Chapter 41 The Cloudgate
We were ready before dawn as we prepared the Touchstone for careening when a shout came from the rigging.
Six sails in the northern Channel, all flying Admiralty ensigns, six thick-hulled warships led by the Templemore.
Thanavar had been right, and from their rate of knots, we had only hours before the Navy made land.
So, just after Forgedawn, Dev ordered the entire crew over to the Marelethan to take shelter from the Navy on the island’s east bank.
That left a skeleton crew on the Touchstone, but her rudder had not been damaged, and with magik and seamanship aplenty, she glided smoothly through the bay toward the shore.
I stood at her prow under the early-morning suns, one hand on the fife rail, sending chimeric into her bones.
The breeze was sharp, the bay waters choppy, and finally the Touchstone shuddered, groaning as her keel slid into the sand.
The Touchstone won’t need anyone after tomorrow, Dev had said. At least she’ll be home.
Home, she said in a voice barely there. Home.
The Island InBetween. Lindurithain. Home of the House WoodRaven.
In a leaking longboat, Dev, Echo, the ironmages, and I rowed through the shallows toward the rocky shore, but the closer we got, the more my heart began to sink. For this beach, once beautiful and glittering with magik, was now a shore of devastation, covered in ice and snow and wreckage and blood.
I didn’t want to get out. I didn’t want to go.
Dev slid out his sword and stepped from the longboat, and I followed, chimeric sizzling in my fingertips as we sloshed through the water and onto the shore.
It looked like a war zone, with crushed tents and scattered gear—barrels and chests, picks and axes, spears and arrows and bodies slain across the sand.
It was the crew of the Marelethan, slaughtered in the night, throats slit open, bellies split apart.
The stillness was unfathomable. Even the wind held her breath.
Fifty or more Rhi’Ahr to kill before dawn.
My stomach pitched, and I bent over, hands on my knees, desperate to catch my breath.
I had never seen blood like that, he’d told me, bones and brains and shattered faces.
His pain and his vengeance, right here in the sand.
Slain the way you might pick flowers.
These Rhi’Ahr warriors hadn’t stood a chance now that the last Priestlord of Lindurithain was home.
Like oil, the ironmages flowed past me, silent and lethal as they fanned out across the sand.
I looked up to see Dev quietly pick his way through the carnage, checking for life or danger or both.
Echo stood, eyes wide, boots in the water, arms wrapped around his chest. I wondered if he could feel the echoes of the fighting, the cries of soldiers cut down, and my heart broke for him.
I wanted to hug him, hold him, offer him comfort for once, to bear his burdens and ease his gentle soul.
He caught my eyes, tried to smile, and it broke me all over again.
We were mapping the fate of the world, I told myself. We were trying to end a war.
I took a deep breath and straightened my spine, summoning the chimeric that flowed in my veins.
While reaching the Cloudgate had been our goal these long months, I had never given much thought to what it might look like, and I found myself overwhelmed by its strangeness and its splendor.
The morning glowed like twilight, with skies of cinnamon and gold.
The beach sand was the color of ginger, and it turned the waters of the bay a brilliant green.
The air was heavy with the scent of sweet grass and limons, damp erthe and decay.
Leaves were red, purple, or brown, but curling as if bitten by the first tooth of frost. In the distance, the volcano towered over the trees, clouds of dark cinnamon tumbling slowly from its cone.
Fabled and forsaken, it was a legend that was dying, like the goddess who was dead.
I heard a splash and turned to see the second longboat rowing up on the shore.
Neale and two other seamages hauled the boat up onto the sand, and Dev jogged over to help them drag the trunks and crates from the Court of Sand.
I let my gaze sweep past them, caught by a sight at the far end of the beach.
Half in water, half in trees, a circular structure thrust out of the shoreline.
I wondered if it was a dock of some sort, or a wharf made of stone.
It was huge, easily as wide as the Touchstone was long, a high, smooth, flat platform growing out of the sand.
Chimeric drifted from its surface into the waters and onto the rocks.
Yes. Most likely a dock. Unless…
Chaser, come home.
“Exquisite,” said my mother, and I turned.
A cyr of hammered bronze rose like a lamppost out of the sand. Sitting atop it was a head.
She placed her fingers on his cheeks, then laid a palm across his eyes.
This was her realm; I knew it well. The space between life and death, the cold dread of the unknown, and the bargains made in its shadow.
She leaned in as if to kiss him and breathed in deeply, letting his taste fill her mouth before exhaling.
She stroked the forehead, smoothed the stringy hair from his face.
“He died late last night,” she said. “He was afraid and did not know what killed him.”
“The Priestlord killed him,” said Liskeel. “Look, the cuts…”
Three fatal slices beneath the chin.
“Impressive,” said Tek.
I remembered Worley saying how he’d torn Commodore Bracebridge’s face “clean off.” I had scars from when he’d caught me. I knew how lethal those talons could be.
“Three Rhi’Ahr,” said Echo suddenly. “Coming this way.”
Dev stepped forward, raised his sword, and I pulled my gloves off, tucking them in my sash.
“Veil,” said my mother.
Tekamorian snatched the cyr and tossed the head into the sand, and the ironmages stepped into a pattern. I could have sworn the air rippled around us, and the sky echoed with the cry of a winter hawk.
Suddenly, a Rhi’Ahr burst from the trees, followed by a second and then a third. My heart thudded in my chest as they stumbled toward us.
“Nisseth vraie dennayarh,” gasped the first, and he wiped his brow. “Asak laithe ni’dellen.”
They didn’t see us.
I slid my eyes over to my mother. Her face was taut, concentrating.
“Ni allath,” said the third. “Endorathil sil Marelethan fa’ardenn.”
I whispered the cy fwthilu under my breath, prayed they didn’t see my fingers spark behind my back.
“Curse this island,” said the second. “We are dead men for agreeing to this.”
“We were the ones who defiled our goddess the Tree,” said the third. “We are the cursed ones.”
“Now is not the time for contrition, Tannalyth,” growled the second. “You made your choice between a dead tree and a living king.”
I held my breath as the trees around seemed to shake at his words.
“It is the judgment of Goddess Lindurithain,” Tannalyth snapped. “The demon hawk is her decree.”
Liskeel nodded, and, like a cat, my mother moved.
Slowly, silently, she slipped toward them, sliding the bone pins from her hair.
I remembered those pins from our life in the Spits.
She pricked the neck of the first man as she swept past, and he slapped his skin as if stung by a pinewasp.
By the time she pricked the second, the first had buckled to the erthe, foam bubbling from his teeth. Within moments, both were dead.
And I knew now how she’d secured her place among the Court of Sand.
As she reached for the one called Tannalyth, he spun, catching her wrist with one hand and her throat with the other.
“Shroudling!” he hissed. “Demon!”
Beside me, Liskeel launched into the air, and in three flaps, he’d sunk his talons into the man’s shoulders.
The surprise had him releasing my mother as he shrieked in pain.
Liskeel lifted him, twisting and thrashing, from the ground.
With a roar, Tek hurled the cyr across the clearing and sent the man crashing into the trees.
So fast. They killed so unbelievably fast.
Echo rushed to the dead men, and my mother turned to us.
“There are no longer Rhi’Ahr on the Cloudgate.”
She smiled and slid the bone pins home again.
Chaser, come home.
I frowned. That wasn’t the Touchstone’s voice, and I turned back to the platform, the vast, flat semicircle of stone between the jungle and the sea. I took a step toward it, and my runescars lit up like sparks from a fuse.
“I’d say we’ve found the chimeric mine,” said Dev, and my heart sank into my boots.
As I got closer, I could see that the chimeric that floated across the platform came from holes that had been drilled. They bubbled and hissed like acid pools, and they called to me like the beat of an ancient heart.
My runescars ached, and I broke out in sweat as my body tried to cool the heat rising in my veins.
Scraps of old, tanned leather were embedded into the sides of the holes, pressed along the edges like dried wax.
I reached down, ran my fingers along the ridges.
Blackened and crisp, twisted and gray. Not leather, I realized. Not wax.
Bark.
I ran my fingers along the surface next. Not stone. Wood.
I staggered back, my heart hammering in my chest.
This entire platform was all that was left of the RuneTree.
If I had a thousand thousand years, I could never count the rings.
Surely, her branches held the stars. Surely, her roots girded the erthe.
But she was gone now. There were no whispers.
There was no voice. There was nothing left of her save the bark against my boots and the plateau of dead wood, blackened and split.
Nothing save the husk of something that had once been beautiful.
I sank to my knees, overcome with sorrows.