by John Bierce
Talia just smirked at her.
A thought occurred to Sabae as she was climbing out of bed.
“Actually, you know who else has been having nightmares lately?” Sabae asked. “Dell, from when the sea serpents took him. Do you think you could help him too?”
“Of course,” Talia said. “There’s only so much I can do in the time we have left on the ship, but it should help a bit.”
Sabae reached out to scratch the cat’s head, then, on a whim, mussed up Talia’s hair as well— which did essentially nothing, considering how short it was still.
Talia rolled her eyes at her. “Oh no, you’ve ruined literal hours of work brushing my hair.”
Sabae stuck her tongue out at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Delta
Hugh’s spellbook intercepted another one of Kanderon’s messages a few hours out from the Ylosa River delta.
More eyes are coming to rest on Anastis, Kanderon. The Council is displeased, and none have forgotten that all of this is ultimately your doing.
I was not a member of the Council when I ended the Empire, and I have never and will never apologize for my actions in those years.
The greater Radhan fleet is assembling in case they must rescue their brethren from the coming of the Cold Minds. Galvachren is no longer updating his bestiary, and we have lost track of his actions, and he is the biggest wildcard of all. Even the Wanderer is rumored to have returned. Not, of course, that we expect either you or Keayda to tell us if that were true. We’re only lucky the Liar hasn’t turned their attention back to Anastis, and that our enemies still fear our defenses.
I am, as always, reciprocal with the degree of trust I offer the Council. And I note who you leave out of your list.
Half of us still consider you a threat, Kanderon. You would do well to remember that. If your Exile Splinter has brought the Cold Minds to us…
The messages abruptly vanished, morphing into the lessons Kanderon had sent him a couple days ago on the theory behind starfire spellcraft, and Hugh frowned, thoroughly disturbed by what he’d read. He knew of Galvachren, of course. The Wanderer was just a children’s tale, though, a semi-mythical archmage with a bag of ten thousand tricks from the years following the fall of the Ithonian Empire. They told tales of her even in Emblin— how she’d traded away a throne she’d won for a swift horse and a treasure map, how she’d overthrown a hundred warlords, and how she even once tied a kraken’s tentacles in a great knot. If the messages were to be believed, she was not only real, but still alive.
And Hugh had absolutely never heard of anyone called the Liar. He had no idea who Kanderon was claiming had been left out of the list, except for maybe whoever had killed Lasnabourne. And what was the greater Radhan fleet?
Somehow, Hugh felt asking one of the Radhan about that would be a bad idea.
And what were the Cold Minds?
“What’s wrong, Hugh?” Talia asked, walking up to him where he sat in the bow, channeling the windlode into the figurehead.
Hugh hurriedly shut his spellbook and set it down. Talia scowled at it as he did so, and it quickly scuttled away across the deck to get out of her sight. Technically slid, Hugh supposed, since the book didn’t have appendages, but it looked more like a crab scuttling than anything despite that.
“Stuff I probably shouldn’t talk about?” Hugh said uncertainly. “Something I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to know.”
Talia frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Hugh shook his head. “Definitely not. I think I need to talk to Sabae about it soon, I have no idea what to do now.”
Talia nodded. “That’s probably a good plan. Though I feel like I should be getting jealous that you’re not telling me first instead of her? Not that I am, but girlfriends in novels are always doing that.”
Hugh blushed a little at that. He was still getting used to this whole dating Talia thing, and he was pretty sure he’d used up his store of confidence for the next year or so when he’d kissed her.
“I’m glad you’re not,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m trying to think of a non-weird way to say that, but I don’t think I’d be very good at handling that?”
Talia sat down in his lap, and turned to kiss him.
“I think I understand what you’re trying to say,” she said. “I’m not going to start acting completely different because we’re dating. I mean, it’ll definitely be different, but…”
“I think I understand what you’re trying to say,” Hugh said.
Talia smiled at him, then leaned back against his chest.
He wrapped his arms around her and stared up at the water surrounding the ship.
They’d crossed into the outflow from the delta a few hours before, and the closer they got, the murkier and more sediments filled the water. At this point, Hugh couldn’t see more than a foot or so into the cloudy brown waters. It blocked almost the entirety of the sunlight, so the only light came from the ship’s glow-crystals. Every now and then, a fish brushed up against the invisible barrier, but most of the time it felt like the Cormorant was burrowing through the earth.
He still felt a little awkward about dating Talia. It had all happened alarmingly fast for him, and he was still a little worried whether he’d made a mistake or not, but… he also felt more comfortable than he had with Avah, in some weird way.
It was something of a relief for Godrick when the ship surfaced for good. He’d never had a problem with enclosed spaces before, but being submerged more often than not for days on end had really started to weigh on him, especially the last few hours while sailing through the sediment-filled water leaving the delta.
“We timed it well,” Captain Grepha said. “We’ll be arriving right with high tide, so we’ll be able to coast straight up to Zophor. There should be a channel guide waiting for us near the entrance to the channels.”
“There had better be,” Alustin said. “Because the Havathi seem to have finally realized where we’re going, and they have several ships heading this direction at high speed. We should get to Zophor before they reach the delta, but odds are they’ll be close on our heels following us to the next site.”
“And if Lake Nelu isn’t the right site, what then?” Sabae asked. “How are we supposed to get out of the delta?”
Alustin didn’t have an answer for her.
The mangroves appeared as a smudge on the horizon at first, but rapidly resolved themselves.
The shortest of the mangrove trees jutted thirty feet above the water, but they would apparently have their trunks submerged all the way up to their lowest branches soon. Godrick could see a few roots jutting straight up into the air, oddly enough.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, of interlocking channels entering the partially-submerged rainforest. At least a half-dozen were in sight of the ship, but the Cormorant took none of them. A ship entering without a guide was liable to get lost, then beached or stuck on a sandbar at low tide. Even having water mages wasn’t much use, for the currents were complicated and ever-shifting in the delta.
“Ah don’t see our guide,” Artur said.
Godrick sidled over to his da. “We just got here, what’s the problem?”
“There’s usually a guide already waitin’ as soon as a ship arrives,” Artur said. “Ah’ve rarely heard a’ them bein’ late. Zophor has mages with all sorts a’ different affinities scryin’ fer arrivin’ ships, includin’ a couple farseers like Alustin.”
It was only a handful of minutes later that the channel guide arrived, but even that short wait was a little alarming for the Radhan, it seemed. The guide, a naga woman, was delivered to the deck of the ship by a pair of fliers— a wind mage and a gravity mage working in concert, Godrick suspected, though it was hard to tell. Apparently the Cormorant’s underwater approach had surprised the seers, simply appearing well within their range out of nowhere.
As they wound through the channels, Godrick took the time to chat wit
h a few of the Radhan he’d befriended on the trip, including a couple of cute ones he’d danced with, though nothing more had developed there. Godrick just felt awkward about trying to date on a ship with his father on board. Artur would likely be relaxed and supportive about the whole thing, which, for whatever reason, made Godrick feel even more awkward about the idea.
“Hey, Godrick!” Hugh called.
Godrick strode over to where Hugh and Talia were standing at the railing. Godrick suppressed a smirk when he noticed Hugh and Talia holding hands.
He would be gloating about being the only one to correctly predict the outcome of all that silliness for quite some time.
“Reach out with your affinity senses towards the mangrove leaves,” Hugh said.
Godrick’s smirk turned into a puzzled look, but he did so.
“There’s bits a’… is that salt?” he asked. “Why are there salt crystals on the leaves? Do the waves submerge the mangroves that high up?”
“No, actually,” Alustin said from behind them. “The mangroves actually secrete the salt crystals from their leaves as one of the ways that they prevent themselves from being poisoned by the sea salt. It’s why they’re nearly the only trees that grow in seawater.”
Godrick jumped a little at Alustin’s sudden interjection.
Alustin walked past him and hopped up onto the ship’s railing.
“We might as well get a bit of training in,” he said.
Alustin pulled a sheet of paper out of his satchel, and tossed it up into the air, where it folded itself into an origami golem in the shape of a seagull, then fluttered off.
“Ah thought yeh needed ta draw spellforms an’ glyphs an’ such onto an origami golem?” Godrick asked.
“I did. I spend several hours every day simply drawing glyphs and other spellforms onto paper for later use. I keep the next best thing to a warehouse-full of specially prepared paper in here,” Alustin said, patting the satchel at his side, likely for the benefit of the Radhan around them. “The better prepared I am for different situations, the more effective I am as a battle mage. You all have actually made me even more effective of a battle mage— it takes a lot of work and research to figure out how to teach non-standard magic, and it’s inspired me to add quite a bit to my arsenal. Not least a significant number of wards, split across dozens of sheets of paper. I can easily mix and match the ward papers to vary the effect. I’m still not as good as Hugh with them, but Hugh’s a specialist.”
“What about me?” Talia asked.
Alustin chuckled. “Actually, yes. I’ve been experimenting with glyphs that try and force effects through spellforms that are completely unsuited for them, similar to your early magical problems, and I’ve been getting some fascinating results. Mostly explosions.”
“Not many problems explosions can’t solve,” Talia said.
“Ah’m pretty sure there are,” Godrick said. “Ah’m pretty sure, in fact, that most problems can’t be solved with explosions.”
“Well, I’m not saying that they make the best solution, or even a good one,” Talia said, “but they’re definitely a solution.”
Godrick just sighed at that. He knew better than to argue with that logic.
The paper seagull returned, leading Sabae over to them, and Alustin unfolded the bird. He showed Godrick the glyphs and spellforms on it, then stored it back in his satchel.
“So,” Alustin said. “Training!”
Hugh’s training consisted of simply firing starbolts up into the sky until his mana reservoir was empty, then growing salt crystals in the channel water. After weeks of training, Hugh could now launch four starbolts before running out of mana. Hugh had grown much faster at growing salt crystals in the water, but the channel water was brackish and far more difficult to get salt out of than ocean water.
Sabae, meanwhile, had finally progressed up to spinning different types of armor around multiple limbs at once— she could now maintain wind armor on two limbs and water on two limbs at the same time. Alustin had the crew playing the same armor transfer game with her, but her explosions were coming far less frequently.
Talia was having to now hold mana in bone shards for even longer than before, while also maintaining a swarm of the tiny dreamfire bolts at the same time. Everyone was making sure to stay especially far away from her, and more than a couple mangroves took damage from her training.
Godrick was proud of the name he came up with for the swarms of tiny dreamfire bolts, however. Sabae had proposed dreamfire-flies, which Hugh had shortened to dreamflies. Godrick’s name, however, was the one that stuck— dreamwasps.
Godrick, meanwhile, was being taught an entirely new spell type. It was one he’d heard of before, and one his father was excellent at, but then, the famed Artur Wallbreaker was good at everything he tried.
He felt a brief flash of resentment, which he promptly quashed. His father had literally never been anything but supportive, and didn’t treat Godrick with any sort of disappointment for not being as powerful as he was.
The new spellform type was referred to as lithification spells, and they were fiendishly difficult to use. In essence, it was the process of turning non-stone materials into stone— usually mud or sand, though other materials like shells could be used.
The reason it was so difficult was that there were a half dozen spellforms that had to be used over the course of the process, often two or three at the same time. And there wasn’t just a simple checklist of what order to use them in, either— it was a process with a complexity coming close to alchemy, though not nearly so dangerous. It was more art than anything. If you applied the concretion spell to the mud too soon, the matrix of the rock would be insufficiently well-consolidated, and it would collapse. If you applied the heating or the pressure spells while there was too much water, the mud would explode. If you drained too much water with the dehydration spells, the mud would just turn to dust instead of water. If you drained the water too quickly, it would leave air bubbles that would cause cracks, even if you took precisely the right amount of water out.
There were literally dozens of ways to ruin the process, if not more. And on top of that, the half-dozen spellforms had to be swapped out with others from situation to situation depending on the contents of the mud, sand, or soil in question. The amount of mana needed for each spellform changed based on both the contents of the ingredients and the conditions around them— not just parameters like the temperature, but on the humidity, the elevation, and more.
Artur had claimed before that the best training for lithification spells was learning how to cook. Godrick, unfortunately, hadn’t spent nearly enough time learning to cook from his father yet.
Not to mention, the process was slow and intensely mana hungry. Hugh’s ability to simply grow crystals was far swifter and more effective. Lithification was simply too slow for use in combat.
When Godrick brought that up, however, Alustin’s response was simply to ask whether Godrick thought magic for battle preparation was important. Godrick felt a little embarrassed at that, considering how Alustin had literally just told him about the hours he spent drawing spellforms and glyphs each day.
Getting more proficient with them would also slowly improve his control over stone over time, which he wouldn’t sneer at.
Alustin spent the whole practice-time lecturing them on the magical principles for filtering toxins, and the techniques various toxin mages used for getting venoms and poisons past magical defenses, and in turn the means for defeating those techniques, and so on and so forth.
Finally, Alustin let them rest, just before they arrived at Zophor.
The mangroves grew taller and more densely packed the deeper they sailed into the channels of the delta. Thousands of birds flitted back and forth among the branches, ranging from cormorants and other seabirds to brilliantly colored parrots and hummingbirds. Seadrakes competed for nesting space with their larger forest drake cousins— usually winning, thanks to the fact that sea drakes floc
ked in large numbers, while forest drakes nested as separate mating pairs.
Hugh also couldn’t help but notice his spellbook trying to blend in with a group of bright green parrots, which seemed surprisingly tolerant of the intruder in their midst.
Monkeys raced through the trees, following the Rising Cormorant curiously. Hugh spotted a tree reach out and snatch a monkey off a branch at one point, before he realized that it was a man-sized octopus that had camouflaged itself as a section of trunk. The octopus eyed the ship as its skin shifted from the color of the bark to a bright purple, then dropped down into the water, its struggling prey still wrapped in its arms.
The closer to the delta they got, the taller the trees grew, until they passed a bend in the tidal channel and saw Zophor itself.
The living mangroves that made up the tree-city of Zophor towered hundreds of feet into the air, looming high over their natural brethren, which were themselves enormous. At their bases, the city trees were wider across than any other tree he’d ever heard of.
Immense branches intertwined in midair, creating roads between the various trees of the city. More roads spiraled up and down the trunks of each mangrove, with shop-fronts and homes carved into the trunks. Then Hugh blinked and realized that the buildings of Zophor weren’t carved, but were actually grown into the trees.
Thousands of people walked the streets of Zophor, and there were even small wagons pulled by what looked like boar-sized iguanas.
There was no land below Zophor— the whole city grew straight out of the water of the Ylosa Delta.
None of that was the most impressive part of Zophor, however.
There were faces in the trees. Or rather one face, grown again and again. A stern faced middle-aged man, with high cheekbones and a bold jaw. The faces were all bald and beardless. They varied in size, but even the smallest dwarfed Kanderon’s face, and the largest dwarfed even the head of Indris.