Chapter 51 Samson
SAMSON
I cannot bear to find your mad heart silenced, your inner comet stilled. There is music for us still to hear, my love. So why are you not near?
—from The Odyssey of Goromount: A Play
The Lord exploded in a sheath of flames running down its sides, but that was not the inferno that called to Samson.
It first came with a bloom. Soft and warm, beneath the cage of his chest. Even as his own exhaustion subdued the edges of the world, he felt something sharp and vicious, awakening.
He turned, half-afraid, half-hoping. Could it be?
The sensation intensified into a calcified, white-hot heat that snagged the corner of his heart and tugged.
He almost cried out in pain and relief. It was her.
He knew the shape of her desire, the fury of her wanting.
He knew it as well as he knew the curves of Seshar’s moonlit bays, or the song of the wind as it rattled through the mangrove leaves, soft and low like a murmur.
He tried to call to her. To catch the indefinite ribbons of her prana, but when he tried to grasp them, they fizzled through his mind.
Samson stumbled back into the bridge, Jaya on his heels.
“It’s Elena,” he gasped. “She’s alive.”
“What? How?” Daz whirled, searching the sensors. “Did she send a signal?”
“Her Agni, I can feel it. She’s on the Lord of Sea.”
Pity flickered in her eyes as Rhumia turned to him. “She’s gone to the sea, islander.”
“She is not! Why else did the Lord take the hit? She screened us.”
“He has a point,” Jaya said. “I saw the flames on the Lord. They moved like hers.”
Daz shook his head. “Forget the killdoms. We can’t win. We must make for Tsuana in haste. Rhumia, set a course for the south to outrun these bastards, then send a distress signal to—”
“But Elena needs us!” Samson interjected. “It is her! I know it. She is on that ship.”
“Our priority now is getting to Tsuana, safe and sound. Elena may be gone, but I can still push our cause when I take my seat at the council—”
Daz yelped in alarm as a blue flame snapped forth, biting his wrist. Rhumia whipped around, her hair rippling, hardening, as Afira lunged for him.
Samson dodged her, his urumi singing as he snapped it forward. Flames roared down the blade.
“Daz,” he called over the inferno. “I don’t want to harm you. Turn us toward the Relentless or give me command of the ship.”
Rhumia swiped, and the edge of her hair caught his forearm, cutting through his skin. Samson hissed in pain. He brought up a flame, forcing her back.
“Daz! Turn back or surrender this ship.”
But then Afira struck, swift and silent. He had not heard her creep behind him, but he felt her now as her hair dug into his shoulders. Samson cried out, his sword falling. She slammed him into the wall, and he crumpled to the floor.
Shadows ringed his vision. Faintly, he heard Jaya screaming, and then a wet, gurgling sound.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Daz said, his voice pinched. “But we must sail straight to Tsuana now.”