Star Mage (Book 5) (12 page)

She thanked him as he withdrew a handkerchief and wiped her face clean and offered her some water that soothed her parched throat. The waves did subside a bit, and in her now feverish mind she imagined them waning and the wild thrashing of the ship subsiding more and more.

“It’s getting better.” Talis’s soft voice calmed her anxiety, and as she joined him in studying the sea, she could tell the truth in his words. They still waited for a long while more, and in their watchfulness Mara could feel the fever flourish and her face was so hot that she craved the diminishing rain, cool and calming on her forehead and cheeks. She opened her mouth to say something, and Talis interpreted this as a desire for water. He poured more of the wonderful liquid into her mouth and she drank and drank, but the coolness of it only seemed to fuel her rising fever.
 

“You’re dripping with sweat!” Talis said, and wiped her brow. “Did I give you too much heat of the sun when I cast the spell?”

Mara shook her head and gave him a feeble smile of encouragement. “I think I’m ok to go down and rest. Can you help me? I feel all wobbly and weak.”

As he helped her stand, the weight of her drenched backpack strained her shoulders. They hobbled together towards the stairwell leading below deck, and despite the still unsettling movement of the ship, they made it down and into Mara’s small cabin, where at her insistence, he’d snuck in and stayed with her each night.
 

“Can you stay with me for a while?” She let her heavy backpack drop to the ground, but kept it close as she felt the twin daggers calling out to her in warning. When she and Talis had first enjoyed the freedom of the smuggler’s cove, her mind had raged about leaving the daggers behind when Talis asked her to go swimming in the sea. In her silent entreaty, she begged the daggers to loosen their chain of torment, vowing to never leave them if they agreed to withhold the pain. This had allowed her to swim in the ocean unfettered, and roam around the cove blissfully unbothered.

But since their journey aboard the Emperor’s Revenge, the daggers had proven jealous, guarded masters, and had insisted that Mara keep close to them, especially with all the danger lurking around.
I really should tell Talis
, she thought,
if he knew he might be able to help me.
Or he might judge you,
a sinister voice told her. The voice of the Nameless, the voice that she’d heard in the Ruins of Elmarr. The voice she knew craved the death of all living beings. The utter disintegration of the individual into the consumption of the whole. And that voice had promised her—
 

“What was that?” Talis said, and peered into her eyes with a concerned expression on his face. He mopped her brow with tender strokes, and offered her more drink. “You were mumbling something about a promise…”

She shook her head and gave him a disarming smile. “The fever must be affecting my mind. I was thinking back to our trip across Lorello, and when you saved me in that horrible graveyard. I really owe you so much, Talis. And you saved me again, you saved this ship from destruction—”

He pressed a soft finger to her lips to quiet her. “You should rest and get some sleep.”

But she didn’t want to sleep. She felt her heart open in tenderness and love towards him and didn’t want to close her eyes. A soft light was shining in through the porthole, and the sight of his beautiful face lured her to study all the contours of his forehead and nose and cheeks and ears. Above his lips, a soft fuzz was forming, and she knew it would one day grow into a beard like his father. She loved him for the man he’d become one day, strong and stern and proud, but still with the same kind eyes that fell softly on hers. She willed that he would one day love her as she loved him now.

When he moved to sleep in the top bunk, she opened her mouth and spoke in a hoarse voice, “Stay with me, there’s room for you here. I don’t want to sleep by myself.”

He nodded and she slid further in and made room for him to crawl in beside her, and she could feel his body shivering a bit. Mara came out of her feverish state for a moment and realized they were still wearing wet clothes. “We should take off these clothes…we’re going to get sick.”

Talis’s face went shy at her suggestion, so she squirmed out of bed and locked the door to their cabin, and as he stood, she turned him around while she pulled off her soaked pants and shirt, and dove under the blanket. She grinned at the expression of embarrassment on his face, but she refused to look away, finding herself curious and bold in her feverish state.

He gave her an annoyed expression as he unbuttoned his shirt, but she just grinned in a wild look of delirium and watched in wonder as he pulled down his pants and scrambled under the covers. She felt his soft skin and a strange sensation tingled across her body as he wiggled in next to her. An excited giggle escaped her lips, the kind of girlish giggle she hated hearing from the practiced mouths of pretty girls fawning over the attention of young men. But his sparkling eyes dilated in response and he fixed his gaze on her, and only looked away after a flush appeared on his face.

“You’re shivering,” she whispered, and stretched out her hands to wrap around his trembling arms. Likely embarrassed of their close proximity, he turned his back to her and she found her fingers feeling along the curve of his shoulder as it dove down along his arm. His body quivered in response. The fever flushed sweat again from her pores, and her mind felt muddled but wildly awake and alert. Her body acted with its own volition and she scooted up to press her chest against his back and she snaked her arm around him and felt his heart pounding against her palm.

“Are you sleepy?” Mara said, and found her throat dry and raspy. He shuffled in response and twisted himself around to face her once again.
 

“I don’t know if it’s such a good idea for us to be like this.” His voice sounded unconvinced of his own words. Mara was unable to think as her mind was absorbed in the sensation of his quick exhalations wafting along her neck.

“I just want to hold you, that’s all.” She saw that her smile caused him to part his lips. “Is it wrong for us to just hold each other?”

He shook his head and awkwardly wrapped his arms around her, but still kept a distance between them as they held each other. A bead of sweat slid down and stung her eye with its saltiness. She blinked and wiped her brow and Talis ran a cotton cloth across her forehead.

“You’re still feverish.” His voice was softer and resigned now, as if he was no longer nervous to be lying next to her. But he still kept a safe distance, and soon turned to lie on his back.

But Mara was still feverish and found herself daring and careless about his sense of propriety. She snuggled in close to him and wrapped her arm over his now sweating chest and surprised herself by sliding her leg over his, and immersed herself in the new sensation of his skin against her thigh. Instead of responding to her movements, she was disappointed as he closed his eyes, and whispered groggily, “We should sleep.”

After fidgeting around for a while, a wave of weariness washed over her mind and she found the images of exuberant faces luring her into the dream world. She followed the people down a long, shimmering corridor of white marble, and was greeted by a celebration complete with cheering and the raising of flutes of crystal glass filled with fizzing wine. Over and over she toasted and drank the sweet, fragrant liquid, and found the frenzy of the festivities lifting her spirits to a place of reckless abandonment. She danced with handsome young men dressed in radiant blue robes of the finest silk. Her raised hands snaked and slithered in poetic movements, causing her dancing partners to rave in exaltation at her sensuous swirling.

Laughter poured from her mouth and she danced and drank again, more each time, until the feeling of freedom and fury possessed her in a singular sensation. All the while a deep, immoral voice whispered in her ear, urging her to drink again, and dance more, and relinquish all thoughts and worries into the fire of her new freedom. Her body writhed and twisted and shook, until the world wheeled around in a whirlwind of sights and smells and sounds.

She collapsed on the ground, heart hammering in her chest, and she found her arms draped over Talis, her breath panting and quick, and they were kissing in a wild frenzy, his excited eyes adoring her in an animalistic rush.

The way Master Holoron scanned the air surrounding Nikulo’s head, it was as if the wizard were probing for invisible threads of energy still attached to his brain. The pain had vanished. Nikulo blinked and yawned and stretched his shoulders and found that the world was lighter and imbued with a kind of protective bubble that stretched around his body. Was he truly free of the agony and the voices? Or would they return once again, stronger and more violent than ever, bent on his total annihilation.

“You’ve finally come back from the void.” The old historian’s serious face scowled at him as if displeased by what he saw in Nikulo. “The foreign consciousness followed you all the way to the very edge of the void, but then retreated in horror from the nothingness of it all. I was able to observe them as they followed you there and as they fled back to the surface of shining consciousness, where all life feeds and nurtures itself away from the thoughtless void.”

“They call themselves Naemarians.” Nikulo was surprised at the gentleness of his voice, so unlike the timbre of his voice over the last few weeks since the affliction had seized him. And even his thoughts were different and through some new lens viewed the strangeness of his old thoughts and actions with a kind of perplexed feeling of disgust. Had he really done all those terrible things?

A frown creased Master Holoron’s brow. “And they exist on that other world you visited?”

“There and here, and they claim they are in many worlds, in the water of the deepest springs, from the primordial water of the universe. The water that brought life to all worlds from the heavens.” Nikulo found his fists clenched in fury. “Those entities are utterly mad and crave a powerful fragment I found when I was in the World of Vellia, a fragment that belongs to the Starwalkers.”

“As a historian, your words fascinate me to no end. But as a historian who has only studied texts from the known archives, I’m completely baffled. Who are these Starwalkers and Naemarians? Tell me your tale, tell of your experiences, tell your old history teacher stories to fill his future volumes. We’ve all the time in the world. I’ve lured and slain the Jiserian sorcerers that were foolish enough to show their faces. The City of Ursula is once again in the hands of the people, thanks to you and those ill prepared but persistent revolutionaries.”

Still suspicious of his freedom, and mindful of the Naemarian’s command to board the ship for Carvina, Nikulo addressed Master Holoron once more. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“For three days…three long days in the void. Those beings called the Naemarians were incredibly tenacious and quite unwilling to give you up. That fragment of yours must have been of utmost importance for them to acquire.”

“And am I really free of them?”

A dark cloud crossed the old historian’s face. “I fear that you will never be completely free of the Naemarians. And perhaps in the future you will wish their counsel from time to time. However, my power now blocks their influence on your mind, and I will teach you the spell to block them from hurting you and to prevent their thoughts from intruding on yours. You will learn to control them…in time.”

A mixture of anxiety and relief fell over Nikulo at the wizard’s words, and he could not fathom why he would ever want the Naemarian’s counsel. At Master Holoron’s prodding, he began telling him the story of their journey to Chandrix and to the World of Vellia and his discovery of the Naemarians in the ancient spring above Illumina.
 

Twilight fell outside when he had finished telling the main parts of the story, but he failed to tell his old master of his slaying of the caravan owner and of his time with Callith, other than to mention her in passing. The old historian raised an eyebrow and addressed him once more.

“She is waiting most devoutly for you, my young pupil. It seems you’ve made quite an impression on her.”

Nikulo smiled at that, and feeling in need of moving his body, pushed himself out of bed and stretched and found life stirring through him in an electric rush. He followed Master Holoron out of the sumptuous chamber and strode down to great dining hall where he was greeted by Callith and Yarin and several of the men he recognized from their bumbling campaign against the Jiserians.

“At last you are recovered, Master Nikulo?” Yarin was now dressed in a fine white silk robe and his once ash-stained face was now pristine and proud. “We’ve done it at last! Our fair city by the sea is now back in the hands of the people. And the Jiserians are slain and our citizens are in the process of cleaning the streets and rebuilding the city. Won’t you sit and enjoy a drink before dinner?”