This way we can get some answers. After that we’ll attempt a plan.”

  There was another lapse in conversation, Makku fidgeting so much she knew what he would ask before he spoke. “What about… him? Do we take him with us?”

  “If he lives. We have no way of knowing whether he can survive what he did.” Or whether the crew wouldn’t just toss him overboard. She had fought to keep him on the ship, arguing that throwing him to the sea would only anger the beast beneath. They had all been so frightened they had listened to her without question. She had expected more resistance but she supposed when such inexplicable events occurred, people just wanted someone else to make sense of it for them.

  “I thought it would be a little more exciting, you know?” said Makku, resting his chin on his knees.

  “What would?”

  “Seeing the continent. Travelling. Now most of Kallan’s crew are dead and I don’t really know what’s left.”

  She sighed, scrubbing at raw eyes. “I can’t help but feel like I have been some kind of bad luck charm for your crew. I’m surprised you’re still talking to me.”

  “It’s hardly your fault!”

  Surprised by his vehemence, she smiled. The light pushed the clouds back a little further, bathing her damp face with warm sunshine. She held her face up to it like a withering flower, craving a sign of life amongst an endless desert. For one simple moment, she let the tension bleed from her limbs, melting under the nourishment of the sun and forgetting all that had happened. That was until footsteps vibrated beneath her, signalling trouble.

  Keeping her eyes closed until the last possible moment, she pried them open to peer at the young girl hovering over the pair of them, hands twisting in her grubby shirt. Jayna, if she remembered correctly.

  “That man. He has awakened.”

  Kilai stole a glance at a wide eyed Makku and then scraped herself off the floor. Her gut churned worse than the ocean had on that fateful night and she pressed her palm into the muscles of her abdomen, as if that might stop her from vomiting across the deck. With every step she took below, her anxiety buried in deeper until she was trembling once more by the time she reached the brig. She hesitated before the cell, apprehensive of what she might find. Of what judgement she might see in his eyes, should he be lucid at all.

  With a deep breath to steal her nerves, Kilai kept her gait steady as she walked towards the iron bars separating her from the man hunched over the bench, a ratty sheet pooling around his waist. His head did not move even though her footsteps echoed on the floor so she cleared her throat, sparing a glance for Makku a few paces behind her. No one followed them down. Instead of going to someone of the original crew – of going to whoever might be next in the chain of command if that had been established – Jayna had come to Kilai. Somehow it always fell back to her to be the one to take the next step.

  “Ivor,” she said. “Ivor, are you there?”

  Slowly Ivor’s head lifted from the nest of his arms, eyes bloodshot and steeped in heavy shadow. Kilai noticed lines on his face she had not before. He still wore the bloodstained clothes from that night, bringing back flashes of the pouring rain and the feel of metal catching on flesh and bone.

  “Think it’s me,” he said hoarsely. “Maybe.”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  His eyes shuttered, muscles in his jaw flickering. “Mm. Most of it.”

  Dread flickered inside her. “Ivor… did you know about this? This thing that’s inside of you.”

  There was a long pause before he lolled his head back against the wall with a crack that made her wince, his own expression contorting with pain. “I didn’t until I did. That make sense?” He shook his head. “No. I mean, I should never have survived that shipwreck, I knew that much. People like me, Shaikuro, we’re not lucky like that. I think I knew something was wrong, too. But to have a demon inside of me? How could I have known?”

  Kilai did not have a personal frame of reference for such things but time spent with Rook, Viktor and Janus had taught her some things. “Can’t you feel its presence in your head? It managed to take control of you completely.”

  “I don’t know.” Ivor scratched at his beard. “All I’ve got is a headache and what feels like someone else’s memories but everything is so hazy it’s hard to work out what’s what. I don’t know what has happen
ed to me.”

  “When you were drowning you must have accepted it,” said Makku, drawing both of their gazes. He still hovered some distance from the bars, even though Ivor sat on his bench at the back of the cell. Thin strips of light cut across the cell floor from above, illuminating one green eye as he moved to rest his elbows on his knees, startling Makku back another step. Seeing this, Ivor scrubbed at his face and sighed. “How could I have accepted anything? I was caught in a storm. About to die.”

  “Your desire to live must have moved you to subconscious action. People will do desperate things to survive.”

  Ivor barked a laugh. “My desire to live? Never took you for a jokester, Shaikuro.”

  Kilai grabbed an oil lamp from its mount against the wall and struck the metal casing off the bars, the sound clanging out in a series of echoes. Frozen, Ivor stared at her with his mouth slightly ajar. “Enough of the self-pity right now,” she snapped, anxiousness like a wire pulled too taut. “We’re trying to establish how you managed to bond yourself to the personification of the one true adversary and massacre half a crew of Sonlin soldiers as we sail on our merry way towards a continent full of people who will be more than happy to execute us as soon as we hit land. Forgive me for not laughing but I find my sense of humour has quite vacated me at this present moment.”

  Ivor immediately sobered, shadows lengthening across his face as he looked down at hands shredded with tiny red cuts and welts. They had suffered through so much together in the short time they had known one another that it was difficult to remember she did not know him well at all. That he was a soldier of a distant empire. That him washing up on that shore was not a twinge of fate but in fact the symptom of a much deeper problem. One Kilai could not even begin to understand, for that would mean acknowledging the beast below the waves was indeed the steed of Var Kunir.