Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  “No! It’s not!” She had to make him understand. And she had to convince the part of herself that desperately wanted to be persuaded. “If only thirty pairs were needed, that’s all the Mother would have asked for. If Daisy and I don’t go through with this, people are going to die.”

  “You heard him, Larine. If you die, Ozor will never be the same. He needs you. Is it really worth sacrificing your son to save a handful of strangers?”

  Larine tried to answer, but she couldn’t force out the words. She knew he was right about Ozor. Her death would wound him in ways that would never fully heal.

  Shiar went on, urgent. “Do you want him to go back to stealing? He only stopped to please you. Do you want him to move on to even worse crimes? His anger will drive him to violence eventually. You know it will.”

  Larine clenched her fists and closed her eyes. Daisy seized a mouthful of her breeches leg and tried to drag her toward the prow. Come on. We have to do it now.

  She knew her familiar was right, but she couldn’t move. What Shiar described was all too plausible. Ozor had never cared if he hurt people. His pain and rage at losing her could well make him lash out at anyone who got in his way. And the knowledge about the limits of the Mother’s power he’d gained growing up in the Hall could allow him to escape detection and capture for a long time. How many people might he hurt? More than would be lost if she and Daisy failed to go through with their sacrifice?

  Daisy whined, gave a final tug, then released her breeches and backed toward the prow. Please. I can’t do this without you.

  I know. I’ll come. Larine took a deep breath. “Shiar, it’s going to be up to you. You have to make sure that doesn’t happen. Ozor loves you. Be there for him. Talk to him. Keep explaining until he understands why I had to do this.”

  “How can I, when I don’t understand myself?” Shiar took her hands. “Please, Larine. For Ozor. For me.” His voice dropped until she had to strain to make out his words over the wind. “And what about your new husband? Yes, I heard about that. Think how happy he’ll be when you come back alive.”

  Larine could picture Hanion’s joy all too clearly. She shut her mind to the image. “He’s a wizard. He understands.”

  “Then he should have offered to take your place. How much can he love you, if he was willing to let you sail off to die while he stayed behind?”

  Larine’s stomach plummeted. At first she thought it was in reaction to his cruel words, but then she realized the front of the ship was falling into a deep trough between waves. It crashed into the hollow and jerked upward. A wall of water towered over them.

  Daisy stood in the bow, silhouetted against the wave, yellow fur in bright contrast to the dark water. She whirled, claws scrabbling on the slick deck. Larine!

  Terror smote Larine, both her own and Daisy’s. She lunged toward her familiar, stretching out her arms. All she had to do was touch Daisy, and the dog would use the Mother’s power to keep them both safe, just as she had before.

  Shiar clamped one strong arm around her waist. He thrust the other through a loop of the rope that held the rigging in place and wound it around his forearm.

  The wave crashed across the deck. Daisy was still more than a yard away from Larine’s reaching fingers when the water picked her up and swept her over the rail into the ocean.

  “Daisy!” Larine screamed. She fought to break free, but Shiar held her in a relentless grip. The water rushed over them, tearing with tremendous force, but he clung to the rope and to Larine, keeping them from being dragged overboard after Daisy. Larine had to clamp her mouth shut and hold her breath, but the moment her head emerged she gasped and renewed her struggles. She kicked and twisted and clawed at Shiar, but he refused to release her.

  Closing her eyes, she flung her mind open to Daisy. Cold, wet darkness came to her through her familiar’s senses. Daisy’s legs paddled frantically to bring her to the surface, but the tossing waves sucked her down.

  Hold on, Larine begged. I’ll come after you.

  Don’t. Daisy’s thoughts were suddenly calm. You have to stay on the ship. If you try to rescue me, we’ll both drown, and Elathir will be lost.

  Larine sagged in Shiar’s grip, tears hot amid the cold rain on her face. It’s lost anyway. I can’t save it alone.

  We’re not alone. The Mother is with us.

  Love and comfort poured into Larine’s mind. Bright gold lit the back of her eyelids. The sense of the Mother’s presence enveloped her, warm and compassionate and strong. Daisy’s rough tongue licked the tears from her cheeks in a flurry of eager swipes.

  Then she was gone.

  Larine was dimly aware of Shiar easing her to the deck, but it didn’t matter. The horrible emptiness in her mind made everything else irrelevant. She buried her face in her arms.

  Shiar patted her shoulder, his voice as gentle as she’d ever heard it. “I’m sorry, Larine. But I guess that settles it. Ozor will be so happy when you come home.”

  Larine was about to bleakly agree when a cold wave of understanding rushed from her belly to the tips of her fingers and toes, followed by a white-hot blast of fury. She scrambled to her feet. “You did it on purpose! You turned the ship so the waves would break over it. You weren’t trying to persuade me. You were distracting me until one of them did what you wanted.” She threw herself at Shiar and pounded his chest with her fists. “Don’t think you’ll get away with it! Killing a familiar is murder. I’ll make sure they put you on trial and watch exactly what you did through a window. After the storm is over it will be easy to bring a ship with wizards close enough to where we are. They’ll see the proof, and they’ll sentence you to death!”

  “What will they see? Do you think I have the power to summon waves to do my bidding? It was an accident, Larine. A tragic accident, that’s all. Or maybe it was the Mother’s way of telling you that your sacrifice wasn’t needed. You should be thanking her for saving your life. And me, too. If I hadn’t grabbed you and held on, you’d have been swept overboard with her.” He displayed his arm. Raw red welts marked where the rope had cut into his skin.

  Larine knew he was lying, but with sick despair she realized he was right. A window would show nothing to prove he’d acted intentionally. Undoubtedly he’d known better than to speak his plan aloud when he ordered his second-in-command to turn the ship. And nothing she’d seen him do would indicate forethought to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Larine did. It would be her word against his, and that wouldn’t be enough to convict him. A murderer could only be executed if a window provided absolute proof he was guilty.

  Which was why he’d carefully arranged for it to look like an accident, of course. He was going to get away with killing Daisy, and there was nothing Larine could do about it.

  She sank to the deck and curled into a miserable ball. “Go away,” she said, not caring whether he heard her over the howling gale.

  “You should go below,” he said. “The waves won’t be so bad once we turn around, but until then they’re going to stay dangerous.”

  The thought of the office full of smiling corpses made Larine feel physically ill. Her fellow wizards had succeeded where she’d failed. She’d rendered their sacrifices pointless. Without her final push, the storm was going to destroy Elathir anyway. Maybe it wouldn’t be quite as devastating as if they’d never tried to save it, but it would be bad enough. She shook her head.

  “At least take this.” A rope fell around her shoulders. “Put it around your body under your arms. It will keep you safe if we hit any more waves like that.”

  A big part of Larine didn’t care if she was swept into the depths to join Daisy, but she pulled her arms through the loop of heavy wet rope and moved it into place around her torso. Her death would no longer serve a purpose. She owed it to Ozor and Hanion to do what was necessary to survive.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees and stayed silent until she heard Shiar move away. He’d go back to the wheel and steer them out of the tumult into
clear water. Eventually he’d take them back to Elathir and she’d witness the results of her failure. Perhaps the Mother would be so disgusted she’d instruct Dabiel to expel her from the Wizards’ Guild. Or maybe she’d send Larine another familiar. The idea of any other animal trying to replace Daisy was repellant, but she’d have no choice but to accept and do what little she could to heal the damage and rebuild the destruction.

  If only she’d ignored Shiar’s interruption and urged Daisy to proceed. She’d be standing with her familiar in the Mother’s presence now, warm golden light washing her pain away.

  The bow dipped again, and another wave crashed over the deck, not as big as the one that had doomed Daisy, but high enough to swirl around Larine’s waist. The water dragged her forward until the bight of rope under her arms jerked her to a halt. As the water receded, Larine scrambled to her feet. Shiar was right; she should go below. If she went down the forward ladder instead of the ramp in the stern and took refuge in the crew quarters, she could avoid the bodies. She pushed the rope past her hips and stepped out of the loop.

  Something burst from the water and flew toward her. Instinctively she cowered back and threw her arms up to protect her face. Whatever it was landed on the deck with a massive thud and slid to a stop at her feet. She dropped her arms and stared.

  An enormous fish, longer than Larine was tall, lay before her. The huge blue fin running the length of its back flexed and stretched. The fish twisted until its long snout, as narrow as her finger and sharp as a spear, pointed at her. Then it arched back, bringing one big dark eye to fix on her face. Just behind it, vivid against the silver of the fish’s body, was a rust-colored oval mark the size and shape of a fingerprint.

  Larine gulped. Her pulse thundered with terror and exhilaration. The Mother was offering her another chance.

  This time she wasn’t going to stop and think and give something else time to go wrong. She snatched her knife from her belt, crouched by the fish’s head, and jabbed the point through the scales of its side. Instead of flinching, it pressed into the blade until red blood flowed from the wound. Larine withdrew the knife, slashed her palm, and slapped her hand against the cut. Hot blood met cold. The world around Larine dissolved into a wash of golden sparkles.

  The Mother appeared before her, just as she had the other two times Larine had bonded. She regarded Larine and the fish, eyes heavy with grief and lit with hope. “Are you willing to humble yourself beneath this sailfish and allow him to use my power through you?”

  Larine forced her answer through a tight throat. “Yes. I’m willing.”

  The Mother stepped forward and put her hand on Larine’s shoulder. “And are you willing to let him spend your life to finish moving this storm past Elathir?”

  Larine wanted to reply with a bold affirmative, but it was impossible to lie to yourself or the Mother when her compassionate gaze was looking into your soul. “I am, but—is it really necessary? Please, we’ve given so much already. Surely my life won’t make that much difference.”

  “It is, and it will. I wish it were otherwise.” The pain in the Mother’s voice stabbed Larine’s heart, but there was no doubt in it. “Observe.”

  Sensations overwhelmed Larine, much as they did during healing, but even more intense. She tasted salt and wind and dirt, smelled blood and lightning, heard the roar of the wind and the growl of the sea and the creaking of the earth. She saw a swirling white disk against a background divided between blue and green. But most of all, she felt. She felt an enormous, intricate network of forces surrounding her body, pulling her in every direction at once. She felt life pulsing everywhere, filling the land and sea and sky, every spark unique and beloved and eternally interacting with every other, flaring and fading and dancing in a pattern at once immensely joyous and impossibly heartbreaking. She felt a place where the grief in the pattern overbalanced the joy, as simultaneously natural and wrong as a malignant tumor growing in a living body.

  Was this how the Mother perceived the world? Larine barely had time to wonder before the visual portion of the information pouring into her mind shifted and became more recognizable. She saw the Tarath swell and spill out of its banks as wind pushed the sea into the mouth of the river. She saw the buildings of Elath submerged in the flood, their inhabitants fleeing to upper stories and roofs until there was nowhere higher to go and the water swallowed them. She saw buildings torn from their foundations, collapsing into the boiling foam. She felt pain and fear and death, heard screams, smelled rot and decay.

  The Mother spoke, her voice soft and sad. “That’s what will happen if the storm continues on its present course. Only with the impetus provided by another sacrifice will it move far enough north for the surge to clear the river.”

  The images before her eyes changed again. The river still rose, but only a few feet of water entered the city’s buildings. All but a handful remained standing. People fled upward to safety and emerged when the flood retreated. She felt death, but on a far smaller scale, overshadowed by ongoing life. She searched for Ozor, but she couldn’t focus clearly enough to distinguish individuals among the survivors.

  Abruptly the vision vanished and she was back among shining golden clouds. The Mother regarded her gravely. “That’s the difference your sacrifice will make.”

  Bleak peace settled over Larine. Her heart slowed and her breathing calmed. Laid out in such stark terms, the choice was easy. “Thank you for showing me.”

  But a worm of resentment lingered in her gut. If she was going to give her life, she deserved to know the whole reason, so she blurted it out. “I still don’t understand why you asked us to move the storm instead of doing it yourself.”

  The Mother grimaced, deep lines creasing her ageless face. “I tried. I’ve diverted many other such storms from Elathir over the centuries. But when I touch the world, chaos increases. Moving a storm makes it grow larger and stronger. This one formed and approached in such a way that any effort to steer it away increased its reach and destructive capacity enough to negate my efforts. The region around Tevenar, and especially Elathir, is unstable because I’ve touched it so many times to create familiars. It drew the storm like a lodestone draws iron.”

  Her voice strengthened and her eyes drilled into Larine’s. “But when a wizard and familiar use my power, no further chaos enters the world. You can do what I cannot, and move the storm without worsening it. In the end, I had to choose the course that cost the fewest lives.”

  It was disturbing to think of the Mother as less than all-powerful, but there were passages in the Histories that suggested the same thing. Larine glanced at the fish beneath her hand. “I guess you must have just touched him. Didn’t that make the storm worse?”

  “Yes, but not enough to change the outcome, since he’s fresh and Daisy had already spent a great deal of energy.”

  Larine swallowed hard at Daisy’s name. The Mother’s gaze met hers, Larine’s grief mirrored in her eyes. For an instant she felt her loss as the Mother did, the pain fully as intense as it was to Larine, and also part of an immensely vast pattern that gave it context and meaning.

  The moment passed, but memory of it remained, giving deep and wordless comfort. Larine bowed her head. “Please, explain all that to Dabiel the next time you talk to her. It will help her feel better about this.”

  “I will.” The Mother’s mouth twisted ruefully. “It might help you to know that one of the options I considered and rejected would have sent the storm far north, growing more powerful every day it remained at sea. Elathir would have been spared, but Gemgeda would have been wiped out.”

  Larine shuddered at the thought of her home consumed by an even more destructive storm. “Thank you. That does help.” The last of her doubts fell away, and she was able to speak with profound certainty. “I am willing.”

  The Mother bowed her head. The warm golden clouds faded and the noise and cold of the storm returned. Only a bright sphere remained around Larine’s hand on the fish’s side. Her
palm tingled as the cut healed.

  Larine pulled her hand away and the light died. Don’t bother. You know what we have to do?

  She showed me. The voice in her mind was cool and tranquil. Are you ready to begin?

  Yes. Larine smoothed her hand over the fish’s scales. Are you uncomfortable out of the water? Can you breathe?

  Not well, but enough to last as long as we’ll need.

  Larine briefly considered offering to go over the side of the ship with the fish and do their work from the water, but his placid thoughts conveyed acceptance of his awkward position. All right. I’m Larine, by the way. Do you have a name?

  Not as you seem to mean by the thought. He sent her a fleeting impression of his image of himself, swift and deadly and proud, roaming the sea the way Flutter had roamed the sky.

  She couldn’t waste time thinking of the perfect name, but she wanted to acknowledge him as an equal. May I call you Falcon, in honor of my first familiar? She sent him an image of Flutter soaring among the clouds. You would have liked him.

  His approval washed over her. I think I would have.

  Daisy, too. Larine swallowed a fresh stab of grief. All right. It’s time. She laid one hand flat on Falcon’s silver side and lifted the other. She took a deep breath. Her last, or close to it. She was acutely aware of the cold damp air moving through her nose and throat and into her lungs, then rushing out again warm and final. Burn us out.

  Golden, shimmering light burst from her raised hand. Falcon drew on her strength, tentatively at first, but stronger as he gained skill. Larine had recovered a little energy, and Falcon had plenty, so at first the work was easy. But as he reached farther to gather more air and pushed it forward with greater and greater force, Larine swiftly approached exhaustion. Falcon drew from his own reserves a bit longer, but his strong muscles tired and his mouth gulped for air that couldn’t nourish him as water did. Larine felt him gather his determination and shift the flow of the Mother’s power to a deeper source.

  Pain started in her toes and moved through her feet. They were burning, consumed by flames from within. The fire moved up her legs and into her hips and pelvis, sharper and fiercer than labor pains. Like them, this would soon be over. She just had to endure.