CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Gunther was talking. Talking to someone.
About an invitation.
“Fire!”
The shout cut through Gunther’s sleep-fogged perception.
It wasn’t over. Gunther could still say yes.
But he was afraid.
“Fire! Fire!”
Gunther snapped awake and rolled from his cot, tangling himself in sweat-soaked linen. The air was so wet with rain and spray, he could barely inhale. He thrashed his way to his feet, climbing out of the light blanket and lurching from his sleeping cubicle into the hallway. The world spun about him.
The weasel Shush scurried back and forth in the hall, shrieking. For a moment, Gunther had the impression that the weasel had been the one shouting fire, but then he finally got air into his lungs and the world settled into place.
Lowanna burst from her own cubicle. “Where?” she asked.
“Where what?” Gunther countered.
The other party members crashed into the hall, rubbing sleep from their eyes and elbowing each other.
Lowanna squealed and chittered at Shush, who chittered back. “Follow me!”
Gunther followed close on Lowanna’s heels, descending to the courtyard and into a curtain of rain flinging itself sideways across the landscape. Yellow light snapped on the other side of the shrouds of water.
“Fire!” Gunther heard again.
The fire was among the ships. Some of the boats seemed to be drifting away, though he had a hard time seeing clearly in the darkness and the storm.
Turn back, Gunther heard another voice. Come down.
“Fire!” he yelled, and raced down through the town toward the water.
He got separated from Lowanna and found himself running alongside François. Neither man was especially fast or agile, so they slid down together through mud and rain. Lightning flashes illuminated hulks of ice drifting toward the shore, and three ships putting laboriously out to sea, pulling their oars in the rain.
“Time to stretch yourself, Gunther!” François shouted.
“I can’t run any faster!”
“I don’t mean that! I mean, what can you do magically?”
“Heal!” Gunther snapped back immediately. “Bless food!”
“You can do more than that!” François shouted into the wind. “You can stun opponents. Can you put a hole in a ship? Can you extinguish a fire?”
They slid to a muddy halt just out of reach of the flames that were devouring the lower part of the town but especially the harbor. Gunther stared over the burning boats to the water and saw the Neshili. They struggled to put out the flames but they also waved to the departing ships, screaming for help.
Queen Halpa leaned against a rope of one of the ships, watching the shore as she drifted away.
“So, Halpa chose the Noah option before we did,” François murmured. To Gunther, he said, “How about it? Can you strike the queen dead?”
“Let’s get closer.” Gunther ran down to the harbor and turned to run along it. He jumped over nets and pots and little boats, and François ran with him. Ahead of them and to the right, Gunther saw Surjan organizing warriors on the shore.
Gunther raced out along a spit of sand. He got as close as he was going to get to the disappearing ships, just as Halpa stepped to the edge of the deck and raised her voice.
“My people!” she called. “This land is cursed! The magic of its kings has run its course! The new king, Surjan, is no better than the man he slew. The gods will have neither of them. But the gods have chosen me to lead a small remnant of you, a few chosen survivors, away to found a new city. If I can, I shall send servants back to look for you!”
“Give her palsy!” François urged. “Knock her senseless, lift her from the boat, do something!”
Gunther focused his will. He shouted every word that occurred to him. “Die! Sleep! Wither!” Finally, he shouted “Stop!” knowing it would only knock the queen down temporarily.
She duly collapsed.
At that moment, Surjan’s warriors let loose a hail of darts. Men aboard the ship with atlatls returned fire, and François pulled Gunther away by the elbow. “The fire!” the Frenchman shouted into his ear. “Let Surjan fight the battle, what can we do to fight the fire?”
Gunther turned and staggered back toward the harbor. The crescent of masts and sails had become a half-moon of glowing orange, with most of the boats on fire. Gunther felt faint and leaned on François for support.
“Put the fires out,” François urged him. “I know you can do it.”
Gunther raised a hand and directed a wave at the flames. “Extinguish!” he cried. “Douse! Out! Retard flame!”
The fires burned on.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Come to the door. I can teach you how to use the door.
“Look down,” François said.
Gunther looked down and saw that his own body and François’s both sparkled with a metallic orange sheen.
“But I wasn’t on fire,” Gunther protested.
“Let’s go put out the flames!” François said.
The Frenchman rushed to the nearest burning boat. The flames didn’t seem to hurt him at all, so Gunther followed suit. He climbed into a flaming boat, feeling no pain or even warmth. Working directly in the flames with mud, seawater, and sails, he was able quickly to smother and douse the fire. Thinking the ship might be used to pursue the fleeing queen and her supporters, he went to raise the sail, and found that the ropes had been cut.
He looked to François, who had just finished putting out the flames on the boat he’d boarded, and held up the severed end of a line. François did the same on his ship.
There would be no pursuit, but some of the ships could be saved.
Working together, Gunther and François picked the largest burning ships and saved them from the fires. Other ships were pushed out into the bay and dragged up onto the stone shelf, where a splitting iceberg had left a pile of ice and slush. The ice was more effective than the rain at dousing the flames. Before it was finished, Marty had joined them, and with him the weasel Shush. Marty and Shush spoke to each other in Weasel and Shush helped Marty by gnawing through inconvenient ropes and fetching water pails. Most of the Neshili had also come, working together to save some semblance of a fleet.
In the chaos, Lowanna got separated from her companions.
She was up to her ankles in sucking mud. “Where is everyone?” she shouted, wiping rain from her eyes.
I am here! The voice belonged to the weasel Shush. What do you want?
“Take me to Surjan!” Lowanna knew the harbor was on fire, but she trusted Surjan to be at the essential action, whatever it was.
The weasel scampered along a stony elevated street whose pebbled path somehow managed not to be a morass of mud. Holding one hand pinned to her forehead like the visor of a cap, Lowanna succeeded in clearing her eyes of water in time to realize she was running into a firefight.
Darts whizzed past her.
“Get down!” Sharrum’s voice barked at her, and then he dragged her to the sand behind a thick log.
She climbed to her knees and peered over the log. Sharrum crouched beside her; elsewhere on a long spit of sand, warriors sheltered behind storm-battered palm trees and even in low depressions. Ten steps away, Surjan crouched behind a large rock. A dart struck the rock and whizzed away.
On the other side of the sand, the ocean raged. They were beyond the stone of the shelf here, and three ships were beginning to pick up speed and cruise away. The warriors on the first ship were out of range and could only watch now, but the warriors on the second and third ships continued to fling darts with their atlatls.
“Lowanna!” Surjan called.
“I’m fine!” she shot back, staying low. “Stay down, they’ll be gone in a minute!”
“They’re stealing!” he yelled. “Food, treasure, the sacred and magical items of the Neshili!”
“Who cares?” she shot back.
“I care,” murmured Sharrum beside her. The answer made her feel slightly embarrassed.
“I care!” Surjan shouted. “These are my people, and I am supposed to protect them! They’re being robbed! Can you reach them?”
Lowanna looked deep into her heart. She found there were things she could do, and considered them. She was confident—she didn’t know how she knew, but she knew—that she could breathe underwater if she had to. And she could use that power to board one of the ships.
But first, she’d have to cross the beach, and that would involve getting turned into a pincushion.
She saw that she could twist wood at the touch. If she were standing on the deck of one of the ships, she could twist its mast and snap it, or shatter the oarlocks to ruin the work of the rowers, or break the rudder. But she’d need to be close to be able to do that—not necessarily touching, but very short range.
And that would involve first running across the beach.
A dart struck the sand, too close to her leg for comfort. She pulled closer to the protective log, looked again—and found what she wanted.
Shouting the words she instinctively knew, Lowanna stood and charged across the beach. Black vapor rose from the ground around her and from her own flesh, hiding her within a shifting, billowing cloud. The storm winds didn’t help, and would wear down the duration of the magic, but she only needed it to last long enough to get her across the beach. She could see out, as through a grimy windshield, but she knew others would have difficulty seeing in. The vapor didn’t need to stay centered around her; she could direct it with her will, and she did so. She walked off-center in the cloud.
“Lowanna!” Sharrum rose from protection and dove into the cloud with her.
“Fool!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the side. Her actions were rewarded when two darts in quick succession fired through the center of the cloud, missing Sharrum by an arm’s length.
“I can’t see!” he said.
“Either lie flat or run!” she told him, but she didn’t let go of his hand. She broke into a sprint and dragged him with her.
“Fire!” Surjan yelled. “Give her cover!”
The Neshili on the beach renewed their fire on the Neshili aboard the hindmost fleeing ship. Some of the shipboard snipers continued to fire at Lowanna, but the dark vapor made them miss, and most of them turned their concentration to Surjan and his men on the sand.
“We’re about to dive into the water,” Lowanna warned Sharrum. “Be ready! Stay down!”
She then cast her underwater breathing spell on herself. She couldn’t cast it on both of them and she needed it herself. She dove into the water, Sharrum plunged in beside her, and the vapor disappeared.
Down she dove, the warrior at her side, but when he had to turn up, she found she didn’t. She breathed water as she would have breathed air and swam forward comfortably.
“If I can breathe this medium,” she said out loud, “surely I can speak in it.”
Darts struck the waves above her but their impetus was immediately blunted by the water. The raging of the storm disappeared, replaced by gentle, but strong, currents, tugging her out toward the depths of the ocean.
She saw the third of the fleeing ships first as a shadowy bulk, oars thrashing by its sides. It took her a little effort to swim to catch up but once she reached the back of the ship, she grabbed the rudder with one hand and was able to relax. She was just below the water, but the ship’s crew would be entirely focused on rowing or steering or shooting at Surjan. They’d never see her.
She took a deep breath (of water) and prepared to cast her final spell, the wood-warping charm.
A spear stabbed into her shoulder from above. Blood burst into the water, clouding her vision. She let go of the rudder, which saved her life, as it made the second spear that stabbed down from above miss her.
The ship was moving, and would quickly be gone. She cast her third spell, chanting the words and pointing at the wood she wanted warped. Three boards close together peeled back like curled shavings, like banana peels stripped away from the banana, creating a hole in the hull as big as a human torso.
She tried to swim away but found that only one of her arms would work. To her horror, she realized that she was floating to the surface. Thrashing, she tried to swim down, but the currents drew her up and she wasn’t strong enough with her one arm to resist.
A second spear pierced her body, in her thigh. She screamed and broke the surface of the water, water gushing from her mouth as she yelled. She drew a moment of satisfaction from the cries of panic she heard. If she was going to die, she at least wanted to know that she sank the ship. But then prudence got the better of her and she dove again.
This time she fought down several body lengths, felt a dart narrowly miss her, and then lost her fight to the current and was swept to the surface again.
A powerful arm wrapped around her clavicle and under her arms, grabbing her and pulling her. She wasn’t sure in which direction she was being pulled, but she had lost the strength to fight. She was rapidly losing the strength to do anything, and could feel her life ebbing through her shoulder and through her thigh. Any moment now, she knew she would lose consciousness.
Strong arms hoisted her into the air and she felt her heels dragging in the surf. Had the vapor returned? But now she was on the outside of it, because she couldn’t see. She fell a thousand miles and then she landed hard on sand, but she barely felt the landing because she was a thousand miles away from her own body.
“Gunther!” someone yelled. Surjan.
Thudding footfalls through the ground.
Rain splashing on her face.
Then hands pressed against her shoulder and she was surrounded by angels. They shone like white fire and their faces smiled down at her. More hands pressed her thigh. More angels surrounded her and raised her up onto their shoulders until she was so close to the sun, she thought it might burn her.
Then the angels began to sing.