Chaos Unleashed (32 page)

He didn’t say anything else, he just walked along with her.

Keegan’s not the only one who might become a martyr,
she thought, but she didn’t have the courage to say the words aloud.

After a few more strides she once again took his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. She still wasn’t sure what to do about Keegan, but Methodis was right about one thing: If time was short, she was determined to make the most of her last moments.

The Chaos Runner
’
s
prow knifed through the storm-tossed sea, riding the waves like a living creature. With each rising swell, it seemed to gain momentum despite the ferocious headwinds, leaping forward as the crest broke to attack the next surge.

Cassandra stood on the top deck, braving the wind and rain as Bo-Shing relentlessly drove his vessel through the gale. Any triumph she might have felt at convincing the captain to leave Pellturna had long since been swept away by the storm. She clutched tightly at a length of rope wrapped around her wrist and lashed to the foremast, the mainsail above her pulled taut by the howling wind. The sack with the Crown was secured tightly at her back, tugging at her shoulders with each angry gust.

While his captain manned the wheel, Shoji shouted orders at the crew, his voice barely rising above the screaming of the squall.

That’s not his captain,
Rexol said.
It’s a demon!

Cassandra was too focused on settling her heaving stomach to argue with him. Knowing that the fierce storms were caused by the backlash of their enchanted ship had actually helped her deal with her nausea—for the first two days after leaving Pellturna she’d been able to keep her food down. But the storms opposing them had grown steadily worse, and this morning she hadn’t even tried to eat.

She saw Tork coming toward her, his gait calm as his body naturally rolled with every wild pitch and cant of the ship. The storm pummeling
The Chaos Runner
didn’t seem to bother him. Based on his demeanor, Cassandra wondered if he even noticed it at all.

“The Kraken’s Eye!” he shouted in her ear once he drew close. “I told you you’d see!”

Pushing out with her awareness, Cassandra saw that the tempest that assailed them was only the edge of the weather front. The sky above them was already dark and hard and cold rain pelted them like stones thrown from the sky. But ahead the clouds were pitch-black and the deluge was like a solid wall of water.

But Cassandra barely registered the monsoon they were bearing down on. Instead, her focus went to the massive cluster of whirlpools and maelstroms dead ahead. The largest was easily fifty feet across, a whirling vortex crawling across the ocean like a hungry maw. A dozen more, each large enough to swallow the ship on its own, circled slowly around it in seemingly random patterns.

Every few seconds, whirling waterspouts shot up and danced atop the surface before crashing back down with enough force to snap a ship in half. The largest waves crested at well over fifty feet, and Cassandra knew a broadside hit from even one of those monsters would surely sink
The Chaos Runner.

“We’re not seriously going through that, are we?” she shouted.

“Your island is on the other side,” Tork answered. Then he smiled. “Done it before. Once.”

With that he turned and headed toward Bo-Shing, moving with the same preternatural calm. He reached the captain’s side and began giving quick, curt instructions. Bo-Shing never hesitated and never questioned him. With each order, he spun the wheel exactly as Tork demanded.

Cassandra wrapped the rope around her wrist a few more times to guard against a rogue wave sweeping her overboard as they plunged headlong into the Kraken’s Eye.

“Twenty-eight degrees to port! Sixteen to starboard! Thirty-seven to starboard. Twelve to port!”

Orath struggled to keep up with Tork’s shouted instructions, the ship’s wheel fighting against his efforts to constantly change course in the raging waters. When he had devoured Bo-Shing, some of what the man was—including his skill as a sailor—was preserved, passing into Orath’s mind. But though he had the technical knowledge, he lacked the pirate’s natural instinct and years of experience. Without them, the Minion feared, they’d be swallowed by the sea.

Cassandra and the Crown stood on the deck behind him; so close he could feel the Talisman’s power thrumming in his chest above the fury of the storm. For a moment he considered letting the ship sink: If
The Chaos Runner
went down, maybe he could get his hands on the Crown before it plunged to the bottom of the ocean.

But what if Cassandra survives the wreckage? Don’t underestimate her like the others did!

“Hard to port! Hard to port!”

He cast the plan aside even as Tork barked out a new course, forcing him to turn the wheel hard to the left. Calling out orders with Bo-Shing’s voice, he relayed every new change of direction to the crew, leaving it to Shoji to see that they trimmed the sails and manned the rigging to keep them on course.

Ahead of them a waterspout erupted skyward, then smashed back down like an angry fist, narrowly missing the ship. Had they not changed course, they would have been directly in its path.

Tork can see what is coming before it happens. He can guide us through to the other side!

If they failed, Orath realized, it wouldn’t be because of the navigator. The weakest link in the crew was the false captain. If he failed to react to Tork’s commands—if he was too slow, or he turned the wheel too far and they missed their mark—all would be lost.

“Sixty-two degrees to starboard!”

Orath knew it was dangerous to summon Chaos this close to Cassandra, even with the terrors of the Kraken’s Eye drawing most of her attention. If she noticed what he was doing, she would unleash the full power of the Crown against him. But if he did nothing, they wouldn’t survive much longer.

Drawing on the reservoir of Chaos he’d gathered from feasting on the blood of the Inquisitors, Orath reached out to the magical essence imbued within the ship itself. He felt the touch of Old Magic, trapped within the hull, and opened himself up to it.

The Chaos Runner
was a creature of the sea. It understood the ocean in ways no sailor ever could—not even Bo-Shing. By forging a connection with the remarkable ship, Orath suddenly became more skilled than any captain since the Cataclysm.

“Forty degrees to port!” Tork bellowed.

Orath reacted with uncanny speed and perfect precision. The crew pulled on the ropes as they tacked hard, and the ship veered just in time to avoid being sucked down into one of the whirlpools that had unexpectedly spun off from the main constellation.

“Sixty degrees starboard!” Tork shouted, and Orath dutifully spun the wheel again, all thoughts of Cassandra and the Crown pushed from his mind as he battled the angry sea.

Keegan kept the hood of his cloak up as he approached the ritual grounds, hoping it would hide his nervousness. Vaaler had spent the past two days meticulously preparing the location: a testament to how complicated and dangerous the spell he was about to attempt could be.

He didn’t want to die in a final blaze of uncontrolled Chaos, but that wasn’t what he feared most.

They’re all counting on me,
he thought, staring out at the faces of the friends and allies who’d gathered to wish him well
. They’re all looking at me to save them. And what if I can’t?

Scythe was there, too, of course. She wore her typical outfit: tight black trousers and a sleeveless leather vest. The exposed flesh of her face and arms was covered with temporary tattoos that mirrored Keegan’s own, painstakingly drawn by the Danaan sorcerers working off Vaaler’s instructions.

As he saw Scythe standing there a new fear crept into his mind. It wasn’t just his own life he was risking with this ritual.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told her. “You can give me the Sword and stay behind to look after Methodis.”

“Maybe you should be the one to stay behind,” she shot back. “Just give me the Ring and send me through the portal.”

“You’re not a mage,” Keegan reminded her. “You’ve had no training. You don’t know how to use the Ring.”

“And you’re no warrior,” she reminded him. “And believe me—you have no clue how to properly use the Sword. So I guess we better just accept that we both need to do this. Together.”

She smiled at him, and he felt some of his anxiousness slip away.

“I know you’re scared, Keegan,” she whispered, leaning in close. “So am I. But I believe in you. I know you can do this.”

For an instant, Keegan thought about trying to kiss her again. Fortunately, he resisted the urge. Scythe was a friend, nothing more. But somehow, that was enough.

“I bet you would have made an incredible Chaos mage if you possessed the gift,” he told her, returning her smile.

“Save it,” she said though not overly harshly. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”

It was hard to tell for sure, given her complexion and the markings scrawled on her face, but Keegan thought she was blushing.

They stepped forward to where Vaaler was waiting to usher them into their assigned positions.

“You both know what you have to do?” Vaaler asked.

“I just have to stand still and shut up,” Scythe answered. “Wish me luck.”

“What about you, Keegan. Are you ready?”

“I am,” he said.

Vaaler reached out and grabbed them both in a fierce hug.

“I believe in you,” he told them before stepping back to stand beside Shalana and Jerrod beyond the edge of the ritual grounds.

“I believe in us, too,” Scythe whispered, taking his hand.

The ritual ground covered most of the large cobblestone courtyard inside the city hall’s main gates. Over the past two days, Vaaler and the Danaan wizards had transformed the bare stones into a map of the entire known world. The ground along the North Wall had crudely drawn trees to represent the North Forest, while scattered handfuls of coarse sand marked the edges of the Southern Desert. Blocky triangles traced in charcoal reflected the mountains bordering the Frozen East, and a series of curved wavy lines stood for the Western Sea, with a smattering of small circles serving as the Western Isles.

Each of the Seven Capitals of the Southlands was drawn onto the map, as was Callastan. That’s where Keegan and Scythe now stood, surrounded by a perfect circle traced in ash. Vaaler had drawn a thick line from Callastan across the imaginary ocean, through the Western Isles and ending at another circle on the far edge of the map. Rexol’s gorgon-headed staff stood upright inside the circle, supported by a small stand. Visually it made a suitable representation of the Keystone itself, but more practically, incorporating the powerful staff into the ritual would allow it to be a catalyst for the spell.

He wasn’t the only mage who would be invoking the spell. Just outside the map several more circles had been drawn. Inside each one stood a Danaan wizard, including Andar himself. Like Keegan and Scythe, their skin had been covered with symbols to help ward them against the Chaos they were about to summon.

As one, Andar and the others began to chant. For two days they had practiced the incantation Vaaler had given them, and the strange words rolled smoothly off their tongues.

“Lev. Ull. Fer. Shi. Lev. Ull. Fer. Shi.”

To his surprise, Keegan recognized the words from his training under Rexol: North, south, east, and west in the Old Tongue.

Stay focused!

As the rhythmic chant continued, the glyphs on Keegan’s skin began to tingle. Chaos was gathering, summoned by the combined efforts of the Danaan mages.

Keegan didn’t join them; his role was not to summon the Chaos but to draw it into himself, concentrating the power of many into one. He felt the familiar heat of the blue flames building up inside him, and he slipped on the Ring he’d been clutching in his hand.

A tower of blue fire suddenly leapt up around him and Scythe, but the protective circle kept the flames from devouring them. He could feel her tense up beside him, fighting her instinctive response to flee the unnatural conflagration.

Stay focused!

“Lev. Ull. Fer. Shi. Lev. Ull. Fer. Shi.”

Augmented by the Ring, the Chaos flowing through him became an unstoppable torrent. But instead of fighting to control it, Keegan let it pass through him and out into the ritual grounds.

The pillar of fire around them grew higher, and a line of flames slowly began to trace its way along the line from Callastan to the Keystone. Keegan struggled to stay calm, resisting the urge to seize the Chaos and try to control it with his will. At this stage of the spell, he was still merely a conduit.

“Lev. Ull. Fer. Shi. Lev. Ull. Fer. Shi.”

The line of flames finally reached Rexol’s staff, and the empty eye sockets of the gorgon’s skull glowed with a fierce green flame. Scythe gasped beside him, and for an instant his concentration wavered as his head turned in response to the sound.

Blue fire leapt from the pillar, engulfing him and Cassandra and spreading rapidly across the map in all directions. He heard Vaaler shouting, his voice panicked. The chant of the Danaan mages had dissolved into cries of pain and fear.

Go!
Keegan screamed inside his mind.
Go now!

The world beyond the edges of the map suddenly vanished into empty darkness. The pillar of blue flame lifted him and Scythe high into the air, and she clutched at his arm.

Keegan ignored the contact, his mind focused entirely on the spell, just as Vaaler had told him. He was no longer just a conduit; now the Chaos was his to control!