Chapter Forty One
PEDR
Darkness and half-baked realities escorted Pedr from pure unconsciousness. No sea song, no wind lulled him, only silence that sounded like empty thuds in a hollow world. A familiar voice he didn’t particularly want to hear, but couldn’t dismiss, brought him the rest of the way.
Einar, from on deck.
“That’s all Himmel said. Her name is Clara, and she’s a servant.”
“Clara?” Mila asked
“Yes, Clara. Himmel sounded afraid.”
“Onskar has taken Himmel, then?”
Einar expelled a punctuated, sharp breath. “It would be wise to assume so.”
“Then . . . Clara . . .”
“Everything about her is a presumption.”
Mila sounded quiet, small, when she whispered, “True.”
Their conversation swilled in Pedr’s mind. The words made sense on the surface, but he couldn’t hold their meaning. His sluggish thoughts resembled a gradually thickening steam. He focused on each individual emotion as his mind awoke.
“Okay,” Mila said with her characteristic eagerness, “but we can make other assumptions based on fact. For example, assuming the Hall of the Sky and the Hall of the Sea are similar in construction, we can anticipate shelves and reliquaries, but probably more reliquaries. It would also be prudent to expect the Hall of the Sea to reflect the sea environment, like the Hall of the Sky.”
The gentle thumps of pacing feet crossed the deck, stopped, spun, thumped again. Pedr kept his eyes closed because it required less energy. He eavesdropped on a planning meeting, it sounded like.
Recollections filtered by like fish. Here, gone again. Large chunks of time had passed without him, so no facts lined up in a discernible fashion to help him orient.
Where did they sail to?
What happened . . . back there?
The holes in his knowledge created irritating gaps, but he could barely hold to a thought. His emotions remained vague. He remembered a battle near . . . Himmel’s Hall, was it?
Mila said the word reliquaries. Environment.
Hall of the Sky. Patchy recollections formed again.
He coughed. His ribs ached where his heart beat again.
The tired, bruised organ flopped in pathetic tremors, with little force remaining.
He hated the agony of being human. Pedr craved breath, he craved completion. He craved the arcane.
Mila explained another detail to Einar, something about doors and access and confinement.
The name Clara arose again, followed by growls and utterances.
Unable to keep his mind on one track, Pedr’s thoughts wandered.
Should he stand? Draw their attention? He wouldn’t be awake long, so attempts to stand would be in vain. He could barely move his arms.
His debate made it obvious that this was the beginning of his end. An approach to the final waking hours. The details didn’t matter. Soon, he wouldn’t peel these bloodshot lids apart again.
“We know not to touch the reliquaries,” Mila added, interrupting Pedr’s self-sustained pity ride. “At least . . . it didn’t go well last time.”
Einar growled, “That’s another problem we haven’t tackled.”
“What?”
“How can we fetch Pedr’s reliquary to bargain with if we can’t touch it?”
“He’s an Arcanist.”
“So?”
“Maybe it’s different.”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “With any luck, we won’t have to touch Pedr’s reliquary. In fact, our plan needs to pivot on not touching it. At least, not me. Maybe it would be different if you touched it since you’re an arcane being.”
She sighed. “I’ll use Pedr’s reliquary as the focus of our search, as we’ve discussed.”
More information lay behind that single sentence. For all the world, Pedr couldn’t conjure what he should think about.
During a lull in discussion, Pedr might have skimmed the surface of sleep again. The conversation continued when Einar said, “I’ve done something like this before, with Henrik. Many times. We call it a feint-and-switch.”
“Oh.”
“Hasn’t failed me yet.”
Mila sighed. “We’ll try it. Though, I wish I could offer better assistance in fighting Onskar with the arcane.”
Pedr strained to hear Mila’s continuing explanation, but her voice dropped too far.
Did he sense embarrassment or despair? He couldn’t tell.
The conversation had an air of winding down and closure, though he couldn’t hear the words.
His hearing failed him for several seconds until a board creaked.
Weight shifted. Wailing made a ruckus outside. A storm, maybe?
Already, the oily, dead depths beckoned with putrid fingers. He didn’t want to go back there, but he must.
Unable to bear the suspense of seeing Mila again, and feeling marginally more awake, Pedr slowly lifted both eyelids.
They fluttered before remaining open. A low illumination filled his cabin, the lesser light before full day.
Lightest blue tones banished the nighttime, opening to sunrise.
What day was it? Were they down to the remaining hours?
Gathering his weak breath, he called, “Mila?” in a broken rasp.
He marveled that her feet traveled so quickly to his side. She lowered to her knees, curled her fingers around his arm, and smiled. Joy charged her grin.
“Good morning!”
He returned it, however faint. “Ta.”
“We’ve been waiting to speak with you. We have a lot to discuss, my love. We’re going to do it fast, in case we lose you again.”
Einar appeared, one hand gripping the diasvard handle attached to his hip.
He wore a loose, damp shirt. He braided his hair out of his eyes like a soldat who meant business.
For a human fighting an impossible battle, his eagerness gave Pedr a feeble shot of hope.
If any human could manage to kill the most powerful arcane being in Elestra, he’d put bets on Einar.
“Wake up, you bastid.” Einar tapped the side of the bed with his foot. “Must be nice to lay in your berth all day while the rest of us do all the work.”
Pedr scowled.
“Bastid.”
Einar grinned, but it sobered. “What do you know about Clara?”
The name stirred something in Pedr’s shallow mind. “Clara,” he murmured. A dreadful sensation arose with the name. He wrinkled his nose at the unpleasant idea that Clara was dangerous and curious and altogether unknown.
Mila threaded her fingers through Pedr’s and squeezed.
“Do you know her, my love?”
Pedr felt relatively confident that when he said, “I’ve never met her,” it was true. Each second he mulled over her name, hints of clarity pieced together.
“What do you know?” Einar asked.
“Rumors.”
“What ones?”
“Not sure . . . heard about her from pirates . . . long ago. They sailed a cursed sea, having nightmares about an Arcanist and a woman named Clara.” He tensed, recalling a day on the sea when he physically fought Onskar.
Shite.
What a bastid. Pedr did know a little about Clara.
“I tested Onskar by asking about her,” Pedr added. The words came easily now, though still required more energy than he wanted to impart. “He didn’t . . . didn’t like me saying her name.” With a shake of his head, he finished with, “Not sure why. Sorry.”
Einar’s lips tightened.
“That’s helpful. Thank you.”
A whump preceded a dip in the Rosenvatten’s stern.
Einar crouched to gaze out the windows. He relaxed.
Pedr could have sworn he saw a distant shadow, almost like a wyvern winging close.
Must have been a trick of the burgeoning light, for what wyvern would be out here?
Moments later, heavy feet traversed the stairs and the door squeaked open, sending Pedr’s observation to ether.
Draven, hair wet and expression bright, politely inquired, “I presume that Pedr is finally awake?”
Oh, right.
That wyvern.
Einar said, “Yes, sir.”
“Happy to hear it.” The Father King ducked into the room, pushing the door open wider.
“I’ve returned with good news. According to my nose and scouting ahead, we’re about an hour from the current that once bore the Hall of the Sea.
” He added, “A thousand years ago, anyway, which is a relatively short time for a being like Onskar.”
Mila sucked in a sharp breath.
“Let’s not mince time or minutes.” Draven crossed the room to stand at Pedr’s bedside. Pedr loathed Draven’s easy control, the bodily prowess, while he wallowed in the sheets. He closed his eyes to preserve energy.
“You have very little time left, Pedr.”
“Well spotted,” he muttered.
“Can you access the arcane?”
“Don’t know.”
“Try, please?”
Pedr attempted to seek it, but nothing existed. He shook his head once.
“I understand it’s difficult,” Draven said politely, “but I’m going to ask you to try again.
Perhaps a third time after that, but let’s give you a firm purpose with it.
I want you to help us locate the Hall of the Sea based on the arcane.
It drifts on an ever-roving current. I believe we’ve located the current, based on the concentrated amount of arcane in this position, but I’m not sure if we’re near the Hall.
As Arcanist of the Sea, you are the only arcane being who can help us. Will you try again?”
“Where’s Himmel?”
“I believe Onskar has her.”
Rage on Himmel’s behalf bubbled to the surface, sparing Pedr the agony of failure.
With that tidbit of information, and the little power that ire lent, he turned his focus within.
All ties to this moment fled. Only Mila’s hands, wrapped around one of his, provided an anchor as he glared into the darkness and faced the master who glared back.
Pedr dove into the empty, cavernous place that had been his soul.
Once teeming with arcane and life, it degraded further into a wasteland.
His heart chugged reluctantly while flabby breaths filled shriveled lungs.
The splitting of arcane and soul during the last several days had cleaved and rent and wrenched until his soul became a shell. Only edges, no interior.
Just before he gave up on his search, he sensed ghostly arcane existed in the periphery of his awareness, like a phantom pain. Sly and sneaky, this arcane. The moment he attempted to conjure an awareness of it, it evanesced.
He sent out mental casts for the Otherworld. Could he enter again? How long had it been since he stepped into the ethereal, strange white light?
Too long.
His attempts were in vain. Please. Let me in, he asked, but no response came. No void granted access, nor could he sense his request in a stirring or echo. A loneliness this pervasive had never overtaken him before. Not when he lost his parents, his humanity, nor Mila.
Wrenching the last of his awareness into the remaining arcane tendrils, he gasped out a final command.
Reveal my Hall.
A response came, faint as a dying echo. From distant mind-reaches, shadows revealed the arcane map. The lines, barely visible, resembled smoke. Amidst the twining haze, he saw the place: a gigantic loop in the sea, burning bright as a sunburst, dead ahead.
Pedr gripped it in his mind’s eye. Thankfully, Mila anchored him from these inner workings or he may not have had energy to return. He rose to his conscious mind, where every breath required effort. The weight of one hand now rested over his chest, pressing his heart.
Her voice wobbled with a low cry. “Pedr? Are you still with us?”
“I see it,” he gasped.
“Where?”
Grunting through escalating pain, he breathed deep and clenched his hands. “Hold her steady—north by northeast. Half an hour more. Then give her a slight starboard yaw—just a point off.”
“What does that mean?” she cried.
“I understand,” Einar said, clipped and confident. “Anything else?”
“The Hall is . . . below.”
“How far?”
“Not . . . sure. Wait.”
In a last blow of energy, Pedr demanded the arcane reveal what he most feared: the uncanny depths. Final tendrils struggled to coalesce, giving Pedr the slightest understanding. An eternity existed between the Rosenvatten and the Hall of the Sea’s entrance. Too far for a human to swim.
“Far,” is all he could say.
Einar asked, “Anything else?”
“No.”
“It’s enough. Thank you, Pedr.”
The arcane, slippery as fish, wriggled away.
He let it go. Mila pulled her fingertips down the side of his face in a steady, soothing rhythm.
His taut muscles calmed, and so did his bucking heart.
Einar’s feet pounded out of the room as Mila began to hum.
Pedr sank into the quiet pleasure of her song, savoring every note, breathing for the next, and clasping it.
He thought a tear trickled down his wrist, but Mila’s song remained unbroken.
The Rosenvatten lurched, slowing. Einar shouted a few curse words, and Draven called from farther away. Mila’s hand hovered near Pedr’s neck, trembling, but her song didn’t stop.
Pedr wrenched his eyes open again. Mila sat next to him, tear trails staining her cheeks. Defiance burned in her eyes, lessening outright terror. She gripped his hand, pressed his knuckles to her lips. Despair crippled all he wanted to say. He swallowed it, bringing his hand to her jaw.
“You can do this.”
“Pedr—”
“I trust you. I know you can.” He infused might into his words. “I am ready for a life with you.”
Einar shouted from outside.
“We’re on course!”
Comprehension slipped away, a landslide Pedr couldn’t call back. This time, it was real. The end had come. A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye as he rasped, “I love you.”
Mila clamped his hand in hers. His petite, fiery little vixen transformed into a woman hardened by love and determination.
“No, Pedr. I love you more, and I’ll see you when you awaken with your soul intact.”