‘This is not who I am, I have forgotten who I am. I don’t want to be here, set me free,’ she cried out and gasped as the ground shuddered in response. The clouds and black vortex sunk towards them. Asaph grasped her close as the cliff rocked violently. Cracks snaked under their feet and the ground began to crumble and fall away into the sea below.
‘Raven, guide us to the boatman,’ Asaph shouted, but it needed no telling and was already in the air. He followed the raven and all but dragged Issa along.
A soft light grew ahead. Tears of relief blinded him as the magic of Coronos’ Orb of Air reached for them, itself becoming a vortex of white. The raven went in first, and Asaph hurled himself and Issa into it. Their world became a spinning tunnel of light and gushing wind.
Chapter 19
Battle Between Leviathans
THE white vortex slowed and the wind dropped. The fog in Issa’s mind was trying to keep her from remembering who she was. But she had glimpsed freedom and the Shadowlands could not keep its hold on her living life force as she fought her way back from oblivion. The dregs of Edarna’s potion were slowly leaving her wasted body.
She opened her eyes and found herself slumped against Asaph’s chest, the steady beat of his heart stilled the rising panic within her own, he was not a wraith. She was light-headed but clear-headed as if a veil of deceit was being lifted. Dense mist rolled around them and all was silent.
‘Issa,’ she breathed her name, remembering. Asaph looked down, his blue eyes searched hers.
‘Are you all right?’ She nodded but wasn’t sure. ‘Issa,’ he spoke her name to himself as if to feel how it sounded.
She glanced at her arms, small blotches of pink were slowly forming. ‘I had been given a potion to make me seem dead so I could survive in the Shadowlands, but now it’s wearing off. Where are we?’ she looked at the tall reeds struck up like needles through the mirror-like surface of the water.
‘At the edge of the Shadowlands,’ Asaph replied and chewed his lip. He seemed anxious.
‘We must leave as fast as we can,’ she said, her voice was as weak as she felt. Asaph squeezed her arm.
‘I think we came from over there,’ he pointed to another clump of reeds that looked like any other. Slowly they moved through the marshes and she leant heavily upon him.
‘We will soon be gone from this forsaken place,’ Asaph smiled at her and for some reason, she blushed.
She could see him clearly now in the muted light. He wore thick woven trousers, a wide belt and scabbard, within which hung a long sword. She would have wondered why he wore a sword had it not seemed so natural upon him. A brown jerkin covered his white shirt, and a cloak reaching to his knees hung loosely upon his shoulders. His accent was strange and he sometimes seemed to struggle with certain words as if Frayonesse did not come naturally and he was not speaking his own language. He certainly wasn’t from Frayon and she wondered where his home was.
He caught her gaze and she looked away. She hugged her arms self-consciously, realising she wore only rags and wondering where her waders had gone. Only her blacksmith’s belt was holding her clothes together, and she probably would have lost that too had it not been secured around her. He noticed her shivering, unhooked his cloak and wrapped it around her. She smiled gratefully, but could not meet his eyes, feeling her cheeks burning.
‘It pleases me more than you can know to see you both here now,’ another man’s voice came from somewhere, making her jump instinctively behind Asaph - he had a sword after all. She peered from behind him to see a white-haired man emerge from the reeds. Asaph grinned at her, amusement in his eyes.
The two men spoke in a language she did not understand. The older man stopped before them and dropped two fully stuffed backpacks at his feet. He smiled kindly at her. Like Asaph, he was tall with angular features and had long hair that he wore tied back at the nape, though he had a long beard and a deeply lined face. He wore a tunic that came to his knees, breaches and a light-grey cloak. He leant on a staff, but despite his age, his grey eyes were bright and full of knowing.
There was something else about him that caught her attention, more a feeling than seen and she wondered at it for a while. There was an air about him, some kind of power she had never felt before that was beyond the merely physical. She focused on the feeling and could sense a little in Asaph too, though it seemed more hidden.
Come to think of it, Edarna had had a similar power, but it was earthier, more feminine. She smiled inwardly at her returning memories and hoped the old witch was all right. Edarna, I made it out. She wished she could speak in person to the witch.
Asaph hugged the older man, unspoken relief in both their eyes.
‘Issa, this is my father, Coronos,’ he said.
Coronos reached forward, took her hand and kissed it. She hesitated and smiled at him, nervousness clouding out any words she might have said. A strange gesture, she thought, one that would be right for important ladies and royalty, and she wondered if he was in some way linked to royalty himself. She glanced at Asaph. Could he be a prince? Such thoughts did nothing to relax her, and so she pushed them aside, deciding to form no judgements until she knew more.
‘I even prayed to the Night Goddess that you would return,’ Coronos said, turning back to Asaph. ‘This deathly place eats away at the soul.’ His voice was taut though he didn’t stumble over his words like Asaph did, he seemed far more used to Frayonesse.
Asaph nodded. ‘Let’s go.’ He turned to face the water, stood in quiet concentration for a moment, and spoke.
‘Murlonius.’
The name echoed loudly, out of place in the silence. It rippled through Issa as if she were a still pond whose peace was broken by a thrown pebble.
A dot of orange light shrouded in mist appeared on the horizon. It grew as it neared, and then the prow of a boat materialised. The man that rowed it was hooded and cloaked. He stood up and guided the boat with an oar through the marshes towards them. She stared at the ornately carved vessel, noticing that it cast no wake in the water as if it glided only through air or belonged to another time and place entirely.
Asaph held the boat against the bank and beckoned to them. No words were spoken as she took his outstretched hand and stepped in after Coronos. Asaph hopped in behind her. The thought of leaving the Shadowlands filled her with excitement, but she wouldn’t let herself believe it until they were far from here.
The boatman said nothing, but Issa could feel his eyes upon her. She looked up at him from her seat, but could not see his face in the darkness of his hood. Still, she knew his eyes watched her and it was unsettling. Asaph reached into the sack at his feet and passed her a wrapped object.
‘Jungle Stew filled roll,’ he explained. ‘You look starving.’
She smiled, he was right. As daintily as a starving person could, she tucked into the roll. It was delicious, but swallowing solid food after so long was painful and her stomach hurt. After a few bites, she set the roll down.
‘It’s nice but… it has been a long time. I’ll eat it slowly,’ she smiled apologetically back at him.
Her attention was caught by a caw and rush of air as the raven landed on the side of the boat next to her. His sudden arrival did not startle her and instead, his presence was comforting. They looked at each other and slowly the memory returned. She had followed him. He had saved her from the Dromoorai. The raven gave a low caw as if in response to her thoughts, and she noticed Coronos watching her and the bird, though he said nothing and instead sat deep in thought.
‘It stole my ring,’ Asaph scowled, but then smiled. The raven looked at him with wide innocent eyes.
‘It’s a he,’ she laughed.
‘Really? How can you tell? They all look the same to me,’ Asaph said with a shrug.
‘Well, it’s obvious,’ Issa said, then realised it wasn’t obvious to most people who couldn’t feel an animal’s presence as she could. ‘I guess I just have a feel for animals.’
‘
Well, it, him, stole the ring and caused all this trouble,’ Asaph said, ‘but I forgive him, and because he found you, I’m glad he did.’ Issa smiled and saw Coronos grinning too.
As the boatman pushed them through the reeds, his sleeves fell back. Issa noticed with a shock that he had six fingers on each hand, and his hands were shrivelled and wrinkled with great age. She tried not to stare, but how could such an old man manage this boat? When the mist engulfed them and the world was lost from view, he reached up and pulled back his hood.
A gasp escaped her throat before she could stop it, for his hands were no longer shrivelled with age, but young and smooth. She glanced up at his face and saw a human one, but unlike any she had seen before. He smiled at her, his aquiline features were beautiful and she had to look away rather than stare longer.
‘Murlonius is one of the Ancients, a people gone long ago from Maioria,’ Asaph explained. She nodded and inclined her head towards Murlonius.
‘I remember something Ma said about an ancient race,’ she faltered, trying to remember, ‘but the Shadowlands has dimmed my memory.’
Whenever she thought the boatman was not looking, she stole a glance at him, but each time she caught his eyes for he was always watching her. Instead, she closed her eyes and pretended to doze, but her thoughts only focused more fully upon the boatman. He seemed really sad as if a dark shadow lay heavy on his shoulders.
An image of a woman flashed in her mind, with features similar to the boatman’s, but the image was ripped away replaced by two triangular eyes of swirling lights that bore into her soul. She tried to push it away, but could not. The eyes turned red and it felt like her mind was burning. The shadow of a raven crossed her inner vision, breaking it. She opened her eyes, and her breath came fast and shallow as she looked at the boatman. He tore his eyes from hers, fear raw upon his face. She was suddenly cold and wrapped Asaph’s cloak tighter.
‘Issa? Are you all right?’ Asaph asked. His voice came from far away. She blinked and looked back into a worried face.
‘I think so… I drifted and saw eyes watching me. It’s probably nothing…’ she frowned and wiped her clammy forehead.
‘Be careful what you think,’ Coronos said, ‘the soul is weak here. We must get as far away as we can from the Shadowlands.’
‘We should be as quiet as we can,’ the boatman urged.
She swallowed and nodded, but still felt the boatman’s eyes watching her. It seemed he could not look away for long, but she dared not look at him again, afraid of what else she might see. She picked up her roll and tried to finish it.
They moved in silence through a strange ocean that was completely still and, though the mist had cleared, shimmered with a white glow. The sky above was also white so that sea and sky blurred into one all-encompassing light, the line of the horizon barely distinguishable.
‘Is it far?’ she whispered, trying to keep her mind from thinking about those burning red triangular eyes.
‘The journey is not long, but we travel an unfathomable distance. Whether we will make it has yet to be decided, for none have I ever brought back from the Land of Shadows,’ the boatman’s voice was low, though he seemed more relaxed with each passing minute as they moved away from the Shadowlands. She hugged her shoulders, finding no comfort in his words, and turned to Asaph.
‘Back there you said I was needed. What did you mean? Where are we are going? My memory is hazy, but I remember the Dromoorai came and destroyed my home upon the Isles of Kammy and everyone that I knew. I left in the hope of trying to reach the mainland, Frayon. Perhaps a foolish hope.’ She swallowed down a hard lump, the memory of her destroyed homeland returning in full force. Asaph was silent for a moment as if considering her words and his. Coronos looked on, still deep in thought.
‘Um, it’s a bit difficult to explain and hard to believe, even I don’t fully understand it,’ he began awkwardly. ‘All of my life I’ve had these terrible dreams of a white sea monster and a girl running that looked just like you. I never knew what the dreams meant, and still don’t, only that they were true, and everything that just happened back there also happened in my dreams - all except this part, where we escaped the White Beast. It is like my dreams were warning me about the future, and the woman in them is you.
‘Just the other day I…’ he rubbed his chest as if it were sore. ‘Well, the raven stole that ring and I chased it. It led me to a place where a door to another world opened up. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened. That other world was a desert under a midnight sky, and there was this massive stone doorway.’
Issa listened wide-eyed as Asaph’s words unlocked her own memory of the shimmering door. His voice filtered down to her every now and again, ‘…a woman wearing the strangest robe covered in stars that moved.’ ‘…her face I could never see…’ Yes, she remembered the woman cloaked in the stars.
‘It’s a long story,’ he sighed. ‘To cut it short… There was another woman, an Ancient like Murlonius.’ In the corner of her eye, Issa saw the boatman pause rowing. ‘She told me that if you did not escape the Shadowlands, then all is lost. I don’t understand it either,’ Asaph said when she frowned, ‘but I saw a terrible fate befall the world as the Immortal Lord draws us into the Dark Rift. It seems that you and I are connected to that fate in some way,’ he seemed about to add something, but must have changed his mind and stayed silent.
‘You should have it back, then,’ she fumbled to pull the ring off her finger, feeling bad for having put it on.
‘No, please keep the ring,’ he said, ‘please keep it safe. The raven meant for you to have it. I could not have found you without the raven.’
She looked at the ring. It wasn’t hers and the thought of being bound by something she did not understand did not sit well. She was afraid of his words, of what he had seen that mirrored her own experience, somehow making it more real and more disturbing. He had saved her from the Shadowlands though so surely she could trust him.
‘I shall look after it for you,’ she said and smiled. ‘I don’t understand what you experienced either. In a matter of days, my world has been completely changed. I didn’t even know Dromoorai were real until they destroyed all that I love.’
‘Long ago they also destroyed all that we loved,’ Asaph said with a comforting smile. ‘We come from the Uncharted Lands, as it is known to the Old World, but we originally come from Drax, a land in the north that was destroyed by Baelthrom.’
‘Drax, I remember it on the map,’ she cast her mind back to the map on the classroom wall. She remembered thinking that the land of the Dragon Lords looked like a giant dragon tooth. ‘But I had no idea that the Uncharted Lands were reachable or inhabited.’
‘We were lucky to reach there when Drax was destroyed,’ Coronos explained, his voice was low and his eyes troubled.
She had a hundred questions to ask these interesting men, but exhaustion came over her. Instead, she leant against the side of the boat and stared at the hypnotic glittering sea. It felt safe here in the light of this strange ocean between worlds.
The raven’s caw jolted Issa awake. No sooner had she opened her eyes than her head began to pound and queasiness settled in her stomach. A terrible wailing rang out around them. She knew that sound intimately, and its desperate calling was for her. She gripped the side of the boat, fighting against the fear and nausea.
The sky had darkened and the sea was no longer calm, instead choppy waves lapped at the boat, becoming increasingly violent by the minute. The wind gusted until it felt like solid punches. They were no longer in the ocean between worlds.
‘Keteth is here,’ Asaph barked and squeezed her shoulder as if to reassure, but she could see the worry on his face.
‘We must hurry,’ the boatman’s voice cut through the noise, still melodic despite the howling wind. In the distance, moving in the ocean behind him, she saw a great white shape that made her shudder. A longing to go to the beast overwhelmed her, and she reached over the boat for t
he water.
‘Issa, no,’ Asaph cried and hauled her back into the boat.
She struggled against his rough grasp, but what little strength she had soon left her and she sagged. Without Edarna’s potion to protect her, Keteth’s calling was unbearable, it gripped her heart and scattered her mind. She longed to dive into the depths of the dark water, down and down until the surface was but a distant memory.
Cold sweat trickled down her back and she clenched her eyes shut, but Keteth’s yearning only grew louder, lulling her with enchantments. His power was strong out here in the open ocean, and she could not fight him. The ship lurched to the side and water flooded in. Asaph’s grip on her arm tightened and she clung to him white-knuckled.
‘This storm is Keteth’s magic, it’s not natural,’ Coronos screamed over the wind.
Black clouds closed in. Ink-coloured waves reached towards them from all directions, lifting and tossing the boat. Asaph’s face was white, though he gave a weak smile.
‘Try to look at the horizon,’ he shouted over the wind, and passed her a pouch from inside his tunic, ‘and smell this if you feel queasy, it’s hessel leaf.’
She took the pouch with a shaking hand and breathed in its pungent aroma, but it could not quell this kind of sickness, it was not caused by the sea, but by the touch of a corrupt and powerful mind.
Asaph released his grip on her as if reluctant to let her go, and turned to bail out the water pouring into the boat, only to have it refill as quickly as he worked. She reached to help, but her stomach lurched and another mournful call drove all sense from her mind. She sagged back against the side of the boat and glanced at the others.
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 19