by Lisa Shearin
The centipede was almost an improvement.
Until it wasn’t.
A centipede had caught me and was pulling my body into its underside where the feeding spikes waited to drug, dissolve, and drink me. A spike was sharp against my stomach, pushing in, puncturing, screaming…
I sat bold upright in bed, panting, my body covered in sweat…
…with the corner of Rudra’s book stabbing me in the stomach.
And Sapphira’s roars sounding outside.
I grabbed the sides of my hammock to keep from falling out. Apparently I’d been thrashing around, too. I spat a string of curses that even Phaelan might have been impressed by, and started pulling on clothes and boots as fast as I could.
Talon slipped out of his hammock, landing in a tumble on the floor.
A few seconds after another thud, Kesyn was standing over me. “What the hell was that?”
“Sapphira,” I muttered, still groggy.
“No, your yelling.”
Perhaps I had screamed.
Sapphira roared again, this time with a kick that shook the deck beneath our feet.
Kesyn stumbled. “Bloody lizard’s gonna tear the ship apart.”
I grabbed my sunglasses and ran for the door.
At the end of the passageway there was a hatch to the hold. I put my hand to the wood. It wasn’t hot. Sapphira wasn’t using fire yet.
I creaked the hatch open and looked inside to see Sapphira frantically clawing her way out of the hold to the shouts and screams of the crew above.
A pissed-off goblin sentry dragon was on the rampage.
*
The worst thing about being nocturnal was when you suddenly had to go outside during the day, especially on a day as bright as a thousand suns.
I was forced to close my eyes for a few seconds to allow the glasses to darken enough so as not to blind me.
I opened them to a scene out of an elf’s worst nightmare.
To escape the hold, Sapphira had hooked her claws deep into the decking, scoring the wood, her eyes wide with terror, the whites showing.
Something had spooked her. No, terrified her. I didn’t know of anything that a sentry dragon was afraid of.
Talon and Kesyn came up the stairs behind me.
“Find Calik,” I told them. “Quick.”
Four crewmen dove aside just as the dragon’s tail crashed through the railing where they had been standing.
Jash was on day duty. He swung down into the hold.
Shouts and curses rang out as men scrambled to get out of the way, especially away from Sapphira’s head. Flames were banked in her nostrils, meaning she had fire ready. Royal navy dragons were highly trained. They would release fire only if directed to by their pilot. Sapphira had a fire ready to go. With Calik not here to calm her, it was a miracle she hadn’t torched the ship.
Sapphira threw back her head and roared, though it sounded more like a scream. She was frantic to get off this ship.
I remembered another ship. A ship with a Gate torn into it. I didn’t sense a Gate.
Sapphira’s harness was still connected to a fire-proof rope as thick as my forearm. That was all that was keeping her from launching herself up into the rigging.
“Cut her loose!” Phaelan shouted.
In her panicked state, Sapphira would push off with her powerful back legs and go straight up into the rigging, bringing sails, yardarms and probably even a mast down on our heads and leaving the Kraken crippled and dead in the water.
A crossbow appeared in one of the gunner’s hands.
“No!” I ran forward, snagging a tarp, waving it to get the dragon’s attention.
“Ka sa’ffrit!” It was one of the few dragon commands I knew.
Obey me.
Saphria hissed, pushing sulfuric smoke out from between fangs the length of my fingers. I held the tarp ready if it was needed.
“Quiet!” Phaelan barked from somewhere behind me.
“Ka sa’ffrit, Sapphira.” This time I did not shout. I kept my voice low and commanding, but not threatening. I wasn’t Calik, but Sapphira knew me. I just prayed she knew me well enough to trust me.
I had awakened panicked from my dream to Sapphira’s roars. Did dragons dream? Did she dream of a monster centipede and awake to find herself trapped in the hold of a ship?
I had thought to use the tarp to toss over her head as you would a blanket over a panicked horse’s head to calm it.
Instinct told me that wouldn’t work. If a dream had somehow terrified her, she wanted to escape, to see any threats coming. To see any reassurance.
I dropped the tarp and stepped forward slowly, speaking soft, reassuring words as you would to a frightened child—a fanged, clawed, fire-breathing child, but still a child and definitely frightened.
Once I was close enough, I reached out and cautiously placed a hand on her neck, my murmurs turning to calming whispers in Goblin, the words for her ears alone, as I stroked her neck, the heat from the fire she held ready warm under my hand.
We calmed each other.
Sapphira inhaled, a giant bellows pulling air in.
The crew instinctively drew back, expecting an exhale of flames.
I kept whispering and reassuring as Sapphira gently exhaled in a cloud of sulfurous smoke.
I released my own breath in relief as Jash and Talon helped Calik up the ladder from the hold, a makeshift bandage wrapped around his head, blood showing through.
Calik calmly walked over to where I was, reached up, hooked his hand through Sapphira’s bridle and pulled her huge head down to his face, so they were eye to eye.
She gently sniffed at the bloody bandage as several of the crew winced and looked away, not wanting to see the dragon’s prey instinct kick in and Sapphira bite Calik’s head off.
“Yes, you did that,” Calik told her, pushing her snout away from the wound.
The dragon lowered her head and rumbled, as if ashamed of her behavior.
“You should be embarrassed, scaring everybody.” Calik reached up and scratched Sapphira under the chin like a cat. She bared her teeth in a draconic smile and the men backed up some more. “Is anyone hurt?” he asked me quietly.
I glanced around. “Just you.”
Phaelan appeared beside us.
“Sorry about that, Captain Benares,” Calik said. “I don’t know what got into her. She’s never acted that way before.”
“Do dragons dream?” I asked.
“Yes, they do.”
“I think Sapphira and I might have been sent the same nightmare.”
*
There was no way to ask Sapphira what had scared her.
“Sentry dragons don’t scare easily,” Calik told me. His head had been re-bandaged. Only a little blood had leaked through the white linen. “A bug the size of what you described coming after her wouldn’t normally make her knock down the walls of her stall, but she’s in the hold of a ship. My girl felt vulnerable, and the only way she could stop the feeling would be to get out of her stall so she could fight. I suppose it could be possible. If they couldn’t destroy our ships with demons and the dead, scare one of our sentries into doing the job for them.”
The sentry dragons on the other two ships hadn’t had any reaction, so whatever had made Sapphira try to break out of her stall had been contained to our ship. Sentry dragons were sensitive to magic. Perhaps I’d somehow projected my dream as I was having it, but none of the mages or magic-sensitives on board had felt a thing.
It was odd, and not in any way that could possibly be good.
Chapter 38
The next week passed uneventfully. The book refused to open again, and Sarad Nukpana had vanished from my dreams.
Sarad had said that Rudra had included the location to the city of Nidaar inside the book, but that it was hidden and that I’d have to magically coax it out. Kansbar Nathrach had been blindfolded when he had been brought into Nidaar and when he had left, but he had known where he and the K
hrynsani had camped the first time, and where he’d been released when he was left alone. Kansbar had known, so Rudra had known. Yes, we had pieces of the Heart of Nidaar for Agata to use to lead us to the city and the stone, but knowing which section of mountain to concentrate her efforts on would be a huge help.
So I needed to open the book one last time, but I wasn’t going to do it until we were on dry land.
It was the morning of the seventh day since Sapphira had terrorized the crew of the Kraken.
“Land ho!” came a shout from the crow’s nest.
The morning fog lifted, revealing a massive escarpment towering above a rocky beach.
Anyone that could, crew or passengers, stopped what they were doing and stared.
Talon appeared beside me. “The Heart of Nidaar did that?”
As the sky cleared to a cloudless blue, we saw that the escarpment extended as far north and south as the eye could see. The map we had had told us as much. Rudra’s book had hinted at it. I had hoped both had been exaggerating. So much for wishful thinking. The map indicated that there was no easy way up.
Calik appeared beside me. “Glad we brought the girls?”
“Oh yeah.”
We had already decided that those of us going on to Nidaar would get to the top via sentry dragon, as would our supplies. After that, they would remain with the fleet as both hunters for the crews and defense for the ships. Stealth was called for, and that would be difficult traveling with three enormous dragons. However, we would be taking a few firedrakes inland with us as scouts.
The map and the book indicated that our situation wouldn’t improve once we reached the top. The rock of the cliffs would give way to a land of sand and rock with air hot and dry enough to shrivel your lungs in your chest. All of this was surrounded by mountains and canyons of rock where no plant could grow. Just because we didn’t have to climb this, didn’t mean climbing wasn’t in our future. Nidaar was somewhere in the mountains beyond the wasteland. We had come equipped, both with ropes and expert climbers. My team usually relished a challenge.
They wouldn’t be relishing this.
Neither was I.
I went to where Agata Azul was standing near the bow, staring intently across the water to those cliffs that seemed to grow taller as we closed in on the shore.
“Are you sensing anything?” I asked her.
Agata continued to stare straight ahead. “That is where we must go.” One side of her mouth twitched upward. “This information will not be well received.”
“No, it will not.”
I went to the quarterdeck, standing to the side and out of Phaelan’s way as he sailed us northward along the coast until we spotted an opening between two towering cliffs that marked our safe harbor, or as safe a harbor as we were likely to find. At least it was hidden from the sea; however, all an attacker would have to do would be to wait for us to come out. We’d be bottled in. The grim set to Phaelan’s face told me he liked it about as well as I did.
A shout from above signaled shallows on either side of the entrance to the harbor. Our final approach would be through a narrow and treacherous channel.
Phaelan gripped the wheel and began a litany of murmured endearments and entreaties to his ship, and curses directed at the continent of Aquas and every rock on it.
Then we saw it.
Dark clouds poured over the edge of the cliffs and surrounding escarpment like a waterfall. They quickly leveled and spread toward our ships.
“That’s not natural,” Phaelan said through gritted teeth.
“No, it’s not,” I readily agreed.
“That Sandrina woman?”
“Or a pack of Khrynsani weather wizards acting under her orders.”
I had another suspect in mind. Perhaps Bricarda had escaped the Nebian ship only to teleport here to try to kill us again.
The clouds picked up speed as if recognizing us as their targets and eager to get here.
Phaelan ordered the sails trimmed, and I could hear the same orders being bellowed from the other ships. I couldn’t imagine either Gwyn or Gavyn thinking the oncoming storm was natural, but I made my way quickly to the ship’s telepath to spread the word to the Raven and Sea Wolf that things were going to get worse before they got any better.
If it got any better. If Sandrina was behind this, she had never been one for doing anything halfway—especially vengeance. This storm probably wouldn’t stop until every ship was under the water. I was no weather wizard, but I could lend my strength to the one we had.
Calik ran up to me. “Tam, if we’re swamped, the dragons won’t stand a chance.”
“Take Saffie and the drakes and get out of here, above those clouds. Can you signal the other pilots to do the same?”
“Done.”
Talon darted below with Calik to help release the firedrakes to safety—or to a safer place than we were about to be.
There were two seats on Sapphira’s saddle.
“Take Talon with you!” I yelled to Calik’s back.
Releasing the dragons and drakes would not only save them from drowning, they could save us in a recovery effort.
If there were any of us left to save.
We were all about to find out the veracity of the Caesolians’ reputations as the finest ship makers in the Seven Kingdoms.
There were rocks in those shallows and cliffs looming beyond that. If we were pushed too far in the direction of the harbor, we’d be ground into kindling. I had no intention of being ground into anything, especially not within sight of our goal—or at least the first one.
Phaelan was shouting commands and encouragement. The crew was the best of his elves, and the finest of goblin intelligence agents. Yes, they were all seasoned and battle-hardened, but what was coming straight at us wasn’t anything that could be defeated with muscle, steel, or the iron of cannonballs—or probably even countered with our magic. They knew it. We all did. This was the blackest of magic, Phaelan hated and feared it, but you would never know it to see him now.
Captain Phaelan Benares was a figure of strength and confidence, who by the sheer force of his personality was willing his crew to remain calm, stay at their stations, and do their jobs. The crew, elf and goblin alike, fed off of his words, gaining strength and resolve while bracing themselves for what was to come.
The Kraken’s weather wizard had already lashed herself to the mainmast, the crew scrambling around her getting the ship ready for the storm rushing toward us. A bank of black clouds had already blocked out the sun and obscured what minutes before had been a clear, blue sky.
Falitta Rondel had sailed with Phaelan’s father, Ryn Benares. Ryn had made sure his son had the best weather wizard available. I’d spoken with Falitta many times during our weeks at sea. She was gifted, powerful, and experienced. Lashing herself to the mainmast told me and everyone on the Kraken that what was coming was as bad as it could get.
“Lash yourself to something,” Phaelan told me. He jerked his head to the right. “There’s a stack of harnesses in that bench. Toss me one and take one for yourself.”
Phaelan kept his hands on the wheel as I quickly helped him into his harness, which he latched to a steel ring embedded in the deck at the base of the ship’s wheel.
“There’s another ring by the bench.” Phaelan now had to shout to be heard over the wind. “Use it!”
The doors to the hold were flung open and Sapphira dived over the side of the Kraken and with a few wingbeats was above the ship, fighting for altitude to get above the storm. The firedrakes followed in her wake.
The seat behind Calik was empty.
I swore and frantically scanned the deck for any sign of Talon. He must still be below. I’d have to believe that he could fend for himself. There was nothing I could do here with Phaelan, but I might be able to help Falitta. There was another ring in the deck by the mainmast.
I unhooked my line from the ring.
Phaelan saw. “What the hell are you doing?”
The weather wizard’s eyes were fixed on the black bank of clouds racing toward us, her lips moving in silent incantation. I stopped just inside her peripheral vision. She wasn’t in a trance, at least not yet. She could still see me, or at least perceive my presence. If there was any help I could give her, she would tell me.
“This is beyond me,” Falitta said calmly, her eyes locked on the clouds that were only a hundred yards off our bow.
She couldn’t stop or even divert that storm.
We were screwed—and dead.
Like hell.
“Take my strength,” I told her. “I can add my—”
The weather wizard finally looked at me. “Power cannot help us now. This is a form of magic I have never encountered. It is not of this world.”
Sythsaurian black magic.
“Can we deflect it?”
Falitta shook her head. “It defies my every attempt, sensing my efforts before I make them. My spells evaporate before it. Unless we can somehow ride this out, Tamnais, we’re dead.”
Suddenly the Kraken’s deck shuddered beneath my feet.
I shot a quick glance back at Phaelan.
His face was utterly white.
It was an earthquake, in the floor of the sea beneath us.
I snarled a curse—at Sandrina, Bricarda, the Sythsaurians, but mostly at my own inability to do anything to save our lives—as a wave rose in the distance at our backs, growing taller and wider, until it was a wall of water racing toward and dwarfing our small fleet.
A wave taller than the tallest mast.
A monster wave spawned by an earthquake.
The stone in my ring blazed to life.
An earthquake sent from the Heart of Nidaar.
Chapter 39
I dimly heard Phaelan’s voice cut through the chaos and howling wind. “Brace yourselves!”
I secured myself as best as I could and braced my feet, knowing that it was a pitiful effort against a monster wave, but it was all I could do.
The water rose behind us, obscuring the very sky.
Falitta was right. There was nothing natural about what rose above us. This was malice made water. This wave had been conjured from the depths with only one purpose—utter obliteration. Sandrina wanted to pound our ships to splinters against the cliffs and our bodies into food for whatever lived in these waters. She knew we would be rendered helpless, and if there was any way that she was watching, she would be reveling in our destruction.