CHAPTER SEVEN
The Widowmaker Sea, to the West of Escator
T he captain of the fishing boat had set course for Narbon.
No one argued with him over the matter.
Fishing had become impossible the night previous as the storm had gathered and the sea arose in huge, rolling waves that made work impossible.
Even the crew began to feel queasy as the deck undulated back and forth, back and forth, rolling ever closer to the black, glassy surface of the sea.
Ba’al’uz suffered as he had never thought possible. He lay in the cabin, twisted among sweat-stained sheets, his head resting on the wooden sides of the bed, the deck beneath slippery with the thin fluid he vomited forth every few minutes.
No one came near him. Everyone had too much respect for their own life to risk his foul temper.
StarDrifter was unaffected, his stomach tranquil.
He sat on the deck, his back pressed against the timbers of the tiny bridge, knees drawn up, trying to make himself as small as possible so he would not trip any of the crew who ventured forth, the Weeper tucked in securely at his side, watching the rolling seas with distant eyes. He could not merely see the storm building—the dark, heavy clouds milling close to the sea then piling higher and higher until they completely obscured the sun—but feel it. The air was heavy, almost thick, uncomfortably humid.
Oppressive.
It was not just the storm. StarDrifter thought he could feel a sense of expectation slowly accumulating as the cloud mass thickened and darkened. A sense of power. Magic.
Something was happening.
Something was building.
StarDrifter did not know whether to anticipate or to fear.
So he sat through the morning and the early afternoon, his eyes fixed on some distant unknowable point far out to sea, watching the storm gather in strength and in power.
By midafternoon the wind had strengthened to almost gale force. It was not yet raining, but the sheer force of the wind blew spray over the ship’s deck, slicking its timbers, and soaking StarDrifter. The captain, Prata, made his way out of the sheltered tiny bridge, grabbing handholds as he came, cursing once as he slipped to his knees and grabbed at StarDrifter’s shoulder—as much for support as to get the man’s attention.
“My friend, get belowdecks! This storm will hit us within the hour, and no one is going to survive out here then!”
StarDrifter looked up at Prata’s concerned face, an amused glint in his eyes. “Then perhaps we should persuade Ba’al’uz that some open air would be good for him.”
The captain chuckled. “StarDrifter, get below. Please. I can’t be wasting energy worrying about you out here while trying to save the boat.”
“Leave me be, Prata. I will go below soon. Do not worry about me.”
Prata looked at him searchingly. “Then make sure it is soon, StarDrifter. Please.”
StarDrifter nodded, and Prata struggled back along the deck into the slightly safer confines of the bridge.
StarDrifter returned his eyes to the sea, wrapping his cloak about him a little more tightly in a futile effort to keep some of the spray from his flesh.
He was fascinated by what was happening. Something, something other than the storm, was about to happen. Stars, the power gathering out to sea was sending electricity thrumming along his skin and making the hair on his head rise slightly.
Something was coming, and StarDrifter knew he would go insane if he were trapped belowdecks.
Even the Weeper felt different. It was growing colder, much like it had the day before when StarDrifter had felt the sudden explosion of power from the deity. But its current coldness could just as easily have been due to the increasing amounts of spray that soaked it, or to the fact that it may be expending small amounts of power merely in anticipation of the storm…
StarDrifter didn’t really know. He knew he should heed Prata’s warning to go belowdecks, but the storm looked a little way off yet, and surely he could sit here for a few more minutes.
Maximilian, Serge, and Doyle rode for Narbon. They were some two or three hours distant from the port city, and they wanted to get there as fast as they could.
To the west a massive storm was building over the Widowmaker Sea.
The atmosphere was heavy and oppressive, their horses skittish, too ready to shy at every gust of wind and every leaf blown across the road.
The road itself was deserted. Everyone had taken themselves inside and shut and bolted the doors, and Maximilian thought that he, too, should get himself and the two Emerald Guardsmen behind shelter.
Above them, treetops whipped to and fro, and leaves burst from shrubs in small, violent explosions.
How had the storm become this violent, so fast?
Maximilian pulled his horse to a halt, signaling the other two to stop as well.
The horses milled about on the road, unnerved by the violence carried on the wind, their heads tossing, their haunches bunched close to the ground, ready to bolt.
“We can’t stay out in this,” Maximilian said, having to almost shout to make himself audible above the howling wind. His hair whipped about his face, but it wasn’t worth taking a hand away from the reins and risking what little control of the horse he had left to try to tuck it away.
Serge and Doyle nodded.
“We need shelter,” shouted Doyle.
Maximilian looked up to the sky, squinting.
BroadWing and his three companions were still there, black dots high in the sky, riding a wild current that buffeted them about like leaves that tumbled across the roadway.
Maximilian momentarily waved an arm at them, hoping BroadWing would somehow intuit his meaning.
Find shelter.
His horse plunged to the left, and Maximilian grabbed at his reins again, pulling the horse up barely an instant before he totally lost control.
“Anywhere,” said Maximilian between clenched teeth. “We need to find shelter now.”
StarDrifter thought that he needed to get belowdecks very soon. The storm front was now only a few minutes away. The clouds hung like a thick veil before the ship, lightning forking through them in angry flashes of white and gold.
The sense of power was not only growing stronger, but far more unsettling.
Deciding he’d waited too long, StarDrifter began to move, slowly, trying to get to his feet without tangling his legs in the sodden cloak and slipping on the soaked deck, or being blown away by the increasingly violent gusts of wind.
A few drops of rain splattered across his face—a different feel to the spray: harder, more aggressive.
Icy. Sharp.
The wind threatened to unfoot him with every move he made, but StarDrifter finally managed to stand, clinging with one hand to the overhanging eaves of the bridge.
The Weeper whimpered.
“I’ve not forgotten you!” StarDrifter muttered, wondering how he was going to hold on to the bronze deity and still manage to reach the safety of belowdecks.
Perhaps if he could fashion a sling from his cloak…
The boat suddenly tilted down the side of a huge wave, and the Weeper slid toward the edge of the deck.
StarDrifter made a grab for it.
The Weeper shrieked.
StarDrifter managed to get one hand on it, then two, then cried out himself as he felt ice burn through his hands.
The boat tilted back the other way, and both the Weeper and StarDrifter slammed back against the bridge.
Prata partly opened the door, yelling something indecipherable.
StarDrifter tried to release the Weeper, but was unable to remove his hands from the frozen deity.
The boat, as suddenly as it had just moved, tilted the other way once more, just as a massive wave crashed over the deck.
StarDrifter and the Weeper were washed overboard.
Maximilian, Serge, and Doyle had given up trying to ride. It was almost impossible in this wind, and the horses were so frantic they were unrideable.
The last glimpse Maximilian had of the Icarii was of them tipping their wings, sliding through the air toward the ground, and Maximilian hoped they were able to find a safe harbor.
For himself and the two guardsmen, there seemed little likelihood of anything save a shallow and somewhat damp gully to the seaward side of the road. They’d been caught out on a particularly isolated stretch of the road into Narbon, one that led through the vast marshlands bordering the northern aspects of the city. There were no houses here. No villages, and the marshlands that stretched a few leagues inland were too risky for Maximilian and his men to venture, even in this storm.
The marshlands were known for their treacherous sands, and many were the tales of travelers who had sought shelter in them never to be heard from again.
“Come on,” Maximilian yelled, pulling his reluctant and terrified horse down the slope into the gully. “We can wait it out here.”
“So long as there’s no storm surge,” Serge said.
StarDrifter turned over and over in the turbulent water, eyes and mouth tightly closed, trying to fight his way to the surface.
The Weeper was gone, torn from his hands as they were dashed into the sea.
StarDrifter had no doubt at all that the Weeper had pulled them overboard. He was aware that the deity had expended a massive surge of power just before the fishing vessel had tilted that final, terrible time, and he’d felt both himself and the deity being pulled toward the sea.
StarDrifter had no idea why the Weeper might want him to drown in the Widowmaker Sea, and right now trying to drum up a reason was the last thing on his mind.
All StarDrifter wanted to do was survive.
His clothes—the cloak, his boots, his heavy jerkin and trousers—were pulling him ever downward, no matter his attempts to fight his way to the surface, and he tried to pull them off.
The cloak floated free fairly easily, although it tangled in his legs as it went, causing StarDrifter a moment of sheer panicky terror. His jerkin, a thick leather affair, and trousers, of similar material, were harder to dislodge, however, particularly when his lungs felt as if they were about to burst.
He started to sink, and he stopped struggling with his clothes and tried to work his way to the surface.
He sank farther.
It began to feel almost like flying.
StarDrifter stopped fighting altogether, overwhelmed by the sensation.
He’d missed flight so desperately. To re-create the sensation, even for a moment, would surely be worth death.
Wouldn’t it?
Suddenly a powerful light blazed in the water before him, searing through his closed eyelids, and StarDrifter’s eyes flew open. Something gripped his upper arms, and StarDrifter felt himself being drawn toward the surface.
Maximilian, Serge, and Doyle crouched in the lee of a boulder, trying to shelter themselves as best they could from the driving wind and rain.
Their best was pitiful little.
The horses had bolted almost as soon as they’d been tied to a strong hewen bush. So great was their fright, nothing could have held them, and Maximilian had signaled to the two guardsmen to let them go.
Trying to catch them in this storm was not an option, and all they could do was trust that their horses might find some degree of shelter rather than dash themselves to death in terror.
The three men huddled behind their boulder, faces turned away from the storm front, bodies crouched into as small a ball as possible, crowding themselves together for what little shelter and warmth they could provide each other. They did not talk—there was no point.
Maximilian hoped that BroadWing and his companions had managed to find shelter, and that he and his two companions would manage to survive.
He thought they could. They were in no danger so long as Serge had not managed to curse them with a storm surge through his pessimism. The night would be wild, and very wet and cold, but they were strong, and even though the boulder offered little comfort, it did shelter them from the worst of the weather.
Just as he’d managed to make himself feel a little easier, something twigged at Maximilian’s consciousness.
Almost like a distant shout.
And then his Persimius ring screamed—so loudly that Maximilian himself shouted in shock, rolling away from Serge and Doyle into the full fury of the storm.
Maximilian heard one of them call out, the sound a thin and diminishing wail in the tempest, and then he was gone, the wind so vicious, so powerful, it rolled him over the lip of the gully toward the pounding surf on the beach.
Toward the beach? But that was against the wind!
Maximilian tried to grab at bushes, rocks, the occasional thin trunk of a stumped tree, but he was being pulled so fast toward the surf that his fingers did not manage to maintain a grip on a single thing.
He felt something tear in his shoulder, and he gave a hoarse cry of pain that was instantly lost within the maelstrom.
The blazing light—the Weeper, StarDrifter knew that somehow, impossibly, it was the Weeper—had somehow managed to drag him to the surface.
Here the danger felt even closer, for the waves loomed huge above them before crashing down on his head, and every so often he was dragged into the wrath below.
But now StarDrifter was almost entirely encased within the light, and whenever a rogue wave dashed him down, he bobbed back to the surface just at that moment when he thought his lungs would explode.
He was covered in scratches and bruises from debris in the water.
StarDrifter hoped it was not the wreckage of Prata’s boat.
The coast! the Weeper said in his mind. StarDrifter, look, the coast.
StarDrifter blinked, but his eyes were blinded by the sea and spray and the mountainous waves, and he had no idea how the Weeper expected him to see any farther than his nose.
Maximilian will be there, the Weeper said. Maximilian will be there for us.
Maximilian managed somehow to hook the fingers of his left hand into the thickness of the damp sand at the surf’s edge, then get his right hand wedged behind a boulder.
Thank the gods he hadn’t slammed into that!
With his good arm he managed to pull himself farther and farther away from the sea, desperate to get himself as far away as possible.
Then, impossibly, he heard a faint shout coming from behind him.
From within the sea.
“No,” Maximilian whispered, too tired, too cold, too desperate for shelter to even contemplate the idea that someone might be calling out to him for rescue from the raging waters.
His ring screamed again, flared as if in agony, and Maximilian cried and rolled to one side, the cry intensifying as his injured shoulder hit the boulder.
The shout came again, closer, and somehow Maximilian struggled to one elbow, and looked over his shoulder.
There was a man, struggling out from the surf, directly behind him. He was dragging something in his hand.
Another man, perhaps, or a log.
Then everything went black for an instant, and when he regained his vision, all Maximilian could see was a body being rolled over and over in the surf.
Almost crying with the effort, Maximilian managed to get to his knees, shuffled into the waves, then pushed forward with his feet as the water got deeper.
Waves crashed into him, blinding him, and he felt his feet give way.
The next instant the body collided into him, and Maximilian felt something very hard hit his head.
He blacked out for a moment, then something picked him up and thrust him forward. He found himself on sand, out of the water, a heavy body draped over him, almost suffocating him, and he felt the icy heaviness of metal against his injured shoulder.
He rolled away from it, onto his belly, raising his head a little to peer into the rain-swept gloom.
Then blinked, not believing what he saw.
A woman stood on the crest of the small hill that the wind had blown Maximilian over, her cloak wrapped about her, long dark hair streaming in the wind, but otherwise apparently unaffected by the storm.