Shadows (27 page)

“Will we sail all night?” Mara asked.

“In a ship this size? I'd think so,” Keltan replied. He helped himself to bread and cheese. “We'll probably reach the coast by morning.”

“I hope we're in time,” Mara said. “What if the Watchers . . . ?”

“We'll be in time,” Keltan said. “We have to be.”

He had to know it was an empty reassurance, and she certainly knew it, but she accepted it and said nothing more.

Prince Chell came in shortly afterward. “Making good time,” he said, helping himself to more food from the platter. “On the course I've set we should reach the coast somewhere north of wherever the unMasked Army has managed to get to. We'll sail south until we find them. With luck, we'll be loading them aboard by afternoon.”

The prince retired to his bed, but Mara and Keltan sat up for a long time, side by side on a couch turned so they could look astern at the long white moonlit streak of the ship's wake, stretching straight as an arrow behind them. Keltan put his arm around her, and she snuggled into him. After that it seemed a natural thing to kiss him again. Kissing, Mara discovered, was a fine, fine way to make time pass quickly.

They finally fell asleep nestled against each other, and woke late to find the prince absent once more. Fresh food had appeared: they ate bread and cheese and fruit, washed down with water, and Keltan was attempting to teach Mara a complicated board game he had found in a locker, involving multiple pieces, each with different moves that Mara had a hard time keeping straight, when she heard a distant shout, “Land ho!”

Game forgotten, she and Keltan leaped up. Chell came banging back into the cabin a moment later. “We've raised the coast!” he said. “Come on deck. It won't be long now.”

They went out into the cool morning air. Mist, rising from the ocean, shrouded the shore, reducing it to a shadow land of guessed-at hills and hints of trees and rocks. “Damn this fog,” muttered Captain March, who stood beside them on what Chell had told Mara, though she wondered if he was pulling her leg, was called the “poop deck.” (“Or just ‘the poop,' for short,” he'd said, and
that
couldn't be true, could it?) “Came out of nowhere.”

“We'll have to sail closer,” Chell said.

The captain nodded. “Arm the lead!” he shouted, and while Mara was still wondering what that meant, there was a patter of bare feet and sailors rushed forward.

She glanced at Chell. “Arm the lead?”

“The lead is a weight at the end of a long rope, with knots in it at regular intervals,” Chell explained. “You fling the lead out in front of the ship to measure how deep the water is. The lead has a little hollow in it that you ‘arm' with a bit of tallow. When you haul out the lead, some of the bottom material sticks to the tallow, so you can tell—”

“Eight fathom, mud,” came a voice from the bow.

“Ah,” Mara said.

They crept in closer to the shore under minimal sail, the sailors in the bow singing out the depth every minute or so. The shore became marginally less ghostly when, at “four fathom, small stones,” Captain March turned to the prince and said, “We dare go no closer, Your Highness.”

Chell nodded. “We can see well enough,” he said. He looked south. “Follow the coast.”

“Aye, Your Highness. But we'll keep sounding.” Captain March gave his orders, and the ships swung to starboard and began creeping southward.

An hour passed, then another. And then . . .

“People on the shore!” shouted the lookout, high above. “Dozens!”

“We've found them,” said Chell. He gave Mara and Keltan a quick grin, then turned to Captain March. “Anchor as close in as you safely can and lower the boats. We need to get them aboard as quickly as possible. Send marines south along the shore to watch for any sign of pursuit.”

“What about inland, Your Highness?”

Chell turned and studied the cliff face that loomed, far higher than the one down by the Secret City, dark in the mist above the strand of rocky beach along which the unMasked Army had been making its way. “Unless these Watchers have some magic that allows them to fling themselves into empty space and drop down like feathers, I don't think we have to worry about attack from that direction.”

“The mountains inland are impassable,” Keltan confirmed. “The northern border of the Autarchy. The only way the Watchers can come after us is along the beach.”

Mara gave that tall cliff another look. Like Keltan, she, too, had always heard that the mountains were impassable . . . but she had also heard, from Ethelda, that the Lady of Pain and Fire had been driven into those mountains by the Autarch when he was a young man.
Did she make it through?
she wondered.
Are the mountains
really
impassable, or is that just another lie of the Autarch's, designed to prevent anyone from even
thinking
there might be a way to escape Aygrima to the north? Or did the Lady of Pain and Fire, despite all her magic, die among the peaks?

She shivered at the thought. Magic didn't keep you from dying. She should know. How close to death had she come now, time after time, despite her Gift? And high in the mountains, far from any humans, the Lady's Gift would have been useless . . . worse than useless, if, as Ethelda said, the Lady had become addicted to magic: the desire for it, combined with the lack of it, might well have driven her mad.

Of course, she was supposedly mad already by that time, so maybe she didn't notice.

Mara shuddered and put the Lady of Pain and Fire out of her head. The Lady wasn't a comfortable topic of thought, anyway, considering Mara had been warned over and over she might turn into the same sort of monster.

Even as she thought it, the magic in the ship's crew tugged at her.

No
, she thought.
I'll never become like that. I won't let it happen.

I
won't.

A ragged cheer had gone up from the shore as the refugees saw the ships, and Mara saw Edrik and Hyram, leading the column on horseback, wheel around and gallop to the water's edge. She imagined how she would have reacted to see such enormous vessels looming out of the mist, offering rescue unhoped for, and a grin split her face.

“Lower the boats!” shouted Captain March; and with a splash, the evacuation of the unMasked Army from Aygrima began.

The Sea Arises

B
OAT BY BOAT, the unMasked Army fled the icy shore for the towering ships of Korellia. Keltan and Mara stood on the poop, watching as the members of the Army were helped aboard: men and women, clutching their belongings and their babies; frightened, tired children, faces white, eyes wide, wondering even through their exhaustion at the astonishing vessels on which they found themselves. A dozen at a time, until the decks were full and both
Protector
and
Defender
rode much lower in the water than they had.

Prella and Kirika came aboard together. Prella gave Mara a big wave, and she waved back, a grin spreading across her face that died when Kirika gave her a look so cold she would have feared a knifing had she encountered it on someone in the street. She let her hand fall, remembering again that none of this would be happening if she had not thought she could outwit Stanik.

The last boat to come alongside held Edrik and his wife, along with Catilla, Ethelda, Hyram, and Alita. Catilla's eyes slid up the side of the ship to where Mara stood, then slid away again as though she were beneath notice. Edrik did not look up at her at all, but Hyram did, and Mara actually gasped and stepped back a little at the fury that flitted across his face. Her fingers found Keltan's, and he took her hand comfortingly.

In the boat, Alita took Hyram's hand, too, and the look she turned toward Mara was cold . . . and more than a little smug. “Hyram and Alita?” Mara said to Keltan.

He nodded. “Shortly after we left,” he said. “And when I arrived with word of what was about to descend on the Secret City . . .” he let the words trail off.

Mara felt a pang. She had liked Hyram. He had liked her. He and Keltan had even fought, once, over her. But she had turned him against her.
Forever?
she wondered, and remembering the anger she had glimpsed in his gaze, very much feared it was so.

With the last of the unMasked Army aboard, Prince Chell ordered Captain March to weigh anchor. To the chants of sailors manning a windlass, the clanking chain rose link by link, sails began to pull, and
Protector
and
Defender
slipped away from the shore.

Mara looked down from the poop at the mass of people sorting themselves on the deck, and decided to stay put for the moment with Keltan. Captain March glanced at them, then at Prince Chell, who stood looking astern at the vanishing coastline with his hands clasped behind his back, and said nothing.

Mara and Keltan joined Chell at the rail. “Will the Watchers really just let us go?” she asked.

Chell shrugged. “Even if they put two and two together and link my escape . . . and the ships I have already told them I have . . . to the otherwise impossible disappearance of the Army from this shore, what can they do? They have no navy.”

“They have fishing boats,” Keltan said. “We sailed to the islands in a fishing boat. They could do the same.”

“But they'd have to know that's where the unMasked Army has gone,” Chell said. “Even if they scout every island along these shores, they cannot determine that for months. And in that time, I will return with a far more formidable force . . . and then we will take the fight to the Watchers.” He glanced sideways at Mara, and smiled. “Mark my words, and mark this day,” he said. “Today is the beginning of the end of the Autarch's tyranny.”

Mara gave him a half-smile back . . . and then clutched at the railing. The ship had given a sudden lurch. The prince glanced over his shoulder. “Captain?”

“Sea's rising,” Captain March said. “I was right about there being something unusual about this mist. There's bad weather coming.”

Mara looked up at the sky. Before she had been able to see blue, even through the thickening mist, but now . . . black clouds were rolling in from the sea, thick black clouds with thin, white outriders that swept overhead with frightening speed, like hurled javelins. The ship lurched again. The waves grew even as Mara watched. She clutched the railing tight.

The rigging thrummed. Cold air blasted into her face. “It's straight out of the west!” Captain March shouted. “We'll make no headway against it! Best we can do is sail close-hauled to the northwest and hope we can keep off the shore!”

“As you see fit, Captain,” Prince Chell said.

Captain March began shouting orders. The ship turned ponderously, sailors pulled on ropes, the sails shifted to a new angle, and the wind began blowing more from port. They galloped along, the shore now lost behind them and to starboard, through a shrinking circle of dark sea surrounded by white mist, waves rolling through from white wall to white wall . . . but each wave was a little bigger than the last, and increasingly they were capped by white foam and flying spray. “She'll weather this,” the captain said, staring to the west. “But is this all that's coming?”

It wasn't.

The wind rose from moan to howl to shriek. The waves grew to the size of hills, and then to mountains. The sky turned black as night. The mist blew away in tatters in the rising gale, but it hardly mattered, because hard on its heels came snow.

It arrived as a wall of white hissing across the waves.
Defender
, which until then had at least been visible as a dark bulk on the edge of the mist-shrouded circle of water, vanished in an instant. And then the snow swept over
Protector
.

Mara gasped as a million flakes of ice, borne on a howling wind, stung her face like nettles and drove into every crevice in her clothing, chilling her to the bone. The poop deck was suddenly a tiny island surrounded by swirling snow, the rest of the ship invisible. Drifts piled up on the deck, turning it white. And still the waves grew, the ship crashing into one, riding up and up to the crest and then falling down the other side to crash into the next. Mara was pleasantly surprised to discover her time at sea had inured her to the motion; she didn't get seasick, a small mercy.

“North-northwest!” Captain March shouted to the helmsman.

“North-northwest it is!” the helmsman shouted back. But then March came back to the rail, where Chell clung along with Mara and Keltan.

“We can't hold it,” he said flatly. “Not in this wind and this sea. We're heading north-northwest, but we're being driven east, back toward the coast. And in this weather . . . we'll see nothing of it. If we're driven ashore, we're dead men . . . and women,” he said, with a glance at Mara. “And children,” he added under his breath.

Mara thought of what conditions must already be like on the deck in the wind and spray and snow, and her heart went out to the little ones clinging to their mothers and fathers.
At least they still have mothers and fathers
, she thought, and hated herself for that pang of self-pity. Her own self-disgust drove her away from the rail, across the heaving deck to the gangway. Chell put out a hand to try to stop her. “You're better off up here!” he shouted over the gale.

“And those women and children would be better off in your cabin,” she snarled. “Your Highness.”

Chell's face darkened for a moment, then he pressed his lips together and gave a short, sharp nod.

“I'll come with you,” Keltan said, and together they picked their way down the slippery gangway steps to the deck. Behind them, Mara heard Chell ask March, “What do you recommend, Captain?”

“Fight it out as long as we can,” said the captain. “It's all we can do. We have no sea room . . .”

Mara felt a chill at the fatalism in the captain's voice, but she shoved it away. “You take port, I'll take starboard!” she shouted to Keltan.

He nodded and disappeared into the flying snow.

The ship slammed hard into a wave. Water sluiced across the deck. Mara staggered to the rail and began pulling her way across it. Faces appeared, refugees from the unMasked Army huddled on the wet deck. “Women and children to the aft cabin!” she shouted. “It's warm and dry. Women and children to the aft cabin!”

Mothers staggered up, holding their children, helped by husbands and fathers, and began making their way toward the stern. Mara continued along the rail until she was certain she'd spoken to everyone. The motion of the ship grew worse, and great dollops of spray crashed over everything with every wave. Shivering, she turned to make her way back to the stern.

Her foot slipped on the icy deck. Her hand flew off the railing. She fell hard on her rear end, and began to slide, down a deck that seemed suddenly steep as a mountainside.

A hand grabbed her, her body swinging around to slam into the railing. She seized the wood gratefully and pulled herself upright, twisting around to see who had saved her. “Thank you,” she gasped out . . . and found herself facing Hyram.

For a moment he just stared at her. Snow had crusted his eyebrows and his blond head, as though he had turned old overnight. He still had her hand in his.

“Hyram . . .” she said. “I'm—”

He released her hand and turned away without a word, vanishing back into the thickly falling snow that shrouded the bow as another wave crashed aboard.

Shivering, Mara turned and fought her way back to the poop deck. The groups of people huddled together, wedged against the masts and railing, were noticeably smaller and mostly made up of men and older boys now.

At least no children will be washed overboard
, Mara thought. But if the ships foundered, it would make no difference.

Keltan met her at the gangway. “You should go into the cabin, too,” he shouted.

“No,” Mara said flatly. The children might not know, but the women would certainly know that the fall of the Secret City could be laid at her feet. She couldn't face them, and even if she could, she couldn't cower in the cabin waiting to see if they would all die. Better to freeze on the deck.

She climbed the gangway. Captain March, Prince Chell, and the helmsman were all little more than dim shadows in the thickly falling snow. “Ship's sluggish, sir,” she heard the helmsman say as she reached the poop once more.

“Aye, she would be,” March muttered. He went to the front of the poop. “All hands! Clear snow and ice!”

How long they fought the seas Mara didn't know. She stayed where she was, miserable, wet, and cold. The light began to fail as, somewhere beyond the clouds, the sun reached the horizon. The snow never stopped, and despite the best efforts of the crew and the unMasked men and boys who also threw themselves into the effort, soon even she could feel the difference in the motion as the ice built up on rigging and deck. The ship seemed to plunge harder into each wave, and stagger up more slowly. They had long since lost touch with
Defender
.

The end, when it came, came quickly.

The sun had set. Mara and Keltan had sunk to the deck and were huddled together for warmth. Chell had gone down the gangway and hadn't come back. The captain had never budged from his spot beside the helmsman. Running lights made pale circles of light in the still-falling snow.

Then—

“Rocks!” screamed the lookout, high above them in the crosstrees. “Rocks to starboard—”

They hit.

A terrible crunching sound, then the tortured shriek of splitting planks, mingled with the whip-snap sound of breaking wood high above as masts cracked and spars shattered. The lookout's shouts turned to a scream of terror, a scream that plunged down from the top of the mast and ended in the sea. Mara felt the burst of magic released by his body as he died, but it was distant and did not flow to her.

Mara and Keltan, tangled together, were flung across the poop deck and crashed into the forerail. The wheel spun so suddenly and viciously that it clubbed the helmsman to the deck, where he lay moaning.

Captain March picked himself up and charged down the deck. “Damage parties!” he cried. “Clear the boats! Sparl, Thimon, with me.” He vanished into the swirling snow.

Mara hauled herself up by the railing and peered into the darkness. “I can't see any—”

Another horrendous crunch. Shouts and screams rang out on deck as she was flung to the planking again. “It's
Defender
!” Keltan shouted. He turned toward her, and she saw blood streaming from his nose, black as tar in the dim light of the running lamps. “She's run into us!”

Mara, picking herself up, saw that he was right. The other ship's starboard side was pressed tight against
Protector
, listing toward them so that masts and rigging were entangled. The heaving sea ground the ships together, the vibration groaning through the planks with every wave. More splintering sounds came from starboard, as the waves pounded
Protector
against the rocks.

“We're all going to drown!” Mara cried.

“Boats,” Keltan said desperately. “There are boats . . .”

“They'll never be able to launch them!”

And then, in the space of a single breath, the frantic panic filling her vanished, replaced by a preternatural calm.
It's up to me,
she thought.
I have to use magic
. She closed her eyes, feeling the power all around her, filling every living body on both doomed ships.
Even Ethelda would say I have no choice. I can pull it to me. I can . . .