by Aaron Bunce
The ship rolled sideways, the hull supported only by the wall and the hewn rock of the island above it. The mast caught the rock and the ship shuddered. Ropes, cleats, and spars broke loose, snapping loudly before the ship rolled over fully onto its side. It came to an uneasy rest, rocking gently like a wide-bellied fish, trapped just out of the water.
“Sharnin!?” Geoffrey yelled, shrugging out of the guard’s grip and lurching towards the steps leading down. But they were empty and dark. Just like the hollow pit settling in his gut.
“My Lord, it isn’t safe. Please, be to safety. The waters may return,” a soldier hollered, his voice empty of conviction.
Geoffrey didn’t respond. He didn’t turn either. He scanned the steps, all the way to the harbor, settling onto the spot where the dock master’s shack had been. His gaze drifted over the wounded ship perched on the rocks, and just beyond that the tumultuous waters surrounding them. He watched for movement. That telltale flash of white as the surface of the water was broken. But there were flashes of white everywhere, the water cresting and breaking from the violent wind and waves.
The guard pulled gently on his shoulder again, and said something. He couldn’t hear him. The man pulled again, but Geoffrey pulled free just as another wave roared into the harbor. It crashed up onto the storm battered pier and just kissed the keel of the stranded ship, but paled in comparison to the monster that preceded it.
A panel on the side of the grounded ship popped loose, before swinging open. A figure stuck their head out, looked up and down, before ducking back into the dark interior.
They live, he thought with more than a touch of surprise. He hadn’t even considered that anyone was left on the boat, let alone alive. Not with the violence of its landing on the rocks.
“Guards,” Geoffrey yelled over his shoulder.
“Yes sir?” The guard walked around before him, his helm and half of his face plastered with snow.
“Fetch men and rope, and help those people out of that ship. If they do not yet draw breath, remove their bodies, and search the vessel,” he said, waving his hand down towards the ship.
Geoffrey crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet, intent to wait outside, and prove to the storm that it had not, and would not, beat him. He wanted to know what news was so urgent that a seasoned sailing man would risk a thousand deaths of the stormy dark.
No, not want, he realized. Need.
Chapter Eight
Nightbreaker
Julian fell, the water flowing around him, the ground tumbling up as he rolled over. He caught glimpses of water below, rocks, and lots of trees. Pera was there, distantly, the pressure of his presence a detached, fleeting sensation of anger and pain.
He jabbed his arms, punching the air, pushing back against it, his fear unseating him completely. Time seemed to slow, his heart pounding a plodding, thunderous cadence in his chest. He instinctively reached out for Pera, but it wasn’t the dark creature’s presence that filled his mind, but a warm, light sensation. Tanea’s heart pounded like a drum, instantly flooding in and matching time with his in Pera’s absence.
A misty spray hit him, the roar of the falling water so loud it drowned out all else. Julian’s instincts told him to fight, to claw and battle the fall, but something else pushed into him. Strength. He knew he had to be strong. Calm. It wasn’t just Tanea, he realized, but another presence, one well beyond his understanding.
Find us, beyond water, to where the land meets the sky.
The thoughts were strange and flashed in time with Tanea’s heart. Julian instantly stopped thrashing. He crossed his arms over his chest and straightened, shaping his body like a blade. His insides churned with warmth, his confidence solidifying as if made of stone. Was this how it felt before Pera? If so, he silently wished the dark creature would not return.
Pain exploded everywhere as he was engulfed by freezing, dark water. Stars washed over his vision, the suffocating dark of the water cutting in a million places. His heart fluttered as his body rolled and pitched. He pulled and kicked at the water.
Don’t let fear take over. Be decisive, weight is my enemy.
Julian rolled over again, his body scraping violently against rock and mud. He broke the left shoulder strap of his chest plate with a twist of the wrist and let the armor fall free. He twisted, planted his feet, and kicked off.
Julian pulled at the water, the light of Tanea’s will driving every powerful stroke. His lungs burned, and his head grew fuzzy, but after several long moments, his head broke the surface.
The water raged around him, splashing and kicking violently, but compared to the fall, pushing his body through the current felt like a simple task. By the time Julian made it to the bank, he had traveled a considerable distance with the current.
He hefted himself up onto the rocky bank, stopping only to catch his breath and gain his bearings. The spray of the river billowed up the bank, coating the scraggly bushes and hanging trees in a thick coating of ice. It looked like glass, and groaned balefully in the ripping river wind.
He was wet, and cold. He still had the padded boots and clothes he took from Wraithman, and the old sword. He would miss the iron chest plate however, just as he would miss being dry. Stumbling into the trees, Julian clutched his arms to his chest, the cold seeping deeper into his body and stealing his strength.
Need to get warm…need to get dry. Keep moving…just move. Even his thoughts started to feel sluggish and cold, but also out of sorts…or out of order. His vision started to get fuzzy.
A gust of wind screeched through the river valley behind him, hitting with enough force to send him stumbling face first into the snow. Julian pulled his arms away from his chest, barely managing to straighten the stiff muscles and extend his hands into the snow.
He weakly forced his body upright, the shaking, failing muscles almost making the simple act impossible. Julian trudged forward on his knees, grabbed a dead branch hanging low on a pine tree, and broke it free. He found another, and then another, numbly stacking them into a pile in the snow.
He couldn’t pull his arms away from his body long enough to manage more than a rough stack, but it would have to be good enough. At least it was dry. Julian groped at his side, but his hands bunched up in his shirt, frozen stiff by the starchy wind. His pack was gone. The knives, flints, and striking steels, were gone.
“No!” he hissed, his teeth smacking together violently as he struggled to keep the despair from overwhelming him. There were other ways to make fire. Think! But all he could focus on was the cold burn biting bone-deep in his body.
Pera, I’m freezing. I…we nnneed fffire, wwwarmth!
The Nymradic repelled from his thoughts, sinking, falling even further from the surface of his mind. The sense of pain and despair radiating from the creature was so strong Julian feared that it would break him apart if he got too close, or worse, touch it. And yet, it was already inside of him. Perhaps even a part of him.
“Curse you!” he whispered, but before the bitterness even reached its peak, Julian’s thoughts shifted away to something else. He closed his eyes, clutched his quaking arms tighter to his body, and turned his thoughts to Tanea and the strange thoughts just as he went over the waterfall. Find us where the land meets the sky…past the water.
The subtle, distant pulse of her heart pounded in a contrary rhythm to his own, just as it did every time his thoughts strayed away from her, but it quickly hiccupped and realigned between beats.
The burning cold was broken by a different pain, stabbing into the base of his skull, spilling into him like fire. The darkness behind his eyelids came to life, everything washing into a field of blinding white.
Tanea, let me know you’re alright…knowing might give him the boost he needed to survive. His query echoed out into the white, but his body shook, and his focus wavered. He didn’t see Tanea. He was too cold to see anything.
Tremors nearly shook him off his feet, the skin of his lips tearing as they
tried to freeze together. Julian staggered against a tree, the rough bark grating against his numb cheek. He took an awkward step, forcing every thought, every ounce of focus into the connection. He tried to ignore the pain burning through his muscles and into his bones but it was a monumental task. What did it mean? Find who? Was it Tanea? Julian’s mind was too cold, and he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
The blinding white faded, his mind slipping too much to maintain the focus. He opened his eyes, the dreary, cold woods a startling reminder of how truly alone he was. He felt the connection slipping inside him, growing weaker with every heartbeat, like it was a greasy rope sliding slowly out of his grasp. He had to…focus.
Julian’s lips broke apart as he tried to speak, something warm tickling his chin, but then it was gone. His heartbeat lumbered along in his chest, Tanea’s racing along in contrast. The trees and snow blurred together, his thoughts skipping across a single thought, like a thrown rock resisting the water’s pull. A twig snapped somewhere ahead of him, relenting under the uncaring wail of the cold wind. A dark form filled the corner of his vision, growing larger, threatening to cover him completely in darkness.
“N…n…noo!” he yelled defiantly, moving his arms and legs.
His frozen clothing snapped and cracked, the ice breaking and falling away. He hadn’t been run through, left for dead at the lip of the pool, and then escape the Yu, only to freeze to death in the snow, so close to his goal.
He didn’t need flints and steels, fire, or Pera. It was a lie, but it was one he needed to tell himself in order to move forward. He forced a broken breath in, braced himself and pushed up to his feet. Everything was numb, and he felt like he was floating as he staggered forward. Julian caught his weight on a tree, pushed forward, and staggered another couple steps. He could do this. Just keep moving.
His head held high, Julian pushed forward. He fell to a knee, but pushed up and moved again. A tree branch rustled behind him, but he was too stiff to turn and see what it was. If Julian stopped, he wasn’t sure that he could get moving again.
Tanea, I’m coming, he thought, over and over again. His laboring heart picked up speed and fell into rhythm with hers. The connection strengthened.
We are weak. Find us.
For a moment, Julian swore he smelled Tanea’s scented oils. Warmth blossomed in his chest, spreading out into his limbs. The numbness lifted, bringing on a dull ache, but even that lifted quickly. A distant voice echoed in his thoughts, too soft to understand, pulling him forward like an invisible tether. Yet, with every step forward the voice seemed to grow in intensity. It splashed inside him like waves of warm water, pushing Pera’s darkness further from his thoughts. He was freezing on the outside, while his insides broiled.
Keep moving!
Had Pera been present in his mind, he would have pushed the creature to dry his clothes and warm his body, utilizing the life they had stolen from the unfortunates in Spear Point. The revolting thought made Julian’s stomach twist into a knot. And yet, the intrusive pressure of Pera’s presence had never felt further from his mind than in that moment. Now, he only felt an unusual need to trust, to lay his life on faith, and most unusually, walk.
The warmth continued to stream into him, taking some of the burden of each step as he plodded through the deep snow. The burn plaguing his muscles faded as well, until it felt as if he were floating through the snow.
Trees brushed by, scraggly plants slapping and cutting his hands. Armloads of snow broke loose above, disturbed by his passage, showering him, but he pushed forward.
Julian climbed a steep slope, using the trees for leverage, and stopped at the top to catch his breath. The landscape jutted down steeply, allowing him his first unhindered view since losing the boat in the river.
A valley sprawled directly before him, with a small creek nestled at its center. The sun appeared from behind the thick, gray clouds, bathing the landscape ahead in bright, warm light. Julian lifted his face to the sky and held his arms out to his sides, soaking it in. The distant voice, ringing faintly with every beat of Tanea’s heart, grew louder in the radiant light.
Julian focused inward, trying to shut out the wail of the mountain wind and the gurgle of the nearby creek. Part of him believed that it was Tanea’s voice, calling out to him across the rocky valleys and jutting hills, guiding him home. But part of him, anchored by Pera’s darkness and doubt, wondered if he would even recognize the sound of her voice after all this time. Would he know her, even connected as they were? And if the voice wasn’t her or Pera, who was it?
Shadow swept across his face, the blissful warmth retreating as the sun once again slipped behind the clouds. Julian lowered his gaze, his body shaking more violently, the distant voice receding until it was barely above a whisper in his thoughts, and slid forward. His frozen clothes crunched loudly, his aged armor and worn straps binding uncomfortably.
His weary legs supported him as he hobbled down the valley, and even back up the adjacent slope. He took a deep breath, taking note of a jutting mountain off in the distance, its peak haloed in fluffy clouds.
Could it be? Was that particular mountain Bahlman’s Peak? He told himself that if he could get high enough to survey the land to the east of the peak, he would see the wretched, yellow mist creeping into the sky. And if he could see the Black Moors, then he knew Craymore wasn’t much further.
The old Julian would have whopped excitedly, punching the trees and jumping forward in triumph, but more than a little of that young man died in the underground caverns with Sky, or with Pera. How much of him had the dark creature already consumed? Would Tanea even recognize him if and when he saw her again? Julian felt older and darker, a pale shadow of the young man that ran into the fray on the day of the first gnarl attack, and definitely not the spoiled kid who left Ban Turin.
He wanted to stop and mourn for that young man, perhaps before a fire, or under a heavy fur blanket, but those things felt almost as out of reach as Tanea and Craymore. So he did the only thing he could, he pushed on. He lifted his stiff leg and staggered forward, pushing towards the distant mountain peak.
Julian crested another valley, the distant voice thrumming in his ears in time with Tanea’s heart. He moved to take a step, but the smell of wood smoke blew past his face. He stopped, his boots almost sliding out from underneath him. Find us, share our light…our warmth.
The wind swirled up against him and for a labored moment all he smelled was cold pine trees. But as the wind gust broke, he smelled it again.
Julian lurched forward, drawn towards the promise of fire. He traversed over another arduous slope before he spotted smoke. Another valley sprawled out beneath his feet, tilting into a natural switchback leading to the valley below. A wide, low cave split the rocky bowl’s southeast face, a lazy trickle of gray smoke leaking into the cold air.
His teeth chattering, Julian fumbled awkwardly over the rocks, drawn towards the smoke with a powerful need for warmth and food. He stumbled, fell numbly into the snow, and just managed to claw his way back to his feet. He half-ran across the valley floor, the powdery snow reaching up over his calves. His hand slid to the hilt of his sword, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything.
Hovering in the light, Julian stopped just outside the gloom of the cave, his fear of unknown threats inside temporarily overriding his need for heat. A single, biting blast of wind from behind sent Julian inching forward however. The black absorbed him, and for a few claustrophobic moments he inched blindly forward.
Warmth kissed his face first, and then his exposed hands. Gentle light flickered in the darkness. He bumped into a wall, before he realized that the glow was actually a reflection off the sweating stone. His numb hands walked forward, until he stepped lead-footed into a sizable cavern. A round hearth sat a dozen paces ahead, an iron frame and cookpot hovering tantalizingly above it. Beyond the fire sat a squat table and several chairs, and further still, pressed against the wall was a blocky, roughly carved booksh
elf.
Julian collapsed to his knees and crawled forward, his hands held out before him, shiny spots exploding before his eyes. His vision blurred as his eyes filled with tears, everything blurry and bright. The heat from the fire soaked into him, angry pinpricks of pain stabbing into his skin. Julian hunched forward, wrapping his arms around his midsection, fighting desperately to horde every ounce of heat.
A shadow passed over him and the fire flickered and danced. Julian squeezed his eyes closed, letting the warmth soak in and drive away the cold. Something heavy and soft fell over him, and although part of him screamed out to rise and fight, his cold muscles refused.
Take rest…warm yourself. Regain your strength. You are safe.
The fur draped over his shoulders bunched up and pulled snug under his chin, yet his hands did not move. Julian tried to form words, but his face felt like a solid block of ice. He couldn’t talk, and there was possibly someone with him in the cave. He had to simply trust that person didn’t mean him harm. Time blurred together, the leaching effect of the cold water and buffeting winds effectively stealing the last of his strength.
He sat before the fire, his mind wandering to distant places and people, voices and memories washing over him like a comforting blanket, although he didn’t think he was asleep. Julian’s head snapped up some time later, the heavy fur sliding free from around his shoulders and bunching up on the floor. His sword pulled partially free of its scabbard as he eased to his knees, some strength and dexterity thankfully returned to his swollen, achy hands. Julian indeed wasn’t alone. Three figures stood in the shadows, silently watching him.
“Who are you?” he asked, his face sore and tight.
In response, the figures strode forward into the light. They were women, each radiant and beautiful, with prominent features and bright, unsettling eyes. They wore simple robes, the pedestrian fabric detailed with glittering gold embroidery depicting the moon in all of its phases. They were striking, but as Julian glanced between them, he realized that they looked eerily similar. In fact, if forced, he wasn’t sure if he could tell them apart.