JET 8.7: BLACKICE
“In this the symbol is made plain. The halo of the saint is the rope of his noose. But the descent is arrested. They are no longer falling. Do you understand the meaning of their redemption? They are condemned yet they are no longer falling.”
– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 19:121-125
I broke down the tent – a task I was miles better at than I was at putting the damned thing up, it seemed – then stowed the pegs, ropes, poles and canvas back in the bag. The whole lot got dumped back with everything else in the chest.
“The water is boiled, master.”
“Thanks, Pinktongue.” I moved the bat-like demonoid aside then used the towel to grab the pan’s handle as I scooped off the scum. We had more water from Mund in the chest but I was acutely aware of how quickly we were going through the stuff. I was going to have to learn how to do all this stuff for real sooner or later, rather than just reading about it in books. We were camped in a secluded location, a floor of dirt surrounded by wind-smoothed rocks and tall aspens, within two minutes of a stream as the imp flew. A whole bunch of the imps had the ability to throw small fireballs – getting a fire going was as simple as asking for it. With the water, at least, I was determined to do it properly.
“How does this look, master?” snivelled the scissor-clawed imp I had working on the rabbits. “Has the Cutterking kept his name?”
I’d only named him last night, when his ability to neatly snip branches of wood came to light.
I eyed the pair of rabbits critically.
“What were you going for, exactly?” I asked.
“I – er –”
“You’re lucky I don’t traumatise easily.” I shooed him off and sat down by the plate. “Fetch me the knife, will you? The non-ensorcelled one, this time.”
He mumbled dejectedly to himself as he half-hopped, half-flapped his way over to the trunk.
“It’s good you left your brother and sister down on the hillside.” Zabalam, the mouldy gremlin, stumped over to me from the treeline. “She would have been most traumatised.”
“You can see that in her head?” I took the knife from Butcherking and started doing my best to recover the artistically-arranged meat.
“I don’t need to see in her head for that, but she wasn’t best-pleased when you told her what was for breakfast, no.”
I grunted, busy sawing at cartilage.
“Have you sorted out where we’re going yet?” the gremlin asked. He didn’t seem very interested in my answer, but my indecisiveness appeared to amuse him.
“I’ll let the sea make their minds up.” I got one chunk of meat free of bone and gristle, as far as I could tell, and I skewered it. “If they want to take a boat, we take a boat. If they want to keep flying, we keep flying. If they want to hire horses…” I shrugged. It wasn’t like Jaid had experienced any ill-effects from my powers, not after the first time – and those problems I suspected were emotional, rather than magical, in nature.
We were a few hours’ walk from the town at the bottom of Blackice Bay – a matter of minutes flying. Our hidden spot was on the crest overlooking the ravine and its quarries that led down to the boulder-strewn beach. We had a great view of the vast, churning grey ocean stretching off as far as the eye could see – all of it. From our screen of aspen trees we could gaze out at our future.
I’d left them there and returned to supervise, unable to bear the sight for too long. It was too open. I’d seen the ocean before, of course – we’d swum in it – but that had been with Salnifast’s white-walled harbour at my back. With Mund in the distance behind me. With no possibility of crossing it. Now – here – I felt none of the same assurances. I felt lost, even if I could point to our exact location on the map. If I sailed on a boat and we got into trouble on the open sea, how could I use my powers to aid us? Sure, I wasn’t an enchanter, but I wasn’t a wizard either. There’d be any number of problems that could arise which my magic couldn’t fix.
No. Easier to focus on the problems with immediate solutions – slicing the rabbits, getting them on the spit – packing up, purifying the water –
The truth was, I was homesick. It was amazing to finally see the world – I’d spent so many years reading stories about epic journeys, fantastical wanderers in fantastical landscapes, that it almost felt like the tales had leapt off the page and into reality. But there were only so many times you could put on clothing that wasn’t quite dry, only so many times you could look out on the drab wilderness, without missing what you’d left behind. In exiting the lands of House Sentelemeth’s vassals we’d crossed into the lands of House Wenlyworth’s, from Fornolost to Ullerland, and the towns and villages stretched across the prairies looked so peaceful – everyone knew where they were and who they were, what they were doing with their time on the material plane… I envied them the simplicity of their way of life, but, even more, the sense of belonging they seemed to possess, ants going about their tasks in the fields. I knew where I belonged, but it was gone now, left far, far behind. Even if Xan was keeping the apartment warm for me, what would happen when I sent for her? Peltos would finally get his wish and rent it out to some idiot for a vastly-inflated amount…
The meat was cooking – I’d cut it thin, it wouldn’t take long – so I headed back to the twins.
They were sitting apart, a solid fifty feet of even solider silence between them. But both of them were doing the same thing, picking at the wet blades of grass between their legs, looking out in pensive poses, beholding that monstrosity between the trees, that immense nothingness of waves and wind ahead of us.
They were out of one another’s lines of sight, if they’d been looking for each other – there were three huge trees standing like wrinkled towers between the twins, their gnarled roots host to dozens and dozens of rain-soaked bushes. Doubtless they each knew roughly where the other was located, but they’d chosen this, this isolation from one another.
I stayed at the very crest of the rise and called down to both of them in my most-confident voice:
“So, do we stay or do we go?”
Stay didn’t strictly mean stay. We were definitely moving on from Blackice Bay, whatever was decided, following Rathal’s final instruction. But left unspoken was the assumption: stay on the continent, head farther north, or east, or north-east; or leave, set sail on the Northril, the dark northern oceans of the world. It was a broad question, the first of many if we were going to nail down an actual destination.
They both looked around at me, heads and hair swinging in almost the exact same manner.
Whatever happens, they’ll always be twins.
“Stay,” Jaid shouted.
“Go,” Jaroan shouted.
And against my better judgement, I knew what we would end up doing.
* * *
I was happily chewing on my rabbit when Jaid said in a quiet voice: “Did Princess die, Kas? Is that why you won’t let me ride her?”
I chewed some more and licked my lips thoroughly, thoughts suddenly flipping over. “Jaid, I – I can’t tell you what happened. It’s a secret – sorcerer’s stuff, you know. I can say that I don’t think she’s dead.” I saw the crestfallen expression on her face slowly give way to scepticism. “Look – I had to give her up, okay? Someone more powerful than me took an interest in her; we didn’t part on the best of terms…”
A dark unicorn, a tricorn of an arch-fiend’s making, swathed in shadows as she lowers her savage trident, bounding at me –
“But yeah. I can’t bring her out. I mean, I literally don’t think I can do it.”
“But you won’t try.” She folded her arms across her chest, giving me the out-thrust lower lip treatment.
“If I did, I might suddenly disappear to a place where for every minute that passes for me, you get to wait about three hours. Aaaand I might never return.”
She finally sensed I wasn’t spreading drop.
“O-okay, Kas. I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Yawn,” Jaroan said. I glanced at him. His face was a knot of bored contempt, one cheek puffed out, like he had a big nut in the side of his mouth. “Are we going, or what?”
I ignored him and hugged Jaid, feeling the sad smile on my lips.
“She’ll be fine. Princess is a tough old dame. Come on, let’s get this fire put out and we can pack up the utensils.”
It was mid-morning as we strolled into the town of Blackice Bay. I was getting the hang of my limp – the touch of wraith-essence I was utilising to let me walk set me a little off-balance, but no one was going to question a mage it seemed. I got a few queer looks from some of the fishermen we passed, that was all.
Blackice-town looked like a giant wooden sea-whale that’d beached itself on the boulders and now lay there dying. Only four large ships were docked at the moment, but there were perhaps a hundred or more small boats in the water, and that had to be just a fraction of the fishing vessels. Jetties riddled the rocks, dozens and dozens of minor harbours spread between the proper piers, and then as the beach rose up the stick-buildings did too, from huts to houses and workshops. The tallest building looked to be three floors, and seemed to be a courthouse of some kind, given the triplicate gavel-symbol raised in granite from its peaked roof. The temples were small and simple. We passed a mossy shrine to the Founders that overlooked the town, with its five graven statues facing inwards towards one another… a sad reflection of the Fountains of Merizet back home in Hightown.
This place, for all its differences – it held reminders of where we’d come from, and that only made me think about where we’d ended up.
We didn’t come in through the main road, but headed down the hill from the treeline to the water, then followed the coast, entering along the waterfront. It wasn’t currently raining, but you couldn’t tell because of the sheer amount of cold spray being lifted up from the waves by the wind and rocks. The scents of salt and fish-innards were overpowering – many of the fishermen had already returned with an early-morning catch, it seemed, and their children got involved in the work, merrily gutting and deboning the slippery critters. I noted that the rejected parts were being carefully sorted, placed in their own special buckets – just to what use cod-intestine could be put I had no idea, and even less desire to find out.
“Fancy getting up to your elbows in that stuff?” I asked, nodding towards a group of four children, chattering away excitedly as they used their small hooked knives on a tray of squirming salmon.
“Eww,” was all Jaid said, but she seemed incapable of tearing her eyes off them. She didn’t actually sound repulsed in the slightest.
Was she jealous of their camaraderie, feeling lonely, stuck here with her brothers?
“Wherever we go,” Jaroan said, “we aren’t living by the sea.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, like it was already decided. Would it’ve killed him to simply give his opinion?
“That’s the next thing to make up our minds about.” I stopped and pointed to the itinerary nailed to the post by the biggest pier. “Let’s head over there.”
Through a near-constant curtain of water droplets, I peered at the board. The dates and times were confusingly arranged, and it took the best part of five minutes for me to decipher their meanings. It looked like two of the four big ships were bound for Mund – the others were bound for Myri and Telior.
“There’s the choices then, guys,” I said, tapping the board with my finger. “Myri, in three days, or Telior tomorrow. Or we could wait it out, I guess.”
“Myri’s nice and hot?” Jaid said hopefully.
“Three days, here?” Jaroan’s question was rhetorical. “Anyway, where’s Telior? I’ve never heard of it.”
I frowned. “Let’s have a look.”
We made our way to a nearby tavern, a rickety wooden building that seemed to shudder with the wind. I seated the twins in the corner, not too near the fire and the other patrons, then ordered ale and water. Before I even had my map out the short, curly-haired barman came over with our drinks.
“Hey, do you know where Telior is?” Jaid asked.
“Let the man go about his business,” I said, smiling up at him apologetically.
“Yeah.” Jaroan spread out the map, and pinned it down with a candle-holder to stop it rolling up again. “We’ll find it.”
“Never a trouble,” the barman said, immediately tapping on a shoulder of land to the west, across Northril. “Thar’s Telior, to be true.”
“Part of the Realm?” I found myself asking, looking down at that section of the world. I didn’t recognise any of the names around Telior – but then about ninety percent of the names on the map were new to me.
He didn’t reply immediately, and I looked up to find him grinning appreciatively.
“On the run, are yeh, young mage?”
I flicked my eyes around the room. No one else was looking this way, their eyes on their drinks or their drinking-buddies…
Damn it. Me and my big stupid mouth.
“Don’t yeh worry at it, lad. Yeah,” he tapped the map again, “Telior’s one bit o’ the world they didn’t conquer. Their kings pay tribute, or whatever yer call it. S’ppose it ain’t so bad up there, s’long as yer don’t mind the cold. Most’ve ‘em’ll speak Mundic, if thasser concern?”
I winked at him, saying nothing – he just laughed lightly, then cleared off to see to some other customers.
I turned to the twins and spoke softly.
“We can try Telior, and head south from there if it’s a bit chilly for our dear sister.” I took Jaid’s hand and squeezed. “It’s important we find somewhere we can all put up with.”
“Course it is.” She pulled her hand from mine, glaring at me. “You’re definitely taking my opinion into account. Definitely. I say stay but he says go, so we go – I say Myri and he says Telior, so –”
“Jaid…” Jaid, you’re more agreeable than him, so just compromise, okay?
I swallowed.
“Look, I’m doing my best. Jar’s right,” I saw some rare surprise in his gaze at that, “Myri’s still part of the Mundic Realm – right in the heart of it, in fact – and if we –”
“But your special friend said it didn’t matter where we went after Blackice Bay, didn’t he? Wherever we go, we’re safe.”
“Oh, I know,” Jaroan muttered with a fresh scowl on his features, “now we’ve arrived in Blackice Bay we can go straight back to Mund! In fact, there’s this apartment in Helbert’s Bend on a road called –”
“Enough!” I put my hand on his arm, not roughly, but with no gentleness either. “Enough. Yes, Jaid, technically you’re correct. In practise, though, that’ll never fly. It was always my intention to get us out of the Realm. Myri sounds nice, sure –”
“Your intention! Yours! What about me? What about us?” She looked at her twin. “Jar, you’re with me, right? You don’t want Kas making all the decisions for us, do you?”
“Are you thick?” he bit back. “Or do you think I am?”
“Oh no, I get it.” There was fierceness, viciousness in her snarl. “You’re fine with it, so long as he’s siding with you.” Her eyes flashed to me. “Well, Jar was right – you’re not my dad,” she curled her lip, “you don’t get to boss me around. If I want to go to Myri, by –”
“If you really want to go to Myri, we will,” I said firmly, trying to ignore the (not merely outraged, but hateful) glare I received from Jaroan. “We will, Jaid. But this isn’t a holiday. We aren’t just trying to go somewhere nice. And you’re both right – I’m not Dad. But why do I keep ending up here? I wish I was, I wish I knew what to do, I wish I had the confidence to just tell you what we were doing but I don’t, I –”
“Okay.” She said it in a small voice, looking down at the water in her cup like she was scrying the future in it. “Okay. We’ll go to Telior. As Mortiforn wills…” A wan smile spread across her face. “But once we’re there, I get to decide where we go next.”
I looked at Jaroan, pleading with my eyes –
“Oh, fine,” he said magnanimously. “Jaid gets to pick next.”
Despite his tone, and the continuing cold expression on her face, Jaid stalked around the table and pulled him into a hug against his will. He looked to me for help, and I just smiled.
For the first time, when I again told myself time would fix whatever was wrong between us, I actually believed it.
* * *
I stood alone at the prow of the Scaleshaker as we crashed like an ungainly sow through the waves. The others were safe below decks, but I had my wraith-essence to make the experience more palatable, and I didn’t care that the sailors out here with me were staring at me with odd expressions. Yes, it was cold. Yes, I could feel it. But it felt right. I felt right, for once. The world was grey and black before me – grey skies, black seas. When I closed my eyes there was nothing, no sensation but the chill, wetness… Colour, warmth, dryness: these were concepts for the dry land, for those whose feet stood upon the solid ground. Here, we were at the mercy of Wyrda, to whom the drunken captain had dedicated his half-bottle of ice-spirits before tossing it overboard. I hoped that was enough to placate her. The last thing I needed was an assault from She Who Slumbers Submerged. I was painfully aware my magic wouldn’t save us if there was some kind of natural disaster out here. Me and the twins, maybe, if I could get us back to land… but the others? I couldn’t wraith-shift everyone.
I didn’t like boats, I decided. I’d only been out on the sea once, when I’d landed on the Dremmedine to discuss the Redgate situation with Phanar and the others. The ship was already close to Salnifast at the time, and I’d known in advance I was only stopping on it for a matter of minutes. But this… this was different.
The Scaleshaker was a fat schooner. Instead of cutting through the water like a knife it bobbed about like a log on the surface of a river, seeming to sway side to side as much as it plunged forwards. And Northril was different to what I’d seen of the Mundic Sea. It was far darker, for a kick off, even when the sun’s rays managed to pierce the gloom. The waves were scintillating dunes of black crystal, scraping at the hull. The clouds were thick, shapeless sponges of grey felt, clinging in the air just inches overhead, it seemed, so that when I breathed in the wind it rolled in my lungs like it was half-water.
I was stuck between the cliff and the flood. (In fact I would’ve quite liked being stuck between a cliff and a flood – at least that would be to imply I had my feet on the ground.) The air out here made me sick, stifling me, drowning me in its moistness – but the air down in the hold was moist too for other, yet-more sickening reasons. Sweat. Breath. The sweet scent of almost-rotten fruits, barely-cured seal skins and something called zippa, which looked like porridge but stunk of fish, casks and casks of the stuff.
I was rarely eating, now that the ship was on the high seas. Even with copious amounts of wraith-form, the nausea was killing me. I’d managed to keep down water and bread and heavily-salted meat, but anything more extreme in flavour was reintroducing itself to me in the most horrid way imaginable. By now – day four of our voyage – I’d learned a few lessons.
Still, when it was time for the evening meal I headed below to sit with the twins, both of whom seemed to have sturdier sea-legs than me. Perhaps the slow build-up of my own tolerance was due to the insubstantiality, what with half my body held half a dimension away from the constant rolling of the waves. Whatever the explanation, it hadn’t affected Jaid and Jaroan. By the time I got to the hold they were happily stuffing their faces – Jaroan even had some of the zippa for the second time – and I had to sit there trying not to breathe for fear of tipping over my stomach again.
I earwigged instead. Out of the dozen or so other passengers, there was one other mage aboard the Scaleshaker, and she was so full of drop she’d squirt Mud Lane if you stabbed her. I figured her name to be Rellos, or something like that. Her skin was a fabulous ochre colour, her eyes and hair purple, ears with the distinctive part-elf point at their tips. As if her natural appearance wasn’t enough, she wore a rune-spattered robe, belts, necklaces, rings – all of it bereft of a single ensorcellment. Yet I could hardly say that, even though everyone was taking everything she said so seriously. It didn’t help that only half of it was in the Mundic tongue, the rest in the native Telese spoken by the crew.
“… shehaz higa gorach… You know zees? Yilygu? Za vampire? Za vampire ‘az only love in ‘is ‘art for za mortal. Zay see it as a gift, zair blood. I haf met one! Harmonaz in o dae orashaz it mef elent…”
“You should really try this, you know.” Jaroan managed to say it in a condescending tone. “It’s nothing like anything you’ve ever tried.”
“No thank you,” Jaid said, the words perfectly polite but her voice brittle as an icicle.
“But you won’t know whether you like it till you’ve tried it.”
“Jar,” I said warningly.
“I’m okay.”
“But I really think you would like it! You like fish – you like porridge –”
“I don’t want any –”
“– no reason not to try it –”
“Jar!”
“– doesn’t taste anything like it smells –”
I applied more wraith to my flesh and, for the first time since boarding the Scaleshaker, I drifted straight up through the planks, onto the deck near the rail, and leaned over the side.
I hadn’t yet eaten, thankfully, so I just brought up a bellyful of fluid.
I stood there, embracing the starboard rail – and it was through blurry eyes that I witnessed the mountain against the clouds, an enormous shadow towering above us through the mist, where there should’ve been only ocean…
“Ysga-vin!” one of the sailors yelled. “Dark elves, cap’n!”
From out of the mist, from the looming shadow, a harpoon the length of an oar came flying, piercing the sailor at the navel and sending his corpse cartwheeling down from the rigging.
“What in – drop –” I muttered even as I threw out shields. I started moving towards the man lying there on the deck, but I could already tell he was gone – he’d landed on his head, and the impact had done a number on the integrity of his skull. For the first time in a long time, I saw a ghost go screaming out of a body to be consumed by nethernal wind.
The narrow chain attached to the harpoon suddenly retracted it with the speed of a counterweight – I followed the hooked spear and its captive body with my eyes. Looking back at the mountainous shadow, watching the thing materialise.
If it weren’t for the preceding events, I’d have thought it a glacier, like from the stories.
But it wasn’t. The sailor was right. It was them.
It was just like they all said about the invasion, back when I was a kid. Mum and Dad didn’t let me go anywhere near the walls, didn’t let me look out to see the seven ‘ships’ anchored in the bay beyond Salnifast. But everyone had heard what they were like, even the children.
So it was I had some vague notion of what to expect as it emerged from the mist.
It was akin to the chariots of the Zadhalites, and maybe zombie-giants, I supposed. A gargantuan warship, its hull rising to the foredeck a hundred feet above my head – but where most sea-going vessels were wooden, this was constructed from nothing but fleshless corpses. Human and elf and dwarf. Fish and bird and mammal. The dark elves didn’t differentiate. This colossus of death was so ancient-looking, I would’ve expected it to have weathered, smoothed, but no – every single skeleton was preserved in its entirety, fused to this world and its bony brethren with purple cords of magic, nethernal cement glowing, pulsing, in every seam. The masts were like Hightown towers, the sails of waxy skin hanging limp, wide enough to cover a city square laid flat.
The bone warship glided closer so silently, with such unchanging speed, it was almost peaceful – the sword-like blade of the prow sliced its way through the sea towards us, Vaahn’s scythe, sweeping in gently to reave away our souls –
Blaaaaaaaaaaa-ha-haaaaaaaaaaa.
The horn’s notes were tremendous, rattling the rails of the Scaleshaker. The organ that produced such a dreadful sound had to be as big as our ship all on its own. Bigger, perhaps. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of Scaleshakers would fit inside the goliath.
A score of small holes appeared in a row, halfway up the hull. Vicious barbs glinted there, then shot forth. But the hail of harpoons that the warship spat at us went rebounding harmlessly from my shields. I had them weaving all about the boat now, protecting the Scaleshaker from harm.
Some of the crewmen were running to their posts, while others were fleeing downstairs and yelling. One of the sailors was clutching his beard and screaming, backing away towards the port rail – surely he wouldn’t be so stupid as to jump in the sea… Though death might be a mercy, considering what the dark elves were said to do with their prisoners.
What they did with them, before they found an eternal use for the remains.
Some of the passengers were stupid-enough to head up with the bravest sailors, as though this were a tourist’s show. The twins were nowhere to be seen, thankfully. Despite their mental states, they retained the Mortenn good sense – or maybe it was just sharp survival instincts. Either way, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I didn’t want either of them to see this.
Rellos, or whatever her name was, appeared on my right side and started pulling spell-components from her pouches – I raised my eyebrows and gave her a nod, which she returned. There was fear in her eyes, but coolness, professionalism too.
Unexpected. I wasn’t going to turn my nose up at back-up, though.
The warship reeled in its hooked spears with what sounded like a single loud, steely rasp. Then, within seconds, the dark elves spat again. More holes opened – more harpoons.
Again, and again. Three dozen this time.
It was like being stabbed with a pin. Thirty-six pins. It barely registered, rebounding from Shield Twelve without incident – but it was annoying. Of far greater danger was the threat of being struck, by the ship itself. They weren’t on a direct collision course such that the sharp bow of the bony goliath would actually hit us, but the swell of its wake would capsize us, and its hull would crush us…
Then I noticed what the captain was doing, and turned to float across the deck towards him. My shields were expansive-enough that I could cross the middle of the ship without putting any part of it in peril, so long as I didn’t head towards the bow or stern, which would leave the other end undefended…
“You ah an ach-soseror?” Rellos breathed, purple eyes fixed on me in wonder as I flew past her.
I didn’t respond, determined to reach the captain and a few of his closest crewmen, who were busy trying to throw themselves over the side – not in suicide attempts, but to jump in the rowing boat.
“Quit that!” I berated them, wagging a finger. “We’ll need you, once we’re out of this. They’d only catch you anyway.”
The idiots only cast me a single glance, then went straight back to untying the ropes holding the rowing boat fast to the side of the Scaleshaker.
I carefully placed Butcherking right on top of the most-difficult knot.
He grinned at them, waving his dangerous fingers, and the sailors recoiled, turning back to me now with shocked expressions.
“Ach-mage!” Rellos hissed.
I looked over my shoulder, only to freeze in terror.
The floating glacier of bone and purple magic had halted, as suddenly and silently as it had appeared – and now a single round opening appeared, like the previous ones, on the port hull looming directly in front of us. Except this opening was big.
Really big.
And instead of a spear, a vast, wizened rod of wood was slid forth – its curling tip aimed down at us –
A humming sound filled the air, rising in pitch, faster and faster –
Oh gods.
The first blast of ice emitted by the tree-sized wand went right through Shield Twelve and Eleven, finally disintegrating against Shield Ten, leaving a sheen of white frost on the air for an instant. I quickly repaired the damaged barrier and recreated Shield Eleven –
BrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR –
The second frostbolt was bigger: the frozen lance it evoked had to be ten feet wide, fifty feet long, jagged at the tip like a flint arrowhead.
Eleven, Ten and Nine went down. The sheen of white frost was bigger, far more daunting, a gleaming blanket of elemental power lingering in the emptiness between us.
No. No. No.
I won’t be taken again.
“What’s the betting they’ve only got one of them?” I murmured.
Even without vampiric abilities, I could feel the eyes of those around me fixed on me as I focussed, pointed, and snapped my fingers.
I only managed to get Shield Ten back online in time for the next blast, and it ripped through so many of my barriers it took me a moment to realise just how close we’d come to dying. Shield Four, the pentagon, caught the last of it, and it was no mere sheen of frost hanging there this time.
Several tons of ice was whipped about by my rotating shape, spraying out across the deck.
But in sacrificing my shields I’d managed to strategically place a trio of crimson flames in the air – just above the wizened tip of the wand.
I put Mr. Cuddlesticks, the heaviest-looking, at the very end where it twisted and tapered, the mystical weapon looking barely two feet thick. Then Mrs. Cuddlesticks, and finally Junior.
It was reinforced against ordinary breakages. Tougher than a tree its girth. Tougher than metal, even, maybe. It didn’t snap as they landed on it, but the cracking sound was audible even from here.
I rebuilt the shield, smiling.
BRRRRRRRRRRRR –
Before the fourth strike could take place, the orange-glowing hammers of my demons achieved my goal. The ice-wand didn’t look like it enjoyed what was probably its first ever taste of fire-magic. The whole thing splintered up the middle – eyes narrowed, I picked out the shapes of the three bintaborax and waved at them –
A blue explosion ripped its way through the hull, and for a moment I exulted – until the fluorescent smoke cleared and I saw the minimal damage it’d caused. We’d put a dint in the side of the ship. An explosion that would’ve torn our ship to shreds, and it made a depression. I could only hope the explosion had made more of an impact on the interior of the hull… On the outside, nethernal energies just started coating the crater, like a quick-forming scab over a wound.
I turned aside. I’d only just managed to move the demons out of the way in time, resummoning them to a point just over the water beside the Scaleshaker – I kept moving them back up and letting them fall again so that I could give them a quick once-over, examine them for injuries before returning them to the Twelve Hells. They looked a bit frosty, but were otherwise quite intact. Satisfied, I thanked them in Infernal and waved them away.
Only then did I realise that I was still feeling it – the eyes on me.
“What?” I fixed the grin in place, looking about. “Can’t everyone juggle demons?”
I laughed at my audience’s shocked expressions and got to work. Within seconds I’d repaired the tattered shields and reinforced them like never before. By the time I was done I was sweaty, my hands were shaking; I shouldn’t have kept bringing the demons out like that, should’ve trusted to their durability. I hadn’t used my powers this intensely for quite some time and I was a little out of practice… nonetheless I remained confident. Eagerness easily made up for a spent Wellspring.
We were still moving, slowly crossing in front of the bony behemoth, crashing through the waves – a chaos of sound which now felt like an eerie silence. Where were the harpoons? Would they attempt to board our boat instead?
Then an amplified elven voice rang down from the warship, splitting the silence with a cool, crisp monotone. There wasn’t just derision in the tone. That would be to assume some semblance of equality between two parties, however disjointed. This wasn’t like a noble talking to lesser folk. It was a master talking to a badly-behaved hound. An errant puppy. An annoying wasp.
“Avri cin cenothen, jhilavri son denominen.”
“In ci qothi!” Rellos cried back. “Di simmon cin Diphroinen!”
There was a pause, a reminder that the waves were crashing loudly by us, and then the voice came again.
“Half-People. We demand its archmage’s bones. Strike off its fingers and tongue. Give them to us and we shall allow it to depart.”
All the eyes fell back on me again.
“If you all want to die,” I grated, “hand me over. They wouldn’t be asking for me if I wasn’t being a pain in their ass.” I glared at the captain, who was eyeing me mistrustfully. “Your best way out of this is with me right here.”
Rellos was nodding in agreement. The idiot captain’s expression never changed.
I looked back up at the glacier of bone, cupped my hands around my mouth and augmented my voice with Zab’s power.
“Aw, didn’t you fork out for malicious damage cover when you took out giant freaking wand insurance? Bet someone’s kicking themselves now! You must think we’re right clods, eh? You withdraw now, and I won’t come up there! You’ve got thirty seconds to comply, or I’m coming looking for you personally, smarmy git.”
Jaid and Jaroan came running up onto the deck. It was nice to see that, in times of crisis, even Jar did still care for me.
“No way!” he was shouting. “Not again! You’re staying right here!” He marched up to me, Jaid hot on his heels.
I ducked my head in agreement, giving them a hard smile. It wasn’t like I actually wanted to go up there… was it?
Was it all bone inside? Would I float through corridors shaped from glued-together skeletons? I had to admit, I was curious.
And wouldn’t there be slaves in there? People not yet killed and reanimated, in need of my aid? How much agony was being experienced by the denizens of the warship? The dark elves worked those they enslaved to death – that’s what everyone always said. Couldn’t it turn out that the hull was packed with chained labourers, whipped, scourged into action, forced to drive the engines that beat in the heart of this wicked abomination?
I suddenly went cold inside, and when I returned my gaze to the warship I saw only a target for my rage.
“Last chance!” I roared, summoning my wings, preparing to lock my shields with the twins as their nexus. Jaroan didn’t want me to board their ship, but I could at least fly up, get a better view of the gigantic vessel – intimidate them a bit –
The moment I started the gesture that would seal the shields in place, the horn split the misty air:
Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ha…
And slowly, ever so slowly, the warship began to move again, steering at once to the side as if to curl away behind us, head the other direction.
Bit by bit, the starboard hull of the bone-mountain was exposed to us as we slipped past each other. Before too long, it’d vanished into the evening mist.
I walked towards the stern of the ship, then leaned on the rail at the very rear of the Scaleshaker, peering out into the clouds of Northril, keeping our protective barriers at maximum efficiency. The last thing I’d want would be for them to turn around, chase us down with their supernatural speed and start ripping us to shreds without warning.
The second-to-last thing I’d want would be for them to get away.
The excitement only lasted for about another twenty minutes, and, after trying to pester me with questions and getting basically nowhere, most of my interrogators retired before too long. The winds weren’t strong, but night on Northril was bad enough as it was, and sometimes the breeze picked up, seeping across the deck like the breath of a frost giant – few were able to endure it without good cause. Jaroan had gone back to his old self within a minute or two, and Jaid was sleepy.
Then I was alone at the stern, just a few nearby sailors and the constellations for company.
They weren’t particularly perceptive, man or god. I fancied my chances.
Soon I was alone over the sea, enwraithed, floating over the waves, waiting until I was farther from the Scaleshaker to bring out my wings again.
And when I dried out and found my bed that night, it was with a satisfied smile on my face that I went to sleep. The dreams weren’t of bone corridors and unchained slaves singing my praises, but of floating invisibly above varnished black woods and lush sheepskin rugs… dismembered kraken and bubbling green oil… hordes of undead mown down, reduced to inanimate parts, a chunky meal of unliving flesh… pale-skinned, blue-haired elves running, hiding from the unseen monster stalking them, their beautiful lips drawn back in animal screams, corpses clad in plum-purple and silver and blood.
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