43. Forty-Three
Chapter 43
At last, the first stirrings of dawn came. My body was stiff and achy from sleeping on the deck. I stretched, inhaling the smell of salt and decaying earth. Kalcedon was still asleep.
In the distance lay a hazy smear of cliffs I’d missed in the dark of evening. Nis-Illous , I thought, my heart tightening. For all I knew those were the cliffs by Eudoria’s cottage. We were close. Though we planned to go straight by it, I couldn’t help but study the cliff longingly. It was home. And a part of me, stupid and small and sorry, still believed Eudoria had just gone away. That she’d be back, someday. Maybe she was already, if we just walked through the front door…
There was magic in the air. Odd, unrefined, and faint. I blinked up overhead, clearing my tears as I studied the pale lights drawing close across the sky. These were the same faerie birds I’d seen with Kalcedon in Olymrei. As the sky brightened, they lowered themselves down to the marsh. They glimmered, I was certain, not just with magic but with starlight itself.
Curiosity got the better of me. I took off my shoes, tied my dress up at the knees to keep it from getting wet, and slipped off the boat to investigate. Though it meant leaving the shield, the bugs weren’t so bad if I didn’t stop moving.
I had to cross one of the grassy sandbars to reach the birds. It was impossible to tell where the shore lay through the plants. Every few steps my foot went through a brambly bit of ground to sink a few inches into the brackish water. The odd magic warmth of the starflits guided me on.
At last I found one. Its companions skittered away, breaking into flight as I approached, but one remained grounded. By the dawn light, it seemed less marvelous than it had in flight. The creature looked like a long, thin bird, its feathers a shimmering pearl. Its swan-like neck craned to watch me, but the starflit remained nestled between the saltmarsh grasses, blinking blearily at me.
I was only a few feet from it. But though the faerie bird shivered and twisted away from me, it didn’t otherwise move. I frowned and crouched, feeling the faint flicker of its magic.
I hadn’t heard him wake up, but I felt Kalcedon draw near me, his power loud. I remained focused on the bird. I tried pushing the tiniest thread of my own heat towards it. The bird’s wings flapped. It leapt into the air a foot before crashing back into the grasses.
“Starflit,” Kalcedon observed. I turned. He stood some fifteen feet behind me, with his trousers rolled up to his knees and his dark hair swept back from his stormy face. “They live on starlight. It must be starving here.”
“Can’t we do anything to help them?” Maybe it was just a bird, but the thought of it slowly dying made me sad. I knew what it felt like to be cold of the power keeping you alive.
Kalcedon only shrugged.
“Not unless you want to break another stone. Are you ready to go?”
I fell in beside him. We tramped back through the murky marsh towards the wolf. The water sloshed with each step.
“You can see the cliffs from here,” I said abruptly.
“I know. I saw.”
“Are you really alright, going to Rovileis?”
“Mm. I don’t suppose we’ll have room for a garden there.”
“Not like you used to. Is that really alright?”
“I'll make do. Dung, what’s that?”
I squinted in the direction he’d pointed, then yelped as Kalcedon cursed and charged forward. We splashed through the saltwater, trying to reach the wolf as quickly as we could.
A bone-white rowboat worked its way smoothly up the channel; the large warship shimmered in the distance. I hadn’t felt any magic, and I still didn’t; they were keeping it close to their chests. Four faerie warriors rowed, armored and weaponed.
We were as stuck as the starflit if we couldn’t get to our own boat.
Why had I let myself be charmed by the flickering shimmer of the birds? Perhaps we’d have ended up trapped either way, but I knew I must have lost us at least a few minutes of warning on the faerie’s approach. All I could hope was that when they realized we didn’t have Oraik, they’d leave us alone.
But that wasn’t how a single faerie-story went. Maybe Kalcedon was strong enough, fae enough, to survive the Sorrowing Lord's rule. But I’d probably be ripped apart and eaten or enchanted so deeply I never remembered who I was. They’d sunk the Buis ship for no good reason. No doubt they’d end us, too.
Kalcedon had longer legs, and he pulled further ahead of me. I felt like I was running in place; it was hard work to move through the soft-mud water. He vaulted up onto the wolf as one of the faeries tossed a shimmering net of magic over it. Kalcedon’s hands twisted out one of my favorite basic shields, one he’d watched me practice, helped me practice. But it was sloppily done, cast by fingers moving too fast and unfamiliar with the tangled phrasings.
He should have practiced more. If only I’d made him practice more.
The shield crumbled as the faerie’s spell hit. I finally reached the wolf and gripped the edge, trying to pull myself up over the hull. The net-spell tightened over us, pulling our boat—anchor and all—towards the faeries. Even if I cast a shield now, we were in their grasp. I hauled myself on deck.
“I need heat,” I yelled. I started to form an attack as Kalcedon threw some my way. I couldn’t feel any coming from the faeries, even though they’d cast. Perhaps the raven-warriors had warned them to guard it carefully.
Kalcedon fired bolt after bolt of power. But they never reached the faerie boat. One of the warriors casually directed his spells into the water.
The wolf rocked as it bumped against the bone-white ship. Two of the warriors gracefully leapt over. Now I could feel the fire of their power, banked beneath the surface of their inhuman flesh. My choke-spell shot towards the nearest faerie, who abandoned his casting to claw at his neck. I started to ready another spell, but one of theirs hit me first.
The wolf’s own mooring lines slithered to me like snakes. The ropes wrapped me tighter than a fly in a spider’s web, rough as they snaked about me. I couldn’t move my arms. Even my chest felt tight, like the air was being squeezed from my lungs. I could barely move my fingers.
“Meda!” Kalcedon bellowed. “Run!”
It was a terrifying feeling, but all my focus was on Kalcedon. One of the faeries still in the rowboat had done… something to him. A fog enveloped him. It seeped beneath his skin until not a trace of it could be seen.
He collapsed, eyes straight on me until they weren’t.
I screamed and struggled against my bonds. The faeries ignored me. They lifted Kalcedon's limp body and carried him into their boat. The one I’d hit was dead. His corpse lay half in the wolf and half over, trailing in the water. The faeries didn’t seem to care that they’d lost one of their own.
“Let him go!” I screamed, as if they could be convinced. “Don’t touch him!”
The rowboat began to move on its own. The net connecting it to the wolf faded. I struggled with every part of myself, tried to get to him before he was gone. But I couldn’t move. The ropes still held me tight.
“Kalcedon!” I shrieked. He didn’t answer, didn’t wake. They were carrying him further away. The ropes didn’t loosen. I curled my cramped fingers, trapped beneath them; useless. I couldn’t form anything properly, even if I had the power to. I kept screaming his name.
As the rowboat left the curving channels and returned to the Etegen, the spell on me finally began to fade. The ropes loosened and fell away, my hands and feet tingling like needle-stabs as the blood returned. I stumbled to my feet and lunged for the stern of the boat. I hauled the anchor, panting as I wrestled with the heavy weight, finally pulling it up from the silt and mud bottom of the marsh.
Then I raised the sail and began to slip down the channel, picking up speed. But even though no rowboat could match a sailboat for speed, the rowboat had a head start, and plenty of magic at its rider’s command.
The rowboat met with the warship, and both blinked out of view. I couldn’t feel a trace of magic in the air.
Kalcedon and his captors were gone.