The Dreaming Hunt (46 page)

And then, by no means Eben could fathom, the vessel's tall, pointed prow dipped into the swells and caught. A great wave of water passed over the craft, and he ducked frantically along with his friends. But the membrane held in spite of its fragile appearance. They were completely under the surface now, and the light above was fading fast as they descended.

“Welcome to Estarris,” the Merr captain intoned.

Eben looked around in awe. The water was mostly black with streaks of bubbles racing past now and then. The Merr crew held on to poles extending out from the sides of the vessel, propelling the boat with easy kicks of their webbed feet.

Rynn spoke up thoughtfully. “While we are in the business of throwing off the scent of the Imperial hounds, perhaps we should also engage in a misdirection exercise to further confound both hunter and hounds.”

Everyone looked at him questioningly.

He continued, “Normally, one would board a Merr vessel with the intent of crossing the Estarran Sea, yes?”

The Merr captain nodded.

Rynn asked. “What if, instead, we make for Marhul? From there, we might hire passage on another vessel and sail north along the eastern shore. If we disembark north of where we were, perhaps we can pick up the trail of our quarry.”

Eben had never been to the floating island of Marhul. A meeting point for Imperial merchants, Merr traders, and exotic merchants from far-flung lands, legend had it the city was built upon the hull of a leviathan.

Going there was not a half-bad idea. It was neutral territory, and the hunter and his hounds would not be able to attack Eben lest they violate treaties the Empire might have with the Merr.

Let the hunter fruitlessly spend his energy and time trying to figure out how to track him and his scent across the Gulf of Estarra when, in fact, neither he nor his scent would have crossed the sea at all. It was rather diabolical. The harder the hunter tried to reacquire his quarry's scent, the more he would fail. Eben suspected that failure was not an option for the hunter, ergo, the man would fling his hounds over and over at a trail that did not exist.

He nodded at Rynn. “I like it. A lot.”

Grins spread among Merr and humans alike at the idea of outfoxing a brace of Imperial hounds.

The Merr captain gave brisk orders for the crew to come about and proceed north underwater. How they had any idea what north was down here in this featureless abyss, he couldn't imagine.

“You're sure the Imperial hunter won't follow us?” Eben asked the captain.

The Merr bared his teeth in what might be a smile or a threat display. “The only way to travel anywhere in or on this body of water is aboard our vessels or those we grant access. All others we sink. I will put out word that passage might need to be …
scarce
for Imperial hunters and soldiers for a few days. I cannot hold them off forever, but I can give you a lead in your race against the Empire.”

Rynn threw back his head and laughed. Sha'Li joined him first, and one by one the other members of the party joined in. Eben was last to start chuckling, and soon his belly shook with great gusts of humor. They'd done it. They had escaped what looked like certain capture by the hounds and, furthermore, had left the Empire behind. They still had enemies who might pursue them and unknown dangers ahead, but succeed or fail in their other quests, this had turned out to be a good day.

The silence down here was as deep and dark as the sea enveloping them. The pervasive water all around Eben overwhelmed his senses. He smelled it and tasted it, he felt it on his skin and in his gut. It was everywhere, pressing in on him, drowning him. Too much. The earthen part of him only faintly registered the seabed far below, obscured by the one element to which he'd always shown no affinity. Gads, he hated water.

As his stress grew, it twisted around him like living ropes, binding him more and more tightly. He was going to choke on it soon. If he did not find escape from all this wetness, he would lose his mind.

Mayhap he exhausted himself with fighting off the panic, or mayhap he was just tired from the fight. But either way, he slid off the bench, curled into an awkward ball in the bottom of the boat, and closed his eyes.

 

CHAPTER

23

“Arise now, children of the elements,” called a thunderous voice that resonated deep within Eben's spirit.

He looked around at the white mist obscuring everything beyond a small, verdant clearing. His friends slept around a campfire as they usually did, but he did not recall how they'd come to be in this place.

Rising from his bed of earth, the air heavy with fog beneath the pines, he reached out to wake Sha'Li. She got up and squatted on her heels, holding her hands out to the fire. The strength of Urth flowed into his bare feet, and he drew a long, cool breath as Sha'Li poked at the fire with a stick, stirring glowing embers.

“Heed the call of Llyrando, the Crushing Wave. Come and be recognized,” roared a voice in the distance. It pulled Eben forward like the rush of a mountain stream.

“Sha'Li, did you hear that?” he whispered. “Did you feel it?”

“Heed the call of Imogen, the Mother of Crystal. Come and be recognized,” called another voice, clear and true.

“Wood this fire needs,” Sha'Li remarked. “Alone is the cold heart that does not hear.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, confused. “Did you hear those voices or not?”

“Heed the call of Cyndra, the Crowning Flame. Come and be recognized,” proclaimed yet another voice like a light in the darkness, showing him the way.

“Always told were we, listen not to voices in our heads,” Sha'Li replied. He stared at her, completely flummoxed, as she tossed more wood on the fire. “Sleep again, Eben. Light comes early.”

The breeze picked up strength, conveying warmth through his body while Sha'Li shivered by the fire.

“Heed the call of Arcus, the Coming Storm. Come and be recognized,” sounded another voice. The call brought with it the feeling of a warm summer breeze, drawing him forward.

Frustrated, he muttered, “I know I heard that.”

A tendril of fog rolled forward, nudging Eben to go. As he reached down to jostle Will, the first voice echoed in the mist, “Let those who would be free gather here. Do not fear your brothers and sisters.”

As the mist around him cleared, Eben began to make out shapes. He saw buttes beneath rolling clouds, unmistakably the blunt crags of the mountain range known as the Wings of Haelos. Upon a platform-shaped butte that jutted out from the others stood a creature of cloud. Lightning flashed in his form while his edges flowed in the wind. To his left shimmered a woman in golden fire, to his right stood a man with arms like waves, and behind stood a female figure cut of crystal. Even at this distance, Eben could taste their elemental power, hear their substance, and feel their call.

He continued onward in the embrace of the breeze.

As the rest of the fog faded, he made out a vast army before him. Eben had never seen so many jann in one place. Looking west, he made out the silver sands of the Thirst, the great desert sprawling west of the Estarran Sea. Red-crested lizardmen stood among the jann there, and pyresti gathered on its shimmering earth. North, beyond the butte, Eben heard the sharp cut of crystalline facets in the breeze. He saw urthen dwarves bound to the power of stone, assembled with more jann and others hidden in the ktholes—the ancient underground rivers—of the crags.

“Welcome all, storm fellows, fire forged, stone born, and sea spawned!”

The thundering voice reverberated through Eben's heart. He continued drifting forward, noting people of many elementally aligned races in the masses before him.

A man in strange gray robes covered in runes appeared beside the elementals on the butte. On his right hand he wore a gauntlet of ancient design with four glowing blazons above the knuckles. Next to him, a shadowy form stood tall over a small child in rags.

The robed man shouted, “No longer shall we be divided! The boons granted to ye mark ye as offspring of powers more ancient than the interlopers who seek to divide us. Join us in taking back the powers of your birth. Join us in the freedom to be whatever you choose. Ye are the heirs to greatness!”

The assembly roared its approval.

It was then that Eben tasted snow. He looked back to the east and spied the white peaks of the Heaves, far away in Dupree. Upon the closest peak stood a man in strange armor with the look of a glacier, cold light escaping its plates. Whoever he might be, this man was more powerful than all the jann, ikonesti, and snowscales standing before him. The warrior spoke words Eben could not hear to those assembled at his feet and then strode back into the Heaves.

Eben started at the familiar touch of his sister's water energy upon his spirit. She was somewhere near. He looked around frantically.

Beyond the horde, a young woman pulled back the hood of a black mantle wreathed in bronze flames. Marikeen stepped clear of the crowd to stand before the assembled elementals and humans on the butte. Why could he not sense her before? Did that strange robe mask her?

“My great lords and ladies, I am called Marikeen. I stand before you a child of the elements, ready to do your will that I may claim my birthright.”

He had found her at last! Eben cried out with all his breath, “Marikeen! Your brother is here!” He charged forward, pushing through the crowd as fast as he could. As he drew closer to the butte, it shrank until it was but a few heads above the horde. The Heaves and Thirst fell away, but the crowd remained.

The gauntleted man approached the platform's edge. “I see in ye great power, young Marikeen. Your offer doth please us. Upon ye we bestow the knowledge of summoning. From this night forth, ye may call upon the infinite forces of the pure ones to enact our will.”

With that, the child in rags held out a strange book, glowing with symbols of power. The gauntleted man bowed his head in respect, took the book from the child, and handed it to Marikeen.

Eben still fought through the press of bodies as Marikeen opened the tome. Light poured from the pages, illuminating her face. Her elemental markings reflected the power emanating from the book, and as quickly as it began, the spectacle was over.

“Use thy new spell, young one. Show those assembled here your power,” demanded the gauntleted man.

Marikeen called magic to her hands, the left one iridescent blue like the water mark upon her face, the right one arboreal brown. “Harken Guuri, Harken Wiisen!” Marikeen called.

Eben broke free of the crowd and ran toward his sister. Abruptly, he was picked up and thrown backward above the horde with the force of a hundred gales. For a moment, he spied the shadow that had been standing beside the child on the butte accepting a battle thorn from an orc bearing the markings of a thane, a horrible vertical scar across his left eye. Ki'Raiden? What was he doing here?

Even as Eben flew through the air, the shadow changed and formed into another Boki thane, older but with the look of Ki'Raiden about him.

Beside Marikeen, there appeared two creatures, a stone humanoid twice as tall as she and a writhing watery form. Elementals. A prideful grin wreathed her features.

In the suspended moment of his flight, Eben saw Ki'Raiden hand a wedge of shiny black stone with golden writing on it to the child. Lastly, Eben caught a brief glimpse of Ki'Raiden holding out something blade shaped and bone white.

Eben's world turned black.

Into the darkness, the child spoke. “Such a fine prize, this Dragonfang. You shall have my support, Raiden, son of Daro, Ki of the Thornwold.”

A sinister, childish giggle echoed through his mind.

Eben woke with a start. His companions all dozed around him. Sweat drenched his clothing. What in the name of the four elements had
that
dream been all about?

*   *   *

Will peered through the transparent shell and realized they were skimming along the top of trees. Trees? Underwater? “What is that?” he asked in surprise.

“A forest,” the Merr captain answered wryly. “What do you call a large cluster of trees where you come from?”

Will scowled. “We call it a forest, too.” He paused, then added, “But it's underwater.”

The Merr frowned. “That's Morvadul, the Forest Under the Waves. And aye, we have cities and farms and roads down here, as well. We are not savages, you know.”

Apparently, he did not know. He'd never given much thought to how Merr might live underwater. He'd had some vague notion of them swimming about in packs like schools of fish, he supposed, hunting for whatever it was they ate. He turned to Sha'Li and muttered, “Do your kind have underwater cities, too?”

She threw him a look that could only be unadulterated scorn. “Of course, ignorant land walker.” She added under her breath, “Nothing so grand as the Merr citadels, but plenty nice.”

Huh. Who knew?

“Is that actual light I see overhead?” he asked in surprise.

Sha'Li glanced up. “Ascending we are. Feel it in your ears do you not?”

Now that she mentioned it, his ears did register a strange sucking sensation. “Are we finally going to get out of this miserable prison?” he asked.

The Merr captain responded, “Do not impugn this vessel, boy. It's saving your ugly pink hide and that of your friends.”

“You are correct, sir. My apology for insulting your fast, sturdy ship.”