In the Darkness Visible

by Ted Neill

  Her movement was halted for a brief second, balanced as she was between the pull of the stone and the emptiness below. The emptiness won, and she began to slide out of the ship through the very gap she had created. She slipped out of the Elawn, spiraling in freefall, the air howling past her ears. Gulls wheeled in the wind below her. Not in her worst nightmares had she imagined such an end for herself.

  Her fall was abruptly arrested as Ghede’s thick, solid arms enveloped her. He flew through the air to catch her, his timing flawless. The rope tied to his feet caught, and they swung upwards like a pendulum, over the starboard rail to land in a tangle on the deck. Omanuju was immediately beside her, the cliffs receding over his shoulder. Gabriella promptly vomited on him. He did not flinch.

  “It will be all right.”

  “Don’t speak to soon, Omanuju,” Ghede said. Off the stern, streaming out of the cave mouth like a foul effluence, was the inky mist. Now it coalesced in the sky in two distinct clouds, both growing and moving towards the Elawn.

  “What are they?” Gabriella croaked, spitting bile from her mouth.

  “Sylphs,” Omanuju said, his hand on her back. “Demons of the air. They are without solid form, but they pray on living beings like you and me and Adamantus.”

  Ghede was not included in Omanuju’s list, but Gabriella had no time for further questions. Ghede was swinging his weight into one of the halyards attached to the strange paneled sail. The Elawn shuddered as the sail caught the wind riding out over the sea and into the sky. The deck slanted underfoot, and the Elawn banked, but the surge in speed was not enough to outpace the sylphs.

  Both clouds twisted and narrowed as they streamed behind in the ship’s wake. Omanuju picked Gabriella up, his hands beneath her arms, and moved her to the bow. Adamantus galloped alongside them, his hooves beating like hammers on the deck of the ship. Ghede took station at the wheel where a series of levers allowed him to work additional panels of canvas that folded in and out of the sides of the ship like fins on a dolphin.

  These side sails allowed them to maneuver in the air up and down, left and right, giving Ghede the ability to dodge and weave out from the extensions of the creatures, but he was only postponing the inevitable. The clouds had grown so close that they hovered off the stern like a pair of thunderheads. One tendril, then another wove themselves through the railing on the port side of the ship and crept forward: inky vines of ivy. A third such vine wrapped around the ratlines, and Gabriella could have sworn the ship moved as if being dragged back towards the cliffs. Adamantus must have felt such a pull as well and sensed peril for he left them at the bow and charged aft where he slashed at the limbs making their way forward. The arms dissipated but quickly reformed and sought to ensnare the elk’s legs and neck.

  Gabriella could see the light in the elk’s eyes dim and flicker as the sylphs took hold and started to drain his life away. But Ghede banked the Elawn evasively, swinging the ship hard to starboard, stretching the grip of the creatures enough that Adamantus was able to pull free. He retreated to the bow where Omanuju put his hand on the elk’s flank. Gabriella did the same, just to steady herself, and was shocked at how cold the elk felt—as if he had just come in from a bitter snow storm. The edges of his nostrils and his eyelids were flecked with frost.

  Ghede had freed them of one sylph at the expense of moving towards the other. The second spilled over the railing, a black wave streaming towards them. Ghede angled the Elawn downward at such a pitch that Gabriella, Omanuju, and Adamantus fell against the rail just above the bowsprit.

  The Elawn plunged nose-first into the water. Ghede immediately pulled up, leveling out the ship, but not before a wave of water swamped the deck and flushed over the sides. The sylph recoiled from the element, wheeling and whirling away like oil.

  Gabriella thought they might go free until she saw the first sylph to their port, grown so large that it blacked out the sky and appeared like a piece of night had broken off and hung at the edge of the Elawn. The cloud moved all at once, enveloping the stern and the quarter deck. The second sylph followed. The boards groaned as they contracted and hardened in the sudden onset of cold. Frost limned their surfaces. Gabriella could see her breath and feel her wet clothes hardening into an icy shell. Adamantus pulled protectively around her and Omanuju, partly for warmth, partly to shield them from contact with the bodiless things bearing down on them.

  Gabriella clutched at Omanuju, her fingers sticking to his own freezing clothes. He put an arm around her and braced his head against hers, both of them shivering uncontrollably. The sun was lost, the ship deep in night. There was no sound but those sibilant whispers that emanated from the closing darkness, voices that lulled Gabriella into drowsiness, into a sleep where she welcomed oblivion.

  “Hold on!” A voice cut through the whispers. It was Ghede, and he was racing up the deck, swinging from lines, past the sail, his bare feet gaining purchase despite the icy boards. He took a final swing up into the thickest of the clouds and grabbed hold of another line that left him hanging there, in the darkness, in the heart of the sylphs’ shapes. For a moment the blackness increased around him so that there was nothing visible but the golden gleam in his eyes, two sparks drowning in tar.

  Then like an opening in clouds where a patch of stars shine through, a gap appeared, a gap the size and shape of Ghede, holding fast to the halyard, swinging with the movement of the ship. The stars shimmered, the light twinkled, uncertain, before growing bright. It brought to mind what she had seen when Gabriella had fallen through Ghede’s own mysterious form that was there and not there. Now inside was out. The stars grew from pin points to flood-bursts of light. A sound like fire being extinguished by water rose all around them. The light only grew brighter. Gabriella felt warmth on her face as if the sun were shining on it. Rays radiated from Ghede’s body. His features were lost, his sword, clothes, face all gone, in their place a figure of white burning through the black.

  “Gabriella, shield your eyes,” Omanuju said.

  She did. For a moment she could still see the after-image of the figure burned into her mind. Then a wave of heat, hot as an open smithy, passed over them. The Elawn shook, and Gabriella lost consciousness.

  She woke at eye level with the surface of the deck, the expanse of planking extending from where she lay until it stopped at the port rail where she could see the surface of the sea on the horizon. For a moment she was convinced she was waking from a dream—a nightmare—of red-sailed ships, blue men, and black demons. Now she could almost convince herself it was an ordinary ship she was waking on, one that floated atop the sea and rocked with the easy, ordinary intervals of ocean swells. It was an illusion she wanted desperately to believe—so much so that for a long while she did not move even her eyes lest she glimpse something out-of-the-ordinary, reminding her that indeed she was lost on a perilous quest with strange companions and even stranger enemies.

  But eventually she had to move and quickly things came back to her. It was no regular vessel she was on but the Elawn, with its bizarre sails and sweeping curves, levitating in the air above the face of the sea. Omanuju was unconscious beside her, while Adamantus was just beginning to stir. Farther along the deck, sprawled out like a drunken man fallen on his back was Ghede. He was back to “normal” in appearance, in as much as a man with blue skin was normal. Gabriella stumbled as she stood and shuffled to his side. Close up she could see that he was still as a corpse, his flesh cold and clammy to the touch.

  “He’s still alive,” Omanuju said, sitting up stiffly. “But we can expect him to be in this state for some time.”

  Low gray clouds had moved across the face of the sky, but there was no sign of the shadows that had hunted them. Gabriella helped Omanuju to his feet. He had a large knot on his brow from where he had fallen and struck his head on the deck. Gabriella felt a similar one on the back of her head.

  “Are they destroyed for good?” Gabriella asked.

  “No, it was a stalemate,” Omanuju
said, surveying the sky. “It will buy us time though.”

  Gabriella took in their surroundings. The sea was dark as slate under the clouds. Harkness was still visible to the west, although its features were indistinct in the growing shadows and ocean haze. The Elawn still felt strange and foreign. The vessel did not rock with the incessant swell of the ocean, rather it moved gracefully with the wind as if its total weight were only that of a bag of feathers. Gabriella wondered if this had something to do with the enchanted stone in the hold, but she knew she was far from understanding whatever mysteries governed the ship. Ghede was another one of those mysteries, and although his origin was undetermined, he had proven to be an ally. She asked Omanuju as much as he bent down to lift the blue sailor off the deck.

  “He’s on our side,” he said. “His kind are mercurial but certainly on our side. Take his legs will you.”

  She did. He had all the weight of a real man, she realized as they began to carry him to the cabin. “So he was only testing me by attacking me before?”

  “Yes. It’s not just anyone that can be allowed on these airships. They were once used for dark purposes by evil masters. He wanted to test your courage and your heart.”

  Below the main deck were two small rooms, one leading into the other. They carried Ghede through the first, which was a navigation room and galley, to the next: a sleeping cabin with three tiers of bunks along the walls. They set Ghede down on one of the lower bunks.

  “He should be all right there,” Omanuju said, catching his breath. “Come look at this.”

  He unlocked a circular hatch on the forward-most wall and pulled it open, giving Gabriella a view of the great jagged stone with all its shining surfaces, nestled like the silent, dark heart of the ship. From this angle, Gabriella could see it was connected by cables to the levers next to the ship’s wheel. She could also see the cables that ran from those levers to the side sails.

  “This is engineering beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” she said.

  “There will be more wonders if we reach Nicomedes’ workshop. But first things first,” Omanuju said, closing and locking the hatch. “We are without a skipper and have no water. We will have to put in at the next island to fill our barrels.”

  Gabriella was surprised that they were still going forward with their plans, despite the disastrous brush with the sylphs. “Shouldn’t we go back to Harkness? Wouldn’t that be safer?”

  “Not with the sylphs about,” Omanuju said. “After all, if we had wanted safety we would not have left in the first place.”

  Much to Gabriella’s unease, Omanuju had no intention of sailing close to the surface of the sea. Instead he worked some of the levers alongside the wheel, which angled the paneled sail upwards, and they started to soar forward and rise at the same time. No longer could Gabriella force upon herself the fantasy that they were just an ordinary ship, for soon the sea itself was a glittering surface far below where whitecaps were mere specks and clouds flowed over the railings like fog. The higher they climbed, the lighter and more insubstantial Gabriella’s body felt. Her limbs trembled, her head spun, and when she looked over the railing and recognized cormorants floating in the breeze below them, her knees buckled and she vomited.

  Adamantus was soon at her side, nosing her softly with his snout. Omanuju shifted one of the levers into a locked position, then joined them.

  “I suppose I am still not good with heights,” she said, her knuckles white as she gripped onto the rail. “Perhaps it is like seasickness and I will grow used to it.”

  “We can hope,” Omanuju said. “It bothered you on the cliffs. Has it bothered you in the past?”

  “As long as I can remember,” she said. “From the first time I climbed up in the crow’s nest. Heights never agreed with me.”

  Omanuju frowned. “Maybe in the cabins below you will not feel as anxious?”

  Soon she found herself in the warm darkness of the sleeping quarters. She lay on a bunk across from Ghede, who by all appearances was sleeping now, taking long deep breaths. It was an improvement to his deathlike stillness earlier.

  Omanuju was right. Away from the deck her vertigo declined, but the sense of worry from riding so high in the air, the awareness that nothing stood to catch them between their perch in the sky and the ocean, was something that would not leave her and kept her from resting. After a few minutes on her back, after her stomach had settled, she got to her feet and began to explore the cabins.

  Storage lockers were set into the floor. She opened them and uncovered the usual goods one would find on any ship: sewing kits, sail patches, and fishing tackle. The ship was wondrously well supplied with clothes, blankets, wine, and cooking supplies including salt, sugar, honey, even teas and spices. She found a brazier—a tripod for holding coals to cook food over—which would prove useful if they caught any fish. In the aft cabin she discovered cabinets full of faded parchment maps covered with beautifully drawn gridlines that swept side to side and up and down. Beneath the fine lines the islands looked orderly, inviting, their coastlines accessible and the empty spaces navigable.

  As she moved about the ship, she made some peace with their precarious height and was comforted by the possibilities suggested by the Elawn, and her mysterious skipper. If a ship could fly, if a blue man could turn into a figure of starlight, what else was possible? Surely a prophecy like the one she had received from the dead could come true. Perhaps she was not foolish to hold out hope that her brother could even be cured.

  She uncovered a bag of hard-tack biscuits in the pantry. They were of dubious age, but when she bit into one, she found it edible. After eating two biscuits, Gabriella felt as though her strength was returning, so she went topside.

  The wind was fierce and gusting, yet the oddly shaped sails were perfectly suited for catching it and pulling the ship heavenward. Clouds had become the terrain around them, rising like towering mountains with sheer faces and deep bottomless valleys. Gabriella could no longer even see the water except for occasional breaks in the clouds.

  When her sickness returned, she fought against it, the muscles of her lower torso working hard to keep the two biscuits she had eaten down—the three in her hand that she had brought for Omanuju now seemed about as appealing as clods of dirt.

  Nonetheless she climbed the companion ladder to the mid-deck and found Omanuju, wrapped in a fur cloak, at the wheel.

  “I brought you some biscuits I found,” she said, placing the bag on the deck while still holding onto the rail of the ladder.

  “Thank you Gabriella,” he said, taking the biscuits, then opening a locker in the deck beside him and pulling out a cloak for her. “It looks as if we both have found some useful provisions.”

  She nodded weakly while he helped her to a seat before the wheel. The pilot’s space was unique from a sea-going vessel. Here, whoever was at the wheel sat in a curved-back chair in reach of the levers to the left and right and pedals on the floor. It was even more complicated than what she had first imagined. But as Omanuju worked the pedals and levers, she could see how they moved the sail and the flaps on either side of the ship. The design was actually quite intuitive, and Omanuju had been able to teach himself quickly.

  “Ghede is the true master of the wind, not I,” he said. “When he takes control, this old ship will truly take flight. It will be a thing of beauty.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To where the sun rises, towards the Eastern Continent and the city of Dis where Nicomedes’ treasure would be.”

  “The Eastern Continent is months away.”

  “By sailing ship, not by airship. Already we have covered in a few hours what a sailing vessel would take days. See that ahead on the horizon. That is Kejel.”

  Gabriella looked down the length of the ship. Past the ratlines and rigging trembling in the steady breeze, Adamantus stood peering out over the rail on the bow, a living bowsprit of sorts, his fur rippling as the wind rolled up the length of his body. Beyond the bran
ches of his antlers, she could make out a mountain peak in a nest of white clouds, its slopes steep and rust colored, its base still hidden below the horizon.

  “Kejel,” she explained. “Why it’s—”

  “Days away? To us, it is hours.”

  Remembering what Omanuju had said about stopping for supplies on the first island they came across, Gabriella was alarmed. “We’re not going to land there, are we?”

  “We have no choice. The water barrels are empty.”

  “But Kejel is off limits to outsiders. The Red Riders kill anyone for setting foot there.”

  Kejel was one of the main trading partners with Harkness. It was on Kejel that rare plants grew used for making popular red and yellow dyes. The Kejelin had also found ways—which were still secret—to make other colors such as purple, blue, and green. The sailors on a ship returning from Kejel were always beset with merchants eager to buy dyed yarn or cloth and children clambering to hear about the mysterious island and the swarthy people who would brook no trespassers. Even well-known traders were not allowed by the Kejelin to set foot beyond the city docks.

  The most famous of all the legends were the Red Riders themselves. Horsemen who wore red, better to blend in with the red heather of the island, their ferocity knew no equal. As warning to any raiders who might land on Kejel attempting to steal the valuable red heather that was the source of the red and yellow dyes—they slew trespassers and left their bones on display on the beach. Kejel had become known as the “Bone Coast” as much as the “Isle of Dyes.”