Kulp had heard of High Mages who—it was rumored—had found ways to cheat those illimitable laws, and perhaps the gods and other Ascendants possessed such knowledge as well. But they were as beyond a lowly cadre mage as the tools of an ogre’s smithy to a cowering rat.
His other concern was the vastness of the task itself. Pulling a handful of companions through his warren was difficult, but manageable. But an entire ship! He’d hoped he would find inspiration once within the Meanas Warren, some thunderbolt delivering a simple, elegant solution. With all the grace of poetry. Was it not Fisher Kel’Tath himself who once said poetry and sorcery were the twin edges to the knife in every man’s heart? Where then are my magic cants?
Kulp sourly admitted that he felt as stupid within Meanas as he did sitting in the captain’s cabin. The art of illusion is grace itself. There must be a way to…to trick our way through. What’s real versus what isn’t is the synergy within a mortal’s mind. And greater forces? Can reality itself be fooled into asserting an unreality?
His shouting senses changed pitch. Kulp was no longer alone. The thick, turgid air of the Meanas Warren—where shadows were textured like ground glass and to slip through them was to feel a shivering ecstasy—had begun to bulge, then bow, as if something huge approached, pushing the air before it. And whatever it was, it was coming fast.
A sudden thought flooded the mage’s mind. And moreover, it possessed…elegance. Togg’s toes, can I do this? Building pressure, then vacuous wake, a certain current, a certain flow. Hood, it ain’t water, but close enough.
I hope.
He saw Heboric jump back in alarm, striking his head on a low crossbeam in the cabin. Kulp slipped back into his body and loosed a rasping gasp. “We’re about to go, Heboric. Get everyone ready!”
The old man was rubbing a stump against the back of his head. “Ready for what, Mage?”
“Anything.”
Kulp slid back out, mentally clambering back over his anchor within Meanas.
The Unwelcome was coming, a force of such power as to make the febrile atmosphere shiver. The mage saw nearby shadows vibrate into dissolution. He felt outrage building in the air, in the loamy earth underfoot. Whatever was passing through this warren had drawn the attention of…of whatever—Shadowthrone, the Hounds—or perhaps warrens truly are alive. In any case, on it came, in arrogant disregard.
Kulp suddenly thought back to Sormo’s ritual that had drawn them into the T’lan Imass warren outside Hissar. Oh, Hood, Soletaken or D’ivers…but such power! Who in the Abyss has such power? He could think of but two: Anomander Rake, the Son of Darkness, and Osric. Both Soletaken, both supremely arrogant. If there were others, the tales of their activities would have reached him, he was certain. Warriors talk about heroes. Mages talk about Ascendants. He would have heard.
Rake was on Genabackis, and Osric was reputed to have journeyed to a continent far to the south a century or so back. Well, maybe the cold-eyed bastard’s back. Either way, he was about to find out.
The presence arrived. His spiritual belly flat on the soft ground, Kulp craned his head skyward.
The dragon came low to the earth. It defied every image of a draconian being Kulp had ever seen. Not Rake, not Osric. Hugely boned, with skin like dry shark hide, its wing-span dwarfed even that of the Son of Darkness—who has within him the blood of the draconian goddess—and the wings had nothing of the smooth, curving grace; the bones were multi-jointed in a crazed pattern, like that of a crushed bat wing, each knobbed joint prominent beneath taut, cracked skin. The dragon’s head was as wide as it was long, like a viper’s, the eyes high on its skull. There was no ridged forehead, instead the skull sloped back to a basal serration almost buried in neck and jaw muscles.
A dragon roughly cast, a creature exhaling an aura of primordial antiquity. And, Kulp realized with a breathless start as his senses devoured all that the creature projected, it was undead.
The mage felt it become aware of him as it sailed in a whisper twenty arm-spans overhead. A sudden sharpening of intensity that quickly passed into indifference.
As the dragon’s wake arrived with a piercing wind, Kulp rolled onto his back and hissed the few words of High Meanas he possessed. The warren’s fabric parted, a tear barely large enough to allow the passage of a horse. But it opened onto a vacuum, and the shrieking wind became a roar.
Still hovering between realms, Kulp watched in awe as Silanda’s mud-crusted, battered prow filled the rent. The fabric split wider, then yet wider. Suddenly, the ship’s beam seemed appallingly broad. The mage’s awe turned to fear, then terror. Oh no, I’ve really done it now.
Milky, foaming water gushed in around the ship’s hull. The portalway was tearing wider on all sides, uncontrolled, as the weight of a sea began to rush through.
A wall of water descended on Kulp and a moment later it struck, destroying his anchor, his spiritual presence. He was back in the pitching, groaning captain’s cabin. Heboric was half in and half out of the cabin doorway, scrambling to find purchase as Silanda rode the wave.
The ex-priest shot Kulp a glare when he saw the mage clamber upright. “Tell me you planned this! Tell me you’ve got it all under control, Mage!”
“Of course, you idiot! Can’t you tell?” He climbed his way round the bolted-down furniture to the passage, stepping over Heboric as he went. “Hold the fort, old man, we’re counting on you!”
Heboric snarled a few choice words after him as Kulp made his way to the main deck.
If the Unwelcome’s passage was to be bitterly tolerated and not directly opposed by the powers within Meanas, the rending of the warren obliterated the option of restraint. This was damage on a cosmic scale, a wounding quite possibly beyond repair.
I may just have destroyed my own warren. If reality can’t be fooled. Of course it can be fooled—I do it all the time!
Kulp scrambled onto the main deck and hurried to the sterncastle. Gesler and Stormy were at the steering oar, both men grinning like demented fools as they struggled to stay the course. Gesler pointed forward and Kulp turned to see the vague, ghostlike apparition of the dragon, its narrow, bony tail waving in side-to-side rhythm like a snake crossing sand. As he watched, the creature’s wedge-shaped head appeared as it twisted to cast its dead, black eye sockets in their direction.
Gesler waved.
Shaking himself, Kulp forced his way into the wind, coming to the stern rail which he gripped with both hands. The rent was already far away—yet still visible, meaning it must be…oh, Hood! Water gushed in a tumbling torrent within the wake left by the Soletaken dragon. That it did not spread out to all sides was due entirely to the mass of shadows Kulp saw assailing its edges—and being destroyed in the effort. Yet still more arrived. The task of healing the breach was so overwhelming as to deny any opportunity of approaching the rent, of sealing the wound itself.
Shadowthrone! And every other hoary Ascendant bastard within hearing! Maybe I’ve got no faith in any of you, but you’d better acquire a faith in me. And fast! Illusion’s my gift, here and now. Believe! Eyes on the rent, Kulp braced his legs wide, then released the stern rail and raised high both arms,
It shall close…it shall heal! The scene before him wavered, the tear sealing, stitching together the edges. The water slowed. He pushed harder, willing the illusion to become real. His limbs shook. Sweat sprang out on his skin, soaked his clothing.
Reality pushed back. The illusion blurred. Kulp’s knees buckled. He gripped the railing to keep himself upright. He was failing. No strength left. Failing. Dying…
The force that struck him from behind was like a physical blow to the back of his head. Stars spasmed across his vision. An alien power swept through him, flinging his body back upright. Spread-eagled, he felt his feet leave the tilted deck. The power held him, hovering in place, a will as cold as ice flooding his flesh.
The power was undead. The will that gripped him was a dragon’s. Tinged with irritation, reluctant to act, it nevertheless grasp
ed the illogic of Kulp’s sorcerous effort…and gave it all the force it needed. Then more.
He screamed, pain lancing through him with glacial fire.
Undead cared nothing for the limits of mortal flesh, a lesson now burning in his bones.
The distant rent closed. All at once other powers were channeling through the mage. Ascendants, grasping Kulp’s outrageous intent, swept in to join the game with dark glee. Always a game. Damn you bastards one and all! I take back my prayers! Hear me? Hood take you all!
He realized the pain was gone, the Soletaken dragon withdrawing its attention as soon as other forces arrived to take its place. He remained hovering a few feet above the deck, however, his limbs twitching as the powers using him playfully plucked at his mortality. Not the indifference of an undead, but malice. Kulp began to yearn for the former.
He fell suddenly, cracking both knees on the dirt-smeared deck. Tool done with, now discarded…
Stormy was at his side, waving a wineskin before the mage’s face. Kulp grasped it and poured until his mouth was full of the tart liquid.
“We ride the dragon’s wake,” the soldier said. “Though not on water any more. That gush has closed up tight as a sapper’s arse. Whatever you did, Mage, it worked.”
“Not over yet,” Kulp muttered, trying to still his trembling limbs. He swallowed more wine.
“Watch yourself with that, then,” Stormy said with a grin. “It packs a punch, right to the back of the head—”
“I won’t notice the difference—my skull’s already full of pulp.”
“You lit up with blue fire, Mage. Never seen anything like it. Make a damned good tavern tale.”
“Ah, I’ve achieved immortality at last. Take that, Hood!”
“Well enough to stand?”
Kulp was not too proud to accept the soldier’s arm as he tottered to his feet. “Give me a few moments,” he said, “then I’ll try to slip us from the warren…back to our realm.”
“Will the ride be as rough, Mage?”
“I hope not.”
Felisin stood on the forecastle deck, watching the mage and Stormy passing the wineskin between them. She had felt the presence of the Ascendants, the cold, bloodless attention plucking and prodding at the ship and all who were upon it. The dragon was the worst of them all, gelid and remote. Like fleas on its hide, that’s all we were to it.
She swung about. Baudin was studying the massive winged apparition cleaving the path ahead, his bandaged hand resting lightly on the carved rail. Whatever they rode rolled beneath them in a whispering surge. The oars still plied with remorseless patience, though it was clear that Silanda was moving more swiftly than anything muscle and bone could achieve—even when those muscles and bones were undead.
Look at us. A handful of destinies. We command nothing, not even our next step in this mad, fraught journey. The mage has his sorcery, the old soldier his stone sword and the other two their faith in the Tusked God. Heboric…Heboric has nothing. And as for me, I have pocks and scars. So much for our possessions.
“The beast prepares…”
She glanced over at Baudin. Oh yes, I forgot the thug. He has his secrets, for what that’s worth, like as not scant little. “Prepares what? Are you an expert in dragons as well?”
“Something’s opening ahead—there’s a change in the sky. See it?”
She did. The unrelieved gray pall had acquired a stain ahead, a smudge of brass that deepened, grew larger. A word to the mage, I think—
But even as she turned, the stain blossomed, filling half the sky. From somewhere far behind them came a howl of curdled outrage. Shadows sped across their path, tumbled to the sides as Silanda’s prow clove through them. The dragon crooked its wings, vanishing into a blazing inferno of bronze fire.
Spinning, Baudin wrapped Felisin in his huge arms and ducked down around her as the fire swept over the ship. She heard his hiss as the flames engulfed them.
The dragon’s found a warren…to sear the fleas from its hide!
She flinched as the flames licked around Baudin’s protective mass. She could smell him burning—the leather shirt, the skin of his back, his hair. Her gasps drew agony into her lungs.
Then Baudin was running, carrying her effortlessly in his arms, leaping down the companionway to the main deck. Voices were shouting. Felisin caught a glimpse of Heboric—his tattoos wreathed in black smoke—staggering, striking the port rail, then plummeting over the ship’s side.
Silanda burned.
Still running, Baudin plunged past the mainmast. Kulp lunged into view and grasped the thug’s arms as he tried to scream something the roaring fires swept away. But Baudin had become a thing mindless in its pain. His arm flung outward, and the mage was hurled back through the flames.
Bellowing, Baudin lurched on, a blind, hopeless flight to the sterncastle. The marines had vanished—either incinerated or dying somewhere below decks. Felisin did not struggle. Seeing that no escape was possible, she almost welcomed the bites of fire that now came with increasing frequency.
She simply watched as Baudin carried her over the stern rail.
They fell.
The breath was knocked from her lungs as they struck hard-packed sand. Still clutched in an embrace, they rolled down a steep slope and came to rest amidst a pile of water-smoothed cobbles. The bronze fire was gone.
Dust settling around them, Felisin stared up at bright sunlight. Somewhere near her head flies buzzed, the sound so natural that she trembled—as if desperately held defensive walls were crumbling within her. We’ve returned. Home. She knew it with instinctive certainty.
Baudin groaned. Slowly he pushed himself away, the cobbles sliding and grating beneath him.
She looked at him. The hair was gone from his head, leaving a flash-burned pate the color of mottled bronze. His leather shirt was nothing but stitched strips hanging down his broad back like fragments of charred webbing, If anything, the skin of his back was darker and more mottled than that of his head. The bandages on his hand were gone as well, revealing swollen fingers and bruised joints. Incredibly, his skin was not cracked, not split open; instead, he had the appearance of having been gilded. Tempered.
Baudin rose, slowly, each move aching with precision. She saw him blink, draw a deep breath. His eyes widened as he looked down at himself.
Not what you were expecting. The pain fades—I see it in your face—now only a memory. You’ve survived, but somehow…it all feels different. It feels. You feel.
Can nothing kill you, Baudin?
He glanced at her, then frowned.
“We’re alive,” she said.
She followed suit when he clambered upright. They stood in a narrow arroyo, a gorge where flash floods had swept through with such force as to pack the bends of the channel with skullsized rocks. The cut was less than five paces wide, the sides twice the height of a man and banded in variously colored layers of sand.
The heat was fierce. Sweat ran in runnels down her back. “Can you see anywhere we can climb out?” she asked.
“Can you smell Otataral?” Baudin muttered.
A chill wrapped her bones. We’re back on the island—“No. Can you?”
He shook his head. “Can’t smell a damned thing. Just a thought.”
“Not a nice one,” she snapped. “Let’s find a way out.” You expect me to thank you for saving my life, don’t you? You’re waiting for even a single word, or maybe something as small as a look, a meeting of the eyes. You can wait forever, thug.
They worked their way along the choked channel, surrounded by a whining cloud of flies and their own echoes.
“I’m…heavier,” Baudin said after a few minutes.
She paused, glanced back at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “Heavier.” He kneaded his own arm with his uninjured hand. “More solid. I don’t know. Something’s changed.”
Something’s changed. She stared him, the emotions within her twisting around unvoiced fears.
&
nbsp; “I could’ve sworn I was burning away to bones,” he said, his frown deepening.
“I haven’t changed,” she said, turning and continuing on. She heard him follow a moment later.
They found a side channel, a cleft where torrents of water had rushed down to join the main channel’s course, cutting through the layers of sandstone. This track quickly lost its depth, opening out after twenty or so paces. They emerged onto the edge of a range of blunt hills overlooking a broad valley of cracked earth. More hills, sharper and ragged, rose on the other side, blurry behind waves of heat.
Five hundred paces out on the pan stood a figure. At its feet lay a humped shape.
“Heboric,” Baudin said, squinting. “The one standing.”
And the other one? Dead or alive? And who?
They walked side by side toward the ex-priest, who now watched them. His clothing too had burned away to little more than charred rags. Yet his flesh, beneath that skein of tattooing, was unmarred.
As they neared, Heboric gestured toward his own bald pate. “Suits you, Baudin,” he said with a wry grin.
“What?” Felisin’s tone was caustic. “Are you two a brotherhood now?”
The figure at the old man’s feet was the mage, Kulp. Her gaze fell to him. “Dead.”
“Not quite,” Heboric said. “He’ll live, but he hit something going over the side.”
“Awaken him, then,” Felisin said. “I don’t plan on waiting in this heat just so he can get some beauty sleep. We’re in a desert again, old man, in case you hadn’t noticed. And desert means thirst, not to mention the fact that we’re without food or anything like supplies. And finally, we’ve no idea where we are—”
“On the mainland,” Heboric said. “Seven Cities.”
“How do you know that?”
The ex-priest shrugged. “I know.”
Kulp groaned, then sat upright. One hand gingerly probing a lump above his left eye, the mage looked around. His expression soured.
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