Lance of Earth and Sky (The Chaos Knight Book Two) (15 page)

It would have been a relief if there had been simple coldness in her voice. Instead there was something much sharper, much subtler, an emptiness that stilled Vidarian's heart for a breath. He tucked away her words and reached for diplomacy. “I've been remiss. I never thanked you for the use of your ship.”

“You needn't,” she said. “Your hand is reasonably well played, and I have been curious about your trapped friend for some time.” She indicated the stone in his pocket with a glance. He must not have masked his shock adequately, for she smiled, hollow as bird bones. “Don't toy with me, Captain. The Company was keeping secrets before your grandfather was born. Remember that.”

On the fifth morning, as Vidarian was drinking a steaming cup of
kava
at the bow, Altair landed on the deck behind him.

Vidarian started to offer him a sip from the cup, in jest—gryphons were violently allergic to both
kava
and alcohol—but stopped when he caught sight of the gryphon's roused neck-feathers.

//
There's a disruption here,
// he said, and the peppermint brightness in his mind-voice was curious, worried. //
There is a signature on the water—it came from a gryphon, a powerful air wielder to impose a geis this long-lasting.
//

*
His name was Urri,
* Ruby said softly. *
He left a mark on the water where my mother was slain. I thought it was respect, but years later realized it was a warning-mark.
*

Ruby's words called up a cloudy memory of the largest tattoo on her body—a white gryphon, and one of the only stories she had never told Vidarian. They must have been related.

*
This is the only place my crew would have buried—my body.
*

“Then we should begin this now, and be done with it.” The voice was Isri's, and from behind them. She stood with her hand on Alora's shoulder, her wings partly spread.

Vidarian whistled, then signaled the boatswain to direct the
Wind Maiden
down to the surface of the water. They would approach as closely as they could, and then he would lift Ruby's body from the water.

He had managed to put off specifically envisioning the task Ruby had demanded until this moment. Now, as they descended through the clouds, passing interminably toward the water, he could imagine little else.

Vidarian had seen rotting bodies before, but none pulled up from the seafloor. She would be wrapped in linen, tight. The thought of Ruby's body, as he had last seen it, now emerging from the waters, desiccated, eaten by sea creatures, made the gorge rise in his throat. Grimly he fought it back down, worked his thoughts through what they must do.

The ship leveled out, and below them stretched the glass surface of the sea. A shadow flickered overhead; Thalnarra, keeping a watch from high above. She gave a short, piercing cry, then angled into her circling patrol pattern.

Isri's touch on Vidarian's forearm made him jump. He turned toward her, and had to look away from her golden gaze, too full of sympathy. She realized his discomfort and dimmed her presence, withdrawing. He hadn't known she could do that. “You have the object that she carried?”

“I only have—her,” he said, drawing the ruby from its pouch at his side. He passed it wordlessly to Isri.

The seridi raised the ruby to the light, staring through it. The sense of her presence increased, and he knew she was focusing herself through the gem, testing its safety. “It will be a challenge,” she said, turning to Alora and offering the stone. “But she is up to it.”

Alora, seeming even smaller than Vidarian remembered her, reached out to take the stone.

As soon as the ruby touched her pale skin, Alora fell to the deck, writhing. Vidarian dropped to his knees beside her, diving to break her fall.

“No!” Isri said. The sharpest word he'd ever heard her utter, it stopped him mid-movement. He pushed himself away, losing his balance and falling to the deck. “Don't touch her! If another object touches her, she may not be able to contain the reaction.” Isri spread her wings, arcing them around the girl, who still convulsed, her throat opening and closing in ragged gasps.

Vidarian stood and turned away, stung at his own helplessness. He nearly ran into Oneira, who, to her credit, looked as sick as he felt. Without being asked, she turned to the nearest crewman and gave orders for blankets, hot drinks.

“Shh, it's all right,” Isri murmured, insinuating herself around the girl without touching her, dodging her thrashing arms and somehow making sure she was turned in just the right direction to keep from injuring herself.

“Can't you help her?” Vidarian asked, when the fit showed no sign of stopping.

Isri's eyes came up, and for a moment there was outrage in them, an otherworldly focus that made him take a step backward. “It must pass on its own. She will grow stronger in overcoming it with time. Any interference only jeopardizes her sanity.”

At length, the convulsions diminished, replaced by a wordless murmuring of syllables that seemed to have no beginnings and no ends.

“She is ready,” Isri said, and without warning, touched Alora's nerveless hand to Vidarian's arm.

Ruby's life, and several hundreds of other memories, facts, places, objects, hurtled into Vidarian's mind. It was a faraway self that fell again to the deck, knees banging against wood, back slamming into the rail. Everything Ruby had ever been, every object she had touched, invisible threads spun out from his mind to where they had been. A hundred thousand memories, more—

Push them away,
Isri's voice was in his head, an island of cool identity.
Imagine her body. The flesh as it was. Imagine what you seek.

It was there, ten thousand fathoms below, resting against the silt and rocks, dark beyond darkness. It was there, her body, like an extension of his arm, pressed in by miles of water but as real as his own hand.

Vidarian reached toward it, shaped the water around it with his will, separated it from the silt until it was weightless, encased only in water.

“I've got her,” he whispered. He centered his focus deep beneath the waves, and began to pull.

T
he surface of the sea bubbled and frothed, spraying the deck and everyone on it. Vidarian kept his mind locked on the task of drawing the body from the water; the mechanics of it were not difficult, but he had to fight to keep his grip on today's reality when Alora's object-sense still bombarded him with the chaos of the past, a million million moments experienced all simultaneously.

Over his shoulder, Oneira was shouting for the deck to be cleared. A very small part of him was aware enough to be grateful; the thought of strangers witnessing what they were about to do clawed at his gut.

He continued to pull, aware now that the heaviness was receding; the closer he brought it to the surface, the less the sea seemed determined to haul it back to the depths.

Then—a presence.

It loomed up out of the water, a mind Vidarian had felt before; Ruby had lived then, and steered her ship around the deadly storm-tossed arc of Maladar's Horn. He very nearly lost his grip on Ruby's body: pain lanced through his eyes as he forced himself to concentrate.

A face formed in the water, and human voices around him gasped. Altair and Thalnarra each said something in a language he didn't recognize.

*
Nistra!
* Ruby exulted. She had always been absolute in her loyalty to the goddess of the sea, but now she was a nomad dying of thirst.

What you attempt cannot be done,
the words swirled in Vidarian's mind like drops of oil in water.
You should not take from me what is mine.
Weight suddenly settled on Ruby's body, preventing him from lifting it further. But neither did it draw her back into the depths.

*
What is she saying? I can hear her voice but not her words!
*

“Beloved Nistra,” Vidarian said, and starbursts of white light bloomed against his eyelids as he fought to keep his concentration. What little mind's energy he could spare from keeping the body from dropping again into the black now spun with furious calculation. He chose his words as an archer chooses fletching. “Will you deny us the attempt to return your daughter to her rightful vessel? A captain who has served and honored you always?”

I will not,
the words bubbled now, and the presence withdrew. Ruby's body began to rise once more.
But you are warned, blood of my waters. The knife-reefs line your path.

Then she was gone, the shadowy face surrendering itself to the chop and roll of the waves.

*
What did she say?
* Ruby asked again.

And then her body broke the surface with a crash and rush of water. The shrouded shape tilted, bobbed, and then floated. Now that he could see it, Vidarian stepped away from Alora—parting from her touch was like emerging into clear air, and his thoughts became his own again—and pushed the waves up underneath the body, lifting it gently up and over the rail, then down onto the deck.

Part of him was still in denial about what he was seeing. He had seen bodies prepared for sea burial before, and this was one such, wrapped tightly in binding linens. The left foot was missing; the linen would have been treated to repel the appetites of sea creatures, but this was no guarantee.

The linen was stretched, loose where it had been pushed outward by bloating and then fallen in with decay. As the wind shifted, gaps in the fabric carried a mordant air of death to their faces. Vidarian choked, and brought his forearm up to cover his nose and mouth.

When the wave of nausea passed, he said, “Ruby…I don't think…”

*
NO!
* Ruby barked, a hysteria creeping into her voice. *
We have come this far! You swore an oath!
*

Numbly, Vidarian held out his hand to Alora, who stared wide-eyed at Ruby's body. He cursed himself for allowing her on the journey, even if Isri approved. The seridi squeezed the girl's shoulder, and she started, then handed Vidarian the sun ruby.

Keeping his forearm across his mouth, Vidarian approached the wrapped body, and knelt. He turned to look at Isri, who was concentrating very hard on the shape in front of him. She gave a slight shake of her head, as of uncertainty, and so he turned back, and placed the ruby on the forehead of the corpse.

The ruby flared just as it touched the linen, growing hot, and for one terrible moment Vidarian was sure they would see the corpse lift itself and stand.

Then—nothing.

He choked in one breath after another, staring at the linen shape that part of him still would not accept had been one of his dearest friends. There was a rustle of feathers, and Isri was there, kneeling beside him. She spread her hands over the body, concentrating.

They waited for long minutes, and at last, Ruby spoke.

*
This isn't possible. Why can't I go back?
*

A fury burned in her, something beyond human emotion, something that resonated through all the “chambers” of her prison. It was as if the alien thing that lived within the prism key with her now manifested itself alongside her will—and it was preternaturally angry.

The force of that inhuman consciousness jarred Vidarian from his shock. He realized, almost for the first time, what he was looking at, what he was doing, and suddenly it all seemed quite, quite mad. He turned his head away from the body, seeking anything else to look at.

Tears streaked Isri's face. Vidarian had not known seridi could cry. “It seems…” Her voice rasped, and she coughed. “It seems that Ruby's body is too far gone to house her. The…place…that her mind would go is unreachable to me, as if it were not flesh at all.” Though her words stung, the truth of it again seemed obvious; there was hardly anything left of her body that could be imagined to live.

At Isri's words, Ruby let out a cry of despair and frustration that clawed straight through his soul. None of them could bear to answer her, and so they sat again in silence.

“We should,” Vidarian began at last, choking over his words, realizing that tears were running down his cheeks and throat. He coughed. “We should return the body to the sea.”

*
No!
* Ruby snapped again, rage pouring out of her, lighting the prism key from within. *
This is Nistra's doing! She would not let me hear her, and now would deny me my own body! She shall not have it again!
*

Vidarian reeled anew, struck to some deep part of him that had been raised to revere the sea goddess. Her words echoed back, stirring dread. He started to object, but Ruby cut him off again.

*
Burn it, Vidarian. Do me this service, at least.
*

Dread crystallized into ice. Fire was a landsman's burial, not a sea captain, much less a Queen of the West Sea.

*
It isn't me, my friend. And it has already been taken from Nistra.
*

Ruby's sudden composure, the air of command and confidence once more in her voice, did not dispel the dread, but it loosed its hold.

They could not burn the body on the deck. Which meant in all likelihood, the crew could not burn it at all. Vidarian called a wave up from the ocean's surface with a murmur, and directed it under the body again. He lifted it out, and back to the surface, holding it there. Then he turned away, and willed fire into it.

The fire did not go willingly. It fought him, both at being summoned while he still held the body aloft with his water sense, and in objection to the water energy that saturated the body. Vidarian closed his eyes and redoubled his efforts, clenching his teeth, pressing the water from the body and commanding the fire to enter it.

He heard the fire, and felt it, but would not look back. This might be Ruby's will, and a fulfillment of his oath, but he retreated within himself as he carried it out, searching within for a meditative mind that an exercise from the Book of Nistra had taught him. And he mouthed silent prayers to the goddess of the sea, asking forgiveness for Ruby, and for himself. Nistra was not a goddess to contemplate forgiveness, nor the owing of debts or action, but he asked it anyway, offering himself up to the sea.

An oily smoke and char stained the air, choking them again, until Altair silently summoned a wind to chase it back across the water. The tall gryphon stole up next to him, spreading a wing around him, and Vidarian leaned into his feathered shoulder, reaching for a peace that would not come.

Clouds spread below them, rolling white here at the heights, their every detail revealed by the bright and golden afternoon sun. Far below, a storm rumbled close to the ocean's surface, charcoal clouds lit by intermittent punctuations of lightning.

He had asked Oneira to return them to the Imperial City, his task fulfilled. The dread that ate at his stomach had not diminished. If the ship had been a quiet one before, now it was silent as a tomb. For the first day of sailing Vidarian stood at the stern, looking down and back over the clouds, and spoke to no one.

Ruby, too, had been silent, her thoughts only her own. When she spoke at last on the second day, it was to stir Vidarian out of a solemn and wordless meditation.

*
You have to destroy me, Vidarian.
*

The breath stopped in his chest.

*
I can't live like this. It's not
living
at all! I am not dead, and I am not alive. And I am losing myself to…whatever this is.
*

“Ruby, I…” His head spun.

*
I'm dangerous. I'm a danger to you and to anyone around me. You know this.
*

He must have radiated his agony and shock, for Isri was suddenly there in his mind, whispering up around him as she had never done before, wordlessly radiating reassurance. Far to starboard, Thalnarra gave an upward-lilting call, inquiring.

“I have fulfilled my obligation to you, Ruby,” he began, knowing in his heart that it felt untrue, but resisting her would be truer than admitting he could now bear to destroy her, which he knew he could not.

*
You don't believe that,
* she snorted, an ire raising to stiffen behind the moroseness of her first demand.

Footsteps sounded on the deck, and he turned, stunned to see Oneira approaching the stern rail. He shook his head, but to his further astonishment, she only lifted her eyebrows, and continued forward.

“I know that I cannot destroy you,” he said, reaching for the words that would deter her from the chase. But she only bore down harder.

*
How can you lack the strength to do what you must do? Are you no captain at all? Perhaps you were never?
* He clenched his jaw, but she plowed on relentlessly.
*
Or has ‘destiny’ weakened you? First that mongrel wolf, and now you flinch again.
* He flushed, aware of Oneira's presence, as Ruby must have known he would be, and that the woman could hear her.

This was a Ruby he knew, a woman ferocious in negotiation, a master of sea politics. She was pushing him, hoping to seal him in his own anger so that he might do what she asked. Perversely, it made him all the more inclined to resist her. “I won't do this, Ruby. I can't.”

*
Then you betray me for the second time.
*

He wanted to argue with her, but felt all composure slipping away. He closed his eyes, and a kind of madness yawned under him, a panic; Isri's presence wrapped around him again, soft as a down blanket—a specific down blanket, one that smelled of lavender and cedar, pulled from his memories of his mother—but it could not reach the knife of breaking within him, the fissure, opened by the Great Gate, that now threatened to swallow him into unbeing.

“There is another way.” The voice was soft, gentle. Unrecognizable. It was Oneira's.

Vidarian opened his burning eyes and looked at her. The world seemed tilted, and he worked to straighten his head, assaulted on all sides by sensation. The sun seemed far too bright, the scent of the varnished rail suddenly stifling, the sky too huge and bearing down on them.

Oneira took his silence for permission. “The vessel that you now inhabit, the prism key. It is one of many, some larger than others. Some are so large that they can contain the fullness of a human mind. They can even give it a human shape.”

Ruby's attention palpably turned away from Vidarian, felt as a cooling of his skin. He struggled to breathe. *
You speak of automaton bodies. Like Iridan's.
*