Chapter 36 Transecting the Dreadwall
The initial marvel of sailing sideways turned to exhaustion after days of transecting the Dreadwall.
To maintain our course of due east, all posts had to be manned constantly.
Thanavar, Fahr, and Smoke took turns at the moonswheel, while a full crew steadied the capstan to keep the sea anchor taut.
Sails shredded as we flew through the powerful spray, and repairs were made the moment they tore.
Canvases stitched, frayed lines mended, and I was glad the riggers were tied off.
While our course held true, we were travelling at more than a hundred knots, Buck had said, and perpendicular to the sea, and it was a very rough ride. One bump could easily see someone fly over the rail. They would be lost in a heartbeat without a line.
The ironmages hadn’t moved from their place on the pup, and I began to wonder if they had cast themselves in stone. Maybe they had cast themselves in iron. I found myself surprised at their resolve and impressed by their skill.
With our sideways race across the Dreadwall, no one felt sick, and hands could walk across the deck as if righted.
That was fully illusion, and I appreciated even more, now, the power of the Worldrune and the web the suns had spun.
More than on paper, it was drawn in the sand, in the stars, and in the sea.
And I knew in my bones now what it meant to serve the Ship of Spells.
The Touchstone needed my chimeric, so I kept a hand on her at all times, but after the first several hours of traveling this way, I grew bone-weary.
The roar the Dreadwall made was deafening, the constant cold spray leaving me numb.
Smoke had to tie my hands to the mast to keep me in position.
Even in sleep, I stayed this way, arms wrapped around the main, palms flat, cheek pressed against the old, old wood, and one bare foot atop a chest of chimeric.
Because of this, I couldn’t help but plumb the lure of the Touchstone’s mirror.
Memories flooded through me of a different time, a different life, and I knew it was Kirianae of the House WoodRaven.
I could feel the things she had felt as a thousand years of memory became mine.
I was blessed by the suns and called by the moons from my birth in the Heart of the Cloud.
I stretched forth my fingers to touch the stars, buried my toes deep into the heart of the world, pulsed the chimeric through my veins like sweet syrup.
I guarded my people for one thousand years, with shelter, with shade, with wisdom, with rune.
I met a young boy with eyes like the sea, and I kept him, I saved him, I taught him, set him free.
Along my branches, the winter hawk slept.
He hunted, he preened, he shielded, he soared.
I lived, I died, I loved as Kirianae Lindurithain, Goddess of the Island InBetween. Oh, how I loved.
I was reborn as the Touchstone, mythical, dreaded, fast, and free.
I sank enemy ships. I raised sunken wrecks.
I sailed the oceans. I took cannon fire.
I lost men, and I saved them. I weighed anchor and closed breaches and followed my hawk through the seas.
Storms, calm, water, sky. I was a seabird and a warship.
I broke, was rebuilt, and I loved as the Touchstone. Oh, how I loved.
And I plucked a wretched, wayward girl from the waters, set her feet upon my deck, until she didn’t know if she was deck or girl, ethereal or wayward, and time settled like a river over me.
Or did it set me like a pebble into it? I didn’t know anymore.
The crew was my eyes and my ears and my heart, while Honor Renn, Ensign Bluemage of the Kingship Frigate Dawn Watch, grew as thin as a veil or an island InBetween.
I was losing myself to her mirror. Willingly.
Thanavar appeared at some point to speak to Fahr at the moonswheel.
He was about to leave the ship, go ahead of us to find the Cloudgate and the surrounding waters where we would land.
We would need to be prepared for it when we hit, else we’d plummet to the sea upon leaving the madness of the Dreadwall.
He saw me then and crossed the deck, towering over me like a gaunt giant.
I gazed up at him, trying to push her thoughts from my mind, but she was all I knew.
He laid a hand on the mast and leaned for a long moment before looking down at me.
“Tell her not to forget,” he said. “Tell her we’re almost home.”
“She knows.” And I smiled up at him. “Kel’yion.”
He lingered a long moment before turning and throwing himself over the bulwark. There was a white flash, and he was gone.
From night until morning, we traveled like this, flying on the side of the Dreadwall.
Nan brought meals to all hands on deck, including me, but food meant nothing.
Echo worried, so he fed me like a baby. Not that I cared.
The Dreadwall and the Touchstone had swept all pride from my bones.
I was nothing now but a conduit for magik.
I could be a swift. I could be a tree. I could be anything I wanted. I was magik. All of it. All of me.
I was a mirrormage, and I was the mirror.
My father, Thanavar, Kirianae, Renn. Aro’el, the chaser.
The chimeric runescars had near claimed me whole.
I could feel them across my chest and back, my throat to my cracked lips.
I could read them in my mind’s eye, could feel them in my blood.
I was a different creature than any other creature in either helm, as lost as a woman could be, but as deep and found as the erthe.
Runechaser.
Last night, someone had touched my shoulder, and it took all of my power to come back to the mast. It was Neale. He held out a cup.
“Can’t forget your ration, Blue,” he said.
Slowly, my eyes flicked down to it.
“It ain’t poisoned,” he said. “You’re one of us now. You deserve it.”
And he knuckled a salute.
I would gladly drink any grog he brought me after that, poisoned or not.
At some point the next morning, Thanavar was there. Perhaps I awoke to the strum of his fingers on the Worldrune, perhaps to the beat of his heart in my veins. He stood beside Fahr, brows dark, lips tight.
“We have a problem,” he said. There was something in his voice, but I couldn’t tell anymore. It was the roar of the Dreadwall. It was the song of the ship.
“Meet me in the cabin,” he said to Dev. “Bring Messrs. Smoke, Buck, Broom, Kobe, Echo.”
“And Blue?” said the mate.
“Leave her with me.”
Before I knew, only Thanavar was there, and Dev was not.
He knelt down beside me.
“Aro’el,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m in the whale,” I murmured. “Half fish. Half bird. All sea.”
“Your runescars are not shining.”
And I felt his hand on my forehead, brushing my cheek, smoothing my damp hair. His touch was music, a song I longed to sing. I just didn’t know the tune.
“What have I done to you?”
“Lost,” I said. It was hard to speak with words, not rune. “I think I’m lost.”
“Moons, what have I done?”
The muscles of his jaw rippled as he thought. He reached for the ropes that secured my hands. He burned them free and gathered me in his arms.
“It’s the mirror. She’s the mirror, and I’m losing myself in her.
” I pressed my cheek into the mast. No. It was his chest. So hard to tell.
“But I love her. I love this ship, this Kirianae, this goddess whom I’ve never met.
I love that I’ve now lived so many lifetimes, when I always thought I’d never really live one.
But I’m almost spent, and I don’t know how to be anymore. I don’t know who I am. And I think—”
My words failed. My breath caught. It took everything that was left inside me to finish.
“If I’m going to die from this chimeric, I want to die as me.”
Thanavar stood in front of the mullioned windows, staring out at the sea. He did not turn.
“The Rhi’Ahr have taken the Cloudgate.”
They said nothing for a long moment.
“Did you scry the island?” asked Dev.
The captain nodded.
“The Marelethan is refitting and taking on chimeric,” he said.
“Just the Marelethan?” asked Echo.
“Just,” said Thanavar.
“Hm,” said Echo, and he frowned.
“Well, maybe that’s a good thing, then,” said Smoke. “Considering the alternative.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I wasn’t surprised. I was half ship, half bird. I didn’t know where the chaser came in.
“They have set up nialyn all around the island,” said Thanavar. “The land is frozen, the trees dying.”
“The Rhi’Ahr bring winter,” said Dev. “You always told me that.”
“It’s our way,” he said.
He turned now. He looked weary, his hair wild, his cheeks so gaunt. His eyes swept across those assembled, except for me.
“The ship herself is anchored with a skeleton crew,” he said. “The rest are on the island, so once we land, we can sink her or take her a prize.”
“Land?” asked Smoke.
“We are flying,” said Dev.
“We’re sailing,” said Smoke. “Sideways, yes, but still. It’s strange to call it landing.”
“That’s magik for you,” said Buck.
“Regardless of what we call it,” said Thanavar, “we will need to make short work of her before her crew returns. Mr. Fahr, I need you, Mr. Broom, and Mr. Oakum to work out how you will make this happen, given the fact that we may not be fit to fight off a healthy Rhi’Ahr cruiser.”
“Are you anticipating damage once we…land?” asked Ben.
“Even if we bring her close to sea level before we leave the Dreadwall, I anticipate much, yes.”
“I ain’t sure how to haul closer, sir,” said Ben. “We already got the sea anchor and the cannons to keep us from rising with the current.”
“We are currently a quarter league over level, Mr. Kobe. The Court of Sand is working on a joint Kinestorum, but if we cannot get lower, we will shatter the hull entirely when the Dreadwall ends.”
Ben made a face.