The Golden Shield of IBF (27 page)

In the end, as the crippled Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was about to slip off the edge and into the trough, to be devoured within the monstrous cyclonic wave, the Gle’Ur’Gya mariner manipulated his sword one last time. His right hand, which grasped the hilt, was almost beside his right ear, the sword’s pommel angled rearward and slightly upward, the point of the blade stabbing aggressively forward. His left palm was open, fingers extended, his hand—at once a target and a shield—was thrust toward this enemy which he could not kill.

The Gle’Ur’Gya ship careened over the trough’s edge and vanished. An instant afterward, fragmented portions of the vessel’s hull were visible along the leading edge of the cyclonic wave, then gone.

Alan Garrison didn’t know why his eyes sought out Gar’Ath’s face but when they found it, he saw the swordsman’s eyes swam with tears.

The Gle’Ur’Gya’s fate would be theirs in moments, Garrison realized.

Faster and faster, Swan’s hands flew with blinding rapidity, the speed of the wind which propelled their five craft increasing and increasing. Swan’s greatcape was ripped from her shoulders, blinding Garrison for a second, then jerked away from his face. Her braid began to loosen, came apart, her spray-drenched hair whipping across Garrison’s eyes. The sleeves of Swan’s dress sheared, her bodice, her skirt shredding nearly to rags.

There were loud cracking sounds, one after the other. Garrison twisted his neck around to look forward. Oars were snapping like matchsticks, wooden fragments caught up in the wind, firing along the deck. If enough holes were shot into their solitary sail, it would shred in microseconds.

Garrison turned his head, looking aft, his body wedged hard behind Swan’s. Garrison squinted against the wind, and his lips were set wide apart, rictus-like. Wave after wave of spray launched over them, Garrison choking with it.

The cyclonic wave was frighteningly nearer, the trough’s boundary readying its first kiss to their stern. Their wake was nearly eradicated by the reverse current into the trough.

Swan’s body went rigid against Garrison, her hands and arms thrusting upward in one last summoning. The wind pushing them rose to her command. Garrison lost his grip, stumbling back. Swan’s body hurtled past him. Garrison grabbed for her, caught her ankle. Her body slammed to the deck and both of them skidded along the spray-slicked planking. Garrison reached out with his other hand, clawing for a hold. He caught his fingers around a rail stanchion, his wrist breaking. He knew that he shouted with the pain, but he heard nothing but the roaring wind.

Garrison held on, wedging one foot against the ledge of an oarsman’s well.

At last, he heard something over the shriek of rushing air, the sound he’d anticipated and most feared hearing. It was the thunderous crack of their mast snapping in two. Their square-rigged sail held its integrity for an instant longer, the mast’s upper section rigidly suspended on the wind. The sail billowed outward, the broken segment of mast arcing backward, almost upright for a split second. Then, it snapped forward, like a thrown knife. Their little ship shuddered, the sail torn in two. Garrison looked aft. All light was obliterated, the cyclonic wave towering over them.

The wind which had driven them in their desperate gambit, simultaneously ally and enemy, began to subside.

A new roar, louder than the wind, replaced its sound.

Garrison stared into the cyclonic wave. It seemed to be on all sides of them at once.

In his peripheral vision, Garrison caught sight of some of the oarsmen, trying to clamber back to their positions. Gar’Ath was slumped over the tiller, dead or unconscious.

The cyclonic wave edged nearer, and Garrison knew that their ship was slipping back, the reverse current dragging them into the trough. Garrison turned his head forward, for one last glimpse of Swan. He truly loved her; and, if somehow some part of them went on, he would love her even after death, he realized.

Garrison looked up. The sky, still cloud impacted, seemed oddly bright. He looked over the starboard rail. The other four ships were motionless on the water, the nearest only a hundred yards or so out. The Company of Mir crewmen were waving their arms, their oars, their swords.

“Holy shit!” Garrison gasped.

He let go of Swan’s ankle, let go of the stanchion. Broken wrist or not, as he crawled forward on his knees, his eyes scanned the deck for something he could use as an oar. He found an actual oar, part of the shaft furthest from the blade broken away. Garrison plunged the oar into the water. He shouted, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Row! We’re nearly inside the aura! Row!” It was futile, one man gouging an oar’s blade into the sea, but Alan Garrison did it anyway.

He thought he heard Swan’s voice, but it could have been his mind playing tricks on him. Garrison looked up from the water.

Her dress in tatters, left arm bleeding, hair plastered half across her face, Swan stood amidships, a broken piece of oar in her right hand, raised high over her head. She flung it into the air and it remained motionless. There was a flash of light, a vortex forming around the fragment.

And, oars, perfect and new, fell from the vortex, onto the deck. The Company of Mir oarsmen ran to them, picked them up, ran back to their positions, thrust them into their locks.

The little ship was moving, painfully slowly.

Pain consumed Alan Garrison, but also drove him on. Bone was visible through his skin, blood oozing down his hand from the puncture. With his armpit over the oar shaft, for added leverage, Garrison kept at it.

Lower.

Thrust.

Drag.

Raise.

Rotate.

Then again, and again, and again.

Garrison didn’t look back for what seemed to be several seconds, but time in Creath followed other rules, rules he did not understand. Perhaps Swan was somehow controlling it, using time itself to aid them.

Lower. Thrust. Drag. Raise. Rotate. Again. Again.

Alan Garrison looked back.

The cyclonic wave was only a little closer.

Lower. Thrust. Drag. Raise. Rotate. Faster! Again. Faster! Again...again...again...again—

Garrison looked back once more. The cyclonic wave had gotten no closer.

Lower. Thrust. Drag. Raise. Rotate. Faster! Again. Faster! Again...again...again—“Al'An!”

No time to talk, he wanted to say, but there was no time to say even that.

“Al’An. We are safe inside the summer palace’s aura. Evil magic cannot harm us here.”

Garrison started to laugh. Someone had once told him that the first thing anybody usually did when they thought they were having a heart attack was to try to drive to the hospital. It was a way of going into denial. Hearing Swan’s voice telling him that they were safe was his mind lying to him because his body hurt so much. He wouldn’t take his eyes off the oar that he still moved to lower, thrust, drag, raise and rotate. He couldn’t take his eyes off the oar or he would stop rowing and they’d die.

“Al’An, brave Al’An.”

Alan Garrison thought he felt Swan’s hand touch his brow, then darkness swept over him.

Chapter Eleven

Swan blinked the sleep away from her eyes. The cyclonic wave straining uselessly against a magical barrier which it could not pass loomed over her, was omnipresent. Its roaring was and had been unceasing, but now she was only dimly aware of the cacophonous howl. The noise had not awakened her even once during the night, nor did it awaken Al’An, who slept beside her still.

She looked aft along the littered deck of their all-but-ruined ship. Bodies would heal—she’d seen to that—and structures would be repaired, by means natural or otherwise. What mattered was that the Company of Mir had survived her mother’s evil magic one more time.

Swan was frightened, but not by the cyclonic wave, which would eventually dissipate, nor by her mother’s power. This latter was dangerous beyond imagining; yet it was something she had long since ceased to fear. Fearing her mother’s magic would have been an exercise in futility. Eran’s evil was like a force of nature, always there, inevitable, waiting to strike. Rather, Swan respected its awesome capabilities and rationally chose to resist its tyranny.

What filled an inexorably expanding segment of Swan’s consciousness with unreasoning dread was her own magical power.

Her magic was becoming stronger, draining from her less quickly, replenishing itself more rapidly. Swan didn’t know why. Her wind summoning had amazed her, curiously terrified and intrigued her. She had enjoyed it for itself, beyond its being a necessity by means of which she might save all of their lives.

Like an angry beast at the end of some unbreakable tether, the towering cyclonic wave continued to threaten, glared back defiantly under her gaze. Yet it was unable to trespass within the aura of the summer palace, because evil magic was its very substance.

When she had first met Al’An, he might well have contended that there had to be some explanation other than magic for the wave, or for the creatures they’d battled on Arba’Il’Tac; after enduring all that had befallen them, she knew that he believed. Accepting the reality of that which was indisputably obvious was never a test of faith, of course, and magic was reality in Creath. Yet she was pleased that Al’An accepted this reality. In Al’An’s realm, although magic surely existed, evidently its presence was not readily apparent to the untrained observer.

If, somehow, the cyclonic wave had been a naturally occurring anomaly, rather than the manifestation of evil magic, its strength would have rapidly depleted upon entering the aura, the phenomenon soon vanquished by the power of good magic. But the wave would have intercepted them just inside the aura, while there was yet strength enough remaining in it to destroy their little armada. The aura might have saved them from death, but Swan could not be certain.

Wrapped in two blankets and a borrowed greatcape, Swan and Al’An had huddled the night together against the stump of their ship’s broken mast. Carefully, lest she awaken Al’An, Swan sat up, stood up.

Before taking her own rest, Swan had seen to the wounds of the Company of Mir, resisting the impulse of her woman’s heart to first take away the pain of Al’An’s broken wrist. There had been others more seriously injured, more needful of her magic. The energy necessary for her to magically transport herself to each of the other four ships in turn had drained her, almost more than she could bear. Unnatural magic was always the most fatiguing. Accelerating the healing of wounds, on the other hand, required virtually no magical energy at all.

A night’s sleep at anchor within the summer palace’s aura recharged her, however. Swan felt the magical energy coursing through her, strong and nearly full.

She never dreamed in the way that mortals dreamed. Her sleep was a perfect rest, especially within the aura. And, between exhaustion and having Al’An beside her, the sleep she’d taken could not have been deeper. Nor could any rest have better prepared her for what lay ahead: the attempt once again to cross Woroc’Il’Lod, then march on Barad’Il’Koth.

Swan was still attired in tatters, the greatcape clutched close about her for the dual purposes of modesty and warmth. She approached the portside rail. The two ships anchored some distance off the bow had raised no distress flags. As agreed upon, they would do so should any of the injured require additional magical attention.

The company of her little ship, save for a single warrior on watch at the stern, slept against the rails, in the oarsmen’s wells, wherever they could. She had spellcast over all aboard the five ships that their sleep should be peaceful and long. As silently as she could, lest she unnecessarily rouse any of the exhausted, Swan approached the starboard rail, ascertaining that no flags summoning her had been raised aboard either of the other two ships anchored nearby.

There was much to do and little time in which to do it.

Although the wave still taunted them, lurked in wait for them, it would eventually disappear. Sustaining the cyclonic wave required an enormous expenditure of magical energy. Even if the Handmaidens had assisted their Queen Sorceress in its creation, had formed their great circle six by six, only the Queen Sorceress herself could be maintaining the cyclonic wave for this long a time. In any case, when the cyclonic wave finally vanished, her mother’s magical energy would be dangerously low, urgently require renewal.

Swan, too, had used precious energy, but not as much as she would have used had she attempted to dispel the cyclonic wave rather than outdistance it. And within the summer palace’s aura, magical energy returned extremely quickly, even under normal circumstances. Her mother, Eran, did not have that advantage.

By the time that the cyclonic wave vanished, what Al’An called “Swan’s Armada” would have to be fully ready to set sail for Edge Land, and at best speed.

If she was the Company of Mir’s leader, the Virgin Enchantress, Daughter Royal, Princess of Creath, she’d have to see to it that she looked her part. Glancing toward the stern rail and reassuring herself that the warrior on watch was not looking her way, Swan shrugged out of the borrowed greatcape. She was nearly naked beneath it, her dress torn in places no maiden’s dress should ever be torn.

Swan raised her hands, fingers level with the crown of her head, then envisioned the style of hair and raiment she desired. Drawing her fingers down slowly along her body, her hair arranged itself, her tatters vanished, replaced by attire nearly identical to what she had worn before the storm. Her new dress was deep maroon, rather than the dark green color which coordinated with the shawl made for her by Bin’Ah’s wife; the shawl had blown overboard and was lost.

Again, Swan raised her fingers to the crown of her head, then drew them downward, and a black, fur-ruffed hooded greatcape spell-woven to protect her against the cold emerged. Swirling its skirt close about her, Swan tossed back its hood.

Theirs was the most severely battered of the five ships, and logically so. From this ship, she had controlled the wind and this ship had felt the greatest rush of its power. And this had been the rearmost of the five because it had been ahead of the other four prior to having to come about. Although the other vessels had sustained damage, it was minor. Hence, her own vessel—Al’An called it the Armada’s “flagship”—would require the most rebuilding. There was little that Swan could do about repairing the ship immediately, however. Even by magical means, there would be a great deal of noise.