The Hand of the Storm

by Iain Lindsay

  The Burnt Lands

  25. Storm-Holder

  Talin floated through the tranquil blue. As in his other dreams, he was surrounded by vapors or waters, he couldn’t be sure which. When he moved his arms, they felt heavy and dreamlike, and his thoughts were tinged with a feeling of deep loss.

  He tried to remember where he was, where he was going – even who he was, but the all-surrounding, quieting blue made it hard to think clearly. He knew that he shouldn’t be here, and he knew that he had no home to go to.

  “My mother is dead.” The youth murmured to himself, knowing that he spoke them, but not hearing them. The blue hid his tears.

  My mother is dead. That voice again, rising towards him from the depths. Talin had thought it was his own voice, so perfectly synched as it was with his feelings of bereavement and homesickness.

  But it wasn’t.

  This voice was different; it was deep and expansive, but oddly muted in the blue airs. It was also a voice that did not come from within, but from the dark shadow that was growing larger under his feet.

  Talin knew that he should swim – or fly – out of the way, but the blue around him made him feel sluggish and slow. His emotions felt like cloaks hanging out of reach as the shadow grew larger and closer.

  Below? Or above? Neither makes sense here, where we are. The voice said, starting to take shape. Talin saw the edges of a mountain – no, a mass of white, cream, and grey skin. Snub-nosed and immense, there were cracks and crevices running along what must be the snout, with encrustations of smaller shell and mushroom-like outgrowths. A dark line intersected across the living hill-sized snout: a mouth.

  Who are you, little thing? The creature thought at him, as it slid up and up, it’s gigantic form growing larger and larger.

  It was too big for Tal’s mind. Thick skin crisscrossed with white, scar-like tendrils. Tree-branches of cilia under the creatures’ mouth, like a living beard that fluttered and wove in the blue. The bulk of the swimming beast expanded below him into impossible sizes, a suggestion of fins the size of an airship. Far above the mouth, a hump of grey meat, surrounding a massive eye the size of a dinner plate, with no iris, just black pupil on white.

  It was the same as the impossible eye he had glimpsed inside the Boreal device, and Talin knew that he should be scared – but he strangely wasn’t.

  You share my dream, but you are not like me. The creature did not move its mouth to speak, but Talin knew that the words came from it. Do you know where Home is?

  Talin shook his head. “I have no home either. I am Talin of the Nhkari. I was on a boat…”

  The creature slowed, the dark masses of its fins moving gently forward and back and forward again. Ah. They call me a boat sometimes, and they give me a different name, but it is not the name my mother called me. I am Storm-Holder-of-Songs-for-the-Deep-Sisters, but once I was just Holder-of-Songs-for-the-Deep-Sisters, or just Holder.

  Talin felt the waves of loss and confusion coming from the great beast, pregnant in its unspoken voice. He remembered that he, too, once had a different name. A mother had called him Cumu, and then he was called Tal, Talin, and pirate. Which one was he really?

  “Wait – Storm?” Talin realized, his surprise making him slowly cartwheel in the blue, until he paddled his arms, copying the gentle movements of the great creature’s fins far below him. “You’re a boat? The boat? The airship Storm?”

  I am not the Storm, I am me! The great body convulsed, the distant thunderhead of its tail fin moving through the depths, powering the acres of body upward. Talin rolled in the upsurge of movement, floundering with his hands as the creature dominated the horizon.

  “Holder – wait! Holder, come back!” Talin was shouting.

  It is time for you to wake up, little human! The beast said.

  “It is time for you to wake up, Talin,” said a worried-sounding voice.

  “Holder, come back!” Talin garbled as he was thrust into wakefulness by Father Kef’s shaking hand. “What…?”

  Father Kef sat cross-legged on the floor beside his narrow bunk in the powder locker, his lined and wrinkled face looking fierce and worried. Across his knees was his iron-shod quarterstaff, but he had swapped his colorful light-weight desert robes for baggy light trousers, stout boots, and his blue and yellow linen shirt crossed over and tucked into his belt. Talin remembered where he was; who he was. I am on the Storm. Fleeing Marduk.

  “You dream strange dreams, my friend,” Father Kef was peering at him intently. “Who is Holder?”

  “Uh, just a dream.” Talin shook his head. But it had felt so real, the emotions, the voice. He coughed. “What time is it?”

  “First watch. Sun’s breaking the horizon.” The man muttered, still examining the boy as he selected his next words carefully. “Dreams can be true dreams, it is the way of the Nhkari to record them, to gain wisdom through their telling.”

  “Oh,” Talin frowned. His mother had told him her dreams at times, and had asked him when nightmares plagued him in the middle of the night – but over the years the telling had slowed, as both had too many bad dreams to inflict on the other. He was wary of sharing those private moments with a stranger. “It was nothing.” He repeated more firmly. “I have to get up, do you mind?” He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  “Talin of the Nhkari,” The old man considered as he stood up with a groan, turning to let the younger get dressed and ready. “Do you often have disturbing dreams? Nightmares?”

  “No more so than any slave,” Talin said truthfully.

  “What did you know of the Lords of the Reach? Do you remember your clan name? Your mother’s name?”

  Serin. Degu. Talin knew, but his mouth didn’t want to give them away so freely. They were his, the only parts of his family left. He didn’t like thinking that they could belong to someone else. “The Breakers were slavers. Why do you want to know?”

  The man coughed. “Wise, perhaps, when you do not know me. I am Father Kef, I was once what we call an Ekun, or priest for the Running Meadows clan.” The man looked sad, before his face hardened into a scowl. “The Running Meadows are gone, and it is easier to say father in Protectorate.”

  Talin said nothing as he got dressed.

  “I hope that you will see me as an ally, Talin.” Father Kef’s tone was serious. “Those people who are after you…”

  The thrall in the flames. Jekkers. Talin’s fists gripped his wind cloak. “I was a slave. They want me back.”

  “That is not why they want you, I can be certain of that.” Father Kef said. “I have heard a little of the Quartermaster’s story – what he would tell me, anyway. That man who chases you is a Mnemoth, a man possessed by the most evil of spirits. They are enemies of life, enemies of the land. We Nhkari have seen their kind in the south, and we must resist them.”

  “You think that is why he wants me? Because of my skin?” Talin’s hand moved to the sown-in pockets on the inside of his wind cloak, where the heavy sky-metal of the Ship’s Medallion was hidden.

  “I do not know why it wants you, but it is strange, and unforeseen.” Father Kef said heavily. “I will not let you fall to its darkness, Talin.”

  Talin felt confused. This man wanted answers from him. Answers that he couldn’t provide. But still, the Father had also offered me his aid – I think. “Thank you,” he said suspiciously.

  “Hands!” A muffled shout from above; an annoyed troll.

  “I’ve got to go to work.” Talin motioned towards the door.

  “So do we all,” Father Kef muttered.

  The afternoon breakfast in the Forecastle constituted of Sevesti’s spiced porridge. “It’s all I have to work with, I’m afraid” the big Izantine bemoaned the lack of most of their supplies that they had to abandon on their race across the burning pier. It still tasted delicious, all the same.

  “How bad do you think she got it, in the end?” Odestin was yawning as stretched and cracked his shoulders. His face was a patchwork of brui
ses, but, aside from the slightly frazzled beard, he appeared to take his injuries in his stride. “I’ll be sad if they burnt down Needle Street, the swobbers…” The man groaned as he took another bowl.

  “I uh, I don’t know…” Talin shook his head, still feeling muzzy from last night’s flight. He remembered working into the harsh light of the morning, pulling lines and rigging as his chest had ached with smoke. The burning city behind them had grown fainter and smaller, becoming a smudge of dirty black clouds on the western horizon.

  “You alright, Tal? You look pale,” the Chef frowned at him.

  “Just tired.” He said, although now that the Chef mentioned it, he didn’t feel fine. He felt floaty and disconnected in a way that reminded him of the strange dream. The eye in the Boreal Chamber. Storm-Holder.

  “Hm. You tell the Quartermaster if you feel faint…” The Chef said critically, but Talin waved him off.

  Out on the deck, Talin saw that the Storm had travelled far during the afternoon. The Captain was nowhere to be seen, presumably in his state rooms leaving the solid Gulbrand piloting the boat and Lura up in the rigging. Father Kef had been put to work stowing lines and making the many small adjustments that an airship in motion required. If the older Nhkari man had any ignorance of sailing, then he hid it now as he worked steadily and competently.

  In front of their prow stretched the golden sands of the Burnt Lands; oceans of orange, yellow, and red, with dots and outcrops of rocks here and there in the distance. The sun was already blisteringly hot, and Talin sweated instantly.

  “Tal – replace Lura up the rigging, she’s been working since last night,” Gulbrand’s voice rasped. The heimr was still as big as a house, but he appeared diminished and even hunched somewhat, until Tal realized that it was his lack of flaring-back horns.

  He took that pain for me, Talin felt ashamed as he climbed.

  “Tal?” Lura was in her second, more secretive home aboard the Storm; the crow’s nest almost at the top of the mainmast. Shaped like a tulip, the look-out platform was barely bigger than a bed, with wooden short walls under a canvas roof. The tylaethi threw a water pouch his way, which Talin fumbled and dropped, before uncorking and drinking a heavy gulp.

  “Not too much. Save some for the day,” Lura rubbed her eyes. She had dropped her leather-petalled armor for a black, light linen shirt and black pantaloon pants. To Talin’s eyes, she looked thinner than normal, and her hair was not dressed into its braid with her usual care.

  “Lura, are you ill?”

  The woman grimaced. “We didn’t bring enough water with us, so the Captain is checking Father Kef’s charts for the nearest oasis… Us tylaethi are not at our best in deserts,” she added as explanation, before pushing herself up from the wooden boards. The most graceful acrobat wobbled.

  “Sit.” Talin said quickly, pushing the water into her weakened white fingers. “You need this more than I do. Get in the shade there,” he helped her back into the shadows that were still only oppressively hot rather than roasting.

  “Good strong easterly, just keep an eye on the front lateens…” Lura murmured, curling into a ball around the precious water.

  “I’ll come back in a half-watch,” Talin said, climbing out over the side to the wave of stove-heat of the desert, before stringing his rope to the guide line from the harness to glide across to the stern lateen sail.

  Too dry. I don’t like it, the words appeared in his mind as he was halfway across. They weren’t his own words, but the words from a dream.

  “Urk!” Talin scrabbled as he hit the forward mast, almost missing the rigging in his shock. The dream voice had never happened in his waking hours before. Regaining his balance, Talin reached for the mind inside his on. Is that you? Holder?

  The heat. The alien voice inside his own returned. It felt confused and hurt. I can’t stand it here!

  “But how…” Talin knew in that moment that the older Nhkari had been right. Some dreams were true. The creature he had been visiting every night aboard this ship was real, and it was intimately tied to the Storm in some way.

  I am the Storm, but the Storm is not me. Holder shook his thoughts defiantly.

  Tal clutched at the lines, his heart hammering in his chest. He needed to think. What did this mean? How could this even be possible? His hands shook as he climbed to work on the knots of the forward lateen sail, tightening some, loosening, re-tying. The heat was like a wall pressed against his back, making him breathe shallowly. Even the wind was dry and scratchy as it sucked up the sand from the dunes below. He felt desiccated like dried fruit.

  Think how I feel. Holder repeated indignantly in his mind.

  “But how can I be dreaming you?” Talin whispered into the breeze.

  You are on my other-body, the body of wood and sail. How can you not?

  The Ship’s Medallion. Talin felt it heavy in his trouser pocket. What had the Captain said? That it connected to a Boreal Chamber. That without a Medallion and a Captain’s seal, the airship wouldn’t obey. But his Ship’s Medallion had come from another airship, a destroyed one.

  “Gulbrand said that the hulk must have been decommissioned by now.” Talin pretended to be working on the lines. “It’s like a key to a door that doesn’t exist anymore.” But maybe that meant the Medallion became a key to this airship, he thought. This creature. Whatever this creature was.

  “Holder…?” Talin reached out again in his mind, but only silence returned to him. The presence had withdrawn itself. Or at least, he thought it had.

  “Talin – Aft Lateen!” The Quartermaster bellowed.

  From the stern-most shorter mast, Tal clipped his harness line onto the rope to the taller middenmast in the middle of the airship, then to re-attach to the spider-lines that connected to the aftmast that stood behind the wheel and the stolid Quartermaster. Another round of tying and retying and readjusting the winches that tightened the canvas. Even up here, Talin could feel the boat itself responding to his efforts, cutting faster and truer through the airs. Like we’re all one creature, he thought, wondering if it was really him that thought it.

  There was a cough from below, and Tal looked down to see that Father Kef had retreated to the shadows of the aftcastle under the wheel, and appeared to be watching him from his crouch.

  What does he want from me? Talin thought irritably, as the door to the Captain’s state rooms beside the older priest banged open, and Tremaine nodded him inside.

  Tal turned back to his work. The dunes beneath extended in an endless canvas, losing their burnt-umber sheen and becoming a bleached gold. Sprays of sand picked up from their tops, and still the sun beat down. After his work here, Tal moved to the mainsails, checking knots in a seemingly endless task. By the time that the Quartermaster bellowed for him to take a break, Tal felt dizzy with the heat and his hands were red and raw.

  “Lura?” He clambered over the railing to slump next to the tyl Rigger, exhausted.

  “Tal..?” Lura coughed, offering him the last of their water pouch. She looked, if anything, worse than before.

  “Come on,” Tal said. “You’re going below decks for a bit.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” a shadow of her old ire. “I have another watch coming up.”

  Tal looked over the walls of their little hideout – the sky was burning a deep pink. It was nearing evening, and that meant that the airs would be cooler in the next few hours. He felt a pleased relief shiver through him, certain that it came from Holder. “I can work through,” he said brusquely. “You take over from me at midnight.”

  Lura scowled, but she did not argue as the Nhkari helped her over the side of her crows-nest and down the rigging.

  “You didn’t have to,” the tyl said warily as he walked her to the stairs.

  “Of course I did. We’re one thing.” Talin said, unsure of whether the words came from him or Holder. The Rigger looked at him oddly.

  “It sounds like this accursed heat’s getting to you, too,” she said before de
scending into the shade below decks.

  26. Sorcerous

  “You say that they’re here?” Tremaine prodded the thick mark on the yellowing vellum that sat on his writing desk. The Captain was annoyed. Even in his state rooms under the aftcastle it was too hot, and he hated the heat. He felt like he couldn’t even take a decent breath, and every time he changed his linen shirts they became drenched in sweat within moments.

  Father Kef in front of him appeared unfazed by the hot sun. He had drawn his robes up over his head, forming a tent-like cloak as he leaned against his staff. When he spoke, his cracked voice emerged from the shadows.

  “My cousin’s son Amar was one of the ones to guide the Blue Princes to their meeting place.” The man’s finger drew a line straight out across the map from the drawing of Marduk, stopping at a hump of hills, and curling it southwards. At their southernmost tip he tapped his finger. “Here.”

  “And here…?” Tremaine squinted at a dot next to the northern end of the hills. A drawing of a palm tree. “Casimar’s Oases? It’ll have water?” It better bloody will, because the next one is a day and a night away… The Storm had lost most of their water bags on the pier of Marduk. They would be bone dry by the time they reached Casimar’s, let alone any further, the Captain considered.

  “It will.” Father Kef nodded. “My people keep the oases tended. They might not be the safest of places, but they will have water.”

  “Not safe? Why not safe?” Tremaine demanded irritably. This entire journey across the south hadn’t been safe. All I wanted was to steal some silk and sell it. Is that too much to ask? But no – I had storms and crewmembers dying, faithless merchants and runaway slaves with demon-people after them.