Chapter 17 Glorious #2
“Good to see you back on deck,” he said. “Have you ever seen a school of sailsquids?”
I swallowed and forced my eyes up to his face.
“No, sir. I have not.”
“You told me you like animals, yes?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, not stopping the smile now. “I do.”
He held out his hand.
Damn me to hels and back again. What had I just told myself? Something about being careful?
With a deep breath, I took it, and his fingers closed over mine.
He spun on his heel and all but dragged me toward the prow.
Forge, he was stronger than most swabs, and I wondered if it were a Rhi’Ahr trait or just his.
The crew parted for him as he sliced a path through to the very cat, drawing me up beside him at the rail.
I tore my gaze away and sent it to the ocean. What I saw took my breath away.
An ocean of colors from Mother the Sea, sang the Touchstone in my head.
A host of colorful creatures raced at the headwaters, keeping pace with the Touchstone and leaping beneath her prow.
Red, purple, blue, and green, they burst out of the sea and skimmed across the waves before plunging back in with a splash.
They were larger than sharks, and their long heads had pointed beaks that looked like they could stab a whale.
Their fins were wide like stinging rays, but razor-thin, and they caught the air like sails when they leaped from the waters.
Instead of tails, they had tentacles and two long barbs that whipped in the waves.
There were dozens of them fanned out before the prow as if leading us through the gap and toward the Dreadwall.
The ocean is mother with teeth in her waves.
“Suns!” I laughed over the roar of the wind and the sails. “They’re amazing.”
“They hunt wyrmaids,” he said. “And wyrmaids hunt them.”
“Wyrmaids aren’t real!” I cried.
“Oh, they are,” he said, his eyes bright and dancing. “There are creatures in the oceans that would make your head spin. It would take every lifetime to discover them all.”
We race and we chase and we bring it all down.
My skin was awake by his side, and I tried to keep my gaze fixed to the prow.
The wind whipped my dark hair into my eyes, and this time, I didn’t want to hide.
I pushed it off to see him leaning far over the rail, feeling the spray of the waters on his palm.
He was smiling like the suns, and the crew was laughing along with him.
Damnations if he didn’t make my heart race and chase, and I swallowed quickly, turned my eyes to the creatures at the prow.
Touchstone, help me, I begged, but I could have sworn she laughed.
Thanavar swung back to the wheels.
“Lean into it, Mr. Oakum! We are almost upon them! Ready with your hooks, Mr. Buck?”
Buck stood at the rail, a massive, barbed harpoon in his hands. Neale and Bergy were at his sides, holding a coil of rope and nets.
“Hooks ready, Cap’n!” boomed Buck.
I realized the crew was completely invested in this venture, and I doubted it was simply because of the steak. I was beginning to realize that they would follow him to the ends of the erthe and back if he dared ask. Even one as cynical as Smoke had found his place here.
The Touchstone had all but reached the school of leaping, splashing squid, and I leaned out over the fore bulwark, stretching my hand just like he’d done.
The spray bit, and the wind howled. The sails snapped, the masts creaked, and the ship was surging into the school when suddenly, Kit cried out from the rigging.
Thanavar whirled.
“Hard to starboard, Mr. Oakum,” he barked. “Hard to starboard!”
Hand over hand, Smoke spun the wheels, and we grabbed the rail as the Touchstone lurched, then heeled deeply to the side. My bare feet slipped as water crashed over the bulwarks, and the captain threw an arm around me to keep me from sliding to the boards.
I squinted through the salt spray as the seas churned before us.
Churned, bubbled, and swirled, trapping the sailsquids within a whirlpool of tides.
With a great spray of white water, an immense ring burst up all around them, growing higher and wider as it opened through the waves.
It looked like a giant hoyster, with a stony outer shell and iridescent folds inside.
The Touchstone groaned and squealed as her hull scraped along the creature’s hard plates, and beneath the waters, a great, unblinking eye followed us as we swept past. The massive mouth clamped shut, pelting water across the topmasts, and the sound echoed across the currents like a peal of thunder.
Finally, the creature sank beneath the waves, leaving white and red eddies in its wake.
Of the sailsquids, there was no sign.
“Port now, Mr. Oakum!” Thanavar shouted over the winds. “Else we end up in the Silence!”
Hands on the rail once more, the Touchstone banked port, and soon we were sailing level, rising and falling on a deadly sea. His arm was still around me, and I didn’t dare breathe.
“No steaks tonight,” muttered Buck, and the crestfallen crew bled away to their posts, leaving the captain and me at the prow.
An ocean of teeth, growled the Touchstone. We bring it all down.
“What the hels was that thing?” I asked after a long moment.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he said, setting me aside. I immediately missed his warmth. “But I told you your head would spin.”
“Along with the rest of me.”
He grinned, and be damned if my toes didn’t curl at the sight.
With that, he whirled and strode off the main, disappearing through the hatch in a heartbeat. I could feel Smoke’s eyes on me—with scorn or envy, I couldn’t tell.
I released a breath and turned to the ocean with new appreciation for the monsters that lurked beneath her waves.
Later that evening, as I made my way through the galley back to my bunk, I overheard Worley telling stories by candlelight.
It was stifling hot tonight, and most of the swabs were reduced to their trousers and kerchiefs and nothing more.
At least twenty huddled in the room, holding tin cups with their rations, spellbound by his words.
I didn’t stop and headed to my little corner to sling up my hammock. But from there, I could hear his stories, and they carried me off to sleep, where I dreamed of monsters and harpiar, sailsquids and wyrmaids. I even dreamed of a Priestlord and didn’t want to wake.
It was morning when we first spied the Dreadwall.
It was sunny and the wind was strong, and I squinted in the bright-yellow light as I stepped on to the main. When I looked over the rail, my will melted like an icicle in the suns.
The Dreadwall.
It was like nothing I could have conjured in my wildest nightmares.
It first reminded me of a dam or a waterfall a good half league tall.
But the furious water rushed upward, not down, from ocean to sky, with sea spilling from it like steam from a kettle.
It sparkled with the same “shattered glass” look as the air in the Silence, but this glass would easily shred a ship in a heartbeat with its force and its rune.
It was impossible to imagine that this massive construct of elemental magik stretched all around the equatorus, circulating ocean water into the skies above and back across the Silence to rain down without ceasing in the Sheets.
High above, the Dreadsky streaked with thick, heavy black-and-green clouds across the Silence.
It was terrifying to think that magik had created this, even more terrifying to think of what might happen if the spell ever failed.
Even so far away, the roar deafened, and from the quarterdeck, Fahr needed a bullhorn to be heard.
“Spinners,” he called. “Both crews on deck, and at the ready.”
“Have Ensign Renn join me on the pup,” called Thanavar. “Her chimeric will be helpful.”
My heart leaped into my throat as I scrambled to the pup and took my place next to the captain. How fantastical my life had become to find me casting spells with a Rhi’Ahr captain to restore a tear in the Dread, but it felt good, strong. I had a purpose here by his side. I was needed.
“Like Hodgetown?” I asked boldly. “Thrum, Call, and Torrent?”
“Thrum, Call, and Bind, Ensign. We are knitting a frayed wall. A rain spell would be counterproductive.”
Fog. I hated being wrong, but I steeled my jaw. I would not be too proud for the Ship of Spells. I could not.
“This is an Auctorus Circulaia,” he went on, “which is why you needed to learn it. But I am hesitant to ask you to try again.”
“Well,” I said. “I guess you’re here to attend in case I go over the side.”
He grunted, and I wondered if it was a laugh.
“I will be binding in Rhi’Ahr. Repeat after me. Thryh’siahr tryo’visseth.”
“Thryh’siahr tryo’visseth.”
Our hands crackled, and I wondered at the power of the Rhi’Ahr, when their very words could trigger rune.
“Good. Augment if you can. The Dreadwall was cast with chimeric, so any you can send its way will assist the bind.”
I nodded, rolling the words over on my tongue as I tucked my gloves into my sash.
“Hard to port, Mr. Neale,” Thanavar called. “Bring us about.”
As the ship’s nose swung away, I got a clearer view of the Dreadwall from the pup, unimpeded by masts, sails, or rigging. We were less than a quarter league away, but I will forever remember that moment. It was the very first time I laid my eyes on the Nethersea, the land of the enemy.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Bergs. Ice. Crystal mountains. Wyrmaids the size of leviathans, whales to swallow us whole. Fleets of Dreadships or an armada of cruisers. But there was none of that. Beyond the watery jambs of the breach, there was just a narrow blue stretch of open sea.
“Thrum and Call,” said Fahr over the horn. “Both crews, if you please.”
Two crews. It was fascinating to watch them work, and much like in the Bay of Hodges, the Touchstone began to rock as the waters gathered beneath her.
I saw ripples racing toward the breach as the ocean marshalled herself before it, bubbling in frothy white waves at the edges of the Dreadwall.
The sea boiled with pattern. The waters roared with zeal.
Bring it down and bring it home, said the Touchstone.
“Auctorus in ten,” called Fahr. “Second crew, make ready.”
Thanavar looked down at me and arched a brow.
“Ready, Aro’el?”
I swear my heart beat to quarters.
“Ready, sir!”
“You will let me know if it is too much.”
“I will. Surely.”
And he raised his hands, holding them out in the direction of the breach, fingers dancing with pattern and light.
“Thryh’siahr tryo’visseth.”
I did the same, echoing his words even as he flung the spell at me.
It was stronger than I had expected, deeper than anything Taran Vir had sent my way, and my palms sizzled with the impact.
I rolled it in my hands, augmented it with chimeric, and shouted the incant in both languages.
It grew with each syllable, and finally, I hurled it toward the breach, the rune crackling in circles as it went.
“Again!” he barked, and again we cast, him conjuring, me augmenting. We repeated these actions over and over, and there was a cry from the masthead. To my astonishment, the jambs of the breach had begun to move.
Seawater burst from the surface, up, up, up like a fountain that did not peak but carried on a half league into the sky. Above us, clouds gathered, blocking the suns with roiling black.
“Sail!” cried Kithriit. “Rhi’Ahr sail due south!”
I spun, breaking protocol, but I saw the wavering shapes between opposing walls of the Dread. Three warships were entering the breach, and my heart thudded in my chest, for leading them was the Endorathil.