Spellbreaker (50 page)

Peleki was belting out orders. It seemed that the tide was indeed low enough for them to sail into the island's pool.

“Perhaps you don't remember,” Dhrun continued, “but you took down that air neodemon during one of the matches in which Dhrunarman was wrestling. You made a rather … spectacular impression on him.

Leandra laughed. “Your wrestler fancied me?”

“Something like that. And Nika was perhaps a bit envious. She was, after all, an ancient goddess and you were only a mortal. In any case, the confused mixture of admiration and competitiveness led us to break into your bedroom one night and, in our Nika incarnation, see if we didn't look better in some of your dresses.” He laughed. “When we did, Nika's jealousy eased a bit. Then you caught me in the bedroom, and the Dhrunarman admiration was overwhelming. There was nothing left to do but convert to you and the pantheon. It has worked out rather well since then, wouldn't you say?”

“I would.” Leandra nodded and looked back toward the arch in the stone of Keyway Island. With all hands but her own and Dhrun's rowing, they were speeding through the tunnel.

Leandra could see the pool at the village's center ahead. There were no lights burning in the village. That seemed odd. Usually Master Alo was industrious in the early hours, which usually meant that the rest of the village had to be industrious as well.

“Lea,” Dhrun asked gently, “why did you ask me about my past?”

“I've always been curious.”

“But why now … why after Holokai?”

She pursed her lips and stood up straighter. “It's hard to say. What happened with Kai…”

But whatever reason she was going to give flew away from her mind as the catamaran cleared the Keyway tunnel and slipped into the pool. It was then that Leandra first saw the bodies.

There were only two of them lying on the dock, but their arms and legs were splayed at such angles that they could only be dead. Involuntarily, Leandra shouted and pointed at the corpses.

At first Dhrun seemed confused but then he sucked in a sharp breath.

Leandra noticed that in several places the railings around the walkways had been burned out. It seemed all of her followers in Keyway were dead. She yelled, “Peleki! Turn the boat. Turn, we have to get out of here!”

Her mind raced with fear. How could anyone have found Keyway? And why, an hour ago, had she not felt the possibility of her present fear? Then, with horror, she remembered that one man could blind her to certain futures.

“Lotannu!” she whispered. Right after she had bought the first godspell from Lotannu disguised as a smuggler, she had sailed back to Keyway and thought she had spotted something large flying from island to island, following her.

Icy terror closed its fingers around her heart. “Lotannu, if you did this to my people, I swear…”

But once again, she could not finish her words.

Above her, the circle of dawn sky visible from the pool was darkened by the shape of something massive. At first she thought it was some new kind of neodemon.

But then she saw, arcing across its foresail, a jagged blaze of lightning.

*   *   *

A thunderclap rolled through Keyway Island. Leandra barked orders but could not hear her own words. Fortunately neither Peleki nor the sailors needed orders to know they had to back-paddle for their lives. With painful slowness, the sailors halted the catamaran's progress, reversed her course back toward the tunnel.

Using her godspell of misdirection, Leandra mentally reached out for the airship. As before, she sensed the remnants of a divine mind that had aimed the airship's lightning, but now the mind had been stripped down to its basic subspells, not enough of an intellect left to misdirect. Hopefully this meant the airship's aim would be impaired.

As if to oblige her curiosity, lightning fell from the ship and struck the highest point of the island. The flash dazzled, the thunderclap deafened. A corona of blasted rock rose from the lightning strike and then rained upon the catamaran. The larger stones punched holes into the deck.

On the starboard hull, a sailor screamed and went down grabbing his shoulder. A bloody limestone shard clattered onto the deck beside him.

Another line of white energy arced down from the airship and struck one of the village staircases, transforming it into a chaos of splinters. Another shower of debris.

Leandra turned, intending to bellow orders to the crew, but found herself lifted into muscular arms. A confusion of crimson text exploded around her. Another flash and thunderclap. For a moment she thought she had been struck by lightning, but then she realized Dhrun had picked her up and was running for the starboard hull.

Indignation jolted through Leandra, and she struggled with the impulse to scold Dhrun or at least deconstruct one of his limbs. But just then a rafter from some blasted village structure crashed onto the forward deck where she had been standing.

Before she could fully appreciate her gratitude, Dhrun hurried them both down a hatch and below the deck of the starboard hull. Above them, Peleki screamed orders and the crew replied with war cries. There followed a double thunderclap, a wail of pain, more war cries.

Through the hatch a square of dawn sky was visible with no sign of the airship. Then came another flash, another thunderclap. Then strange quiet.

Leandra invoked her prophetic godspell, but felt nothing. Lotannu must be in the airship and blinding her to futures his influence created, and there were no longer future hours free of his influence. “What do we do?” Leandra yelled.

“Stay down here!” Dhurn replied.

Leandra looked back up at the hatch and saw that the view of sky had been replaced by dark stone. They had passed into the tunnel. “Put me down!” she yelled. When Dhrun didn't, she hammered her fist against his chest. “Put me down or I'll break you down into loose punctuation, you lumbering heap of paragraphs!”

Dhrun started as if noticing an insect bite and put her down.

Another thunderclap rocked through the ship. Leandra hurried up the hatch. The deck was a mess of stone and wood. Fortunately little rigging had been damaged and the sails were mostly intact. The air felt strange, too warm and wet. There was a strange scent—something of seawater and smoke, something vaguely rotten.

The crew, divided between the two hulls, were stationed with their paddles. Peleki was on the aft center deck, waving his leimako and yelling. As Leandra made her way toward the lieutenant, a flash came from the tunnel's mouth and was followed by a thunderclap, then debris splashing into water. She had taken only a few more steps when another blast tore through the tunnel. Then another. She clapped her hands over her ears but the sound seemed to pass right through them.

Twenty feet behind them, a large chunk of the tunnel roof gave way. What must have been two tons of rock came crashing down into the water. A forceful spray soaked the deck and the resulting wave pushed the catamaran toward the tunnel's opening. The crew did not have to be told to back-paddle to stop the ship from floating out from under its protection.

At last Leandra reached Peleki and put a hand on his shoulder. The man spun around, nearly stuck her with the leimako. “Hey!” she yelled, dancing away.

The lieutenant's face was tense with fear. “My lady—” was all he could get out before another thunderclap deafened them.

“We can't stay here,” Leandra yelled. “They're going to bring the roof down.”

“But they'll catch us with the lightning if we try to—” Another thunderclap. He continued to yell but Leandra could not understand what he was saying until, “—to wait for Holokai to save us.”

Leandra cursed herself. She might have killed their savior. “How could he save us?”

“He will!”

Another flash and thunderclap. Another ton of rock fell from the tunnel behind them into the water.

“How?” Leandra yelled. “How could Holokai save us?”

The lieutenant blinked at her. “He could … he … could pull us.” He gestured forward. “We could run lines from each bow and create a harness below the forward center deck. Other shark gods have done it.”

Leandra felt a flush of relief. It was true that shark and whale deities had pulled their worshipers about on catamarans while they undertook various maritime quests—although, it probably happened more often in tall sea tales than true life. “Rig the harness,” Leandra yelled. “Holokai will save us.”

Peleki nodded and started to reply but was drowned out by another thunderclap. There was something different about this thunderclap. Leandra looked at the ceiling and frowned. The pause that followed was longer than any previous.

Another thunderclap tore through the tunnel and made her jump, but she had seen no flash of lightning and was now certain that the thunderclap was softer. The airship had pulled back. But why should the empire change position when she was so completely trapped?

Leandra turned around and nearly ran her nose into Dhrun's chest. “Burning hells, watch where you're standing,” she said while making her way to the forward center deck. On the prows, the men worked to set up the harness. Another thunderclap echoed through the tunnel. But this time farther away.

“Dhru, I'm going for a swim,” she said while untying her lungi. “Help Peleki keep them calm and busy.”

“This doesn't seem like the best time…” His voice trailed off as she stepped out of her lungi, peeled off her blouse.

She looked back at him in time to find his eyes looking up to meet hers. A blush made his youthful face darker.

She laughed at him. “Here? Now?”

He gave her a four-armed shrug. “Especially here and now. Might be the last thing I see.”

She looked down at her naked body and then up at him. “Well, then I'd better give you something else to see.” She dove, arms outstretched. The blue water was at first bracing and then transformative. The crimson passages that had been Holokai sprang into motion, covering her with textual construction. She became a creature of long muscle, black eyes, white teeth.

On a faraway island, Holokai's devotees were making the dawn devotions, praying for their shark god to destroy the archipelago's enemies. So, as Leandra swam down into the blue, she felt the divine language wrought by such prayers pour into her new body.

The falling rocks had kicked up debris, clouded the water. Leandra saw only a few bright yellow fish flitting along the underwater tunnel walls. With a whip of her tail, she dove with such speed that at first she found it alarming. Water rushed through her mouth and into her gills. Light faded in the depths. A moment later she passed out of the tunnel and into the bay.

She whipped her tail a few times, propelling herself with an exhilarating lurch of speed. When she was far enough away from the island, she rose in wide circles until she was just below the glassy surface of the swells. Here she discovered that though her shark's eyes were sharp enough in dim waters, the bright morning above the waves presented a blurry confusion. With concentrated effort, she discerned Keyway Island and the massive airship flying above it. Surprisingly, lightning arced up from the ship into the sky, at what she could not tell.

She slowed down to better inspect the airship but discovered that she needed to maintain a minimum speed to keep water moving through her gills. She rose up and breached. The sudden, shocking difference between water and air overwhelmed her and prevented her from concentrating on the ship; however, she could tell that she was now almost two miles away from Keyway Island.

Suddenly Leandra realized that she could swim away, out of the Cerulean Strait and into the open ocean. She swam another circle, turned the idea of fleeing over and then discarded it. Her crew was still on the catamaran. What was the point of escaping the empire if it made her as soulless as they were? Or was she soulless already?

She breached again. This time she discerned that the airship was now hovering over the island and slowly rising. Strangely, half of the aft sails seemed to be in disarray. Lightning again arced up into the sky. For a moment, Leandra saw something dark flying nimbly about in the pale blue sky.

Leandra dared to swim closer, her anxiety building. She had a strong suspicion about what was flying over the airship. If correct, Leandra would have to swim as fast as she could back to the catamaran and pray the crew had finished rigging the harness; the airship might not be distracted for long.

When she was as close as she dared go before diving, Leandra breached again and discovered that the airship had risen to a point nearly half a mile above Keyway Island. Far above the ship gamboled a distant dark shape, her auburn scales glinting in the sunlight. A blaze of lightning shot up from the airship toward the figure. The dragon flitted away.

Leandra had been right.

Fiery heaven, Mother, what are you doing?

Leandra's heart filled with guilt and fear. Was Nicodemus dead now? Or in some state worse than death? He had always feared disability, and now he might have awakened from paralysis crippled. Why had Francesca come for her?

Leandra breached one last time to watch her mother dance around lightning. Creator help her avoid it a bit longer. If the lightning struck true, Leandra did not think she could survive the guilt, loveless spell or no.

So Leandra dove deep through the water as her mother swam through the air.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Francesca banked hard right and felt as much as saw the lightning bolt tear through the air where, moments before, she had been flying.

As she dove, Francesca sensed a threat that had nothing to do with the airship throwing lightning at her. The sun now hung above the eastern headlands but shone with a crimson glow more characteristic of dusk than dawn. The horizon seemed too hazy. Even the wind felt strange—too warm and smelling of sulfur.

Francesca rode the wind down until an updraft coming off a large standing island made the air turbulent. Then she worked her wings hard, rising away from the
Empress
as lightning arced from the airship into the sky. Whatever Lotannu had done to protect the airship from Leandra's influence had also made the ship a miserable shot.