Ship of Spells

Chapter 42 Run #2

I’d lost track of time as we rocked past the southern Channel, but Kier’s spells grew more intense, and my arms trembled as I caught them one by one.

Each sizzled along tendon and bone, and I struggled to focus on anything beyond the blinding pain of the catch, the exhaustion that was left in its wake. Over and over. Catch. Augment. Throw.

We practically flew past the southern gap, as broad as it was in the north, and I paled to see seven Rhi’Ahr cruisers bearing down on us. We had to close it before they got through, else they’d be trapped within the safe waters of the Cloudgate. With us.

I couldn’t think of anything worse.

“Close it, spinners!” I heard Dev cry, and my knees almost buckled as Kier sent another spell my way.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the jambs smash inward and the waters burst up, and I lost sight of the ships in the fury and the spray.

I clenched my lids tight, desperate for breath, willing my body not to give out.

“Aro’el?” I heard Kier shout.

“I’m fine!” I cried back, offering a shaky grin. “I’m good!”

I lied like the best of them now, thanks to the Ship of Spells.

But suddenly, there was a crate of chimeric at my feet, and I looked up. Neale and Dik had brought it for me, and my chest almost burst at the sight. They knuckled a salute and backed away, wisely not staying too close to a lit wick and her fuel.

“Last leg, Aro’el!” Kier shouted, and I pulled strength from the sound of his voice. I was his kedge, but Forge dammit if he wasn’t the wind in my sails.

We were rounding in on the northern gap once more, preparing to head into the Channel.

This was the dangerous part, I knew. We’d close this gap behind us and keep closing it as we sailed.

A normal gap was close and run—Thrum, Call, and Bind—but this was close and keep closing while we ran.

I didn’t even know the Auctorus for that. It didn’t matter. I trusted he did.

I turned my weary eyes to see him, shining and arrogant and proud. He was grinning at me through his tangle of sea-dark hair.

His eyes. My heart.

I hate you, I mouthed, my lips tugging into one cheek as I teased.

“Good,” he said.

I loved him so much.

With a deep breath, I plunged my hands into the crate of the chimeric. I screamed as it shot up my arms and into my belly, seared my bones but set my body alight with power. It took me apart and put me together. It emptied me and made me full. Pushing and pulling at the very same time.

It was pain and it was pleasure. Edges of the same blade.

I spun and sent another wave into the Dreadwall as the Marelethan banked starboard and took us into the Channel.

The Templemore was at our stern, and I could see Bracebridge holding the forecastle rail, his gray hair slicked back off his face.

I knew he longed to blow us from the waters, but he was a pragmatic man, choosing life over vengeance and duty.

I glanced at Kier. Maybe not so pragmatic, but perhaps he was charting a new course, too, abandoning his vengeance to choose life. To choose his kedge. To choose me.

Suns, I couldn’t even imagine what that would be like.

No, maybe I could.

We were in the Channel now, racing through it at a rate of knots, and it was not at all like the Halls of Silence or of Sheets.

We were literally slicing through the Dreadwall, and the waters raged up on either side.

The howl deafened, the spray stung, and the magik reflected all things like a madhouse of glass.

“Spinners, at the ready!” Dev shouted, and I knew we were going to close it now, behind us as we ran with the wind.

The Templemore was fast, her sails full and her lines bluff.

She was able to keep to our stern and run north along with us, keeping her safe in our wake.

But the other five ships lagged behind her in this gap, and they ran the risk of being shattered like the Meradah Thenn when the waters rushed in.

No. I couldn’t think of that.

“Aro’el!” Kier cried. “We do this now!”

And he flung another pattern, the Thryh’siahr tryo’visseth, into my waiting hands.

I caught it but slid backward at the force, the spell almost pushing me from the pup.

I crouched low, marshalled my chimeric, and leaped to my feet, flinging it high, over the Templemore, over the fleet, straight into the gap behind us.

“Again!”

And again, I caught it, augmented it, flung it over the sea.

Again and again and again, until I thought I’d burst into ash, when behind me, there was a sound.

A crack of lightning, a peel of thunder, and the jambs of the Dreadwall itself erupted in a shower of colors and lights like fireworks or a hailstorm of shooting stars.

The sea boiled with pattern. The waters roared with zeal.

Plumes burst up into the sky, one after another, as the Dreadwall began to move.

Like two sides of a curtain being drawn over a window, the Channel slammed itself shut.

A glittering wall of fury and elemental force closed behind us, and all around, the ocean thundered.

It roared and it thundered, and Kier stepped up the speed of his casting.

I caught and I flung. I caught and I flung.

My hands were numb, my body spent, and my thoughts began to detach, to slip away into the Worldrune where my whole life was seared in rune.

I was wayward. I was willful. I was stubborn.

I was proud. I had served the marvelous, magikal Ship of Spells.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard a boom. It rocked the deck beneath my boots.

I had a duty to this ship.

Shouts from the crew. The ship pitched forward.

I had a duty to my family, now the marvelous, magikal crew of the Marelethan.

His voice, barking orders over the Dreadwall’s deafening wail.

I had a duty to my lover. Kier Gavriel. Moon Weaver. I loved him to the moons and back.

Suddenly, his hands were on my shoulders, and I realized that we were not casting. There was no pattern. There was no spell. Wearily, I looked up. He drew me under one arm, his very body helping me to stand.

“Aro’el,” he said. “Aro’el, it is not enough.”

I didn’t know what he was saying. My ears could barely hear.

He turned me. I saw the Channel behind us, the Templemore with only three ships at her stern, and I knew we had lost two in the closing of this gap. But there was something else, a ripple, a darkness, a faint tear in the Dreadwall that was threatening to grow.

Forge, it was growing.

The realization swept down from my head to my boots. It wasn’t enough. We weren’t enough. We couldn’t close this gap. It was massive, elemental, and Archaic, and we were out of our depth. I felt dizzy, weak, lightheaded at the realization that all this had been in vain.

“No. I have more chimeric,” I said weakly. “I can do more.”

“It is not that,” he said, and he drew my chin up, forcing me into the gold-shot depths of his eyes. “The problem is on the other side.”

The air rushed out of me, a sail robbed of wind.

“The other side,” I said, nodding woodenly, knowing it was true.

The ironmages couldn’t do it. They didn’t have the skill. Perhaps one day, they would, but that was not this day.

“It needs to be closed from both sides,” he said. “And the ironmages cannot close it.”

“I have the chimeric,” I panted. “We’re good. We can do it.”

“We can,” he said. “When I am on the island.”

Oh suns, no. The strength fled my bones, my stomach knotted, my breath locked tight.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. I wanted to pound my fists against his chest. I wanted to hide in his arms, in his shadows, under his wing.

I wanted to reach up to cradle his face in my palms, trace the gold threads beneath his skin.

Deep called to deep. Magik to magik. Runechasers both.

“No,” I gasped. “There’s another way. There’s always another way.”

“Aro’el.”

“You’ll be marooned on the Cloudgate!” My words spilled off my tongue. “Oh, Forge! No! You can’t!”

“I must,” he said, and I saw the tears gathering behind his lashes. “Aro’el, ten years ago, I started this war. Today, I must end it.”

My shoulders sagged, my head dropped low. He was right. He had started it, or at least given it a second wind. And I knew he could close it from the island. The chimeric burned beneath his skin like it did mine. It made sense. It would work. It wasn’t fair, but it was the only way.

I wanted to hate him. For choosing sacrifice. For choosing chains. For choosing isolation as the price for his vengeance and pride. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. It was his choice. He had the right to chart his own course.

“I know,” I said. My own eyes stinging now, my throat too tight to say more. My heart was a stone, sinking in the deep.

“I choose life,” he said, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I do. I choose a path of life, and I know it will lead me back to you. I will close this gap and repair this wall…and then I will find my way back to you.”

I said nothing. What did a crab say when their shell was all gone?

“Remember, I am stubborn as well,” he said, smoothing my hair from my forehead. “I will find a way off that island. I will find a way back to you. I will not be marooned with your mother for the rest of my days.”

His lips twitched, and I looked up at him. Finally, in this time of all times, a joke. I shook my head and smiled, tears spilling down my face. I didn’t fight them.

“I have loved you since the day we pulled you from the sea,” he said. “Fierce. Stubborn. Powerful. Strong. And now—glorious. My Aro’el.”

He pulled me into his arms. Oh suns, I didn’t want him to let go. My entire body shook as he kissed my brow and I breathed him in one last time. Salt and oil. The deep sea itself.

I took another heavy breath as an idea began to form, filling me as wind fills the sails.

He had the right to chart his own course.

But so did I. Besides, I had mutiny in my bones.

“I have my own course to chart,” I said. My heart was pounding, but the rhythm was sure. “And it leads me straight to you.”

“I look forward to it, then,” he said. “For I am not an easy man to catch. Beloved.”

Beloved.

I would find another way. I would bleed, break, bargain with every ounce of chimeric in my veins if I had to. I would find him. I would save him. I would release him from his life of duty and remorse.

Besides, deep called to deep. We were runechasers both. We would find each other because of the chimeric in our veins. We would chase and we would catch and we would finally be free.

“Captain?”

It was Smoke. He threw a glance at the curtain of water, the tear growing, opening. Falling.

Sometimes I fight. Sometimes I run.

“I know what to do,” I said.

“Run,” he said.

“Run.” I nodded again. “Go.”

He stepped back but lingered a brief moment, as if memorizing my face for the very last time.

“I love you!” I shouted. “Go!”

And he flung himself over the side.

Over the side, where wayward Blues go.

I held my breath, sure my heart didn’t beat until I saw the flash of white streak up from the stern. I watched him soar up, so high up, until he was lost in the roiling white clouds of the Dreadwall, taking what was left of my heart with him.

I spun around to Smoke.

“Another chest of chimeric!” I ordered. “We’re closing this foggin’ gap!”

“Aye, Chaser,” he barked, and I felt a surge of pride. Chaser. I had chased, and I had found. I had fought, and I had won. I would close this gap and run with the wind. I was stubborn, and I was loved, and I was not too proud for the Ship of Spells.

I couldn’t be proud enough.

And I plunged my hand in to the chimeric once more.