by Bo Burnette
“It has to be Thane,” Eamon said. “He’s followed us from Anmór.”
Ríon bellowed from the prow, “Land ho! Coming straight upon the Isle of Light!”
Eamon’s eyes bulged. “Impossible! My calculations…”
He glanced from his ship to Thane’s ship to the looming land mass before them. Then he rushed to take command of the prow from Fiach. He steadied the wheel and shouted commands to the crew. “Out all our sails into the wind! Hold off Thane’s offensive measures. We must not be boarded!”
Arliss pushed through the scrambling crew and fought her way to Eamon. “What can I do?”
“Get to the crow’s nest,” Eamon panted, “and kill Thane. He’s right within our grasp.”
Arliss glanced behind her. The steep mouth of the volcano jutted through the mist not too far away—much too close for comfort. She clenched her bow. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to fool him. We’ll force him into turning his ship all the way into the currents on the other side of the isle.”
“But your ship…”
“Sometimes it takes a shipwreck to make you realize the leak.”
She nodded, then dashed for the crow’s nest. No sooner had she mounted than Thane’s carven prow impaled the fog. The black-masted vessel pushed alongside theirs.
Arliss’s fingers trembled with an arrow. Her palm found that familiar worn spot on the grip of the bow. In all the time she had used this weapon, it had never failed her. Philip had crafted it out of the finest yew. Come to think of it, Philip hadn’t failed her yet either.
The ships creaked against each other.
Arliss bit her lip. Thane’s crew was preparing to board their ship. She raised her bow and readied a shot, scouring the deck for Thane. She found him at the helm, his hulking form in much the same position as Eamon’s—tall, tense, and ready.
The vessels grated against each other again, throwing off her aim. She steadied her arrow on Thane again, but hesitated. She could not miss, not now, not after all Thane had done. It would end now—his villainy, his greed, his kidnapping.
Eamon shouted across the deck, “Hold on!”
The two ships collided so harshly she thought they would crush each other. Mist stung her eyes. The isle loomed just within her peripheral vision.
Her fingers relaxed.
The arrow sped free of her bow towards its target.
The wood crackled below her feet. Thane jerked his helm away, and his ship wrenched free of Eamon’s. The black dragon sail filled with wind and shot into the current, sweeping around the north end of the isle.
Arliss’s shot fell short.
She didn’t have time to think about it. A horrible scrunch wracked the entire ship. It sounded as if the craft was being crushed to pieces.
The ship scraped aground on the beach, the prow stabbing through sand before piercing the forest beyond. Arliss gripped the edges of the crow’s nest for support, but gravity started to fight her. The ship listed over onto the beach.
Eamon shouted something. Philip yelled. The ship swung all the way onto the beach and crashed its starboard side into the sand.
The crow’s nest snapped. Arliss slammed into the beach. Her fingers were still threaded around her bow. For a horrible moment, she wondered if she was the only one left alive.
Ilayda closed her eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time. What did it matter? The creaking ship’s dungeon was black as midnight, and the only light dribbled in from a tiny porthole on the far side of the room. Even if she did open her eyes, there would be only one thing to see: Brallaghan staring at her with angry, unrelenting eyes.
The ship had been creaking and shaking for the last few minutes, but now it floated smoothly. She tilted her head back into the wall, wriggling her hands where they hung shackled behind her back.
Brallaghan coughed.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” He exhaled. “It still happened. Now we’re going to die.”
She opened her eyes and flashed him a look. “What?”
He strained against his chains. “Don’t you understand? They’re going to take us back to Reinhold, they’re going to attack the city, and they’ll kill us for all of them to see. At least, they’ll kill me and my father. Perhaps they will spare you, since you’re a girl.”
“A woman.” Ilayda pursed her cracked lips. It had been days since she’d had food or water in reasonable amounts. “Surely there’s something we can do, though?”
“There’s nothing.” He stared at the dark floorboards. “You should realize that. You ruined our quest.”
She arched her eyebrows. “You’re blaming this on me? I was just trying to help you find your father.”
He exploded. “We should have helped Arliss! If we had just stayed the course, we could have stopped that scoundrel Orlando!”
“How is this my fault? Aren’t you the one who dragged us away from the company?”
He leaned over his knees, his dark hair lank with sweat. “Yes,” he managed hoarsely. “Because I wanted to find my father. And we could have done that—we could have helped Arliss, we could have killed Orlando.”
“Thane was still there, though.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
A sob rumbled in the back of Ilayda’s throat. “Is there no way to escape from this ship?”
“We’re chained to the walls. There’s nothing.”
She rubbed her strained shoulders against the uneven wood. “If Erik were here, he would know what to do.”
Brallaghan’s eyes were fire. “Erik’s not here!”
He had changed, somehow. In the last few days—ever since their capture—she felt she no longer knew him. Ilayda searched his face for an explanation. Brallaghan was always singing, and so often smiling that broad smile of his that was as sly as it was happy. But now he was grim. Dark.
There had been something between them—something more than a spark, more than a glimmer. At the party in Anmór, and on the bridge afterward, she had been sure of it.
She tried to choke back tears, but they came anyway. “What happened…to the moment on the bridge? Did that not happen? Did I dream that?”
Brallaghan’s eyes shifted to the porthole, his lips parted. “I’m afraid we both did.”
Ilayda closed her eyes to stop her tears. It had all been a waking dream—a shadow—and now she had to wake up.
Orlando knocked at the rich mahogany door to Thane’s state room. Silence pervaded the starlit deck a moment.
“Come in,” the deep voice finally called.
Orlando turned the bronze knob and pushed the door inwards.
Thane practically lay atop a wide map of Reinhold he had spread across the round table in the middle of the room. His compass scraped across the ancient vellum, his pen scratching marks and notes. A half-empty bottle sat on the corner of the table, and the burning scent of alcohol permeated the room.
Orlando took a breath and ventured a few words. “The prisoners are secured.”
“Are they?” Thane barely glanced up from the map. “I feel something is amiss. I have cast a strong spell around this ship, but I feel that my protections have been pierced.”
“That was quite a run-in with Eamon’s ship,” Orlando offered. “Maybe that’s all that’s worrying you?”
“No.” Thane clenched the copper compass in his palm. “It is not that. Eamon’s ship was destroyed. His crew will all be dead or injured, unless by some miracle they survived. And there will be no miracle. You will take a band across the isle once we land and kill any survivors—all of them.”
Orlando loosened his glove around his pinched index finger. “Understood.”
Thane nodded, then turned back to his map.
“It’s the first of December, you know,” Orlando said casually. Had Thane truly forgotten? “I suppose you know what that is.”
“Ah, yes. A happy birthday to you is in or
der, is it not? Made happier by the fact that Reinhold is about to be crushed beneath our boots.”
“I suppose so.” Orlando shifted back towards the door. “Do you think perhaps, sometimes, we’re doing things against the rules?”
Thane stood from the map, his fingers still splayed across it. “There are no rules in war.”
Orlando nodded, bowed slightly, then turned and left the state room.
Belowdecks, Ilayda drifted from her dreamless sleep. Her eyelids fluttered open as she drank a breath of watery air.
Outside the porthole, a crop of dark hair and flick of green cape flashed past.
Then they disappeared into the mist.
Ilayda’s eyes fully opened.
Chapter Thirty-five: Eamon's Clan
ARLISS STRUGGLED THROUGH THE MESS OF SPLINTERED WOOD and cracked beams for many minutes before she found Philip. His left arm was twisted beneath the top of the mast, and his face had been buried in the sand.
“Eamon!” Arliss shouted the name for the third time, praying he had survived. Fiach and Finín already scrambled through the wreck, searching for crewmen and cargo, but she had seen no sign of the others yet. She fell to her knees by Philip’s body, struggling to budge the mast a few inches.
“Philip?”
“Arliss,” Philip managed as she moved the log slightly off his shoulder.
The tension in her shoulders dropped. “You’re alive.”
He was alive, but the state of his arm troubled her. Even this narrow tip of the mast was as thick as her waist, and from the look of things it had collapsed squarely on Philip’s arm. Worst of all, she couldn’t budge it more than a few inches.
“Come on,” Arliss grunted, every muscle in her arm straining against the immovable weight.
Suddenly it rose off Philip’s arm. To her left, Eamon’s chiseled arms bulged through the long sleeves of his snug brown tunic. His face burned red with effort and held a nasty gash, but he hoisted the log off Philip’s arm. He let it fall to the beach with a thud.
Arliss fell to the beach beside Philip. “Can you move your arm?”
Philip winced and wriggled his left arm. The forearm moved, but his shoulder remained limp on the beach. Arliss shuddered. His shoulder had been forced into a hideously unnatural position. She collapsed into a sitting position, sand streaking her hair and clothes. Eamon knelt over Philip.
Several paces away, Ríon bounded over the upturned hull of one of the longboats that had not been destroyed. Then he turned around and offered his hand to Clare, whose purple cloak hung about her heels in shreds.
“We’re all right.” The skin of Ríon’s knuckles looked completely scraped off. His grin melted when he saw Philip.
Eamon carefully helped Philip into a sitting position, gently handling his injured arm. “The shoulder’s dislocated.”
Arliss touched Philip’s good arm. “Can you fix it?”
“It’ll hurt like hell, but I can pop it back in right now. But he’ll need medicine for the swelling and pain.”
“Do you have any?”
Eamon glanced up at Ríon, Clare, Fiach, and Finín. “Search the wreckage. Find anything you can—vials, boxes.”
Fiach gave a terse nod and turned, the others following.
“It’s probably all destroyed or washed away by now,” Eamon said to Arliss. “We need to leave. He will need to be still, very still. The quicker you take this journey, the better.”
“The journey to Reinhold, you said?” She turned to the eastern horizon. The newborn sun spread its fingers through a hazy sky. “I thought we were going to explore the vault. We have the crown—isn’t that part of why we went looking for it?”
“We went looking for it because that crown belongs to your people,” Eamon said. “There is no time to unlock the vault now. Thane will be returning to his camp. He may have already returned, in fact. You and your company must get to Reinhold.”
Arliss wavered. Wasn’t this the entire purpose of her journey? To go to the Isle of Light and find the treasures of Reinhold? Now, she had the tool necessary to open the vault which had to contain either the mysterious vial, or the equally mysterious pendant, or the even more mysterious sphere which Gally had mentioned. None of them had been accounted for in any way. They were right within her reach, yet she could not close her hand around them. All because of Philip. All because of his injured arm.
She turned to Eamon and found her voice was hoarser than she expected. “I have to find those treasures. That is my mission! Thane will not stop until they are found.”
“Thane will attack no matter what. It’s not treasures he wants. It’s Reinhold. Once he has Reinhold, the treasures will be easy to find. You know this.”
Arliss nodded. Her mind warred with itself, and for a moment she felt it would pull itself apart. Then the voices in her head silenced, and she heard one voice speaking clearly through the darkness of her mind, a lone candle struck in the night. “We will return to Reinhold. You’re right, Philip needs care. He—he matters more than the treasures.”
She rested her hand on Eamon’s arm. “Thank you for protecting us this far. I know you cannot come with us. I see it in your eyes—you never intended to bring us farther than the Isle. Now you have sacrificed your livelihood to bring us this far. Thank you.”
“You are right. I did not plan to take you any farther. But I know now I must go with you until the end.”
“But war is coming,” she said. “Did you not see Thane’s ship? And no doubt there will be other ships, if Thane and Merna have maintained their alliance.”
“That is true.”
“Then how can you come with us? You are a man of peace—you told me so yourself! You said you call no clan your home, nor any your enemy. If you fight for us…”
“That version of myself will be gone forever.” He bowed his head. “So be it.”
“You don’t have to do this. I have ruined you enough. You don’t deserve to give up anything more on my behalf.”
His face contorted, his eyes clenched shut. “I deserve it bloody well, all right. I deserve every sacrifice I can make. You do not know the depths of what I owe you.”
Her eyes grew wide. “What are you talking about?”
He took both her hands in his. “I should have told you when I first met you a week ago. I almost did tell you, so many times. Yet something held me back. Now, I can hold it back no more.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. “What?”
“A great secret about myself, and one that you deserved to know. Perhaps, though, that was not entirely my fault.”
His glassy eyes wandered east, then back to Arliss’s face. She squeezed his hands reassuringly, and he continued.
“I said that I belong to no clan because none would take me. You’ve made me see that I was looking at it wrong: I belong to no clan because I would take none of them. Yet that doesn’t change who I am.”
Arliss recalled the events of the past week, the past month, from the deceptions on the Isle to the revelations in Anmór to the secrets in Reinhold.
Her father’s secrets.
“Who are you, then?”
Eamon leaned closer to her. His massive hands swallowed hers up. “The word I gave you earlier is true, true as blood. I will fight for the clan of Reinhold, for it is my clan.”
Arliss felt she had been stabbed, but her heart felt somehow free. It thudded within her for an explanation. “Your clan?”
“I am Eamon, son of Kenéad, and brother of King Kenton of Reinhold.” He pressed his forehead to her as they both fell into joyful tears. “I am your uncle, Arliss.”
Arliss shifted her weight back as the prow of the longboat scuffed onto the sand. She filled her lungs with the December air. It burned her nose with invisible ice, yet, despite the chill, it still smelled like Reinhold: fresh, wild, and free. She jumped out onto the beach.
A dusting of snow clung to the Cliffs of Aíll which spanned the shoreline on either side. The path up the hi
ll between the cliffs, too, held a thin layer of ivory powder; and, high on the horizon, she could see city roofs decorated with white crystals.
Eamon helped Philip out of the longboat by his right arm. Eamon had forced his dislocated arm back into position back on the isle. Now Philip’s left arm hung in a sling made from one of Eamon’s ratty tunics.
Clare hopped out onto the sand beside Arliss. “So this is Reinhold—the realm that doesn’t exist.”
Arliss smiled. “Indeed.”
Ríon’s boat—containing Fiach, Finín, and the few other crewmen—had landed first, and already they hauled their cargo and weapons up the steep hill. Clare bounded off after Ríon.
Philip smiled cautiously at Arliss.
She stiffened. What was he afraid of? Of her? Surely not—he’d spoken his mind so much in the past few weeks she had nearly forgotten who was the ruler and who was the subject. Yet something in the subtle tilt of his lips, the squint of his eyes—he looked almost desperate.
What more did he want? She was abandoning her quest simply because of his arm. That should have been enough to douse his anger at her—his suspicion, his fear. Or whatever it was. She couldn’t tell anymore. The lines between them had grown so old and thick that she almost forgot why they were there.
He still wanted her to change, didn’t he? To become a different person. Yet he had said it himself once: people like that don’t change. Didn’t he still believe that?
Philip turned to ascend the snowy hillside.
Eamon cleared his throat. “It’s been a long time.”
She turned to him. It was still hard to process the reality that he was her uncle. But the similarities between their personalities—and the way his nose and eyes resembled Kenton’s—were suddenly so obvious. “You’ve been here before?”
He nodded. “Sixteen years ago. Before I left, my father and I created the vault beneath the waterfall. Even Kenton did not know about it. That was so long ago.”