Gaff nodded while cutting a strip from the blanket. He wrapped it around a bundle of sticks, securing it with a complicated sailor’s knot. “They don’t expect us from the water. That’s good.”
We worked for a couple hours to finish the floats, then hid them under an overhanging boulder before swimming back inside. The cool water in the lagoon’s tunnel set my scars tingling. Jellyfish drifted before my eyes. When I broke free from the lagoon’s surface, I was pleased to see Raav’s and Islilla’s progress. Five rucksacks were stuffed with gear, and another was half-filled. Heiklet’s, I assumed, if we managed to rescue her.
We climbed from the water and stood, dripping, on the smooth stone. Raav smiled a greeting, his eyes like warm coals on a cold morning.
“Listen,” I said before anyone had a chance to speak. “I’m sorry. There’s obviously more happening with me than I’ve been willing to talk about. It’s time to get it all out so we can make the right decisions.”
After my escape from the men, I’d started wearing a long-sleeved tunic to hide my new scars. I peeled it off, leaving just the sleeveless linen shift I wore beneath. The web of scars shimmered from my fingertips to my armpits. “I told you they call me a channeler. I think this is part of it.”
“If you’re looking for opinions, I’ll start,” Raav said. “I think it’s beautiful.”
My lips twitched in a smile. “Thank you. But that’s not what I mean.”
“I know,” he said. “I just don’t want you to be embarrassed.”
Gaff lifted a pack, checking the weight. Probably trying to put me at ease by diffusing the others’ scrutiny.
“At first I thought I was imagining the voices.”
I explained everything I knew, including my fear that I was making the wrong decision to go near Mieshk’s camp. If I were captured, Mieshk could bring the whole mountain down on our heads. Before I finished, I explained what the Vanished had offered: to meld a spirit’s memories with mine.
The others listened without interrupting. When I stopped speaking, Tkira scooped a handful of gravel from a dish on the rocky shelf. She dribbled the pebbles into an open palm. “Maybe you should stay here when we go after Heiklet,” she said.
I opened my mouth to protest, but Gaff raised a hand and cut me off.
“Or maybe these Vanished memories are the advantage we need to pull off the rescue,” he said. “Plus, the nightstrands may have information on Mieshk’s movements. Look at us. A group of cripples and injured. We shouldn’t discount anything that might help us.”
“We need a diversion,” I said. “I have an idea for that, and it will keep me out of the fight.”
“Which is?” Tkira said.
“Paono. He’s still with them. He can help from the inside.”
Tkira looked genuinely confused. “He thinks you’re a traitor.”
I shook my head. “He’s never been able to stay mad at me forever.”
“You’re willing to risk everything on that assessment?”
“I think we have to trust Lilik on this,” Raav said. “She knows him best.”
Tkira shrugged. “Fine.”
Raav squeezed my shoulder, and we sat quietly for a moment.
“So you gonna go commune with your dead souls, or what?” Gaff asked.
Yeah. I guess it was time for that. My pulse throbbed in my neck. I would see Ioene as she looked when the Vanished lived. The notion both terrified and exhilarated me.
“Raav, will you come with me?” I said. “The speaker for the Vanished said I’d want someone close. To help me keep myself grounded when she blends with me.”
He slipped his hand down my arm. “I’ll stay as long as you need.”
Wavelets lapped at the lagoon’s rim, and high on the mountain, a vent spouted ash with a growl, sending a new wave of dark across the stars. I trembled when I stood. Raav wrapped his arm around my waist while we climbed to the room we’d shared for the last few days.
He lit a lamp when we entered the building. I took a seat on the bunk, cool stone beneath my hands.
“Do you need anything? A water skin?” He sat beside me, close enough to lend comfort without pressing into my space.
“I . . . No. Just don’t laugh when I start talking to the air, okay? They claim I’ll learn to project my thoughts someday . . .”
He smiled. “I would never laugh at you—unless you wanted me to.”
The reassurance didn’t help much. I still struggled to find my voice.
“I’m ready for the guide,” I said, finally. The words hung in the room.
Oh, we know. I heard you talking to your friend. But it was humorous to watch you “talk to the air” as you called it.
Great. I hoped this new guide wouldn’t enjoy mocking me as much as the speaker did.
Are you ready, Lilik? Really ready? Once she bonds with you, you will need to practice discerning her memories from yours. You also need to know that she goes to you willingly. She can’t leave unless you let her. But after this is over, I hope you’ll release her.
“I—yes, I’m ready.”
Abruptly, coolness like seawater on a hot afternoon seeped into my limbs, my palms, the knobs on my spine. It sank through muscle and bone and then diffused, melding with my warm flesh and beating heart.
Memories flooded my mind, overwhelmed my senses. I remembered platters of orange and green fruit spread beneath the afternoon sun. Steamed fish lay on beds of vegetables, and I could smell the warm, yeast-laden scent of fresh-baked bread wafting from a dozen baskets. I’d just set a silver cup back onto the table. A deep red drop of honeyed juice slid down the side. I caught it with a fingertip before it stained the tablecloth.
Behind me, Ioene towered, lush with foliage. Steam vented from her rounded crown.
Rounded? I shook free of the memory and recalled my own images of the harsh angles of Ioene’s summit, of fires blazing in the night. Vertigo slammed me.
The speaker’s low voice returned. Her name was Zyri. We chose her because your ages are similar. Or rather, when she died, she was near to your age. She has seen much in the thousand years since, but we hoped that you might still find kinship with her ghost.
“Kinship,” I whispered.
Or perhaps we hope too much. Regardless, her memories may be easier to navigate because of your similarity.
“No. I mean, yes. You are not hoping too much. I’m glad you made the choice you did. I hope for kinship, too.”
When Raav squeezed my hand, I had an abrupt memory of another boy. Tyrak. Pain stabbed my heart. My breath came in quick gasps. They’d warned me that many memories would hurt, but I’d never imagined how much.
I opened my eyes again. The room’s gray walls, lit a flickering violet by the lamp, pressed in.
“Help me to the beach,” I gasped.
Raav lifted me easily. The muscles of his arms and chest flexed against my body while he carried me out beneath the stars.
“She needs to get through the tunnel.” He tried to keep his voice even, but I could hear the concern.
Islilla squeaked when she saw me. I must have looked terrible. Zyri had a younger sister, I remembered. Black-haired with a pointy little nose. She was on Zyri’s ship when it sank, but Zyri didn’t see her drown. Oh, tides. I couldn’t handle this. Images of the disaster pummeled my mind. I saw waves eating Zyri’s companions. Choking sounds and the crash of splintering wood.
“Raav!” My voice cracked.
“Shh,” he whispered into my hair. Slipping me into the lagoon’s waters, he lowered in beside me and grabbed my hand. “Can you swim?”
I nodded. At least, I hoped I could. Because I was drowning in here.
He towed me more than I swam, but I made it. When we reached the open shore, he carried me onto the beach gravel. We sat, and he held me.
The sea’s black waters stretched out to the star-flecked horizon, marred only by the glint of scattered waves and the occasional luminescent patch of jellyfish. And yet, I remember
ed the clear days of that last summer, of Zyri’s summer. Triangular sails pulled small boats to and fro. In the distant haze, other islands broke from the water. Autumn was coming—already, the sun set for a few hours every night. Soon, Zyri’s people—my people—would trade light silk garments for the lined jackets and thick-woven pants that kept us warm through the long-night’s chill. In a few more months, we’d sow the night crops along the lines of heat that crisscrossed the island.
I jumped when the speaker’s words filled my head.
Lilik. You must take control of the memories. They are no different than your own. You can ignore them or decide to think about them later. Zyri is your guide only. She can’t act. Possibly, she can’t even think. While she is joined with you, she is only a gathering of recollections. When you become too disoriented, push her out.
“Lilik?” Raav still held my hand.
I looked over at him. Instantly, uncontrollably, an image of that other boy, of Tyrak, lay over his face. Tyrak was handsome, similar to Raav in many ways, but with a silvery shimmer in the hollows of his face where the shade revealed the glow of a channeler. Tyrak. So long gone. The memories plunged deeper, into kisses shared on a private section of beach. My chest ached and my belly tingled when I remembered his hands on the small of my back. We’d been friends for so long, and then this sudden love had come like a rogue wave, slamming us together.
“Raav!” I clutched at him, digging fingers into the flesh of his arms, holding on as if I were falling.
“Yes, I’m here.”
He gathered me close. I bit my lip. Hard. Concentrate, Lilik. Fixing my eyes on his face, I pushed away the memory of Tyrak, of the way he smelled like fresh cut wood and the gentle curls of hair over his ears.
“They weren’t together when they died,” I whispered. “He traveled up the coast on an errand the day of the first eruption. No one saw him again. And Zyri was forced onto the ship by her parents. The last of their people hoped to sail to another home. Zyri’s ship sank just offshore. Waves the height of five men.”
I shook in Raav’s arms, shuddering at the memory of being pulled beneath, held down by the roiling surf until I breathed the sea into my lungs.
“Shh, Lilik. Shh.” Raav’s breath tickled my ear.
“Just before the last of their people set sail, the channelers called Tyrak’s soul back to give his last words. But Zyri and Tyrak weren’t family. She wasn’t allowed to attend, but she heard from the priestesses that all his ghost did was call for her.”
I slowly released Raav’s arms, cringing at the red semicircles my fingernails had pressed into his skin. A different memory. A different time. Tyrak’s arms around me. Firm and warm. He bent his face to mine, and his breath was shaky when our lips touched. A tear escaped the corner of my eye.
“Lilik! Breathe. Come back. You’re white as the moon.”
Another pair of lips landed on mine. Supple and warm as a summer day. Raav’s tongue brushed my lower lip, and I shivered. Tyrak vanished like smoke fleeing a puff of wind. I wrapped my hands behind Raav’s neck and sank into him.
Too quickly, he pulled away. “Lilik.” His voice was hoarse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
I couldn’t speak. The words piled up in my mind, but nothing stumbled off my tongue. My body quivered. He pulled me into a hug, friendly but not intimate. I laid my head on his chest.
“You’re strong, Lilik. Strong enough to hold another’s pain. Strong enough that sometimes I want to pour myself into you just to feel you hold me up. If anyone can handle this, you can.”
His heart thumped under my ear. Muscles flexed and relaxed when he adjusted position. Slowly, my trembling stopped. A sense of peace crept over me, and I sighed, thinking how nice it would be to spend hours like this.
Zyri’s memories were harder to accept than I’d imagined. It tore at my heart to think about everything she lost. Tyrak, a friend for so long, and in the last months before the cataclysm, he’d been so much more. Her love for him was like nothing I’d ever felt. Like drinking starlight and holding the sky in your hand.
While I relaxed in Raav’s arms, I thought of someone else, too. Paono. By appearance, Tyrak reminded me of Raav. But the years of Zyri and Tyrak’s shared history, the unbreakable friendship that came before their love . . . I wondered whether things could ever have been different for Paono and me. If the Vanished helped my friends and me escape, would Paono and I, like Zyri and Tyrak, never have the chance to say goodbye?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WITH A FLOAT in each armpit, I felt like a seabird drying its wings in the morning sun. Except the water was frigid, sucking the breath from my body. Without the floats holding half my torso above the sea, I would never have made the swim.
Despite the trimming we’d done on the larger branches, stubs of smaller twigs jabbed my inner arms and armpits. Now and then, I stopped and clumsily treaded water while rotating the floats. But all that really did was make them poke me in different, uncomfortable ways.
We traveled far enough from shore that our heads and shoulders would be—we hoped—lost in the disorganized wave that rippled the sea’s surface. To the left, Ioene towered and fumed. To the right, the sea stretched away like black silk.
I was glad that Gaff had no trouble keeping pace despite his limitation. In fact, I suspected that he’d easily outdistance Islilla, the weakest swimmer, if he weren’t holding back. She no longer wore a sling on her arm, but her legs weren’t used to the work. Gaff kicked with both legs together like a whale pushing its tail up and down. While we advanced, the group clustered around me, listening to my stories.
I kept Zyri’s memories largely submerged, floating beneath my own, and dipped in only for glimpses. Slowly, like the subtle melt of the night sky into dawn, the picture of ancient Ioene formed in my mind, and I explained what I could to the others.
Out to sea, low humps of smaller islands once laid placidly in the warm waters of the summer ocean. After Zyri had died, the eruptions had leveled many of these little islets. Zyri remembered these events in a detached way. The spirits of the Vanished knew most of what had happened since their extermination, but the memories were similar to my recollections of the Nocturnai logs: they were things that had happened to other people.
After the major eruptions, the ferocious storms that now pounded the north in the spring had worn down the remaining island stumps such that no land showed above the sea. Many of Zyri’s people had built huts on the long-gone beaches. They sailed to these retreats for holidays, to celebrate and relax.
Zyri? I asked the question in my thoughts, though I expected no answer. The speaker for the Vanished had considered it unlikely that Zyri could think while bound to me.
In some ways, Zyri’s bonding reminded me of the generations of nightcallers who had imprisoned the strands in mundane objects. She will meld with you and mix her memories with yours.
“Nightforging . . .” I said. “How could we?”
“The Vanished told you to move past it, Lilik.” Gaff turned on his side and swam with both floats beneath his ribs. “No use holding onto guilt for things you couldn’t control.”
“This history is interesting and all, but how about some insights on the rescue,” Tkira said. “We’ll be too close to their camp to talk soon.”
“I guess I could look deeper . . .”
Raav paddled over next to me. “I’ll help you if you get overwhelmed,” he whispered.
By that, I wondered if he meant he’d kiss me again. I assumed not with everyone watching. Still, I wouldn’t mind too much if he did.
I opened the sea gates wide to let Zyri fill my thoughts. For a long time after the girl’s death, none of the souls understood how to exist in their new forms because no channelers guided them. Zyri had swirled on the currents of aether surrounding Ioene, brushing up against the other spirits and their memories, reaching for a purpose.
And then, the first Nocturnai had come. There were no channele
rs, but among the newcomers were a few whose blood pulsed with familiarity. Descendants. As gifted as Mavek’s Hands had been. When they called, the strands came, only to realize the horror of being forced into artifacts for which they had no affinity.
“The nightcallers are distant descendants of the Vanished, of the type of priestesses gifted with compulsion,” I said aloud. “The survivors must have landed in the Kiriilt Islands when they fled the cataclysm. I wonder why there’s no record of them.”
“And I wonder when they’re going to tell us how to get home.” Tkira sneered when she spoke.
“Wait . . .” I trailed off, thinking.
The cool water had chilled my muscles, making my legs stiff and wooden. I kicked harder to get my heart pumping while I tried to fit the puzzle pieces together. The others fell behind.
The ancestor-gods. Mieshk was using the old superstition to cement her authority. Maybe the trader custom of deifying their ancestors from the Vanished who escaped the cataclysm. Many of Mavek’s Hands had been exiled just before the eruptions. Maybe that coven had fled south, giving rise to the trader lines and their nightcalling talent. I thought of my mother, born and raised in the Outer Isles where tiny fishing villages and artists’ colonies clung to hard rock. Perhaps another line of ancestry—and the channeling talent—ran through the Outer Isles and dipped roots into the more settled Kiriilti Islands as well.
That insight explained much, but it wasn’t helping us form the plan. I delved back into Zyri’s life, trawling for ideas. She remembered a city on the mountain’s opposite side. A harbor the size of Istanik’s.
Yes! I could follow Zyri’s memories to the city. There’d be construction materials. Shelter. No need to delve into the island’s heart in hopes of blindly stumbling upon another haven.
I let her recollections of the city blossom in my mind. Built on the steep walls of a massive harbor, tier upon tier of buildings stretched up to the bowl’s rim. Connecting the harbor to the ocean, a deep channel cut between vertical walls. Carvings decorated the cliffs, scenes of everyday life. Beyond the channel, sails pulled boats on the trade winds, waves breaking against their bows. Another memory flashed, of Zyri’s ship fleeing through that breach in the cliffs while boulders rained from above. The landslide had blocked the entrance, sealing off the harbor and hiding the city from sight. But . . . wait . . . before the final stones had fallen, Zyri had looked back.
Nightforged (Shattering of the Nocturnai Book 1) Page 18