Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (2 page)

This mountain was riddled with holes, like someone had drilled dozens of mines everywhere they could, and
something
wove in and out of each one. At first she thought it was a giant snake, burrowing through the mountain, but she quickly realized that the skin was too smooth for scales. And its body was segmented in lines, like an earthworm.

It was a giant worm, woven in and out through the rocky peaks as though the mountain were nothing more than a rotten apple.

And as she watched, the worm began to move. It slid forward, displacing rocks in an avalanche, slithering and squirming deeper. It was repulsive to watch, certainly, and her mother would probably have told her to look away. But it was the kind of disgust that meant she
couldn’t
look away; she was too horrified and too fascinated all at once.

A sense of hunger, of growing dread, suffused the vision like someone else’s emotions were pressing down on her.

“YOU ARE ONLY A PILE OF MEAT,” a voice declared, deafeningly loud and yet somehow still a whisper. Jyrine leaned forward as the mountain rumbled, eager to see the worm’s giant, repulsive head emerge.

Just as she was sure it was about to pop out, the scene shifted.

This time she floated above a field of flowers. Once she adjusted to her disappointment at missing the end of the last dream, she enjoyed the new one; even the scent of flowers seemed to drift up, as delicate and pure as the most expensive perfume. She looked between the petals and realized that the flowers weren’t planted in grass, but rather floating on lilypads. And under the lilies, a red pool.

A coppery smell reached her, underneath the more pleasant notes of the flowers, and she wondered if it was a sea of blood.

Hands reached up from between flowers, dripping scarlet, like human hands but six-fingered and wrong. They groped for the sky, and the scene shifted again.

This time, Jyrine couldn’t contain her impatience. “Go back!” she complained, but no one responded. Were all of these visions going to end just before something good happened?

The third one did the same. She was inside a dim cave, which had been filled by a mound of bleached bones. Tens of thousands of bones surrounded her in waves and piles, and the only sound was a distant crunching sound. It grew louder, until she could see something rushing toward her beneath the bones, like a mole burrowing through the soil. It rushed closer with the speed of a galloping horse, and just when she was sure it would reveal its hideous body in a spray of skulls, the sight changed again.

She’d expected it, but was still disappointed.

More images flashed in front of her, some for only an instant and others for a quarter of an hour. They were all somewhat disturbing, either grotesque or so strange that they left her squinting. One and all, they ended before her greatest curiosity was satisfied.

The rush of images ended in black.

Painted darkness enfolded her, an infinite void filled with swirls of distant colors that shivered and danced. It was like drowning in an ocean of stars, if the stars were dyed like quicklamps for a festival.

Phantom noises drifted behind her, out of sight, and she shivered in a mixture of fear and delight. Something clashed beside her hair, like massive jaws gnashing inches away from her skin, and she spun around. She hoped to catch sight of some nasty monster this time, but was frustrated to see only more dancing lights.

A thin voice whispered to her, and she would have sworn she felt lips against her ear.
“What would you ask for, given the chance?”

The colored stars froze, awaiting her answer.

Distantly, she thought she heard older voices responding, including her father. She couldn’t quite make out the words, but their cooperation gave her courage.

“Can you make it go back?” she asked.

The utter silence rang in her ears like a bell. Maybe it hadn’t understood her.

“I want to see the first one. With the giant worm. Would you allow me to see the rest of it, please?” If she was speaking to Elders, as she now suspected, she may as well be polite.

“Why?”
the voice whispered, breath stirring the back of her neck.

She clapped a hand to the spot and spun around, though she caught no one. “I wanted to see its face.”

The voice murmured something else, something she didn’t catch, and then even that vision ended. It didn’t cut off instantly, as the other scenes had, but slid down her eyes like rain washing away paint.

On the other side of the abyss was the temple room, where the old men all waited in a circle. Her father was sprawled on his back, chest heaving as though he’d run a great distance. One of the older members of the group had a hand clapped to his eye, and blood oozed between his fingers.

Only four robed figures were gathered around the green fire now. They had started with five.

Jerri found herself wondering whether the others had seen the same things she had. She was willing to bet that
they
were allowed to see the giant worm’s face.

The four remaining leaders of the cabal gathered themselves, each composed and kneeling before the fire. One of the men spoke up. “Great Ones, show us our guide.”

From the center of the flames, a jewel rose up, flashing with light. It was an emerald, shining like a star as it hovered in the air above their heads. They whispered to each other in excitement, clapping one another on the shoulder as they watched it. Jerri’s father was ecstatic, his grin as wide as she’d ever seen it, eyes fixed on the gem.

It hung there for five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. After twenty minutes of silence and green light, the circle of adults began to shift uneasily on their knees.

“Should we…should we take it?” an old woman asked.

Five more minutes passed before anyone tried it. Jerri’s father rose slowly to his feet, reaching a hand out for the jewel. It didn’t fly away and it didn’t slap his hand down, so Jerri was sure he’d grab it.

Then the emerald became a stream of light, flashing away. In an instant, it appeared in front of Jyrine’s face.

She jerked back in shock, almost knocking over her chair. If this was some kind of an attack, she had no idea what to do about it.

That whispering voice from the void returned, and though it sounded quiet, it swallowed the room.
“You look back. She looks forward. She will guide you into the future.”

The trinket fell as though a string had been cut, falling into Jerri’s lap. It was so hot that it felt like it would burn her even through her skirt.

“Bind this to her soul,”
the voice said, and then a soft wind filled the chamber. As the wind left, the fire died.

The adults murmured to one another, glancing at her in confusion. Only her father seemed like he was on the verge of laughter. After another hour of discussion, during which Jerri fiddled with her gem and snacked on the food from the service table, the old men and women began to file out.

One by one, the three strangers put a hand on her shoulder and said words of farewell. She didn’t entirely understand what had happened today, but she knew enough to mind her manners, and she responded to each one.

Her father was last. He knelt in front of her, gathering her hand up in both of his. “Are you all right?”

She nodded impatiently. “Of course I am. But what
happened?”
She had waited over an hour to find out, and with curiosity burning a hole in her, it had felt like three days.

He patted her hand gently. “It will take a long time to explain, but I’ll do the best I can. The most I can say is that you’re going to be very important someday, Jerri. Very, very important.”

CHAPTER TWO

When Calder climbed up the ladder and onto
The Testament’s
deck, no one stood at the wheel. Andel was nowhere to be seen, and a pile of ropes sat at the base of the mast.

Foster hurried up to him, blood running down into his beard from a split lip. The gunner spoke only two words:

“She’s loose.”

Then the darkness of Urg’naut himself descended over Calder’s vision, and something slammed into his back with the force of a stallion’s kick. He buckled and fell, his belly pressed against smooth, seamless wood. His spine felt as though someone had run a carriage into it, and trying to catch a breath felt like inhaling a lung full of needles. The recent injury to his shoulder screamed, and he had unhealed bruises over practically every inch of his body.

His sense of time had shattered, so he didn’t know how long it took him to return to coherent thought. Only a handful of seconds, most likely, but it felt longer. With his brain returned to its proper position, he understood his situation in full clarity.

Someone was sitting on him. Someone with an arm wrapped around his eyes and a cold point of metal against the back of his neck.

He left his mouth to steer itself, hoping to say something witty, but all that came out was a sort of muffled grunt. The assassin on his neck sensed this and shifted her weight slightly, enough to allow him to breathe without unfortunate pain in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” the Consultant said, from her position on his back. “I can’t allow you to call on your Vessel, or I might have to kill you before we’ve had a chance to talk. Please understand.”

If I have to be assassinated on my own deck, at least she’s polite about it,
he thought. Out loud, he said, “Quite understandable.” His voice came out as an animal noise, closer to the squeal of a pig than to human speech.

She flipped him over without allowing him to respond, knocking his wounded shoulder and the back of his head on the deck again. He scrambled for his bearings, staring up at the stretched, green-veined skin of his sails—translucent in the sunlight—that loomed above him. Before he gathered himself again, she had her knee pressed to the base of his throat and the tip of a bronze-bladed dagger under his chin.

“My name is Meia, Captain Marten,” she said. “We’re going to renegotiate the course of this ship.” Her voice was businesslike and professional, but her eyes were the vertical-slitted orange of a draconic Kameira. They had been blue only days before, when he’d fought her in the crumbling corridor of a Gray Island prison. Her blond hair hung loose, though short enough that it stayed out of her eyes, and she wore tight clothes of unrelieved black. One bronze knife was entirely too close for comfort, pushing as it was against his skin, and she held the other reversed in her left hand. Free for use, he supposed.

“I remembered your name, Meia,” he said, and his voice came out reasonably human this time.

“You should, since you abducted me. That’s a new crime for you, isn’t it?”

“As the offender, yes. I’ve been the victim of abductions, however temporary, more times than I would like to admit.”

“That should give you some sympathy for my position.” The cold edge of bronze pressed harder under his chin, and he couldn’t ignore the Intent that leaked out from the weapon.

The man begs for mercy, but mercy is not called for, so the blade draws his blood.

Agitated and drunk, the soldiers attack, but they do not know their opponent. The blade draws their blood.

The child of death and unnatural life lets out a howl, shrieking as it wraps its fleshy tentacles around the woman’s leg. Bronze flashes, and the blade draws its blood.

Over and over, Calder Read the history of violence. The visions came with the weight of endlessness, as though he could dig forever and always unearth some older death at the end of this assassin’s blade. Intent and significance hung heavy in the bronze, such that it took everything he had to shut them out.

So heavy that the weapon almost seemed to have a mind of its own. It wasn’t Awakened, he would have sensed that, but it was only one technicality away. He was afraid he might Awaken it with a stray thought.

Awakening would change the physical shape of the blade, likely resulting in his throat slit. As that was the exact situation he was currently endeavoring to avoid, he corralled his mind as tightly as possible.

“...for the Island,” Meia finished, waiting on his response.

The Reading hadn’t taken long, relatively speaking, but long enough that he’d missed whatever the Consultant had tried to say. He gave her a smile before realizing that even that much movement brought a flare of pain from the dagger’s tip. He gave up smiling.

“I apologize, Consultant Meia, I was distracted by your weapon. Would you mind repeating that? Please?” He had no choice but to pray to the Unknown God that she found it easier to persuade him than to throw his body overboard. She could sail the ship, with enough motivation. As long as the Lyathatan beneath the ship remained quiet,
The Testament
would function as well as anything else on the water. It would be a bit undermanned, but he was certain Meia would find her way around that minor obstacle.

Her hand on the knife flexed, muscles unnaturally bulging and shifting. Veins stood out blue against her pale skin, and her nails extended half an inch. Orange eyes flared.

But she gathered herself with a visible effort, and no strain or anger dyed her voice when she spoke. “This ship will return to the Gray Island immediately, where you will deposit me and surrender yourselves to the Consultant’s Guild. You will not be killed, nor even harmed, only detained and questioned. Gently. You will remain a prisoner, but a safe one, if you cooperate now and set course for the Island.”

“Attractive,” Calder said. “I can see what happens if I don’t oblige.” He could feel blood leaking out around her weapon’s tip.

“I’d prefer it if you did.”

“Very well. I give you my word of honor that I will sail back to the Gray Island without resistance. Furthermore, I will not harm you, and I will remand myself into the custody of the Consultant Architects upon our arrival.”

Meia withdrew her dagger, and her eyes faded to blue. It was a disturbing sight. She let up pressure on his chest, leaving only a throbbing ache, and stood. “You’ve made things much easier for all of us, Captain Marten. It would have been a waste to kill you when you can make the journey so much faster.”