by Morgan Rice
Kyra turned to fly south, eager to find her father—when suddenly there came an awful shriek, reverberating in the skies. She peered into the horizon, wondering where it had come from, and what it could possibly be.
It is they, came a voice in her mind’s eye.
Kyra looked down and realized Theon was talking to her in her mind’s eye.
“Who?” she asked.
When all the dragons are dead, the Great Ones will arise. The four great dragons from the four corners of the earth. They have been awakened.
The awful shriek came again, and as it did, Kyra felt herself fill with despair. She knew, even from so far away, that they were coming, and that the battle she had just fought would be nothing next to what was to come.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Seavig led his fleet in the black of night, sailing up the Sea of Sorrow, and the tension grew thick on the silent ship as they neared the port of Ur. Seavig’s heart beat faster as he spotted the sprawling Pandesian fleet, thousands of ships, black silhouettes against the sky, seeming to fill the entire sea. They had the harbor of Ur surrounded, and as Seavig looked out at the city, his heart hurt to see they had flooded it. It was a port he’d remembered fondly, and its destruction felt like a knife in his heart.
Yet the loss of Ur was not his immediate concern; he was focused, instead, on the much greater numbers of the Pandesian fleet. How could his mere dozen ships, he wondered, attack a fleet of thousands? On the face of it, all was hopeless.
Yet during the long sail up here he had been pondering a plan. It was a plan that required stealth, surprise, and the cover of night, in order to do what no sailors had ever achieved before. Seavig had learned as a boy to make do with what he had—that, his father had taught him, was what won battles. And this fleet was all he had, and he was determined to make it work.
They sailed closer, Seavig willing his men to be silent, the only sound audible that of the waves lapping against the hull and the tense breathing of his men. All his men were in position, awaiting his command as they sailed forward, the tension so thick that he could hear his own heart pounding. His ship, leading the way, floated through the harbor, hardly a hundred yards away from the closest Pandesian ship.
If he had one saving grace, Seavig knew, it was that the Pandesians would never possibly expect an attack. Their ships bobbed there, unsuspecting, their sailors fast asleep, the only sound in the blackness the groaning of their ships in the water, the creaking of their ropes. It was just as Seavig had hoped.
They sailed closer, and closer, Seavig’s heart pounding, knowing all his men were looking to him and knowing he needed to wait as long as he could before executing his plan. He had primed them on the way up, and any moment it would be time to execute it.
“NOW!” Seavig finally hissed.
His men all jumped into action. His dozen ships quickly came together, sailing beside one another until their hulls touched. His men quickly threw ropes and grabbed them, ship to ship, yanking them tight to secure all the ships in his small fleet to one another, as one floating mass. Once the ships were secured his men ran across the decks, jumping from one ship to the next, abandoning the ships one at a time and all crowding onto Seavig’s ship. Seavig could feel his ship getting heavier as they did, sinking a bit with the weight of it, protesting, yet still staying afloat.
Soon, of his dozen ships, only one held his men; the other eleven sat empty, as he had planned.
“CUT THE ROPES!” he commanded.
A group of men jumped from one ship to the next, quickly in the night, chopping ropes. As they did the ships began to separate, while the men quickly returned to Seavig’s ship. They all stood there and watched as the ships slowly drifted apart.
Seavig turned and looked ahead, up at the looming hull of the Pandesian warship before him, and nodded to his men. As one, they all soundlessly charged, rushing across the deck, then, as they reached the bow, jumping on board the Pandesian warship.
Seavig led the way. They all moved stealthily across the much bigger Pandesian warship, raising daggers as they raced through the ship and slicing the throats of the sailors standing guard. They felled them quickly, holding their mouths, preventing the enemy from making a sound. Seavig knew that if even one cried out, all would be lost. With each slice, each man he dropped, he thought of vengeance for Escalon.
Within moments, the dirty work was done. His men killed everyone on board, sparing no one, per Seavig’s command. He could not take the chance, outnumbered as they were. They had taken over the entire ship, not a sound uttered, and Seavig turned and looked anxiously to the rest of the Pandesian fleet, hoping no one had spotted them. He was relieved to see they had not.
He breathed with relief. The first step of his mission, and perhaps the trickiest, had been accomplished. They had commandeered a much larger Pandesian warship, and had set their own fleet adrift. Now there was no time to lose.
“ARROWS!” he hissed.
His hundreds of men raced to the ship’s rail, took a knee, and lined up as they drew the bows from their backs.
“FLAMES!” he hissed, as he took a knee and joined them.
He and his men pulled arrows from quivers and touched torches to them. Within moments, a thousand small points of light filled the night.
“FIRE!”
As one, his men all placed their arrows and fired.
The night sky filled with thousands of small points of light, arrows aflame, sailing in a high arc, silently through the night. Their course was not set for the Pandesian fleet, though—it was, rather, set for Seavig’s ghost fleet.
Seavig watched as the small fleet he had sailed here with was suddenly set aflame. The ships continued to drift toward the greater Pandesian fleet, aflame. The flames grew higher, roaring as they ate up the sails, the masts, and soon the ghost fleet became a weapon, a floating wall of fire, unstoppable, heading for the much greater Pandesian fleet.
Seavig watched with great satisfaction as his fleet of fire did what he hoped it would. The first ship’s hull touched a Pandesian warship, and within moments it set it ablaze, its flames licking its rails, deck, then climbing up the sails. The dozen other ships followed suit, some hitting Pandesian warships directly but most brushing up against them just long enough to set them aflame, then continuing to sail, setting more and more ships aflame.
Seavig watched, his eyes aglow, as the night was lit up. Shrieks soon rang out, of surprised men being awakened, burned alive, men stunned by panic. There followed the sounds of splashing, as men jumped below, aflame, to their deaths in the sea.
Then, finally, the sound of bells tolling. And of a chorus of warning horns.
Chaos ensued as the huge Pandesian army began to wake, dozens of its ships aflame, the flames spreading on the steady wind with every passing moment.
Seavig’s men all turned to each other and let out a great cheer.
The battle for Ur had begun.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Merk stood at the bow of the small ship, Lorna beside him, sailing in the black of night up the western coast of Escalon. The Sorrow was still, eerily calm. All that was audible was the gentle splashing of tiny sea creatures jumping alongside the hull. Merk looked down and saw them swimming alongside their ship, following it, lighting up the night with their fluorescent scales as they glowed beneath the water. Merk found himself getting lost in their brilliant colorful patterns, and he felt as if the entire sea were following him.
Once again Merk found himself on a ship with Lorna, and again, he found himself overcome by his feelings for her. He had never truly felt close to anyone in his life, had never taken comfort in anyone’s presence, but with her, it was different. After all, she had saved him back there, in the Bay of Death; without her, he would surely be dead by Vesuvius’s hands. No one had ever saved him before—or even cared about him.
Lorna’s mystery only deepened for Merk when he watched her heal Duncan on his deathbed in Baris. It had been miraculous to watch, a
nd made him wonder even more about her powers. When Duncan had recovered and had asked Lorna to head north, to aid in the battle of Ur, she had selflessly accepted the duty. Merk had insisted on accompanying her, and she had not resisted.
Was it because she liked him? he wondered. Was it because she felt for him as he did her? Or was it only because she needed the company in the pending battle?
“You have barely spoken,” Merk said to her, wanting to break the silence, eager to know more about her, to establish some connection with her.
Lorna glanced at him, and her glowing blue eyes, looking gray in the night, captivated him as always.
“You know we sail into the entire might of the Pandesian fleet,” he added.
She nodded back knowingly, and he was surprised to see her unfazed.
“Yet you are unafraid?” he asked, eager to understand her.
She shook her head, and he could see that she was not. It only deepened her mystery.
“Death has never held fear for me,” she said, her voice as soft and mysterious as the twilight. “Only not living with purpose.”
He wondered.
“But your powers,” he said, needing to know. “With your powers, can you stop an entire army?”
“No,” she admitted. “I cannot.”
His heart sank. He had hoped that she was secretly confident of their victory, yet he could see from her face that she was not. The death sentence awaiting them seemed ever more certain. And yet, as this was where they were needed, neither of them would let their country down.
“Duncan does not need two more bodies to die with him at the Devil’s Gulch,” she replied.
“Would you rather die up here, in the north, in the blackness of the ocean?” he asked.
She smiled.
“Where else would you propose?” she asked.
He shrugged, nervous to say what he was really thinking.
“Maybe…” he began, his voice tremulous, “we can forego this war.”
Lorna turned and stared at him, her eyes widening in surprise, and Merk felt his throat go dry. He wondered if he had gone too far.
“Forego?” she asked.
He hesitated. Then, finally, he summoned the courage.
“Just you and I,” he continued, softly. “Leave. Somewhere…away from all this. After all, what good will two more dead soldiers do in this war?”
“And abandon our homeland?” she asked, and Merk felt himself sinking. Perhaps he had made a mistake to ask.
He shrugged.
“Our homeland has abandoned me many times,” he said. “I care far more about you than I do about it.”
She stared back, and he could see she was grappling with her thoughts, her feelings. He plunged forward, knowing he had gone too far, and it was now or never.
“Not every battle is ours to fight,” he continued, speaking it all in a rush. “I love Escalon. But I love life more. My entire life has been one of shifting loyalties. Most of all, loyalty to myself. To survival. To the highest bidder. I want to live now. Finally, I know what I want from life, and I want to live with you. Let’s get away from all this,” he said, stepping forward and taking her hand. “Let’s be together.”
A long silence fell as she stared back, seemingly stunned. Merk felt his hands shaking in hers; he had never felt so nervous.
Finally, she looked away and removed her hands, and as she did, he was crestfallen. His heart pounded, as he wondered. Had he gone too far in revealing his feelings? What if she did not feel the same for him?
Suddenly, he felt stupid, feeling sure that she did not. He wanted to curl up and die, to be anywhere but on this ship.
Finally, she spoke, her voice soft in the night.
“My father served as king,” she said. “And his father before him. Loyalty to our homeland runs in my blood. I am sorry, Merk. This land, this war, is all I have.”
She still did not speak to his proposal, though, did not speak to her feelings for him and he wondered if he detected anything in her voice.
“And there is nothing that will change your mind?” he asked, tentative. “Not even I?”
She looked away, and he felt foolish.
“You are a fine man,” she said. “Finer than you know. You have done dark deeds in your life, yet I understand you—you have lived a life of survival. I suspect inside you there is a yearning for more, a yearning for a cause. Yet what I have learned is that we survive not by thinking only of ourselves; we survive through our causes. Through looking out for others. Through a purpose bigger than ourselves. That is what it means to be alive. Otherwise, we are not truly living.”
Merk pondered her words as the two of them slipped back into an interminable silence, the only sound that of the splashing of the waters against the hull. The silence engulfed them for hours as they sailed ever north. The wind picked up, sails flapping, adding to the chorus, carrying them into the distance.
Shoulders slumped, Merk retreated into himself, feeling rejected, feeling more baffled by her than ever. Most of all, he felt ashamed. Something in her words had rung true. He had indeed always looked out for himself, for his own survival. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps the key to survival had been lying, all this time, somewhere outside of himself.
Yet he felt conflicted. Merk was not scared of dying; he just did not want to die for other people’s causes. He would rather die in his own way, in his own place, his own time. The life of a soldier had never meant anything to him, and Escalon had never looked out for him. Why should he serve it?
Hours passed as the silence grew thicker, the blackness more absolute, the stars shining. Merk found his eyes growing heavy, and he had nearly fell asleep when he heard a soft gasp.
He looked up, eyes heavy with exhaustion, to the water before him. Lorna stood there, gripping the rail, and as Merk saw what she was looking at, he, too, stood up straight. Now he was fully awake.
The picture before him made no sense: there, on the horizon, the sea appeared to be aflame. He looked closely and saw the silhouette of thousands of Pandesian ships surrounding Ur, and saw dozens of these aglow. Men were shouting orders, distant from here, and some ships fired cannons. Chaos and confusion ensued. It appeared the Pandesians were under attack.
“Seavig has begun his attack,” Lorna finally observed, shattering the silence.
She turned to him.
“Our time is now.”
She turned the wheel and Merk saw her set their direction for a massive Pandesian ship, its sails rising nearly a hundred feet high. He spotted hundreds of soldiers in the boat, staring north into the flames, none of them looking south, down at the waters, none expecting a tiny ship like this to creep up on them.
“And now?” Merk asked Lorna, his foreboding deepening. “Are we attack this fleet alone?”
“A battle begins with one ship,” she replied calmly.
Merk looked at her firmly.
“Are you mad?” he asked, exasperated. “Do you really expect we can defeat that entire ship of soldiers yourself?”
She smiled back.
“No,” she replied. “I expect you to.”
He blinked, stunned.
“I, against a hundred men?” he asked.
“You have your dagger,” she replied, “and your speed. That is all you need, when I create cover for you.”
“Cover?” he asked.
She stared back, intense.
“You have to trust me,” she replied. “If you are willing. Are you ready to serve your country?”
Merk stood there, feeling at a crossroads. He had never truly cared for a cause before. Yet when he searched Lorna’s eyes, he recognized a fierceness in them, one that made him want to serve her cause, whatever it should be.
He finally straightened and stared back at Lorna, resolute.
She saw the look of approval in his eyes, and she turned and raised two palms to the sky, closed her eyes, and leaned back.
As she did, Merk watched in amazement as a white m
ist began to come forth from her palms, filling the air, filling the night. It wrapped itself around the ship like a snake, creeping down to the water and slowly, steadily, spread across the sea and to the Pandesian fleet. Within moments, the night was thick with her fog, so thick, he could not even see past the rail.
At the same moment, their small ship bumped gently into the hull of the massive Pandesian warship. Merk, heart pounding, knew the time had come.
Merk reached out, grabbed the long rope dangling down the side of the ship, and jumped, hanging on as he slammed into the hull. He yanked himself up one inch at a time, palms burning and not caring.
Ten, twenty, thirty feet he climbed in the fog, straining from the effort, until he finally reached the rail. He grabbed it and looked down; already the rope was lost below in the thick mist.
Merk hung there, by the rail, took a deep breath and steeled himself. This was his moment. He knew that as soon as he crossed that rail he would encounter an army of hostile men, all wanting his death. It would be the most deadly battle of his life. One wrong move and it would be over.
Merk’s heart slammed in his chest as he finally pulled himself over the rail, landing lightly with his two feet on the deck. He turned and was relieved to see he was, at least, immersed in a wall of fog so thick he could barely see his own hand. Lorna was good to her word: he had cover.
Merk wasted no time. He drew his dagger and rushed forward, using his killer instincts to find soldiers, darting from one to the other, slicing throats left and right as he went. He grabbed men’s mouths before they cried, silencing them.
Still, their bodies dropped with thuds, and a commotion ensued on deck as the others caught wind of a killer amongst them.
Yet Merk gave them no time to react. He darted from soldier to soldier, killing each. A few turned to catch him, but Merk moved quicker and faster than all of them, doing what he did best, what he was born to do, using his dagger with mastery and speed and stealth, as he had always done on behalf of the kingdom.
