Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4)

Two Fingers unwound eight heavy ropes fastened to hooks at the stem of the ship and flung them over the side. He stationed himself at the stem. While the boat rocked on incoming waves, he drew a bone flute out of his pouch and began to play.

They came, first, like ripples in the water. Two creatures reared up from the waves, their bodies glistening as foam spilled around them. They wore faces that had a vaguely human shape, with the sharp teeth of a predator. The skin of their faces and their shoulders and torsos had a sheeny, slick texture, as pale as maggots. The first dove, swiftly, and slapped the surface of the water with a muscular tail.

Alain stared. “He’s summoned the merfolk! I never thought—” He reeled as the boat rocked under his feet. How long had it been since he had dreamed of Stronghand?

But he was dead, wasn’t he? The dead did not dream, and he had not dreamed of Stronghand since the centaur shaman had brought him to Adica’s side. In a way, staring at the sea, it was like dreaming of Stronghand all over again.

If he was already dead, then he could not die again, even from a poisoned snake bite. He laughed, grasped Adica’s shoulder, and turned her so that he could kiss her on the cheek.

“Maybe the poison makes you lose your wits,” muttered Laoina.

Adica’s frowning apprehension was as strong as the salt smell of the sea, yet she was too practical to weep and moan. She crouched in the boat and began to rummage through her pack while, as Two Fingers played the flute, the merfolk circled in reluctantly.

A second pair arrived, and a third, and suddenly the boat lurched under Alain, and he sat down hard onto the floorboards, clutching at the side with his good hand. His staff clattered against the sternpost. He caught it just before it tumbled into the water. The hounds settled down, whining softly. Laoina spoke soft words, as though she were praying, and stared in wonder and horror as the merfolk caught the ropes in their clawed hands and, to the tune of Two Fingers’ flute, pulled the boat onto the sea.

A fourth pair arrived, then a fifth and a sixth, until there were always some circling and some towing, their bodies a slick curve against the dark waters. The strand and the cliff receded until even the gleam of the crippled ship left stranded on the beach vanished from sight.

Alain’s arm throbbed steadily, all the way up to the armband. His ears rang slightly, and he felt feverish, or maybe he was only shivering because of the wind and the cold sea spray.

“Drink this.” Adica set the rim of a leather cup to his lips, and he swallowed obediently. Afterward, she pressed a cool mash against the swollen bite and wrapped it tightly under a bit of wool cloth.

Night fell. Alain could not see the merfolk at all, yet the salt spray stung his lips and eyes and the boat heaved and danced under him as they pressed onward. His hair, his clothing, his skin: all were sticky with salt. Adica had fallen asleep under her fur cloak.

He dozed, and woke, cold, damp, and miserable with his head pillowed on Sorrow’s massive back. Two Fingers stood tall and straight by the sternpost, playing. Alain knew a spell when he heard one. Should Two Fingers falter, they might well be abandoned here in the middle of the sea, left to drift and, finally, die of thirst despite the wealth of water. Alain found a waterskin but drank sparingly, even though he had gotten very thirsty.

For a long while he sat in silence, in the darkness, his hand and arm hurting too much to let him sleep, as the boat split the waters and raced onward. The merfolk made clicking sounds so muted that at first he thought it was the hounds’ nails ticking on wood. But the pitch and distance of these clicks changed and shifted: in this way the merfolk communicated each to the others, punctuated by sudden wild hoots and spits of water arcing skyward.

He swam in and out of waking as he shivered, dreaming that he could understand their talk: “Turn them out of their shell and into the world so we can eat them. Nay, the queen bids us. We cannot refuse her song.”

Sometimes when they changed direction, swells hit them sideways and water spilled over the side. Every time cold seawater sluiced around his feet, he bailed while the hounds whimpered. Here, out on the sea, the two hounds scarcely resembled the fearsome creatures they were on land. To the merfolk, whose element this was, the dogs would no doubt be nothing more than a tidy morsel gulped down. Nor could the human passengers expect any mercy. He didn’t like to think of what would happen to one who fell over the side.

The rhythm of the waves chopping at the underside of the boat lulled him into a doze even as his blood pulsed hotly in his hand. He slept fitfully, dreaming of a great chasm opening in the heavens as the earth split beneath his feet and plunged him into an abyss with no bottom into which he fell and fell and fell.… He had sworn to protect her, just as he had sworn to protect Lavastine, and now he had failed.

“Alain.”

He started awake, almost crying out in relief to find that it was Adica, alive and well, shaking him gently. Her face was a shadow against the sky, like a ghost, nothing more than eyes, nose, and mouth.

“I feared for you, beloved.” She touched his lips, brushed her fingers lightly over his forehead, and checked his pulse at his throat.

“I am well enough.” He tested his hand but still could not flex it. It felt stiff as a board and twice as large as normal. But he could bend his elbow, very slowly.

Up by the stem, Laoina crouched behind Two Fingers, staring into the sea.

“You must see.” Adica’s voice had an odd hitch in it.

The waters sang around them, an eerie lilt, like the sea wind streaming through a hundred whistles. Light gleamed from the watery depths. He crawled over the nets splayed over the ballast and, clinging to the side, looked out over the waters.

There was a city under the sea.

A whorl of light, like a vast shell, spread across the seabed below them. It seemed to go on and on and on in a tangle of curving walls, accretions of alabaster or palest living shell coated with phosphorus that pulsed in time to the waves above, or some respiration of the sea unknown and unknowable to him and to all creatures who live in the world of air.

A crowd of merfolk rose to the brink of sea and sky to swarm around the ship. They, too, seemed trapped by Two Finger’s flute. Their dance, as they swam in tight circles and spirals, winding in and out around the ship as it streamed through the waters, seemed born as much out of resentment as enchantment. Magic binds. They were powerless against the spell he wove.

At times, a pair of merfolk streaked in, taking over the ropes; the tired pair melted away, lost as they sank into the darkness. Their clicking and singing serenaded their voyage, yet it was no restful lullaby. ‘What lies beyond the Quickening? How can magic out of the thin world bind us? We could eat them if it weren’t for that shell. Do they breathe in the Slow, too?’

rth pair arrived, then a fifth and a sixth, until there were always some circling and some towing, their bodies a slick curve against the dark waters. The strand and the cliff receded until even the gleam of the crippled ship left stranded on the beach vanished from sight.

Alain’s arm throbbed steadily, all the way up to the armband. His ears rang slightly, and he felt feverish, or maybe he was only shivering because of the wind and the cold sea spray.