Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
“Should be there by dusk, just in time for the late tide.” Deke’s weathered eyes narrow on the horizon. “Assuming we don’t get tripped up by—”
The words are halfway out of his mouth when the quake hits.
The boom sounds from deep within Dymmeria.
I do not understand what is happening at first. Not until I see the distant dunes collapsing in on themselves like a pile of sugar heaped too high.
Whole mountains of sand shake violently as the earth below trembles with astonishing force.
They fall into the sea all at once, an avalanche that causes a splash so high, my heart stumbles inside my chest. It stops entirely when I watch that splash solidify into a solid swell.
A tsunami.
“Infernal hells!” I hear Jac yell from the foredeck where he and Mabon are sparring. “brACE!”
My eyes swing around the ship, taking account of everyone.
There is Penn, racing up from the crew quarters, strapping his bandolier across his chest as he moves.
There, by the starboard rail, Cadogan is running toward Melité.
There, in the ratlines, Chari and Xio are scrambling quickly toward the deck.
Where is Farley?
“Fuck!” His oath is distant. “Oh, fuck me!”
Skies.
He’s in the crow’s nest, of all places.
“Farley!” I scream. “Get down from there!”
But there is no time. The wall of water barrels straight at us with incalculable speed, roaring like a wild beast. There is no stopping it, though I can feel Soren’s maegic surging as he tries his best to stave off its advance from the other ship.
It is too strong, and far too close.
Even for him.
My eyes search for him as I reach out with my own maegic. I will offer him whatever strength I have, I will—
The wave hits, slamming both ships sideways like children’s toys in a bathtub, one after the other.
Plunging our sails into the water. I lose my footing as the world flips over, pitching me off the deck and into the dark before I have time to draw a full breath.
The impact is disorienting, the cold mind-numbing.
My body spins out of my control, no match for the raging ocean that tosses us round and round at its whims.
I force my eyes open, ignoring the sting of salt as I look around, trying to get my bearings. Trying to decipher which way is up, which direction to swim.
Where, gods, where is the surface?
My lungs are screaming. The submerged sails float ghostly black in the gloom.
Ropes and rigging threaten to ensnare me as I kick blindly, praying my head will break free of the briny waters.
By the time I burst into the dim light of day, my head is dizzy from the lack of air.
I drag deep gulps into my throat, looking around the frothed surface with frantic eyes.
The brig is lying on its side, heavy sails full of water.
“Rhya!” Penn roars somewhere out of sight. “Rhya, where are you?”
“Here!” My voice cracks on the shriek. “I’m here!”
Mabon’s bald head breaks the surface not far from me. Near the stern, where the exposed rudder flaps uselessly, I see Cadogan and Melité treading water. Chari and Xio are with them.
I do not see Deke anywhere.
“Mabon!” I yell. “Where’s Deke?”
“Here,” comes the skipper’s gruff reply. “Right behind you.”
“I’m here, too, don’t you worry about me,” Jac grouses from my left, clutching a floating barrel. He looks mad as a wet house cat, his dark blond mane a snarled mess. “Anyone seen Farley?”
“He was in the crow’s nest.” Treading continuously, I do my best to keep my head above the swells as my gaze traces the length of the mainmast until its tip disappears into the inky waves. “Gods, what if he’s tangled up in the rigging? What if—”
“Skies, woman,” a familiar voice wheezes. “Don’t get hysterical.”
The redhead’s ornery tones have never been so welcome. I spin around and see him swimming my way from behind several floating wood boxes that were swept off the deck. His auburn curls are plastered against his forehead, but he appears unharmed.
“Farley! Thank gods.”
“Thank my fast reflexes, you mean.” He scoffs. “If I hadn’t jumped clear when I did, I’d have been dragged straight to the bottom.”
We all trade relieved glances. The brig is felled, but we are all alive and accounted for. On this ship, at least.
Mabon’s thoughts mirror mine. “Wonder how the others fared…”
The overturned vessel blocks most of our view. Jac pushes up on the barrel, trying to get higher. “Can’t see a thing over these damn swells.”
“More importantly,” Farley says, grabbing hold of an apple as it floats by and tucking it into his tunic, “how the hell are we going to right the ship?”
“She’ll right herself, if you give her a moment,” Deke replies. “Her keel is heavy enough to pull her back upright. Or…mostly upright. So long as the air-holds aren’t compromised, that is…”
Even as he speaks, the capsized vessel is straining toward the surface, fighting against the weight of her waterlogged sails with a low shudder I think might snap her masts clean in half.
That will not do.
“Mabon,” I murmur. “If I pass out, don’t let me sink.”
“What?” His voice sharpens with alarm. “Rhya, what are you doing?”
Ignoring his concern, I send out several thick tendrils of air that wrap around the booms and twine up the rigging. Then, with a momentous pulse of maegic, I heave them skyward.
The water is unfathomably heavy. Almost immovable.
Still waters do not easily shift, Soren told me once.
How right he’d been. The effort required to raise it more than a handspan at a time leaves me lightheaded and even more breathless than before. Yet as I watch the mast inching slowly out of the water, I cannot stop a smile from spreading across my face.
It’s working.
Once I get it started, the ship does the rest on its own—popping back up like a submerged cork in a barrel. Water rains down from the damp sails, hitting the deck in a thunderous downpour. It gushes from the gunnels, seeps out from the rails of the deck, returning to the ocean where it belongs.
Chari and Xio, who wisely clung to the rigging as it sailed upward, wave down at the rest of us from the port rail.
Jac makes a crude hand gesture in return. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re a dimwit,” Mabon mutters.
Farley laughs.
“Well done, Rhya,” Penn says, treading water beside me. I did not even see him swim up, so intent was my focus. “You really have mastered your winds.”
I blink at the ragged edge to his voice. “Mastered? Not quite. It’s still—I’m still—a work in progress.”
“But he did this for you. Soren, he—” His jaw tightens briefly, as though it is a struggle to force out the words. “He helped you. His methods, they worked. This time…they actually worked.”
I nod, feeling strong emotions lash out of him from the bond.
I’m quite sure he is thinking of Enid in this moment.
Of the last wind weaver they tried to aid, only to find her wild tempests too strong to rein in.
The woman he saved from certain death only to lose shortly thereafter.
Even after seventy years, the pain of that loss is sharp as a blade.
But beneath it, there is something new. Something unexpected.
Undeniable sparks of relief are catching within him.
I am not Enid.
I will not be swept away by my own powers.
And for Penn…there is hope in that. Hope for me. Hope for himself. Hope for an entirely different sort of future than the one he has been relegated to, a slave to his own incendiary tendencies.
“I do not know whether I am more awed by your control or envious I do not possess it for myself,” he confesses without even a shade of bitterness. His eyes are alight with warmth for the first time in days, a flicker of his old heat. “It’s incredible. You are incredible.”
“Thank you, Penn.” I smile tiredly at him. “Ready?”
His dark brows furrow. “For?”
I do not answer verbally. Instead, I use a fresh current of air to boost him straight up out of the sea, onto the righted ship.
His surprised shout as he hits the deck makes Jac and Mabon laugh.
But their amusement turns quickly to shouts of their own as they, too, are lifted clear of the swells and deposited aboard.
“No offense, but I think I’d prefer to use the ladder,” Deke declares, swimming away from me toward the port stern, where Chari and Xio are lowering a rope ladder for Melité and Cadogan to climb up.
“None taken.” I grin as I turn to Farley. “And you?”
He grins back at me. “Always wondered what it would be like to fly.”
Laughing, I lift him up as gently as I can manage. He whoops the whole time, delighted as a child. As soon as he is settled, I heave myself airborne. I am not properly flying, not really; it is more of an elongated leap. But my heart soars all the same.
The joy is short-lived. The moment I hit the deck, I hear a chorus of panicked shouts ringing in the distance.
I run to the opposite rail where the others are clustered, shoulders tense as they stare out at the other ship.
It has not fared nearly as well as we did, perhaps because of its closer proximity to the shore.
It is still lying on its side, sails fully submerged.
And every member of its crew is swimming madly in our direction, arms flailing, faces stricken.
There is Vaughn, his powerful strokes carrying him along quicker than the others…Alaric, with his natural swiftness…the Paexyrian trio, all together in a line…
Where is Soren?
“What are they doing?”
No one bothers to answer Jac’s low question, for at that very moment the cause of their rapid evacuation presents itself.
We all watch in stunned disbelief as several writhing orange tentacles, each thicker than our central mast, creep up from the surface.
Three at first, then four, then six, then eight.
They slide sinuously around the prone ship in a deathly embrace…
And proceed to squeeze.