Chapter 21
Fear filled Syla as she flailed with one hand and clasped her spectacles to her face with the other.
As she plummeted toward the sea, the clear sky contrasted starkly with the dark-blue water and frothy white waves.
When she plunged in, frigid water jolting her body, the force wasn’t as great as she’d expected, but she barely managed to keep her spectacles from flying off as the sea flooded her mouth and nostrils. She sank deep but didn’t hit any rocks.
One-handedly, she clawed her way to the surface, her clothes and pack making movement awkward.
A wave smashed into her face and hurled her body several feet.
She tried to get her head up, to look for her aunt and Vorik and Fel, but the sea taunted her.
Another wave batted her like a crinkled ball of paper at the mercy of a playful cat.
Would the current send her toward shore? Or farther out to sea?
For a second, as a wave carrying her crested, her face was toward the sky, and she saw someone plummeting downward, just as she had. She also glimpsed the red dragon flying in the other direction. Wreylith was done with her.
But was that Vorik? Or Aunt Tibby or Fel?
Another wave smashed water into her face, again trying to wrench her spectacles away and drown her, but not before she spotted someone splashing down. Vorik. He appeared unconscious. Or worse.
Again, Syla clawed her way to the surface.
Vorik hadn’t fallen into the water far from her, but in the powerful current, she didn’t know if she could swim toward him.
Still, she tried, willing whatever magic her birthmark would lend her to help her.
Too bad she couldn’t heal the ocean to anchor herself or do something that would aid her.
But desperation lent her strength, and she managed to paddle in the direction she wanted.
When the wave carrying her crested again, she spotted Vorik floating atop the water near a log.
Beyond it, the jagged black cliffs were in view.
From above, they hadn’t appeared so high and forbidding. At least they could guide her to shore.
Kicking and paddling, Syla angled toward Vorik. She had no idea what had happened to the others. She prayed to the earth, moon, and sun gods that luck would favor them. She even would have sent an appeal out to the deranged storm god if it might have helped.
Another wave brought Syla closer to Vorik.
She reached him and the log at the same time.
After flinging an arm over it for support, she gripped his shoulder and called his name, but his eyelids were closed.
Though the water had washed away his blood, she could see numerous tears in his tunic and trousers, deep red gouges visible beneath, and a broken arrow shaft protruded from his shoulder.
And his head? He must have hit that as well. It was probably where all the blood had come from. Why had the riders all leaped onto him in the end?
Because he had, in their eyes, turned traitor? Maybe it had been revenge since he’d knocked the female leader off. If she’d fallen from a great height—and Syla believed she had—she might have died.
In that moment, as she clung to Vorik and the log, Syla realized that Vorik might have been telling her the truth all along. He’d turned on his own kind and chosen a faction that wanted peace between their two peoples. And he was risking his life at every turn for that.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” she rasped.
His eyelids didn’t so much as flicker.
Syla attempted to kick in the direction of the cliff, but she barely could have swum against the current by herself.
With Vorik’s dead weight along with her, she didn’t know how she would make it.
That was even more true when a wave sent the log smashing into a rock formation.
It struck with a bang, the force knocking it out of Syla’s grasp.
She scarcely managed to retain her grip on Vorik as the water tossed them about.
He coughed, and she hoped he had woken, but it was his body’s involuntary reflex to spew out water that went down his trachea. He remained unconscious.
When she glimpsed the cliff, Syla couldn’t tell if it was closer or farther now, but she paddled and kicked in that direction. She had to make it, or she would be swept out to sea and die.
That concern reinvigorated her, and she kept going. Unfortunately, even with the buoyancy of the saltwater, Vorik’s lean muscled body wanted to sink, and her pack dragged at her as well. Even in the icy water, her efforts left her hot and panting.
Her spectacles fell around her neck, only the twine keeping her from losing them completely, and the cliffs turned into little more than a dark blur.
A wave smashed her against a rock formation.
Again, she almost lost her grip on Vorik, but she managed to clutch a protrusion on the barnacle-covered surface.
Needing a moment to rest, she hung on and found a foothold underwater. She used it to push upward, trying to get her bearings, but she couldn’t grip Vorik, the rocks, and raise her spectacles to her face at the same time.
In the sky farther out to sea, a dragon flew past, its outline as blurry as everything else. All she could tell was that it was green. Was that Vorik’s Agrevlari? Or one of the enemy dragons?
It didn’t matter. The barrier kept it away.
“As long as we’re not swept out to sea and into their reach,” she rasped.
“Your Highness,” came Fel’s gruff call from nearby.
Thank the eyes of the moon.
“Here!” Syla hoped Tibby was with Fel and that she was all right. But she worried for her aunt, who would have as much trouble seeing out here as she. And her pack was even more full of books.
Fel navigated to her rock formation, dashed water out of his eyes, and scowled at Vorik.
“He’s out?”
“Yes. Bleeding from many wounds, including at least one on his head.”
Fel’s grunt sounded a lot like good. “Let him go. That’ll solve one of our problems.”
Yes, but…
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
Syla struggled to explain her feelings. “If it were the other way around, he wouldn’t let me go.”
“Yes, and don’t you find that suspicious? You’re his enemy.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It’s true. Trust me.” Fel pointed toward the cliffs. “Come on. I’ll help you, but leave him. If he survives floating out there, his dragon can collect him.” He squinted toward the one she’d spotted. “Actually, that might be one of the dragons that was trying to kill us.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“His dragon might be dead. I don’t see the red one either.”
“I doubt they slew her. She… considered her duty done and left.”
“You mean she hurled you and your aunt into the ocean. I spotted Tibby swimming over that way, by the way.” Fel pointed again toward the cliffs.
“Good. We need to catch up with her.”
“I’ll help you.” Fel gripped her arm lightly.
“I’ll accept your guidance, since I can’t see well, but Vorik is coming too.”
Fel issued an exasperated grunt but didn’t force her to release him. When he pushed off the rock formation to swim for the cliffs, Syla did her best to paddle along so she wouldn’t be dead weight, but she kept one hand firmly on Vorik.
Doing their best not to kick each other or crash into rocks, she and Fel swam awkwardly toward shore. When they reached a small beach of black pebbles and agates between two sections of the cliff, Fel released her and climbed to dry land.
Vorik still hadn’t woken. Syla did her best to tug him up, but the waves that kept crashing onto the beach made it difficult. Further, as soon as his weight wasn’t supported by the water, she couldn’t budge him.
Blood ran not only from the side of his head, mingling with water as it dripped onto the dark sand, but from the numerous gouges in his torso and a long one in the side of his thigh.
His breathing, though even, had a pained hitch, and she worried he’d broken ribs and bruised organs.
Once she had him safe and stable somewhere, she needed to heal him.
Unfortunately, she was so exhausted that she doubted she had the power at the moment.
Hopefully, his hardy rider constitution would keep him from dying before she could rest up.
“First, we’ve got to get out of the water,” Syla said and heaved, trying again to pull Vorik up the beach.
After watching her for a moment, Fel grumbled under his breath and helped her.
As battered as he was, he had the strength to drag Vorik up above the tide line, though the pained expressions that twisted his face suggested the effort hurt him.
Syla would have to offer him healing again too, as soon as she was able.
Seagulls squawked from perches on the great black cliff that loomed behind the beach.
Syla hoped they could locate Tibby and find a way up.
She also hoped there would be a road leading to civilization.
They hadn’t come ashore where she’d wished, and she didn’t know how far it was to the small harbor city that housed the local government and most of the island’s non-farming population.
She did know of a temple perched along the cliffs of the north shore and wondered if they might be near it.
Ships wrecked in this area from time to time, so the healers kept trained men and women in the area to handle the wounded.
“Syla,” Tibby called, waving from farther up the beach.
Clothes sodden and torn, her tunic half-fallen off one shoulder, she picked her way past algae-blanketed rocks toward them.
It looked like she’d lost her pack, or maybe cast it aside to keep from drowning.
“Thank the moon god for blessing our ancestors. You’re alive! ”
Syla waved at her aunt, though so many water droplets dotted her spectacles that she struggled to see her well. With a damp sleeve, Syla wiped them. The effort removed the water but left sand on the lenses, and she sighed in frustration.
“I’m alive too,” Fel remarked.