Grego watched the expressions flicker across the faces of the other Moertans in the cabin, including Karstis and Shalara. He and Emrillian and Mrillis had discussed such things often over the years. While they agreed that it would be satisfying to go throughout Moerta and abolish the more oppressive governments, such as Fedarstan, they didn't have the adequate information to determine the dividing line between a government that hurt its people more than it helped them, and a government that was stern but still a benefactor. Some countries might not want to change, despite how their situation looked from the outside.
Obviously, from the thoughtful frowns, the flickers of dawning surprise, and other expressions of deep, shifting thoughts, the others in the cabin had never considered the implications and limitations and duties that came with the deceptively simple proposition of rearranging the governments of the entire world. The bottom line was that just because Athrar had the power to re-assert his rule as High King, that didn't mean he should. If the Encindi threat could be destroyed once and for all, there was no need for a High King and an alliance of minor kings to defend their own borders and their neighbors.
"Half a kil--" Shalara began.
"Invaders." Edrout's voice boomed across the intervening space from the Fedarstanian ship. It rang in the body of the ship and set up an answering dissonance in the equipment. "I will not waste time arguing with you. Be assured that I have taken over your fiercest and most capable enemy and made them my vassals. I have their weapons at my disposal, as well as magic that you cannot comprehend. There is nothing you can do to resist me. Do not even consider hiding under the weak, puny defenses of Quenlaque. No one there is strong enough to defy me or defend you."
"Sounds like he's wasting time to me," Karstis muttered. "Evil overlord rule number one: never pontificate when you can just blow them out of the water."
Emrillian, Shalara and Delori all muffled chuckles behind their hands. Kayn looked exasperated, but Grego could have sworn a smile twitched one corner of that mouth that never did anything but scowl.
"Speak!" Edrout roared, the force of his magic and his volume making wavelets kick up and spatter against the sides of the ships. "I know you can hear me and understand me. Respond, or I will incinerate you and all the water around you."
"That's my cue," Kayn muttered. His expression turned sour as he got up from his bench and crossed to the communications panel that linked him with the speakers on the decoy ship. He braced himself with his hands on either side of the wand that picked up his voice. "This is Sevron Kayn, commander of this scientific expedition. Your ship has been identified. I think it only fair to warn you that your new vassals are chronic liars and exaggerate their talents and resources. I recommend you take an inventory of your resources before you claim the ability to do any harm to my ship."
The silence rang. Grego imagined Edrout throwing a temper tantrum on his confiscated battleship. He hoped the enchanter was physically on board, and not projecting through the ship. There was always the chance that he had chosen not to witness the fall of his enemies, and was safely within the borders of his own territory. Emrillian had theorized that even if he did that, the power drain to control the enemy ship from such a long distance would damage Edrout and open all channels of magic to attack.
"Do you feel it?" Emrillian whispered.
"Aye." Graddon nodded, his eyes narrowing in concentration and his mouth flattening. He held out a hand to Delori. "Brace yourselves."
"What?" Delori whispered. She grasped his hand. A moment later she tucked the datapad into the front of her jacket and stood up to hold onto Graddon with both hands.
"He's taking the spoiled brat route," Emrillian said.
"Weapons priming," Shalara announced. "At that range, we have maybe a second from firing to-- Firing!"
Emrillian snapped both arms forward. Blinding light flared from her hands as she grabbed hold of the Threads, physically and with magic. She pulled hard, her face a fierce mask.
Grego closed his eyes, envisioning the magic shield snapping into place around the decoy ship. Muffled concussions rang across the water. He counted four, then felt the aftershock of high waves pounding his ship, rocking it despite Quenlaque's shield and the ship's stabilizers.
Graddon stood solid and still, eyes closed, one arm wrapped around the little woman clinging to him. A faint nimbus of emerald light enclosed them.
"What is that?" Delori whispered, as the air darkened and thickened and gusts blew at the ship, rattling the viewports, and a roaring, shrieking ululation spun from every direction.
"Edrout, having a temper tantrum." Emrillian opened her eyes and let her arms drop to her sides again. "I'll have to remind Grandfather not to accuse me ever again of having one."
"You're all insane," Kayn said. He snorted, and his mouth did curve up a little at the corners. He also braced himself with a white-knuckle grip on the control panel as the ship rose and fell among stronger waves.
"Since your version of sanity doesn't include magic..." Grego held out a hand to Emrillian, beckoning her back to the seat. He had an image of her falling, knocked off balance if the water grew any rougher.
"Here it comes," Graddon said. "Now, little one."
Emrillian wrapped her arms tight around herself, closed her eyes, and glowed. The nimbus of deep blue and gold and red expanded from her half a meter with every breath Grego took. When the light touched him, he closed his eyes. Everything was going according to their plan and their prediction of Edrout's reactions. Graddon was to signal when he sensed Edrout attacking the shield around the decoy ship. Emrillian was to make the shield stronger and expand it so it impinged on Edrout's command of the Fedarstanian ship. When the shoving battle between them grew strong enough, she would signal Shalara, who would--
"Shar!" Emrillian shouted.
The air filled with a roaring Grego felt in his flesh and bones. It threatened to deafen him. He opened his eyes, and through the shifting haze of colors he saw Shalara hit the all-important control for the power siphon. Both dishes were on this ship, which immediately went technology-dark as every bit of energy fed into the equipment. He held his breath, staring at Emrillian, willing her corona of color and Thread power to stay strong. The power siphon drained energy from in front of it, so theoretically all the Threads behind it, all the magic-wielders standing behind the dishes, would be untouched.
He found he didn't like depending on theory. Not when his friends' and allies' lives were endangered.
"Is it working?" Kayn demanded, when the roaring of the storm continued.
"Something is..." Nentor growled and turned from the viewport to glare at the rest of them. "I know not what it is, but I sense something has broken out there. Princess?"
"I'm fine," Emrillian said, her voice strained. The rainbow continued pulsing out from her as she maintained the shield around the decoy, battling Edrout's magic.
"Wave!" Shalara shrieked, staring out the viewport.
A world-shaking boom rushed over them, draining all the light and sound and air from his senses for five terrifying heartbeats. Grego gasped as his senses snapped back into place. Everyone dropped to the floor. Then the roar of an enormous wave overpowered them and he heard alarms in the shipboard systems shrieking. The world turned sideways. He felt hands grab him. He took a hard hold of whoever and whatever he could find as he closed his eyes and turned over, three times, with cold surrounding him and a force that tried to spin him in the opposite direction and suck the air from his lungs.
Chapter Thirteen
Emrillian decided later that it had been like trying to ride a bucking horse with all her clothes covered in grease, no saddle, spines on the horse instead of fur, inside a rotating drum, both of them kicking at each other and trying to hold onto each other for safety at the same time.
The ship hadn't capsized, hadn't sprung leaks, hadn't exploded from the strain, though she felt as if her head came close. She understood how Grego had felt, scorched and drained, when he
'd tried to grasp the trunk Thread that fed into the Zygradon.
What mattered was that they were alive, the ship had suffered minimal damage, and the decoy ship was still floating, even though it had been scraped and battered and blackened by the backlash of power. And while she felt totally powerless, Graddon and Nentor had enough magic to heal everyone's bruises and a few broken bones and bring both ships to port at Quenlaque.
She was sitting on the pebbly shingle, sipping a restorative potion the Directorate's medic insisted on for everyone, despite the magic at their disposal, when her parents reached the docks. Emrillian barely noticed the clamor of voices raised in acclaim. It sounded much like the screeling of the gulls, the dying slap of the waves as the water settled down, and the grumbling gusts of the wind.
"Emmi?" Athrar called, cutting through the dazed, drifting feeling that felt incredibly comfortable to both body and mind.
She turned and looked, and realized all her muscles had stiffened, with hints that all her joints had tried to fuse together as well. Emrillian struggled to lever herself up to her feet when she saw her parents ride down to the shore, followed by Mrillis and Baedrix and some of her Archaics friends. She managed to get one leg straightened and was unbending the other, and trying to get up from the boulder where she had been sitting, when Athrar and Ynfara raced across the damp sand littered with pebbles and driftwood to reach her.
"Don't you ever do anything like that again," her father growled, snatching her up in his arms. "We could feel the battle of power as if we were in the middle of it." He interrupted himself by kissing her forehead and cheeks, and then clutching her so close her aching muscles and ribs cried out from the pressure.
"Still not sure what we did. How much we did," she managed to retort, breathless. Then she gasped, on the verge of tears, when Athrar flipped her around in his arms so he cradled her against his chest.
"You take after Grandfather and his wife far too much, that's what you do," Ynfara said. She pressed one hand against Emrillian's chest and the other across her forehead.
Warmth flowed across her skin, down into her muscles, then touched her bones, easing the aches. She felt sleepy content, all her pains and stiffness soothed away. Duty nagged at her, to get up and go back to the ships to help in the repairs and getting the sensors online. She ignored duty and gave in to silly, relieved tears when Athrar sat down, still holding her cradled against him. For a few moments, she was a little girl again, comforted in her beloved papa's arms after a nightmare.
"I suppose I should apologize," Mrillis said, joining them. He snorted, muffling laughter, when Emrillian opened one eye to glare at him and stayed cuddled against Athrar's chest. Why couldn't he leave them alone for a little while?
"Apologize for what?" Athrar said. His voice buzzed pleasantly in his chest under her ear.
"For raising your daughter to expect the impossible from herself. And perhaps for raising her--unintentionally, of course--to want to save the whole world."
"Nobody else could do it," Emrillian said. She sighed and didn't care if she sounded like a whiny brat when Athrar slid her out of his arms, to sit up on the boulder. He kept his arm around her, bracing her. "Everyone had a task. Mine was holding the shield against Edrout, to make him open himself up and throw everything he had into the fight." She looked around and realized quite a few people had gathered around her boulder seat. Members of the Council of Lords, several Archaics friends, Baedrix, and handfuls of the dock workers and sailors and townspeople who had stayed away and left her alone in her misery up until then. She pushed down the grumbling complaint that she would be living in front of an audience for the rest of her life.
"True," Athrar said on a sigh. "I still find it hard to exchange my little bird for the grown woman. An enchantress with the power to reshape the world is even harder to comprehend."
"Just don't ask us to sacrifice you entirely," Ynfara said, leaning forward to rest both hands on Emrillian's shoulders. "We couldn't watch you grow up. Don't make us bury you."
"Believe me, Mama, I have no intention of sacrificing my life." She welcomed the crunch of footsteps on the gravel and sand, because it was an interruption.
"We are victorious," Graddon announced simply, when the crowd parted to let him through. He walked with Kayn on one side and Delori on the other, with Shalara and Nentor coming up close behind them. "We have no indication if Edrout survived the battle or if he was destroyed, but the results are beyond our wildest dreams in terms of the Encindi territory."
"Essentially, there is no Encindi territory left," Nentor said. He shook a finger in Emrillian's direction. "You, girl, are lucky you didn't totally burn away all your imbrose." Then his bluster abruptly cut off. "Let us pray the Estall that Edrout was burned beyond recognition, in all the ways that matter."
"It all fell into the sea?" Athrar asked.
"Volcanoes, shifting of tectonic plates..." Mrillis frowned into an unseen distance, nodding slowly. "Meghianna says she senses very little life in that part of the land, even in the sea. Sulfur and other poisons filling the water. Large portions of the mountains have sheered off. We will likely feel the aftershocks for moons to come."
"What about the battleship?" Emrillian asked.
"Sunk," Shalara said. "With all hands."
"If there was anyone alive on board," Kayn said. "We've finally been able to get into all the sensor recordings made during the fight. Our equipment wasn't picking up much more life than if we had been scanning the decoy." His scowl deepened. "I hate Fedarstan, but from what you've told us about blood magic...filthy, useless way to die."
"That is what we battle, what we have battled from time immemorial," Athrar said. He held out his hand to the Moertan scientist. "We would much rather have your people as allies than opponents."
"Allies usually have something each other needs," he responded, slowly holding out his hand.
"Let's let the politicians and ambassadors worry about that, shall we?" Nudging Emrillian to sit up on her own, he stood and shook Kayn's hand. "Now, let us show you how we in Quenlaque celebrate a victory...and fulfill our promises. My daughter tells me she promised you some star-metal to... To play with?"
"Experiment." Kayn's teeth glimmered for a moment as the two men shook hands.
Ynfara wrapped an arm around Emrillian's shoulders, pulling her to her feet. Her mother held her close, revealing the faint shaking through her body that gave a lie to the serene expression on her face.
"I'm sorry, Mama," Emrillian whispered. "It was necessary."
"I know, but as far as I'm concerned, it's still my duty to protect you, not for you to protect me and the entire world." Ynfara pressed a kiss into her tangled hair. They leaned against each other as they followed Athrar and Kayn up to the docks, then along the winding streets to the open square at the base of the wide slope leading up to the gates of Quenlaque Castle.
* * * *
Lycen had cast a smaller, simpler version of the time-halting spell on the royal family's quarters in Quenlaque Castle. Emrillian felt dizzy, walking into the front room, where she remembered her father having meetings with his most loyal nobles and battle commanders. Nothing was different. There was even that stain on the rug from a pot of popperberry jam she had dropped the day before she and her mother fled Quenlaque to hide in the tunnel. Would the mark still be sticky and damp if she touched it?
Maybe the lack of change comforted her parents, because to them it had only been a few days since they left their home. She hoped so.
She wandered the rooms while her parents settled in, letting the echoes of voices and sounds and smells and movements from people long-dead wash over her. The family's common room was familiar to her, where Athrar had held her on his lap and told her stories. She remembered the model of Quenlaque Castle that sat in the corner. It had been taller than her, the last time she had been in this room, but now it barely reached her waist. Meghianna had made it for her, filled with dolls she and her mother would play with, makin
g up stories of the people who lived in the castle. There was the firepit, with the ashes from the last fire they had shared. She choked when a flicker of memory had her bend over the pit and she found the pit of a peach she had tossed there. Was it only a few days, sixteen years, two hundred years, or two thousand years ago?
She heard Ynfara weeping. Emrillian hesitated a moment, expecting to hear Athrar go to her mother, but she listened and realized he was in his study, banging and digging through chests of books and scrolls, making enough noise to drown out the sound. Ynfara was in another room four doors around the curve of the common room. Shivering, Emrillian went to her mother, and found Ynfara on her knees in front of an open chest of children's clothes. The cold deepened when she remembered this had been her bedroom, and those were her clothes her mother buried her face in, muffling her tears.
"Mama?" She went to her knees and wrapped her arms around Ynfara's shoulders. "What's wrong?"
"I keep forgetting--and then something reminds me--and I just want to rip someone to shreds for taking so much from us." She held out a little white dress with green ribbons sewn down the arms and along the hem. "You never got to wear this. Glyssani made it for you, and she never got to see you wear it."
"Fara." Athrar leaned into the frame of the door, the aching of his spirit clear in his eyes, his breaking voice. "I'm sorry. If I could change something, if I could change history, I would."
"You!" She leaped to her feet, flinging the dress back into the chest, and pointed a shaking finger at her husband. "Why--do--you--always think--you--have to fix--everything?" she ended on a shriek that abruptly turned into a wail. "And you!" She turned on Emrillian so quickly her daughter back-stepped, tripped, and fell into her child-size bed. "You're just like him! Both of you have to save the world!"
"I'm sorry." Emrillian winced and rubbed the elbow she had slammed against the wall when she fell.
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