The sea lit in a starburst of blue. Hiresha at first thought she saw the Murderfish’s blood, but this was too bright. Light oozed outward in jiggling tendrils that illuminated the harpoons and engulfed them.
“Her ink dissolved my casting.” Tethiel spoke in tones of disinterest. He hefted his dragon-headed staff above his head and waited.
He hurled the last harpoon like a lightning bolt. The air recoiled in a blast of thunder. The water exploded in slicing sprays.
Hiresha peered into the sea. She could see nothing beneath the storm-lit surface. Tension rippled over her body in time with the swaying waves. “Did that connect?”
Tethiel shrank, and his silver hair shed and curled into nothing. His eyes reflected violet from a nearby tempest, and his gaze filled her with exquisite pangs.
“It hit,” he said, “but the Murderfish disbelieved it could harm her. Perhaps if Feaster Celaise were here herself…but no, better she be safe. The kraken’s circling toward us now.”
Hiresha sank to her knees. The amethysts in her dress darkened to wisps of shadow.
Tethiel’s eyes dimmed. “I try to craft horrors, but the Murderfish surpasses them all. The best man can do is imitate nature with art. While nature can devour art and man.”
The sea churned beneath them. A wet sucking sound made the enchantress fear the Murderfish gripped the boat. The Paragon sprang into the air and skidded backward over the sea. Water sheeted from either side.
The boat pitched to a stop. Its sail caught the wind once more.
Hiresha braced herself, not knowing from which direction the next tentacle would come. The Murderfish had shoved them back south. Hiresha dug her fingernails into her temples, trying to think if any choice remained to them except how they died. By drowning, tentacle, or knife.
The waves glistened red from the nearby storm. The waters turned choppy.
Tethiel’s face looked bloody as he gazed up at the tempest. “We need to head another way. Unless the Murderfish is afraid of storms.”
“Are men afraid of bosoms?” Emesea touched the rigging.
“Wait.” Hiresha had an idea. She hesitated to say it aloud, but desperation was a superb motivator. “Would the tempest kill us?”
Emesea snaked a rope around her arm then turned to the enchantress. “It’ll change you.”
“Forever?” Hiresha asked.
The expression that wrinkled Emesea’s face was one the enchantress had never seen on her before: uncertainty. Motes of crimson drifted past her bare shoulders.
“My heart, we must turn now.” Tethiel pointed a slender finger to open sea. “I have enough left for one last illusion.”
“Create a decoy. Sail it back north. The Murderfish won’t expect us to voyage into storm.”
Tethiel scratched his chin with a fang. “Maybe we shouldn’t expect us to either.”
“We’ve exhausted the areas of our expertise,” Hiresha said. “We need a new path, and the shore is beyond the storm.”
Emesea laughed and swung the rigging rope around. “That’s the way. I knew you weren’t just a cross-legged tea sniffer.”
Illusion leeched the substance from The Paragon, and Hiresha saw herself and the boat swing around and sail on without her. She remained in a shadow of their former vessel. Beneath her, a swordfish stabbed two orange fish out of their school, and the water simmered and discolored around the pinioned creatures.
Even as the air thickened with the dream storm, Hiresha breathed freer. The sea breeze felt like putting on a new skin.
Fish crowded the waves. Thousands of mouths opened; circles with small teeth dipped in and out of the water. They seemed to gulp at the tempest.
The unseen boat shifted beneath Hiresha. The gnarled hide of a terror croc sped by. The serpentine creature wove itself back and forth with mouth open. Bands of fish fled from it, but they could not go far in the crush of life.
Hiresha told herself that this was a good thing. The Murderfish won’t see us in this bedlam.
“Hold onto your minds,” Emesea said.
26
Storm Gambit
A fever of sky skates circled over the waves. Eels coiled below them. Hiresha spotted the stinger of a fisherman’s bane. The water crackled with a swarm of shrimp. Large shapes moved below, behemoths that pushed away shoals of fish to spout water in musky blasts.
Hiresha never noticed when the boat reappeared. Neither did she much care that her gown of illusion had faded, leaving her in small clothes. She felt tired, so she would sleep. She curled up in the boat, savoring the roughness of the planking against her palms.
Tethiel was shaking her. Hiresha pushed him away and closed her eyes again. Then someone lifted her by the scruff of her neck. Pain burned its way down her back. She cried out. A woman with slanted hair shouted, Emesea.
Emesea had hurt Hiresha, and she could not let that pass. She snarled. She clawed at the other woman.
A punch to Hiresha’s hip spun her around, and Emesea brandished a black-faceted blade. Hiresha knew she was outmatched. She bowed her head.
Her hands caressed the planking. Its texture changed from pitted and scratchy to splinters. The boat burst apart, crushed by a terror croc’s tail. Webbed ridges swept beneath Hiresha. She flipped, feet over head. Her cry burst out in high notes like laughter.
She landed amid the wreckage. Eels flopped around her. They felt like slugs racing over her skin. She didn’t like that. She pushed through broken planks to reach the mast. It tilted and dunked her. Something scaly and cold knocked her. Sharp teeth nibbled her ankle.
She screamed and gurgled. Salt burned its way up her nose. She beat her way back through fins and fish tails to the mast. It tipped her again into a wave. Hiresha clung on.
A hand pulled her away. It was Emesea, the leader. Hiresha followed her into the sea.
Hiresha flopped and flailed. Panic streamed around her in froth and jostling cold bodies. She could not breathe the water like the fish could. She tried. Gulping air that tasted of fire, summer, and sea spray, she plunged.
She swam. The movements were both new and natural. Her legs paddled. Her arms ladled water behind her. She could not remember why she had feared swimming. Bubbles tingled across her belly and flashed in front of her eyes.
Other creatures moved faster. That was a worry. A sardine swam into her face, fins whisking over her lips until she spluttered the fish away.
A terror croc coasted closer. The sinuous menace smashed water into white clouds. Its mouth clamped shut. Its fangs caged a fish broken and leaking blood. It had been the swordfish. About her size.
The terror croc crunched its prey into bleeding chunks. The crocodile’s eye was gold with a vertical chasm. It looked at her.
Hiresha wriggled to the side, fear-sick knowing she could never swim far enough, fast enough.
Emesea pulled her downward. The terror croc’s maw passed overhead. A slipstream tumbled Hiresha upside down and around. A belly of interlocking leather squares streamed above her.
The predator snaked away, and its departing current carried Hiresha beneath a ceiling of fish. Hiresha thought to fight through them for a breath. A mass of sardines turned into a metal prison around her, but it only held her for a few lung-burning seconds.
Emesea towed a floating sack of leather. Hiresha could not say why they needed the oilskin bag, but at least it did not seem to slow the leader.
Hiresha felt someone was missing. She looked behind to see a scarred man. He clawed at the water, trying to follow, but he was slow because of his bad hands and bow legs.
The leader motioned to leave him. Hiresha did so, kicking after Emesea. The water fizzed with red light, darkening into emptiness below. A few green-glowing fish nibbled at their hair.
A tearing sensation built in Hiresha. Nothing had bitten her, but she felt they should not leave Tethiel. He’s part of our pack.
It seemed wrong to disagree with her leader. She still pulled on Emesea’s leg and paddled back. Hire
sha made Tethiel hook his arm around her waist, pulled him after her. He slowed her. She lugged herself forward anyway. She had never felt so strong.
Hiresha knew that she had to swim. To move was to stay alive. To swim was joy.
To swim was terror. The croc serpent looped downward. Its long maw of saw teeth swung forward and back then pointed toward her.
Emesea tugged, and Hiresha followed with Tethiel into the deep.
A fin loomed upward from the darkness, as long as she. Currents battered her from the sway of this new fish’s tail. Rocky plates armored its head. They fit together in a mouth like a jagged beak. Sharks swam after it. They were but scavengers to this monster.
The great platehead swept its tail side to side to meet the terror croc straight on. The terror croc had the greater length and bulk. It still slunk away in a sideways loop.
Hiresha and the others in her pack had stopped. The monsters were in front of them, and worry burned in her like her want of breath. Hiresha went up for air.
She came back down to see the terror croc snap its jaws closed on the flank of the other predator. Translucent armor appeared on the finned giant. One instant, its hide had been bare. The next, glassy slabs tinted the hue of lavender protected it, and the impact of crocodile fangs against them made a pinging din.
This armored giant, this great platehead, snapped open its mouth. Razor jaws cut through lumps of crocodile hide. The sea rumbled with the monster’s pain.
Emesea led the pack in a new direction. If they had been going a specific way, Hiresha did not remember why. Leaving the monsters behind was enough. She went apace with Tethiel. He matched her speed now by cupping both hands together for a rippling stroke through the water. He and the rest of the pack still crawled compared to the tuna flitting by. Spikes ran along the fish’s backbones and bellies leading to their tail fins.
An itching pressure on her back caused Hiresha to look behind. The great platehead followed her, or perhaps the school of tuna. No one in the pack could ever outswim the predator. Hiresha could only hope the numbers of other prey saved her. The great platehead popped open its mouth, and a nearby tuna disappeared.
The school clustered closer, hundreds of silvery bodies slicing through the water in unison. They melded together, scales interlocking into scales, fins linking with fins, until the school was but one colossus. The mammoth tuna now overshadowed the great platehead, and the predator let the school of one swim on its way.
Hiresha felt exposed in her pack of three. Nothing remained to distract the great platehead. Meeting its black-eyed gaze touched Hiresha with mortal chill. The craggy ridges of its mouth stayed shut, while the sharks that escorted it seemed to smile. Hiresha suspected if she was not consumed in one bite, the sharks would eat the scraps.
Emesea pulled her in another direction, toward more finned behemoths. Hiresha’s gut clenched. She did not see why going toward a larger number of sea giants would help, but she trusted her leader.
Shadowy hulks swayed through the water, crying out to each other in echoing moans. The undersides of their knobby fins were pink in the light of the dream storm. Their mouths spread into tunnels that engulfed clouds of shrimp. Throats bulged outward and rippled like shaken sheets. A few shrimp teleported to freedom.
Hiresha’s fright drained away as she swam closer to the whales. Tranquility seeped into her skin like the warmth of the sun on a spring day. Despite the size of the whales, she felt safe, a child swimming among family.
The whales’ aura of peace never diminished even when the great platehead glided below. The predator did not even pause near Hiresha’s pack or the baby whales. Neither did it fight with the terror croc that crossed its path.
Emesea kicked her way above a whale and grasped the mussels on its brow. She motioned Hiresha to do the same. The whale she chose glanced at her paddling closer, a ring of hair around its eye. The creature did not seem much bothered when she and Tethiel clung to its head. The mussel was smooth and sharp on her hand. Her other fingers rested against the roughness of the whale.
Tethiel pawed at the lumpy surface but could not keep a hold. He bled where a barnacle scratched his chest. She guided her pack-mate's arm around her waist. He held to her, and the ridges of his scars brushed against her skin. The press of his arms was a heat of reassurance. She could not remember if she had ever felt such a sense of contentment.
The heave of the whale up and down in the water kept her alert. Many fish her size and smaller accompanied the whales. Redness faded from the sea, and the surface turned into swaying silver.
Whenever the whale lifted itself to spout, Hiresha gasped air amid the rush of whitewater. The night wore on. They traveled further from the dream storm, past reefs, above underwater mountains. Hiresha found it harder and harder to hold her breath as long as the whale.
She took to swimming up to the surface alongside Tethiel for air. They dove back down. Every muscle in her body sang with the strain of catching up to the whale. She gripped it behind its stumpy dorsal fin. Here its back wrinkled in folds. Tethiel latched his arms around her leg. This made her feel peculiar. She could not say why.
After the next stolen breath, she whirred her arms to return to her whale. Her muscles felt they would tear. The whale slipped away from her. She caught hold of the next one. As she clung, a thought seared its way into her consciousness.
What am I doing? Once I was a respected enchantress, and now I’m a whale parasite? Even more curious, she thought she saw the Lord of the Feast with his arms hugging the tail of the whale ahead of her.
Her whale surfaced, and she scanned the horizons. Starlit sea sprawled in all directions. Dream storms cast halos of color in the surrounding waters. She could not say with any certainty which of the red ones she had come from.
There’s no land in sight.
Hiresha realized her danger. She stayed calm, even when lack of breath once again forced her from her perch. The gulp of air did little to relieve the heaviness of her muscles. She felt as if she had been beaten on her shoulders, back, and limbs. She floundered after the whales. Her vision underwater had darkened. She felt she swam in tar.
She knew the whales had left her behind when the panic struck. I’m lost at sea and alone. And what happened to our boat? Her memories were dreamlike.
The behemoths spouted ahead of her. She slapped her arms into the water, pulling herself closer. She wanted to shout for help, but her tongue seemed to have forgotten how to form the word. Her wail sounded tiny amid the waves.
Something round bobbed up beside her. Hiresha gasped, flailing away from it. Then she realized it was the oilskin sack. Emesea touched her shoulder, pointed a direction. Hiresha grabbed the floating bag, and it buoyed her enough that she did not fear she would drown. Tethiel was with them, swimming on his back, spluttering with every wave.
Hiresha had to think miles separated them from any land. She still kicked and swam after Emesea. I prefer a few hours of exertion, even if it’s hopeless, to immediate drowning.
A speck ahead of her grew to a smudge atop the sea. It looked too small for coastline. Seeing the patch of fuzz still invigorated her. Her legs churned the water. She thought it might be an island.
27
Floating Forest
It took so long to reach the island that Hiresha could have sworn it was drifting away. Dawn broke first, and the island shed swarms of birds. Screeching tides passed overhead. Pelicans scooped up fish, stormy petrels danced over the waves, and gulls abounded.
The island was wooded. When Hiresha’s numb legs flailed her close enough, she saw mangroves walled off all sight of shore. A thicket of slender roots dipped into the sea as if the trees were many-legged water striders. Nests cluttered the bank of mangroves, and a red snake slithered from the water, to the squawking disapproval of birds.
Hiresha gripped the roots and cried in relief. She had never striven so long at anything physical. If someone had told her a week ago that she would have to swim for her life
for hours, she would have resigned herself to death. The essence tempest must have given her strength for the trial. She had spent it all.
“Exercise will be the death of me,” Tethiel said.
One root snapped as Emesea scrambled from the water. She reached into a nest and popped an egg into her mouth. The warrior crunched with relish.
Hiresha’s stomach gurgled. She had to accept Emesea’s hand for help up. Every good place to step was inhabited by a nest, and Hiresha felt miserable when her leaden feet knocked a blue egg into the water.
She squeezed between tree trunks. The mangroves made more of a bramble than a grove. Hiresha wore only her undergarments, but her sleepiness kept her from caring about the scratches on her arms and knees. The roots were grey from droppings, and the island stung her nose with a sharp reek.
A cacophony of birds roosted in the branches. Seed pods dangled down like fingers poking at Hiresha’s head. Her legs were pecked by egg guardians. She stumbled forward, ever hoping to reach a bit of land to sprawl over, never finding.
“Is this island entirely overgrown?” Hiresha asked.
“Overrun, without a doubt.” Tethiel shielded his eyes from a diving bird.
Hiresha’s leg slipped between the mangroves, and her foot touched water. She could go no further. She collapsed across a slope of roots, shouldering aside two empty nests. Any person of quality would have proclaimed her resting place too uncomfortable for sleep, too loud, and too smelly.
Hiresha dreamed within minutes.
The enchantress gestured for a mirror to drift closer. It displayed the mangrove she had first clung to. She had only squinted at it through salt-swollen eyes while awake, but now the submerged roots drew her notice.
“I have never seen air bladders on roots before.”
Around the woody bulbs, algae flourished in green and orange hues. Yellow sponges grew on the roots. Oysters hung like ornaments. And below the root tips, nothing. Only deeper sea.
“I do believe these trees are floating.” In the dream she could detect the sway of the mangroves in their mesh of connecting roots. Awake, the motion had seemed only too natural after swimming for hours in the sea. “Of all the miserable islands to be stranded on, this one disappoints even on the ‘land’ quotient.”
Dream Storm Sea Page 16