“We’ve a storm bearing down on us,” she said. “Can see it, smell it, and my aching bones confirm it.”
“Will you take shelter then? The archipelago is ahead.”
“Nah. That’d be a trap. The currents around the islands would tear up the Lady. We’ll ride it out at sea, but it means we go now.”
“Now?”
“Aye. Ready yourself and Mister Yap, or prepare for a season of seal hunting with the Ice Lady.”
Amberhill did not doubt the captain’s weather sense—she’d not been wrong once since leaving Midhaven, but the plan had been to leave him and Yap closer to the islands. She had refused to take him into the archipelago itself, citing the perilous currents and the more superstitious clap-trap about witches and bad luck. Now he’d have to rely on Yap’s experience as a seaman to get them there. Amberhill had picked up a thing or two along their voyage, but little in the way of practical knowledge. He had left the sailing to the sailors.
“Mister Yap!” he cried. “Prepare the gig!”
“Aye, sir!”
When Amberhill had sought passage from Midhaven to the archipelago, it had proven clear that no captain desired to venture among the islands, not even for a large purse, claiming them too far off course, or the currents too hazardous, but underlying all these excuses, like those of Captain Malvern’s, was superstition.
So Amberhill took matters into his own hands, purchasing a sloop that had been the gig of a merchanteer captain. The small vessel, Yap said, would sail well around the reefs and currents of the islands. Captain Malvern had not argued about hoisting the gig up alongside Ice Lady when Amberhill paid extra. Her voyage was proving profitable even before she reached the sealing grounds.
Odd, Amberhill thought as he watched Yap and crew secure their supplies in the gig, that others should be so repelled by the very islands that lured him. He was drawn to them like he was coming home. His true home. His ring sent a pulse of warmth through him.
Captain Malvern joined him at the rail. “Remember to steer clear of the Dragons—that’s where the currents are the worst—and we’ll look for you on our return from the ice. Otherwise, Spring Harbor is your closest port in Arey.”
Amberhill nodded. He’d pored over charts with Yap. Now that it was coming to it, he felt a little apprehensive, a little queasy, like his seasickness was coming back, but thankfully it was fleeting.
“Ready, Mister Yap?” the mate called.
“Ready!” Yap clambered back over the rail from the gig to the ship, and it was lowered to the waves below. It looked small down there, tossing like a piece of driftwood.
“Luck,” Captain Malvern said as Amberhill followed Yap over the side of Ice Lady onto the rope ladder.
“And to you,” he replied before scrambling down along the barnacle-studded hull. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he stepped carefully into the gig. It bucked like a wild horse and only Amberhill’s excellent balance prevented him from falling into the water.
Yap cast off the lines holding the gig to Ice Lady and scrambled from the bow to hoist the mainsail, and then lunged for the stern to take command of the tiller. The gig heeled away in the gusting winds. Amberhill was impressed by how quickly the distance grew between them and Ice Lady, and he felt at once free and anxious. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
The storm rushed upon them as they made for the islands, slamming them with rain, waves washing over the rail. The gig strained, groaned, complained at the forces that battered it. Lightning slashed through the sky accompanied by deafening thunder. Yap fought with the tiller and Amberhill clung to the mast and sent up a prayer to the gods. The Ice Lady was completely gone from sight, vanished behind walls of waves and curtains of rain.
Both fresh and salt water assaulted them, burning Amberhill’s eyes. All he saw was water above, water below, turbulent darks and darker, visibility cut off by downpour and foamy crest. Yap was yelling, but the roar of wind slapped the words back at him. He pointed.
Amberhill peered over the plunging bow. Was there something ahead? When the bow reared back up and the gig climbed another wave, he saw only the gush of rain. The bow surged over the crest and this time, as they slid into the trough, he made out a pair of shapes darker than waves or rain or clouds, green and white froth dashing against them. They looked like monsters of the sea.
The Dragon Rocks!
The bow reared again. Monsters indeed—the currents around them would crush the gig. He glanced at Yap. The expression on the pirate’s face was one of terror.
“Steer clear!” Amberhill shouted. “Those are the Dragons ahead!”
Yap jiggled the tiller. It moved too easily. Amberhill did not hear the word, but read Yap’s lips: “Broken.”
Like the stick of driftwood Amberhill had imagined earlier, the gig was tossed around by the ocean, and when they neared the chaotic, churning currents near the pair of sea stacks called the Dragon Rocks, an enormous wave curled over them and Amberhill found himself wishing he’d taken an unexpected interest in seal hunting.
She walked among the wrack and blue mussel shells and the foam at the ocean’s edge. Bare of foot, she stepped surely, as though her toes knew every contour of every stone of the beach, every cobble and pebble. A hermit crab scuttled out of her way.
She liked to stroll the shore after storms, for the ocean tossed up so many interesting things. Sometimes they were secrets long hidden in darkling depths; often they were the flotsam and jetsam of far passing ships. Today, as gulls argued over a crab and an osprey tested its wings in air currents still restless from the storm, she found a bottle shining in the foam. She picked it up and discovered the cork still sealed, the wine safe within. That was a rare gift. Continuing on she found tangled fishing gear, some battered boards.
Soon she came upon more debris: wood planking, a barrel bobbing in the shallows. Perhaps she would be gifted with an entire cask of wine. She smiled.
A sheet of white undulating in the waves caught her eye, a sail, and it was snagged. It was snagged around a man. The gods were being very generous to her this day—if he still lived. She lengthened her strides to reach him. He lay half out of the water, his head resting on his outstretched arm, kelp trailing from his wrist. The sun sheened on wet black hair that straggled across a well-formed face. Much more handsome than the sailors she usually received.
He still breathed. A wave stirred his hand in an eddy. The red of a ruby on his finger flared in her eyes. She dropped to her knees and grabbed his hand to see the ring close up. She knew it, had known the ring before and the hand that had worn it, the hand that had caressed her so tenderly, so lovingly, so long ago. She stroked the man’s hair away from his face.
“Are you he?” Yolandhe, sea witch out of legend, asked. “Have you come back to me, my love?”
RETREAT AND RESOLVE
Something had gone terribly wrong. Grandmother had felt it like the snap of a bone in the small hours as they passed the night in the grove. She’d heard a horrible wailing in her sleep like some enormous beast receiving grievous injury, and upon awakening, she found the limbs of trees quivering above, and that the forest had grown uneasy. God said he’d ensure their safe passage home, but as they hurriedly packed and sought their way out of the grove, the forest was as hostile as ever, unseen eyes glaring at them, unnamed creatures lusting for their blood, and now they didn’t even have their groundmite companions to protect them anymore.
Grandmother had had to create a salamander compass to help them navigate the curling roads of Argenthyne until once again they found the main road around the lake. Even the lake was disturbed, its surface curdled and waves slapping the shore. When she glanced back toward the castle towers, they had grown darker as if decayed, dying, and then wet clouds swallowed them. Acrid raindrops began to pelt her face.
With two of her men gone—three if she counted Regin, who had been lost so early on in their journey—setting up camp for the night proved despairingly difficult in the rain, a
s if they’d never done it before. With a little help from Grandmother’s art, Cole did manage to get a fire burning.
Though Lala now had a voice, she said little. Occasionally she broke out in small snatches of song.
“Mum,” the girl said, cuddling up to Grandmother before the fire.
Grandmother’s cares and aches and chills melted away to hear Lala call her that, and she wrapped her arm around her little girl.
“I will teach you some songs one of these days,” Grandmother said.
“I think I know some,” Lala replied. “They came with my voice.” And she sang the chorus of a ridiculous drinking song.
“No, no,” Grandmother said as gently as she could. “I need to teach you some songs of Arcosia that have been passed down, and others that will help you with the art.”
“Oh.”
Grandmother was too tired for teaching this night so they sat in silence for a time as rain hissed and steamed in their campfire. It looked like their journey home was going to be no easier than their journey in, especially since it appeared God had rescinded his promise of protection. Grandmother sighed, not looking forward to the perilous walk. She brightened when she thought to look in on Birch. She had wanted to see how his campaign fared, and maybe God would come to her and she could plead for His protection.
So she knotted some of her precious dwindling yarn, and with a nail clipping of Birch’s wound within, she tossed it onto the fire.
And saw dusk. The evenings there were less dark, and it was not raining. She heard the clash of steel, and she gazed through Birch’s eyes. The dead surrounded him where they’d fallen in the woods. They appeared to be—No! Not their own!
“Retreat!” Birch bellowed, waving his sword.
A glance over his shoulder revealed men coming after him with pikes and swords, whose mail glinted beneath home-spun clothes. Snatches of black and silver uniforms showed from beneath plain coats and cloaks.
From Birch’s mind she gleaned he’d allowed his men to walk into a trap. He’d gotten overconfident and his band of warriors had been overwhelmed—there had been more than the thirty of the enemy his scout had reported. They were slaughtered by the Sacoridians.
“Retreat!” he cried again to those of his men who survived.
Grandmother withdrew from the connection and placed her face in her hands. She had to get home now. She could not permit Second Empire to fail.
THEIR SEPARATE WAYS
The wind hissed across the tips of dead grasses, but the scent of new, green growth crushed beneath Lynx’s body filled his nostrils. He gazed up at the sky—it was dull, brooding, but it was not Blackveil. The alien voices of the forest were gone, replaced by the ordinary minds of somnolent wolves awaiting the evening hunt and ground squirrels busy in their burrows.
He sat up to the endless, undulating plains before him, and discovered stony ruins behind him, two partial walls, the rest crumbled to the ground. How had he gotten here? What happened? Silver glass glinted on his legs, torso, and arms, slivers he pulled out of his flesh with sharp little pains and tossed aside. They winked with light as they fell among the grasses.
They’d been in Castle Argenthyne, the chamber with the tree, but that’s as far as he got. Someone moaned nearby.
Another moan and he found Yates likewise speckled with silver glass, but worse, with shards deeply embedded like daggers, his flesh pale.
Lynx knelt beside him. “Yates!”
“The beast burned me out,” Yates whispered. “She wounded him good, but . . .”
And then Lynx remembered—Mornhavon the Black had occupied Yates’ body.
“I am ashes,” Yates said.
“No, I’ll take care of you,” Lynx replied, but with each moment, Yates slipped farther and farther away.
“Tell her . . .” Yates’ whisper was ever so faint. “Not her fault.”
“I will,” Lynx promised.
Yates did not respond. A stillness blanketed him; his eyes, his face, lost all animation. Lynx clenched his hands and growled as if to threaten away the looming grief. This was why he stayed solitary, why he remained aloof from the others. Forming attachments only meant being speared with unbearable pain when there was loss. His growl grew into a howl. He howled as the wolves do.
And when his voice faded over the plains, he gently closed Yates’ eyes.
Telagioth and Ealdaen found him carrying rocks from the ruins to raise a cairn over Yates. The wind had taken on a mournful note as it rushed through the ruins, and Lynx had felt restless souls among them.
“Friend Lynx,” Ealdaen said, “let us aid you. We are sorry for Yates, for his spirit held much joy.”
As they labored with the rocks, they came to an agreement that they were somewhere on the Wanda Plains.
“I will know more when I see the stars,” Ealdaen said.
Neither Lhean nor Karigan appeared, and after raising the cairn, they spread out and searched, but without success. Either of the two could be lying in the deep grasses and they could be missed at even a few feet away.
At night they took shelter near the ruins and built a large bonfire from old timbers they found in the collapsed structure, and dried thatches of grass. If Lhean or Karigan were out there, perhaps they would see not only the fire, but the light of Eletian moonstones.
“I judge we are in the north-central plains,” Ealdaen said, gazing into the sky at the stars that shone through the clouds. Telagioth agreed with him.
“I have quite a walk home then,” Lynx said, missing his Owl intensely.
“As do we,” Telagioth replied.
“What happened? How did we end up here all the way from Castle Argenthyne?”
“We believe it was the Galadheon,” Ealdaen said, “and that mask. That mask was nothing to trifle with.”
“The looking mask,” Lynx murmured, and he remembered. Karigan had smashed it on the floor at Yates’ feet and then ...
And then he’d awakened among the grasses.
“It caused a rupture in the wall of the world.” Ealdaen sounded uncertain of himself. “I believe so, anyway. And with the Galadheon’s ability to cross thresholds, it may be that she is elsewhere.”
“And perhaps Lhean with her,” Telagioth added.
“Elsewhere?” Lynx asked.
“If what I surmise is correct,” Ealdaen said, “she could be almost anywhere, anywhen. But I think it is no mistake the trickster allowed her to handle the mask. Whether he expected her to destroy it in such a fashion?” He shrugged.
“Yates said Karigan wounded Mornhavon.”
“We believe it is so,” Telagioth replied. “We heard the Dark One’s lingering cry of pain even as we found ourselves here.”
“The rupture was a terrible, powerful force,” Ealdaen added. “And it was directed at Mornhavon.”
During the night, neither of their missing friends appeared at their fireside, so in the morning Lynx and the Eletians went their separate ways, the Eletians bearing south toward Eletia, and Lynx, after paying final respects at Yates’ cairn, began his long trek eastward. He’d come to the grasslands without his supplies, only what he’d had on him when he awoke in the chamber of the tree: his clothes, a cloak, and his knife. Telagioth gave him his longbow and what remained of his quiver of arrows, as well as his water skin. Both Eletians shared out some food. With these items and his knowledge of the wild, Lynx believed he would have no trouble making it to civilization.
Over his shoulder he carried Yates’ satchel with his journal inside, as well as his winged horse brooch. Yates’ brooch would return home into Captain Mapstone’s hands to wait until some new Rider was called into the messenger service and claimed it. It had always been this way.
Lynx carried inside himself Yates’ loss, a terrible, yawning pit opening up before him. He shook his head and kept walking.
She tumbled through an abyss of no dimension, of no known depth; falling, falling through the unending midnight well of the universe. Light streaked b
y her in searing hairline strands, and in great beams humming with energy that punched through the blackness, driving relentlessly forward, but doing nothing to illuminate the void.
They were the threads of lives and worlds, of time and place as she’d seen through the faceplate of the looking mask, but now she was among them, as if she’d fallen into the mask, insignificant, nothing more than a grain of sand in the desert. Much less than even that.
Some threads intersected, wove into a grid, weft and warp drawn tightly into luminous tapestries, while others came glancing close but bypassed one another, destined never to meet.
Stars and celestial bodies shone around her, and shards of silver glass glimmering with their far-off light trailed in her wake like the tail of a comet.
Realm of the gods. Her own inner voice came to her from a far off vestige of consciousness.
Consciousness? Was she even alive? Or was she an incorporeal spirit traversing the heavens?
But even as her plummet increased in velocity, she felt mortal fear, a fear that in this infinite dive, all that she was, all that she had been, and all that she might become, would slip away until she was nothing but dust, dust mingling with the shards of silver glass, falling forever.
Nothing, nothing . . .
Her mind ripping; her inner voice screaming.
Then great wings filled her awareness, their beating the rhythm of a heart. They matched the speed of her fall and the arms of no earthly being reached out and caught her. He drew her to his chest, a giant’s chest of alabaster. He hurtled downward with her, his vast wings gradually slowing their descent.