“Then you forgot my old, blind merchant act.” Randel squinted his eyes almost shut and began to stumble around the room, swatting at imaginary children. “Get out of here, you young pests! Hands off the wares!” he screeched in a squeaky old man’s voice.
“I only laughed so you wouldn’t be sad.”
“You young scalawags are all the same. I’m going to get you this time.” Randel lurched toward her. Aislin scooted away when he reached for her. Treylen saw the faintest smile on her face.
“Maybe you should put the knife down before you stick yourself,” Treylen said. Randel still had the chopping knife in his hand. “Like you did that time with your sword.”
“I didn’t stick myself,” Randel said in mock indignation. “I was testing the edge for sharpness.”
“On your foot? By dropping it?”
Randel hung his head, pretending remorse. He glanced over at the short sword he had been issued when he became a guard. It was leaning against the wall of the hut. “I should probably practice with it more. I’m not very good with it.”
“You’re the worst,” Aislin said.
“Ouch. That’s mean.” Randel considered it. “Probably true, though. I think I’d be a better dancer than a swordsman.” He tried a clumsy jig then, nearly stepping on Aislin’s leg as he did so.
“Do that outside!” Aislin yelped.
“You better hope the guard thing works out,” Treylen told him. “I think your options are limited.”
“That’s why I wanted to learn your secrets. Look at you. You have everything, and yet you never do anything.”
“You want to know my secret?” Treylen asked, beckoning him closer. In a whisper he said, “I don’t do anything. That’s my secret.”
“That’s not a secret,” Aislin said. “Everyone knows that.”
They carried on in this vein for a while, everyone enjoying the respite afforded by the general silliness. It was the first time since the gromdin’s attack that Aislin had been a part of the conversation, and it saddened Treylen to think that her mother was missing it. Though whether she would have relaxed this much with her mother there, he couldn’t have said.
After the meal, they were sitting around in companionable silence when Aislin sat up suddenly, tilting her head as if listening to something in the distance.
“What is it?” Treylen asked her.
Without answering, she got up and left the hut. Thinking he might have a better chance of getting her to talk if they were alone, Treylen motioned Randel to stay behind and slipped out after her.
Clouds dappled the moonlight across the sand. Aislin was standing at the edge of the water, looking out over the sea.
Far out Treylen saw the huge form of a whale surface. It blew water high into the air and dove lazily. Storm clouds were building in the east, and a strong wind was blowing. There was the smell of rain.
“Is it them?” he asked. “Does the storm bring the Devourers?”
He wasn’t sure she was going to answer. When the words came, they surprised him.
“It is not your concern. This is not your fight.” The words came in a deep, rough voice, not Aislin’s voice at all. Whose voice was it? he wondered. It had to be Golgath. Was the ancient Shaper stirring within her? Was it because of how much she was using Seaforce these days? Or did it mean the Devourers were close? He wondered again if he should send word to the macht.
They stood there for some time. “Maybe you should come inside and get some rest. In case it is them,” Treylen suggested.
Aislin’s head turned toward him. He noted with some concern that her eyes were glowing slightly, like the phosphorescent seaweed that washed up on the beach sometimes. She regarded him for a moment, then looked back out to sea. Finally, Treylen went back inside.
“What is it?” Randel asked, his eyes big. “Is it the Devourers?”
“I don’t know. There’s a storm coming anyway.”
“I almost wish they would go ahead and show up. The waiting is killing me,” Randel said.
“I can tell it’s affecting your sleep. You only took two naps today.”
“You know what I mean.”
“They’ll get here when they get here. There’s nothing we can do until then,” the old man replied, rolling out his sleeping mat.
“And nothing we can do after they get here either,” Randel replied.
“Now you’re starting to get it.”
“Get what?”
“When there’s nothing you can do, do nothing.”
“You’re a strange old fellow, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
Chapter 31
Treylen woke up in the dim light of morning with a certainty that the Devourers had arrived. Aislin was not in the hut. Randel was snoring softly in his corner. Treylen put his shoes on quickly and knelt by Randel.
“They’re here. Go saddle the horse. Make ready.”
The dawn was coming, though it was hidden by the storm clouds that blanketed the sky. Treylen hurried down to the shore and found Aislin standing at the water’s edge. He looked out to sea and saw a thick fog bank, ghostly white in the poor light.
A black ship emerged from the fog, streamers of mist swirling around it. Standing on the foredeck were three figures, human-like, but taller, bald, with ghastly white skin. They were broad-shouldered, and their arms were thick with muscle under the sleeveless scale armor they wore.
Behind the black ship came three more in a V formation. Men climbed in the rigging, furling sails. Randel came running up.
“Should I go tell the macht?” he asked breathlessly.
Treylen glanced up at the castle. Did the macht know yet? It made no difference. “If he doesn’t know yet, he will soon.” An idea occurred to him, one he hoped he wouldn’t have to use. “I want you here.” He turned his attention back to Aislin. Her expression was grim.
“Aislin.” She gave no sign of hearing him. He called her name again. Still nothing. He moved closer. The air around her crackled with power. He reached out to touch her arm.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice was harsh, not her own. This time he was sure it was Golgath.
She threw up her arms.
A wave the size of a small mountain rose up in front of the ships and raced toward them. The wave crashed down on the ships in a massive spray of foam. When it faded away, there was no sign of the ships. Randel whooped and threw his fist into the air.
Then the ships bobbed to the surface like ducks, water sluicing off them. The sails that had not been furled had been ripped away, and on one of the trailing ships the foremast was snapped off and hung tangled in rigging. Men were already racing to cut it away. But the ships were otherwise unscathed. For the first time Treylen noticed a faint purple glow limning the ships.
He turned and saw a faint smile on Aislin’s face. Or it might have been a snarl. It was hard to tell. Golgath was here, but there was nothing Treylen could do, nothing anyone could do.
Aislin held up one hand, circling it over her head.
Huge, boiling waterspouts shot up out of the sea, one, two, then a dozen. One surfaced directly beneath a ship, causing it to heel over so far that the crosstrees nearly touched the water. The others were tossed madly, but through it all the purple light around the ships remained unbroken, and the vessels emerged unharmed once again.
“Aislin,” Treylen said. “You’re going about this all wrong.”
Aislin ignored him. She spread her arms.
On both sides of the small armada the sea drew back, rising to watery mountains, so tall they cast the shore where the three of them stood in shadow. The ships dipped down out of sight as the water beneath them was drawn out and up. Not even the tops of their masts were still visible. If they were not sitting on the sea floor, they were close.
Aislin smacked her hands together.
With a mighty roar, the sea rushed back in to fill the channel she’d made, flinging foam high into the sky. The sea boiled an
d foamed, an enraged animal snarling and clawing at its prey.
Randel shot Treylen a frightened look and started backing away, worried about the wave that would result from such a massive displacement of water.
He was right to be concerned. A towering wave rushed toward them. Randel yelped. “Don’t drown us, Aislin!”
Aislin didn’t appear to hear him, but she waved her hand, and the wave split in half before it reached the shore, breaking harmlessly to either side of them.
Once again, the ships bobbed back to the surface. They’d taken more damage. Two more masts were down. One of the trailing ships was listing badly and seemed to be taking on water. The black ship was untouched.
Treylen moved over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Aislin, I think—” he began, but got no further.
“Do not interfere!” she said in the harsh voice of the deep sea, backhanding him. Treylen staggered backwards from the force of the blow, almost falling down.
She bent over and put one hand in the water. The sea around her hand froze instantly. The ice spread quickly from her hand toward the black ship, faster than a fired arrow. The ice reached the ship, and the ship came to a stop, held fast. Ice spread up the sides, gripping the hull in its frozen grasp.
Aislin clenched her fist, and the ice began to squeeze. Even from this distance Treylen could hear the timbers groaning and cracking. At any moment the hull would crack like an eggshell.
But the Devourers were reacting. They had their arms in the air, crackling purple fire spouting from their hands. The flames spread across the deck and down the sides of the ship. When it touched the ice it flared up, oily black smoke coming from it. The ice melted in moments.
Aislin had already moved onto her next attack. She threw up a new wave on one side of the black ship. It curled over the ship as it crested and broke. Then she froze it, turned it to ice a heartbeat before it crashed down onto the ship. Aislin shouted and swung her arm. The wave shattered into thousands of pieces. Razor-sharp shards of ice, each longer than the height of a man, shot down at the three figures.
A shimmering shield of purple and black light sprang up around the Devourers. The ice spears melted harmlessly when they struck it. But the rest of the ship took damage—holes punched in the deck, rigging torn down—and the screams of dying sailors filled the air.
Then the Devourers attacked for the first time. One of them threw a handful of something in the air, what looked like small stones. But they flew far higher and faster than they should have, hundreds of paces into the air in the blink of an eye.
They hung there for a moment, spinning in place, growing larger. Then they burst into black flames and streaked down at Aislin.
Randel bolted. Treylen backed up in alarm. Aislin raised both hands and shouted something in a language Treylen had never heard. Spouts of water rose up in front of her, spreading as they did so to form a solid wall, a translucent shield of glowing green water. The fireballs struck the watery shield with loud booms. The booms died away, leaving a loud hissing sound and a thick cloud of steam that filled the air.
When the steam cleared enough to see, Aislin was still standing there, untouched. But to Treylen’s eye she looked noticeably weary now, bent over a little bit, breathing hard. The battle was beginning to take its toll.
The Devourers had been busy while Aislin was fending off their attack, moving to the bow of the ship and leaning over the side. From their hands a thick, viscous black fluid poured down into the sea.
Treylen felt something happening down there under the water, something that set off alarms, though he didn’t know what it was.
Suddenly the water in front of Aislin was roiled from underneath as a huge, toothy creature that had once been a shark and yet was all wrong now—fins bent at strange angles, hide mottled gray and purple, eyes turned cloudy—leaped out of the water at her.
Treylen felt the tug as Aislin drew Seaforce and threw it at the creature. A jagged bolt of it met the warped shark at the height of its leap, slicing it cleanly in two. The pieces fell into the water before her.
Already more and more things were boiling up out of the water, attacking from every side. Crabs grown to fantastic sizes, their pincers larger than her whole body. A squid, its skin blotched with black rot, tentacles waving as it sought to wrap her up and bear her down. And numerous other things Treylen could no longer identify, things that had been ordinary sea creatures but were now all gnashing teeth and crazed ferocity.
They swarmed over her. Treylen could no longer see her through the mass of them, they were so thick. But he knew she was still alive by the glowing arcs of green Seaforce as she slashed at them furiously, her counterattacks a blur.
Then the last of the warped creatures were dead, floating in the water around her. Treylen saw that she was clearly tiring now. For a moment she put her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. He saw something else too, something he thought at first was his imagination. Around Aislin was a dimly-visible shape, a hunched, thick-limbed creature with a bestial face and green, scaly skin.
Golgath.
“Use Seaforce in your next attack,” Treylen said. “Like we practiced.”
Aislin’s lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl. Then she turned her attention back to the black ship. She put both hands in the sea. The water began to glow intensely, the glow racing toward the black ship. Tentacles of pure emerald Seaforce burst up all around the black ship, snaking up the sides and wrapping around the hull. Sparks flew as Seaforce contacted the chaos power limning the ships. The tentacles tightened, starting to pull the ship under.
The Devourers ran to the tentacles, chaos power flaring around their hands. They hacked at the tentacles, each blow causing small explosions as the two powers came in contact with each other. Soon all of them had been severed. Aislin pulled her hands from the water and let the Seaforce go. She sagged, breathing hard.
While Aislin recovered her strength, the Devourers went on the attack once again. They moved back into the bow of the ship and began firing at Aislin, bolt after bolt of crackling chaos power like purple lightning. Treylen yelled a warning, and Aislin managed to throw up a shield of Seaforce. The shield stopped the bolts from hitting her, but the force of them knocked her back, one step, then another, slowly being driven back to the shore.
Treylen looked back at the black ship and saw that one of the Devourers was not engaging in the attack. Instead, he was channeling chaos power upwards into a central point, where it gathered, forming a seething ball of energy. Alarmed, Treylen shouted at Aislin, but she was preoccupied fending off the other attacks and didn’t seem to hear him. The wavery outline of Golgath was stronger now, Aislin partially obscured by it.
The Devourer shouted and pointed at Aislin, unleashing the ball of energy, which streaked at Aislin. Aislin’s shield thickened noticeably in the heartbeat before the attack struck. There was a tremendous explosion when the energy contacted the shield, and Aislin was knocked clear back onto the shore. Her shield flickered and went out. Treylen was knocked down as well.
Treylen struggled to his feet and ran to her, bolts of power slicing the air around him, one burning his arm, another passing so close by his face that it briefly blinded him. He reached her mostly unharmed, but when he bent down to help her up, her face was almost completely obscured by an inhuman mask of rage and fear. She slapped him aside and leapt to her feet with a roar, the Seaforce shield returning as she did so.
The purple bolts continued firing at her, but her renewed shield held them at bay. She threw her head back and spread her arms wide. Power began to leach from the sea in a broad area, her pull so strong that Treylen felt it in his chest and put his hand to his heart.
As the power was drawn from it, the water left behind turned gray. The sphere of Seaforce she summoned was already far larger than Treylen had ever seen her try to control before, and still she pulled more and more power into it. He could see her gritting her teeth, eyes wide and staring,
as she fought to control it. Even the shadowy, hunched form of Golgath was straining to contain the power. If she lost control of it, he knew none of them would survive.
His attention switched to the attackers, and he saw that they were doing something new.
They stood in a line at the bow of the black ship. The air around them was glowing brightly. A circular opening appeared in front of them, a hole in the air, the edges crackling with chaos power. Inside the opening was liquid blackness. Treylen had a sense of a vast maw, gaping wide, wide enough to swallow the world.
Aislin flung the huge sphere of Seaforce at the black ship.
Treylen braced for the impact.
The maw stretched wider—
And swallowed her attack whole. Nothing. Gone as if it had never existed.
Treylen looked at Aislin, who was almost completely obscured by the huge form of Golgath. She was bent over gasping, her hands on her knees. There was an incredulous look on her face. She’d poured everything she had into the attack, and it was swallowed without even a ripple.
A glowing dot appeared in the center of the maw. It grew larger quickly. Suddenly a column of magenta fire erupted from it. It struck Aislin squarely, and she was thrown back across the beach, landing on her back.
Chapter 32
“Aislin!” Randel yelled, running for her. Treylen hobbled toward her still form as quickly as he could, glancing back over his shoulder at the ships as he did. Fortunately, Aislin wasn’t the only one showing wear from the battle. The Devourers were visibly exhausted, leaning against the ship’s railing. One was on his knees. No chaos power flickered around them. They would have a little bit of time to act hopefully.
Randel was kneeling beside Aislin when Treylen got there. The shadowy form of Golgath was gone. “She’s still breathing,” he said, looking up at Treylen, worry etched into his face. “But she’s not responding.”
Treylen patted her cheek and called her name. Other than reddened skin, as if she had a bad sunburn, there was no sign of injury. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t injured internally. If she was, moving her could kill her. Best would be if her mother examined her first. But the ships were getting closer by the moment. Best was not a luxury they had.
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