Chapter 25 The Court of Sand #2
Her eyes flashed at me. Insolent. Arrogant. Wayward. All her words came back like ghosts.
“Here.” She placed my hand on his forehead. “And here.” On his chest, beside his heart.
He was cold, and I broke inside.
But his forehead began to glow as the chimeric sparked, sizzling across his face with light and pattern. Runes shot across his chest like a sunburst, immediately seeking out those along his jaw and throat. They connected, and his entire body began to glow.
And then, my mother did something I had never seen before.
She slid her hand inside his chest.
Two fingers as point, others plus thumb closed over the medicine paste, she just slid them in as if he were water.
The flesh didn’t open, the ribs didn’t spread, but she did it anyway, and I could see everything in the runes dancing between them.
I saw her fingers work the paste into his heart, saw tiny sparks as tonic met toxin.
But the heart did not skip, and I could barely breathe as she slid her unbloodied hand out and reached for mine.
Shroud magik. Dark bargains. Whispers in the night.
Giddy, dizzy, lightheaded all. She moved my hand into his chest.
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
Numb and scarred, my fingers brushed his heart, and I felt it. And for the first time since the sinking of the Dawn Watch, I wanted these new hands to sing.
She looked at me, caught me up in the stars that were her eyes.
“Chimeric is the tears of our sisters, the moons,” she said. “Free them and let this man live.”
I closed my eyes, seeing the web running between my fingers and his heart, seeing it wrap and entwine and connect and engage.
“What is the spell, Honor?”
“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I just don’t know!”
“You are Archaic, like me. Your magik is wylde. Imagine it and breathe the incantation.”
So many ran through my mind, so many I had learned, even more I had forgotten. I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t enough.
“What has he taught you?”
Dreams. Hope. Friendship. Light.
Carmen Lumiere.
Kel’yion.
And suddenly, the captain was there, a sea-deep shadow over us both. I looked up, barely able to see him because of my tears.
“What is the Rhi’Ahr word for life?” I breathed.
He lowered himself to one knee and laid his hands on my shoulders.
“Vivithari.”
The warmth. The strength. The power of this rune. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
“Carmen Vivithari,” I whispered to the void.
My body lit with power as chimeric shot through my hands and into the heart they held. Runes raced along my skin, burning from shoulder to thigh, blistering as they went. I didn’t flinch. Let it scorch me raw if it meant this wretched woman kept her friend.
Fahr’s body bucked, and runes burst from his open eyes.
A cry began from somewhere in his boots, and mine joined his, rocking my body in a rush to my throat, echoing through the walls of the greencellar and shaking the very stones of the floor.
Light was everywhere, and I was blinded.
Sound was everything, and I was deafened.
There was only his heart and my mother and Thanavar and my hands wielding the chimeric that powered all the magik of the world.
I don’t know how long we existed, the four of us like this, locked in the power of the Worldrune, but at some point, it passed like a tide, leaving pebbles of silence in its wake.
My hands were in my lap, my mother beside me, and slowly, Thanavar rose to his feet to stand over us all, his eyes as black as a night sky.
For his part, Devanhan Fahr pushed up onto his elbows, blinked and blinked again.
“Clearly not a dream,” he said, breathless and new. “But what the suns just happened?”
And every wall I had ever built crumbled to sand as my body broke into shudders, and the tears fell from my eyes like a dam bursting. The captain gathered me in his arms.
The Court of Sand had a mess hall.
Actually, it was more of a grand salon, with ceilings higher than mainmasts, pillars as wide as a capstan, and mosaic floors that would make swabs weep joyful tears to scrub.
But the Magisters of the Court had provided a spread, and I watched Fahr dig into his first meal in days.
He was calm and clear-eyed, and he chatted amiably with the magisters over grapettes, cheese, and coriander bread.
Me? I was as weak as a baby bird, and I was grateful that Echo stayed with me, his comforting hand on my shoulder. In fact, while a part of me wanted to celebrate what we had achieved together, the other part wanted to hide away in a dark corner somewhere, wrap myself in rum and shadows.
I had just brought a man back from the dead.
It was impossible, and yet I had done it.
What the hels was I becoming?
“Join us for wine,” said the minotaur, Tekamorian, but they called him Tek. “The chimeric saps your strength, it is clear.”
“She has a unique and powerful gift,” said the faun named River. “We could train her to wield it here at the Court of Sand.”
“She is like her mother,” said one of the harpiar. His name was Liskeel, and he broke bread with his hands but snatched grapettes with his tongue. “Valor Renn is powerful and feared.”
Fahr threw a glance my way. He’d been unreadable since waking up, or coming back, or whatever the hels he had just done, and I didn’t know what to think. His dark eyes locked with mine.
“Blue is powerful,” he said. “And on the Touchstone, almost as feared as the captain himself.”
“Good, good,” said Liskeel. “Fear is the most powerful magik of all.”
And the mate blinked slowly. I saw clouds gathering behind his eyes before he turned his face away. Once again, I was grateful Echo was there, else I’d be a puddle on the stone.
He looked down at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“But you do,” Echo said. “You’ve been hiding from it since you were a child.”
I would willingly walk the plank now if Smoke dared ask.
So, I was glad when the captain returned, followed by the rest of the Court. My mother was at his elbow, and I felt my stomach turn. Behind them, robed mages labored with leather trunks and wooden chests.
“Take them to the docks,” said my mother. “The jollies are waiting.”
She looked up at him.
“Isn’t that right, Gavriel?”
His eyes were dark, mouth grim, and I knew a deal had been struck.
“My crew will assist,” he said. “We weigh anchor at Forgedawn.”
My mother’s sweeping gaze fell on me, and she smiled.
“Honor,” she said, and she swept forward, arms extended. “You should eat, regain your strength. The chimeric drains you.”
And she clasped me tightly, leaned in to touch her cheek to mine. I let her. The only other action would have been to hide behind Echo, and that would have been weak.
Not weak, said Echo in my head. Hold out your hand and tell her no.
I looked up at him. Suns, I respected that man.
Next time, he said.
Next time, and I fought the stinging of my eyes anew.
Fahr had left the table to stand by the captain, and I ached to think of what this bargain had cost.
“What’s in the trunks?” I whispered to Echo.
“Magik, robes, supplies, books,” he said.
“Why?”
“I believe they’re coming with us.”
“The Court of Sand is coming with us?”
“Three of them, yes. That is my understanding.”
I left his side, stumbled toward the captain and the first mate and my mother.
“Sir,” I said. “I told you I could bargain.”
He stared down at me, aloof and unreadable once again.
“I have no need of your bargains, Aro’el.”
“You can’t give them the Touchstone!”
“I am not giving them the Touchstone.”
“Are you giving them you?”
“No, Ensign,” he sighed.
I swallowed the lump that had leaped from my chest.
“Me?”
“While it seems the kings of both helms want a chimeric chaser, the Court of Sand does not. I am giving them the Cloudgate.”
The Cloudgate.
He was giving them the Cloudgate.
The goal, the solution, the destination, the prize. The source of the chimeric, the door between helms. And maybe the only way to save me. He was giving it all up, and it was like a boot to the gut.
He cocked his head.
“What? No wit? No retort? No response from an insolent Blue? Excellent. I’m validated.”
He was sad, so he lashed out. I knew the pattern, for I lived it myself.
But in truth, he was right. I had nothing.
No words, no rebuke, no rebuff. And in his defense, I had no alternative.
There was no good bargain to be had with the Court of Sand, no way a deal could satisfy all parties, especially if my mother was one of them now.
That was how I was raised and likely why I was never satisfied. I always wanted more, just like her.
“I hate this,” I grumbled under my breath.
“Good,” he said, and I looked up at him.
We both felt it. We’d defeated death but had lost to our dread bargains. The Court of Sand was a nest of vipers, and we had just invited them onto our decks. I wasn’t sure anything would ever be the same again.
I am sorry, his eyes said.
Me too, said mine.
“They’re here,” said Echo abruptly, and all heads turned. “Three ships. Rhi’Ahr.”
I knew the look. He was cleerseeing, thoughtspinning, all the things he did that made him a mage.
“The Touchstone awaits the order to engage, sir.”
“Engage,” said Thanavar.
And the dining hall echoed with the boom of cannons.