Chapter 11 #2
Taran lifted his feet off the floor and put them on a stool when the first wave, just a few inches high, slid through the room. I stopped and put the kithara aside.
“I think he’s had enough,” I told Taran when Marit reached for the fluted carafe he’d come in with.
“I can’t stop him, he’ll just make more,” Taran said.
It was true; the carafe in Marit’s hand looked full again, even though he’d set it aside almost empty.
“Marit? Can I take that?” I asked in my politest voice, but the sea god clutched it to his chest, face screwing up in fear and dismay.
Another wave swept through the room, ankle high and larger than the last. With it came a subtle vibration, a distant sound.
I tensed, looking around the room with an eye to disaster management.
“You’re afraid of me too,” Marit accused me, his mouth crumpling. “You think they should have left me in the well.”
“No, of course I don’t think that,” I said, but the sea god had passed beyond rational conversation. He flopped to his back again and started to wail, big drunken sobs shaking his chest. The floor began to shake with the same tempo.
I had barely noticed Awi all afternoon, sitting as still as a statue on a high shelf, but at this she changed her form to a puffin and took flight toward the baths.
Taran, on the other hand, had done nothing but pull up his feet to stay dry, and he was watching me rather than his dangerous friend as though interested to see what my reaction to Marit would be.
Silently cursing Taran again, I sloshed over to the main door, intending to let the water drain. But when I opened it, water swept into the room, not out. The hallway was entirely flooded, nearly knee-deep with cold, turbulent water, and waves were gathering around the corner.
I spun around—the windows were shuttered, and there was no other door to the outside.
“Do something,” I snapped at Taran, and the movement of his shoulders suggested both mild surprise and amusement that I found it natural to shout orders at him.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked with a bright, artificial look of attention on his pretty face.
“I don’t know, tell him to stop.”
With an indulgent shrug, Taran went to the divan and bent over the wailing immortal. He checked to make sure I was watching, then took the sea god’s chin in his hand. He spoke to Marit in a cool, serious voice.
“Hey. Cut it out. You’re scaring my priestess.”
That only made Marit cry harder. He brushed Taran’s hand away and clasped his own palms over his streaming eyes.
“Sober him up, then,” I said, beginning to feel a real anticipation of danger. They were immortal, but I wasn’t, and I had no confidence Taran would see my death as more than an inconvenience.
“Good idea. How?”
I curled my upper lip at him. “Purge the alcohol from his body, starting with his liver and moving to his gut.”
“Does that work?” He sounded curious.
It had worked any of the dozens of times I’d seen a peace-priest cure a hangover.
“It’s the blessing of Genna that starts, Queen of Heaven, may your steps light a path…the key signature shifts from E to D minor in the second and fourth verses.”
Taran paused as if scouring his memory, then shook his head.
“Don’t know it.” His tone was light even though water was beginning to lift small objects and carry them around the room.
You do, I wanted to cry. But maybe he’d forgotten it, just like he’d forgotten me.
“Why don’t you sing it yourself?” he asked, as though hitting upon a good idea.
I remembered the words but felt shaky on the wordless vocalizations—and the liver wasn’t an organ I wanted to make any mistakes on.
Maybe it wouldn’t kill an immortal patient, but Marit could do worse than slowly filling the room with water if I accidentally tortured him.
The entire building could come down on our heads.
“Priestess of Wesha,” I said, pointing at myself. “Genna’s son,” I said pointing at him.
Taran stepped onto a low table to escape the rising waters, and I did the same.
“Genna hasn’t taught me that one yet. But I heard that Wesha’s priests can put a man to sleep,” he said, watching me carefully.
“He’s the god of the sea, not a farmer with a tumor on his neck. Can’t you do anything?”
The waters rose to the point that they began to lap against Marit on the cushions.
When the first wave hit him, he keened like a child and tossed his limbs so wide that he tipped into the water.
The walls shook violently, making tiles pop off the murals and vases on shelves crash with a ricochet of pottery shards.
Forgetting that Marit was immortal, I lunged for him to haul his face out of the water. He fought me, sputtering, and his elbow in my gut knocked the breath from my lungs. When I collapsed to my knees, my mouth filled with cold seawater before I spat it out and gulped for air.
“Taran!” I cried, and he grabbed Marit by the front of his tunic to get him off me, but this did not stop the rising water.
I wasn’t a strong swimmer. Neither was Taran, unless he’d lied about that too.
Marit was screaming now, unintelligible babbling about the dark, the well, the water. I scrambled to get my feet back under me as the water pulled hard at my sodden clothes and the walls vibrated in time with Marit’s voice.
The sea god’s body flailed as Taran held him up, the cords in his arms straining from the effort.
“Stop it, please, please,” I yelled. He’d known this would happen. This must have happened before, at some point since Marit was reborn only slightly less mad than the day Taran rescued him from the freshwater well.
“Do you want me to kill him?” Taran’s voice held far less panic than the situation deserved.
“What?”
He pulled my stone knife off his belt. Marit was so panicked that he didn’t even notice the weapon, instead clawing at Taran’s hand on his tunic while the water rose higher and higher.
“Do you want me to kill him again?” Taran repeated, face finally flashing with the anger that must have lurked under that cheerful mask ever since I rebuked him for Marit’s dead priests.
“Just stop him from bringing the building down,” I said, tears finally rising to my own eyes.
I grabbed for the divan as the water rose high enough to knock me off my feet, pulling at my legs like a retreating tide even in the enclosed space.
The furniture wasn’t buoyant enough to keep me afloat though.
“You want to do it instead?” Taran demanded, dark and bitter.
With a grunt, Taran took a wide step to shove the knife at my hands. I took it to keep him from dropping it in the floodwaters, but once it was tight in my fist, I could imagine using it.
“If you want to do it, I’ll hold him,” Taran growled at me.
“Go on! Here’s your chance. Better do it in one blow, but I’m sure you know where the heart is, maiden-priest.” The water was nearly to his chin, but he spun Marit so that his chest faced me and looped an arm around the other immortal’s neck to bow him backwards.
The water was past my nose, and the room was shaking so badly that I could barely see for the foam splashing in my eyes. The handle of the blade was icy in my fist.
I sobbed once, out of anger more than fear.
“Cover your ears!” I yelled, then gulped a deep breath and sunk until my feet hit the floor. I had to kick up to get my head above water again. When I opened my mouth to sing, my voice was thin and hysterical, totally drowned out by Marit’s screams.
How many times would I have to sing this song or die, or worse, sing this song so that someone else died? I learned this blessing to save suffering patients from pain.
Blessed Maiden who separates day from night, dawn-star who opens and closes the eyes of Marit Waverider, hear my song and bless my voice.
I didn’t know if it would work. But it wasn’t in me to kill the weeping god of the sea, who was afraid of water and didn’t remember the ocean.
A wave hit me and salt water choked my throat, leaving it raw and hoarse as I chanted the words.
There was a sense of pressure—not just the cold water pulling me down or the shaking of the building that obscured my voice, but also like heat, pressing against me and through me. Wesha’s power, overcoming Marit’s.
I didn’t even realize it had worked until I could hear my own voice above the crashing of furniture against the walls of the room.
Marit had stopped screaming and hung slack in Taran’s grip.
Slowly, slowly, the waves receded, but I kept singing, repeating the blessing as a chant instead of a melody.
My feet touched the ground, and then the floating objects found their rest.
I fell to my knees, exhausted and terrified, as Taran lowered Marit to the floor. He pressed his ear to the sea god’s chest and nodded in satisfaction when he heard his breathing.
I could have anesthetized an entire team of oxen for the number of times I’d repeated the chorus. Dropped an army in their tracks. But Marit was just asleep, his expression finally easing from horror.
I ended my song, leaving my panting as the loudest noise in the room. No, I heard Taran’s raspy breathing too. There was a tremor in his arms when he shook them out—it must have taken all his strength to hold the other god.
My fingers clenched around the knife before I made them relax. I met Taran’s eyes as I tucked it into my own belt—a wordless threat—instead of returning it.
He squeezed some excess water from his tunic and stepped around Marit’s limp form to stand over me. With one graceful hand, he swept his wet hair back from sharp cheekbones, then pulled me to my feet. His expression was practically glowing with affection.
“Thank you, Wesha,” he said to the empty air. “She’s perfect.”
The floor was bone-dry even before Taran laboriously draped Marit’s snoring body over his shoulder and hauled him off. I slumped on the divan, dazed, watching as tiles clicked back into place and vases turned themselves upright.