by Giles Carwyn
She nodded slowly, but her eyes betrayed her.
“You don’t want to go back to Ohndarien?” he asked.
“I will go with you wherever you want.”
“But you don’t think we should. Why?”
Shara took a deep breath and looked to the east. “Krellis isn’t our only problem.”
Brophy nodded. “I know, but first things first. I’ll take the Test and send Krellis out the Physendrian Gate, right into the teeth of Phandir’s army. Then we’ll deal with the rest. If we’re going to solve these problems, we’ve got to take them one at a time. Nine Squares taught me that.”
“Ohndarien is facing a lot more than nine opponents.”
“So Faradan joined with Physendria?”
She nodded. “Krellis planned for it, but his allies betrayed him.”
“Then they’re smarter than I am.”
She gave him a smile. “Ohndarien will suffer the most for this betrayal, not Krellis.”
“Who were his allies?”
“The Ohohhim.”
Brophy raised his eyebrows. “The Opal Empire makes no alliances.”
“Krellis had something they wanted.”
“What?”
“The location of the Legacy of Efften.”
“The what?”
“The Legacy, it’s some sort of weapon that the Brothers went to the Vastness to protect.”
“The Brothers? How do you know this?”
“Baelandra told me. Didn’t she tell you?”
Brophy shook his head. “I think she was going to, but we ran out of time. Are you sure the Brothers are in the Vastness? They haven’t sent word in years.”
“Krellis intercepted their letters.”
Brophy clenched his teeth. His fist gripped the rail. His father had written him letters, and Krellis stole them.
She laid a hand on his arm. “Exiling Krellis will not help our city now. Ohndarien will still be overrun. Krellis will be dead, but Phandir will rule. Is that what you want?”
“No.” He closed his eyes, and it seemed as though the music of the Heartstone faded away, lingering as a whisper in the back of his mind. He opened his eyes again. “What do you think we should do?”
She let out a long breath. “Go back to Krellis’s original plan. Bring the Ohohhim fleet.”
“But we don’t know where they are, the Vastness is huge.”
“I know where they are.”
Brophy stared at her. “You read the letters?”
She shook her head. “It was difficult to probe Krellis. The man has a towering will and the Heartstone protects her own, but one thing burned brightly in his mind—the Ohohhim betrayal and the Lost Brothers’ letters. I caught that much. The Ohohhim fleet has gone to the Cinder.”
“The island in the north? Near the Vastness?”
She nodded.
“Why would the Brothers go there?”
“I don’t know that, but if the Ohohhim want the Legacy, they will hunt for it on the Cinder.”
Brophy looked down at his bandaged hands.
“So the question is, my love,” Shara said, her light fingers taking his hands in hers, “where do we go from here?”
Brophy remembered his vision, climbing up the Hall of Windows with his father behind him, fighting with the Sword of Autumn. As much as he hated turning away from the Test once more, the pieces were falling into place too perfectly for him to ignore.
For years he’d longed for that vision to be true, but all that time he feared it was just the wishful thinking of a lonely boy who wanted a father. Now it looked like the Heartstone was right all along.
Brophy looked back across the sea, and Shara moved behind him, pressing her body against his back, wrapping her arms around his waist. His heart ached, and the music of the Heartstone receded to the back of his mind.
“To the Cinder, then,” he said in a hoarse voice. “We go to the Cinder.”
9
BROPHY REACHED for the latch on their door as quietly as he could. The boat leaned, and he grabbed the doorjamb to steady himself. Timbers creaked as the sleek Kherish sailing ship tacked across the wind, carrying them swiftly north.
Brophy opened the door an inch and peered inside. Shara was perched on a window seat looking through the glass. The soft light of the setting sun made her skin glow. She wore a white, long-sleeved tunic that was too big for her. The laces were loose at her throat, revealing one shoulder and the heartstone pendant at her throat. The shirt draped down her body like a short dress, giving a delicious glimpse of her long legs. She had tucked one foot underneath herself and the other was braced against the window well to keep her stable as the boat rocked.
“I had a dream about you last night,” Brophy whispered through the crack in the door.
Shara smiled but didn’t turn around. “Was it a good dream?”
Brophy opened the door, hanging on the jamb as the ship climbed another swell.
Shara turned to him. Her black eyes sparkled as she smiled. “You look good,” she said. “You shaved.”
“I borrowed the captain’s razor.”
“You look good.”
He smiled. “You said that.”
“Did I?” She looked down. Her long black hair slid across her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear with a finger and held up an arm, pulled back the sleeve. “It’s almost gone.” Her skin was still a light lavender color from the midnight plum juice.
“It’s about time. Seven days since Physen.”
Brophy descended two steps into their tiny cabin and sat on the floor next to the window. Shara reached down and cupped his cheek with her palm.
He paused, feeling her touch, then murmured. “Sometimes when it’s dark and I hear the sound of the ocean, I think I’m back there. I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted if you hadn’t rescued me.”
“No, you rescued me,” she murmured. “I was lost in the dark, and you led me out.”
He reached up and pressed his hand against her face. The boat shifted, listing to the other side. Shara held him in place.
“I want to stay on this ship forever, with you,” he said. “Keep making love to you.”
She climbed out of the window seat and led him to the bed. The ship listed back, and they tumbled into the cot together. “We could.” She glanced into his eyes, a hint of a smile on her lips. “Keep sailing to the Vastness. Tame some horses and ride them into the mountains. Sleep in caves for the rest of our lives.”
He kissed her, nuzzled his cheek against hers. “Oh Shara…I wish we could.”
She nodded, pushed her fingers into his curly blond hair. “Perhaps after. We’ll build a cottage on the Petal Islands, raise goats like the Geldars before Master Morgeon ever dreamed of Ohndarien.”
Brophy picked a splinter off the wall next to him. One sailor called to another on the deck above. “I’d like that very much.”
He paused, savoring the vision, then his brow furrowed. “Are you sure this Father Lewlem will listen to you?”
“Yes. I don’t know if he will agree to our plan, but he’ll listen at least.”
“And the Brothers will listen to me.”
“But will they give up the artifact?” Shara asked. “What if we can’t get them to trade this Legacy of Efften for an alliance against Phandir?”
“They must. It’s Ohndarien’s only hope.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean they will do it.”
Brophy fell silent, picked another splinter out of the wall.
Shara shrugged, propped herself up on an elbow. The loose neck of the shirt slipped off her shoulder. Brophy eyed her skin. She pushed his hair out of his face, stared into his eyes.
“So,” he said. “Can you read my mind?”
“I don’t need magic to read your mind. It’s written on your face.” She rolled on top of him. “We have three more days,” she breathed, “before the world finds us again.”
With aching slowness, they made love, explor
ing each other’s bodies as if it was the first time, as if they had not made love every night of their seven days at sea.
An hour later, Shara lay with her head on Brophy’s chest, as the ship rolled side to side. Brophy gazed up at the low, wooden ceiling, his eyelids heavy.
“Tell me about your dream,” she said.
“I flew,” Brophy mumbled, holding her snug against his chest. “You stood in the moonlight on the top of the Hall of Windows, watching me. Your hair blew behind you like a cape. I flew over the Water Wall, over the eastern locks and Dock Town, over Stoneside and across the bay. Ohndarien glittered like a jewel. The lights of the Night Market joined the lanterns on the ships reflecting off the dark water. I flew and flew, around and over the city, finding something new and wonderful with every turn. I felt like a hawk protecting its nest. My chest ached with pride.”
Shara began to breathe rhythmically. Brophy’s head swam, and he grinned as her magic gathered. His skin tingled, and his eyelids fluttered closed.
“Sleep, Brophy,” she whispered.
“What are you doing?” he murmured.
“Sleep, my love…”
He drifted into sleep as if floating on a soft pillow. Colors flew past him, a blend of white and blue sky. They cleared, and he found himself atop the Hall of Windows. The torches of the Four Brothers burned around him and he looked out over the city of Ohndarien.
“She is worth fighting for,” Shara said. Brophy turned and saw her next to him. She wore the long, loose shirt from the ship. It fluttered in the breeze, rippling against her thighs. “Worth dying for.”
He looked down at his arms, his hands. He was naked. “What is this?”
“A dream, my love. Your dream.” She turned and stepped backwards onto the air. She didn’t fall.
He laughed, and she tugged his hands, pulling him beyond the sloping edge of the Hall. “Shara!”
“Come. Let’s fly.”
He followed her as they floated farther out. The Wheel passed below them. “How are you doing this?”
“Magic.” She winked.
“Wait,” he said. “Why are you wearing clothes and I’m not?”
She smiled. “It’s your dream.”
He touched her shirt and it dissolved in a shimmer of sparkles. She spun away, diving toward the bay. He chased her, reaching to grab a toe, but never quite getting there. They pulled up and streaked along, brushing the tips of the waves. He caught her and pulled her to him. Their bodies entwined, and they flew upward again, kissing. The Spire whipped past them.
“I never want to wake up,” he murmured, tasting her neck, her ear. He buried his hands in her floating hair.
“Then sleep, Brophy. Sleep and love me. We will take what eternity we can find in your dreams.”
10
BROPHY HAD never seen fog so thick. It rolled in waves, as if it were an ocean itself, lying on top of the water. A seagull’s call came down from the crow’s nest. The Kherish scout ship leaned hard to starboard. Brophy thought he heard another ship behind them, cutting through the water. The Ohohhim were everywhere in these waters, patrolling every approach to the Cinder.
It was their third attempt to reach the island. The previous two they were almost discovered, but Captain Ahbren’s seamanship saved them both times. In his hands, the little Kherish scout ship flew over the waves faster than any of the Ohohhim war galleys. Two nights in a row they fled back out to sea, disappearing into the mists with their black sails.
An Ohohhim commander on the ship behind them shouted something to his crew, but the voices faded as the ship missed them in the fog and sailed farther away. But sound did strange things across the water. It was impossible to tell if they were a mile away or just out of sight.
“They say this place is cursed,” Shara whispered when the last noises of the Ohohhim ship faded.
They stood at the prow of the Kherish ship. Brophy’s hand rested on the wooden snout of a dog-headed, bare-breasted woman. The grotesque carving stared fiercely forward over the waves. Under the captain’s orders, there was no light on board. They had been flying black sails since twilight. The dark sea slid slowly past as they crept into the fog.
“We’re close,” she whispered, taking hold of Brophy’s free hand.
He peered into the swirling fog, but he couldn’t see anything. “How can you tell?” he asked.
“I can smell the sulfur. And the sailors are nervous.”
“They’ll be glad to be rid of us,” Brophy said.
Captain Ahbren, a taciturn fellow with a bushy mustache and bad breath, had not told his crew where they were sailing until the ninth day. Brophy had been getting ugly stares from the crew ever since they learned where the ship was bound. Sailors had always shunned the Cinder, and most captains would sail an extra day or two to stay out of sight of the volcanic island. Everyone knew someone who knew someone else who sailed too close to the forsaken island and never returned.
“The captain must owe Scythe an extraordinary debt to have brought us this far,” Shara said.
Brophy nodded.
“There it is.” She pointed. Brophy followed her gaze and caught sight of a rocky outcropping through the haze and darkness. He wrinkled his nose at the fumes. The Cinder was a volcanic island that had exploded eons ago, leaving little more than the ragged edges of a vast crater poking above the ocean. The sea rushed in to fill the crater, forming an island the shape of a crescent moon with a bubbling bay in its center. The volcano still spewed noxious fumes underwater. A constant torrent of steam billowed up from the center of the crescent, boiling the ocean and sending noxious gases into the air. The stench of sulfur and brimstone hovered for miles in every direction.
As he looked upon the dark, mist-wrapped island, Brophy thought of a dream he’d been having for the last few nights. It started as the dream where he and Shara flew above Ohndarien, making love in the sky. But then it changed. Black clouds surrounded the city like the sulfur mist surrounded the Cinder, trying to blot out the tiny light that struggled to shine at its center.
Brophy touched the heartstone pendant at his neck, side by side with the black feather. The heartstone pulsed insistently. He hoped, as a Child of the Seasons, that he could use the shard to sense the lost Brothers, just as Baelandra and Krellis could sense each other through their stones.
At a whispered command, the sailors in the rigging dropped the mainsail. The Kherish trader coasted slowly toward shore. Brophy turned as the mustached captain hurried down from the upper deck and walked over to them.
“We go no closer,” he said, in his clipped accent. He nodded toward the swirling mist. It parted for a moment, and Brophy saw an entire fleet of ships.
“By the Seasons…” he whispered.
“The Ohohhim,” Shara said, her lips pressing together.
“Yes,” the captain replied. His mustache twitched. “No farther.”
“There must be two hundred ships there,” Brophy said.
“We will row you from here,” the Kherish captain said. “I owe Scythe this debt, but not the lives of my crew.”
“Of course,” Shara said. Brophy noticed the way she used the tone of her voice to reassure him.
The sailors lowered a rowboat into the water. Shara grabbed two packs full of food and water as Brophy buckled on the sword she’d brought for him from Ohndarien. They followed four sailors over the ship’s railing and climbed down to the rowboat.
The men were silent as they rowed Brophy and Shara through the sulfurous fog to a small, desolate shore. The prow scraped onto a gravelly beach, and the sailors hastily hopped overboard. They held the boat steady as Brophy and Shara climbed out. One of the sailors, a man with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, made a strange gesture in the air.
“Azeel keep the monsters from you,” he said as his comrades pushed the boat back into the water. They leapt to their oars and pulled hard. Mist swirled around them, and they disappeared.
“They think we are doomed,” Shara
said, staring after them. “I overheard them talking yesterday while you slept. They say that monsters are attracted to the island. They climb out of the ocean and crawl over the desolate ridges looking for the passage back to the netherworlds. One sailor said they look like anything—men, women, horses, wolves, even mice or insects.”
“Do you believe him?”
Shara’s hand closed over his, and he felt his doubts drift away. “That we are doomed? No. That there are monsters…” She paused. “Does it matter?” she asked, looking into his eyes. “Would you stray from your course?”
“No.”
“Then do not listen to their legends.”
“The captain said he would send a boat back for us in three days, if possible.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Brophy nodded. “He won’t be coming back.”
“It doesn’t matter. We can’t leave until the Ohohhim agree to save Ohndarien. We’ll sail back with them, or not at all.”
He cupped her cheeks with both hands and stared into her eyes for a moment. “Thank you for coming with me,” he said.
She smiled. “This place isn’t so bad. It smells better than my father’s farm.”
“Come on,” he said, touching a finger to the pendant. It thrummed through him. He could feel something to the north, on the opposite side of the ridge. “We have a long walk ahead of us.”
SHARA AND BROPHY worked their way along the eastern edge of the island, climbing ever upward. There was a thin moon out, but the swirling mists often made it impossible to see. The ground was steep and jagged. It reminded Brophy of the run up the outside of the arena in Physendria.
After an hour of hiking, Shara stopped and held up her hand. Laying a finger against her lips, she crept to the edge of a barren ridge. Brophy followed. There were no plants of any kind on the island. It was all rock and gravel, blasted and forsaken. The swirling mists gave some cover, but they were fickle allies, shifting with the breeze.
Scooting the last few feet on their bellies, they looked over the edge of a rise at the sheltered beach below. Soldiers from Ohohhim were methodically setting up their camp fifty yards away. A line of men ferried poles and canvas up the beach from the rowboats; their fair skin was easy to spot in the moonlight. Like pale ants they walked single file, packing up and loading. The mists parted once, and the enormous Ohohhim fleet could be seen offshore.