“Bloodwind’s witch protects us!” Yodrin bellowed from the aft deck. More lightning split the sky, once again revealing the surreal seas surrounding them. “Her eye is on us! Her magic is holding back the storm!” The exhausted crew cheered madly, laughing and shaking their fists at the storm, defying Odea’s fury.
“Whoever is doing this is wielding an unbelievable amount of power,” Ghelfan said, his voice holding a tone of awe. “Not even a seamage can challenge a hurricane.”
“But if she can do this, why doesn’t she—”
Cynthia’s question died on her lips when something small, wet and vaguely sprite-shaped splattered against her sodden skirt with an audible squeal of alarm.
“Mouse!” She shifted and squinted into the stinging rain. Another squeak from beneath her sopping skirts told her the little sprite had not been lost. His tiny form struggled under the heavy cloth as he tried to crawl free, but every move he made, another fold of fabric pinned him against Cynthia’s leg.
“Mouse, I can’t—” She fell silent as three inches of steel stabbed up through her skirt beside her knee. The little blade, probably a paring knife stolen from the galley, sawed a hole through the cloth. Through that hole, a bedraggled seasprite emerged, dragging his stolen blade behind him.
“Oh, Mouse! You poor thing!”
He struggled to free himself, but his bent and broken wings were caught in the fabric. He grinned up at her, indicating his stolen blade with pride, and tried to free himself again. A portion of one wing parted with a crack, the broken end fluttering away on the howling wind. His smile broke as he looked after the departed wing, then he shrugged and crawled free, working his way carefully up Cynthia’s leg and behind her back.
“What the—? Ouch!” Ghelfan’s bound hands struggled against the small of her back. “Tell him to be more careful with that!”
“Keep your voice down!” she admonished in a hissed whisper. “He’s cutting us free.”
“If he doesn’t sever an artery in the process!” The half-elf’s tone was sharp, but his voice was hushed. “The question is: what do we do once we’re free?”
That was a very good question, but before she could even think of an answer, Ghelfan’s hands jerked free of their bonds. Mouse had done it! Cynthia felt the cold blade press briefly against her wrist, and cringed. The knife began sawing back and forth in a feverish cadence, the edge miraculously avoiding her flesh.
What can we do? she thought, running through the possibilities in her mind. They might be able to sabotage the ship, but that would leave them at the mercy of the wind and seas, and the unforgiving leeward shore. Then she remembered Ghelfan’s comment about their future under Bloodwind’s hand, and she realized he was right. She’d rather sink the ship and die in the process than live as a slave to the man who had killed her parents.
“The lightkeeper’s gift,” she said over her shoulder. She felt him go rigid at her suggestion. “We’ve got to, Ghelfan. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Only the howl of the raging wind passed between them as Mouse sawed at the line binding Cynthia’s wrist. When it finally parted, Ghelfan’s voice startled her in its determination.
“I’ll do it, Mistress Flaxal. You draw them forward. Try to cut the windward shrouds free at the deadeyes. That should get their attention.”
“All right.” She swallowed, wondering if her nerves would hold. “I don’t know if I can walk, but…”
“Oh, I forgot your feet. Perhaps you could crawl.”
“I’ll try to stand; they’re pretty numb. Just wait until they’re after me. The helmsman will see you, but nobody will be able to hear him, and he won’t be able to leave the wheel. When the fire starts, run forward to the fo’c’sle hatch. The hatch cover should float if you cut it loose.”
“And you try to cut the launch free. Once the ship’s ablaze, it will be every man for himself.” Both of them knew their chances of surviving a hurricane clinging to flotsam, but hope, however slim, would make their tasks easier.
Mouse pressed the handle of his little knife into her palm, tugged on her sleeve, and then started climbing, clutching at the sodden linen of her blouse. When he finally reached his customary place at her collar, she worked her feet under her, wincing at the pain, then reached up and took Mouse from her shoulder. “Well, my little friend, it’s time to raise some hell!”
He squealed in glee as she stuffed him into her shirt and dashed for the windward rail. The wounds on Cynthia’s feet sent shocks of pain up her legs, but she managed to grip the rail and start working her way forward before anyone called out in alarm.
“Oy! The Flaxal wench is loose!”
“She’s got a knife! How the hell?”
“Never mind! Get forward! After her!”
Yodrin’s bellow was unmistakable, and a glance showed three sailors working their way carefully forward while their captain remained at the helm. Cynthia grinned and threw them a curse, lurching ahead against the wind and rain to the foremast shrouds. Here, she put her knife to work. The shrouds themselves could not be cut, but the line through the deadeyes was tarred hemp, and fair game for a blade. The little knife was not as sharp as it could have been, but the line was under tremendous strain. She sawed only halfway through the first before it parted, cracking like a stonemason’s hammer. The rope burned through the hardwood of the deadeye, slackening the shroud.
Mouse screeched in delight at the mayhem and urged her to cut another, flailing his little arms from the relative security of the neck of her blouse. Somehow he’d worked his way into the “V” of her breasts, which seemed the most secure spot, though it would have been laughable under any other circumstance.
A shout of alarm from aft and the bang of the forward hatch warned Cynthia that she didn’t have much time. They’d be on her before she could finish. A quick glance told her that Ghelfan had made his move. The ship would be in flames in moments, but she wasn’t quite through yet.
She laughed and launched herself across the deck as a swell tossed the ship. Wind-driven spray aided her progress, and the leeward shrouds slapped into her outstretched palms.
The sailors pursued, and she realized with a surge of excitement that there was indeed one more place she could go. She clenched the tiny knife between her teeth, gripped the ratlines and hoisted herself up onto the railing.
The wind caught her skirt like a sail, trying to tear her away, but she managed to hang on by wrapping one leg around a shroud. She stepped onto the lower rung of the ratlines, and pain shot up her leg like a hot knife as the rough hemp tore into her wounded foot.
“Grab her!”
Hands grasped at her legs, pulling at her skirts, but the cut Mouse had made tore open around her knees and her assailants toppled to the deck holding only a wad of sodden fabric. The pins and needles of hurricane-force rain cut into Cynthia’s bare legs, but the force of the wind against her diminished without the voluminous skirt. She could climb, though every step felt like daggers stabbing into the soles of her feet.
And climb she did.
When only five rungs separated her from the masthead, the ship lurched alarmingly, forcing her to hang on for her life. She looked down at the deck as lightning shattered the darkness, thunder hammering her ears a half-second after. She would have cowered in fear had she not been numbed by what the illumination revealed: No one stood at the helm. Yodrin had left the ship to fend for herself in the battering sea. Then she saw that the water around the ship swarmed with glittering shapes, the light of the storm’s discharge reflecting from thousands of glistening scales. Merfolk, hundreds of them, schooled around the ship like sharks around a bleeding whale.
*
Ghelfan tumbled down the hatch, his weak legs wobbling under him. He reached the corner of the passage leading aft when he heard the hatch bang; someone was after him. He passed the opposing doors to the galley and crew’s mess, surprised to see the cook, Borell, slumped over the mess table, snoring loudly.
He dashed aft, bursting into the great cabin and whirling to slam the stout oak door. As it closed he saw Yodrin charging the door and cringed at the rage darkening the pirate’s face. He threw the latch a second before the captain smashed against the door, and the heavy bronze bolt held.
A lantern swung on a hook from an overhead beam, creating patches of golden light and deep shadow that danced crazily around the cabin. Ghelfan stumbled to the heavy chest set into the forward bulkhead and knelt upon the dark stain where Vulta Kambeo had met her end. He flung open the lid, only to find the handle of the device missing.
“What the hell?”
Shouts and a heavy weight slamming against the door snapped his shocked immobility. He lurched to his feet, casting about the cabin for a heavy object to smash the thing and release the fire within. This would not give him any time to flee, but the stern windows of the great cabin would at least allow him to drown rather than burn.
He clutched the chart table and rifled through the contents, but rolls of parchment and fine navigation instruments were not likely to help him breech the thick ceramic of the lightkeeper’s gift. He peered under the table and opened the compartments below, but the light from the swinging lamp did not reach their dim interiors.
Then he realized his own foolishness; there, over his head, hung the answer.
“There’s more than one way to burn a ship,” he said, steadying himself as he reached up to lift the oil lantern from its hook. As he lifted it free, a tremendous weight hit the door, sending oak splinters flying as both the bolt and its hinges ripped from the frame. Yodrin and Borell burst into the cabin brandishing cutlasses.
Ghelfan dashed the lantern down at their feet. Glass shattered, but the stout bronze vessel did not rupture, and the small trickle of oil that caught fire was less impressive than he’d hoped. Yodrin stepped over the small blaze and advanced on him, cutlass raised.
“Put out the fire, Borell,” he said calmly, grinning like a wolf.
“You’ll have to kill me, Yodrin,” the shipwright said, side-stepping and casting about for something he could use as a weapon.
“Oh, you won’t be that lucky, my friend,” the pirate captain said, stepping in with a quick jab.
Ghelfan twisted away, but realized instantly that the attack had been a feint. Yodrin lashed out with the bronze bell guard of the cutlass, his stroke as quick as lightning. The heavy guard smashed into the shipwright’s cheekbone. Light exploded behind his eyes, and he felt himself falling as the pirate’s throaty laughter rang in his ears.
*
Hippotrin yawed wildly, but Cynthia held on, working her way higher. Her pursuers had abandoned the chase, more concerned with the ship than her. As she reached the last rung of the ratlines, a gust tore her feet from their precarious position, leaving her dangling from hands alone. Terror gripped her for an instant, and the tiny knife tumbled from her mouth as she screamed.
Mouse, on the other hand, was having the time of his life.
The little sprite cackled with glee as they flapped in the hurricane-force wind until Cynthia finally wrapped a leg around a shroud and hugged the tarred hemp for her life. Mouse tugged at her collar, chirping and yipping in encouragement, but she couldn’t share his enthusiasm. She gasped for breath and worked for a better perch.
Abruptly, the ship came about and stabilized, her bow pushing upwind, her sails filling and steadying. Cynthia squinted down and saw that someone had taken the helm. Another flash of distant lightning revealed that it was Koybur, his one good hand guiding the ship while he gawked up at her in astonishment.
Laughter bubbled up unbidden from her throat, not only at her former mentor’s surprise, but at the entire situation. She laughed at the men on the ratlines below; she laughed at the school of merfolk surrounding the ship; she even laughed at the storm itself, at the rain stinging her face and the swirling clouds overhead backlit by flickering lightning. And with that mirth, that heady, crazy laughter, she realized that she no longer felt the weakness, the nausea or the dizziness of ship’s sickness. In this lashing storm, in these mountainous seas, she felt fine. In fact, she felt better than she had in days, which brought even more laughter rushing up like water from a spring.
She climbed higher, up to the top of the foremast, and even up onto the trestletrees that held the topmast in place. She clutched the slick spar and whipped the line that still trailed from one wrist around it, tying a quick bowline to keep herself in place. She was now literally lashed to the mast. Let them come up here and try to cut her down; she would kick them to their deaths one at a time.
Then a sheet of white lit the sky, and her mirth transformed to awe. A great gap in the cloud cover loomed ahead. The eyewall of the storm curved away to the left and right, lightning crackling at its edge. They were sailing right into it, into the very center of the tempest.
Clear sky shone ahead, the wind-torn sea aglow with moonlight. She stared open mouthed at the sight of it, the eye of a hurricane. The cyclonic winds raged around it, hell surrounding a sea of calm, and through that cloudless expanse, she could see stars.
She felt the ship change course, and knew Koybur had also seen it. He intended to take the ship directly into the eye, seeking the calm within.
Through a haze of rain and spray, the pure, white glow of the crescent moon shone through. Cynthia stared awestruck by the insane beauty—the wall of clouds looming ahead and the electricity arcing within it, contrasted by the stars and moon shining in the clear sky beyond.
Something tugged sharply at her neck, jerking and pulling first from one side, then the other, then both together. She looked down to see Mouse wrenching upon the chain of her medallion to get her attention. The little seasprite pointed up at the crescent moon ecstatically, screeching unintelligibly, and pulled on the chain again and again.
“Yes, I see it!” she shouted into the wind. She could also see the deck and the entire crew clustered around the wheel. With that, she knew Ghelfan had failed.
Mouse tugged and pointed relentlessly, ignoring her response.
“Yes, yes, I see it! It’s beautiful!” she shouted again. But he didn’t heed this new response any more than her last. Finally Cynthia freed one hand to pat him, but he promptly seized her thumb and wrapped the chain of her pendant around it in a series of lightning-fast half hitches.
“Mouse! What the hell are you doing? Stop that!” She pulled her hand away and the chain snapped, drawing Mouse, the chain and the pendant out of her blouse. He clung to the pendant, flapping in the howling wind, yipping, screeching and grinning at her like a little fiend. She clutched him to her, worried that he would blow away, but he just clambered onto her hand, dragging the pendant with him, and pointed to the sky ahead.
She glanced up into the moonlight as he held her crescent medallion up before her, and the similarity struck her dumb. The crescent moon shone down in a perfect likeness to the silver amulet, right down to the cluster of blue, red and yellow stars aligned with the moon’s lower horn to form the hilt of the jeweled scimitar. The stars shone in identical colors and configuration to those in the medallion.
“The Scimitar Moon!” she cried, holding the amulet high to view it side by side with the astronomical bodies. “It’s real!” She had always thought the pendant just a pretty trinket, an abstract piece of art, not a rendering of an actual astronomical event. But now she knew: the stars and moon of her pendant signified a specific time, a time when the real stars and moon were aligned in an exact pattern.
And that time was now!
Her joyous epiphany took on a life of its own as Cynthia felt the mast come alive with static electricity under her hands. Her hair flew out in all directions as her damp skin crackled with energy. A ball of electricity raced from the mainmast forward along the stay toward her feet. She shouted in alarm, nearly losing her grip on the mast as the pendant, chain and Mouse all began to sputter and glow with sparks of static.
Unintelligible shouts from below drifted up on the howli
ng wind, but she could not spare a glance. She was too busy hanging on to a mast lit with static and trying to save her little friend. But Mouse appeared to be remarkably unaffected by the tingling, snapping discharges racing up and down his little body. He whooped with glee, grasping Cynthia’s pendant and fluttering his mangled wings in the howling wind.
Then she felt it, and her eyes were drawn up to the approaching eyewall.
“Uh-oh.”
Lightning arced along the clouds from both directions, crawling toward them like luminous spiders racing along the wall of clouds. She snatched Mouse with her free hand and flung him aft toward the mainmast, hoping he might somehow land safely. As he left her outstretched fingers, screeching in alarm, the pendant tied to her thumb flared with light. The static around her exploded up through the mast, and the sky above erupted in light and sound.
For one suspended instant, her mind perceived it all. The sea, the stars, the clouds and the thousands of merfolk surrounding Hippotrin, all one and the same, one great living thing of which she had just become a part. Her mind opened as lightning arced down to strike the medallion in her hand. The immense pulse of energy passed through her, into the wood she touched, and down the mast to blast the trestletrees beneath her feet to bits. Every thought of Odea, Goddess of Sea and Storms, entered her mind, and it all seemed as simple as a child’s whirling top.
Without the braces, the topmast toppled free like the felled crown of a pine, with Cynthia still lashed on. With the link between sky and sea broken, her mind’s link to Odea closed like the snap of a twig. The knowledge of the universe fled, leaving her empty and numb. Cynthia watched the glittering surface of the water approach with mild curiosity. The sea swam with lovely shapes, thousands of them outlined in luminescence against the dark of the depths.
Beautiful… she thought at the moment before impact. How lovely it will be to swim with those luminous shapes at last...
Then the warmth of Odea’s embrace enveloped her, and she knew no more.
*
Scimitar Moon Page 32