Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (41 page)

Then his attention fixed on her, spearing her through the middle, and she knew with a bone-deep certainty that he spoke to no one else but her.

YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR HOME.

That was all, but she read volumes into that single sentence. Her body shook with an involuntary sob.

When the Great Elder said it, she could more easily doubt her own name. Her home wasn’t in the streets, where she’d spent her childhood. It wasn’t in the Guild that had rejected her, or in the box where she’d hidden for years.

She’d found it on a Navigator’s ship.

Somewhere in her mind, Petal had planned to leave once they made port at a place that felt right. She still wondered if the rest of the crew wanted her around, if they even needed her for anything.

With the Elder’s words, that possibility died.

~~~

Foster had his eyes squeezed shut, with his Reader’s senses even more tightly closed. He didn’t want even a
hint
of this monster’s Intent leaking through, because it would crush him to dust.

Then Ach’magut spoke to him, and Foster knew he might as well have saved his effort. He couldn’t shut out the Elder’s Intent any more than he could shut his ears against the sound of an erupting volcano.

THEY ARE GONE,
Ach’magut said, and Foster’s eyes opened wide.

He stared into the Great Elder’s single, gigantic eye as though he sought clarity there. But the Overseer had been perfectly clear.

His family, his former wife and his children whom he hadn’t seen for years, were gone. He should abandon them. He may as well give up, because the future did not allow them to survive.

Foster’s heart clenched, but sheer stubbornness took over his mind. He would throw himself into the Aion Sea before he let an Elder tell him what to do. Now, he’d have to find his family again if it killed him. He would prove to himself that the future could be controlled, could be denied, and that Dalton Foster would be the one to do it. But in his soul, he knew the truth.

Ach’magut had predicted this.

~~~

Urzaia had put up his hatchets. There was no point in resisting, any more than he could resist a crashing wave with the power to capsize
The Testament.
Sometimes, a man faced forces so far beyond him that defiance became an absurdity.

But laughter bubbled up inside him, and he let it show on his face. The Great Elder could do what he wanted, but he could not make Urzaia Woodsman despair.

The eye focused on him, a strange bulb on a stalk rattled next to Urzaia’s ear, and Ach’magut spoke to him.

YOU WILL DIE BEFORE YOU SEE DEFEAT.

At that, Urzaia did laugh.

~~~

Andel grabbed his medallion in his fist so hard that he wondered if his palm would bleed. The Luminian Order encouraged hatred of the Elders, but he knew the truth: the Elders were not manifestations of pure evil, but so chaotic and foreign that they might as well have been. Each of the Great Elders was unique in purpose, and they would be true to that purpose.

Everything Ach’magut said would be factually correct, and Andel could rely on its predictions of the future. He knew that as surely as he knew up from down.

Ach’magut’s words would be correct. But they would not be the truth.

WHAT CAUSE DO YOU SERVE?
For a moment, Andel couldn’t take a breath.

He’d given up the cause of the Luminian Order, but he had never abandoned the teachings of the Unknown God. Even this job, as an aide and supervisor to Calder Marten, gave him the opportunity to guide a young man forward. Without support, Calder would be headed for a future more destructive than Andel could imagine.

Still, Andel’s Imperial supervisors intended him to guide the young Navigator back into the folds of the Empire, and Andel wasn’t sure he wanted to. He’d seen enough in his life to know that even the Emperor couldn’t be trusted, not fully.

If the Guild couldn’t be trusted, and the Empire couldn’t be trusted, what did the God want him to do?

~~~

Jerri trembled before the Overseer, one of the two Great Elders her father had always sought to meet. Anyone in the Sleepless would give their left leg for this chance, but now that she was here, she saw how futile all her plans were. She’d dreamed of this moment before, had actually charted out the questions she’d ask and how she would interpret the potential responses.

But she was nothing more than a tiny longboat on a storm-tossed sea. She did not chart her course, she merely tried to survive until the ocean stopped.

YOUR FATHER WOULD BE PROUD
, the Great One said, and every nuance of meaning flowed into her mind. Her father
was
dead, as she’d suspected for years.
May his soul fly free.
Ach’magut’s words told her that, if he were alive, he’d be proud of what she’d done. Proud of her.

And in the future, he would be proud of the woman she’d become. She would accomplish more than her father had ever dreamed.

~~~

Seconds had passed as Ach’magut turned his gaze from one member of his crew to the other, and though Calder heard the words, they meant nothing to him. The Great Elder did not speak through vibrations in the air, but through a language of Intent so subtle and complex that Calder couldn’t catch a glimpse of its mechanisms. If the Overseer did not want Calder to know his words, that was how it would be.

But now, the strange wave of Intent broadened. Ach’magut addressed them all as a crew, as he had at the beginning. His words were for Calder, but every living thing in the great library—from the human crew to the innumerable Inquisitors—served as a witness.

THE THRONE WILL SOON BE EMPTY.

Calder didn’t need the volumes of explanation that came along with the Elder’s voice to tell him what those words meant. The Emperor was going to die. Soon.

And Ach’magut was telling
him
.

Hope and feverish expectation surged up in equal measure, as Calder dared to resurrect a foolish dream that he had carried since childhood.

A rustle came from behind him, as of a thousand sticks falling to the floor. He turned to look, as he was sure he was supposed to, and saw fields of Inquisitors bending forward. They’d folded their first legs and pressed their jaws to the floor.

It took him a moment to realize what the hordes of Elderspawn were doing, and when he did, his breath died in his lungs.

They were kneeling.

To him.

HAIL THE EMPEROR OF THE WORLD,
Ach’magut said, and Calder stared incredulously into the Elder’s one giant eye. Never, in his most distant dreams, had he ever dared to imagine this.

The crew was looking at him now, and he could feel their reactions as easily as his own. Awe, fear, disbelief, hope, and sheer, mind-numbing shock.

But Ach’magut had one more thing to say, and he delivered it with a finality that made Calder wonder if the Great Elder would ever speak again.

SHOW ME THE FUTURE.

~~~

Calder’s return to
The Testament
felt like his first trip to Ach’magut’s library—that is, it felt like nothing at all. It wasn’t as though he’d fallen asleep, but as though he’d forgotten the journey.

He returned to awareness seated on a sack of beans with his back leaning up against the railing. He had traveled there from the library, he was sure, but no matter how he searched his memory he couldn’t recall the slightest detail of the time between.

The last thing he remembered were the words of Ach’magut. Those, he couldn’t forget.

The rest of the crew was strewn around the deck as though they’d been dropped there out of the sky, and they started to stir at the same time he did. Urzaia was on his feet and inspecting his armor, maybe checking himself for injuries, before Calder managed to stand up.

As soon as he did, he stumbled to the wheel and sent his Intent into the ship. He’d woken with an inexplicable certainty: that they should leave Silverreach as soon as possible. Not that he needed any supernatural urging to do that; he had already planned to show this town the back of his sails and never return.

The trick would be convincing the Lyathatan to stir. Calder had worked the Elder unusually hard over the past few months, and it had begun to let him know that it deserved a rest. Typically, it did so by sending him images of a broken ship littered with human bodies.

Today, the impression he received from the Lyathatan was very different.

The servant of Kelarac strains at its chains, eager to haul its cargo into the ocean. If it were allowed, it would depart without the human passengers, but a greater will consumes it. Not the will of the Lyathatan, nor the will of Kelarac, but the will of another Great One.

The Lyathatan knows it is in danger, that all the plans it has laid for the future will come to nothing if they cross the plans of Ach’magut.

With the closest thing to fear that Calder had ever sensed from the creature, the Lyathatan hauled
The Testament
out to sea. The acceleration made him clutch the wheel and sent Petal tumbling shoes-over-shoulders across the deck until Urzaia caught her. The Champion stood with his feet planted on the deck as though a hurricane couldn’t budge him.

In minutes, they left Silverreach behind. The town and its unlit lighthouse were swallowed up by the night, until the whole world was nothing more than the starlit waves,
The Testament,
and the submerged shadow pulling them forward.

That was when the ocean trembled.

A ripple shot across the surface of the water, like someone had dropped a pebble into a bathtub. Seconds after that, Calder heard a great roar, and sudden waves blasted them from behind. The aft half of the ship lifted up and slammed down, sending a creak of pain through Calder’s Vessel.

Petal started to tumble the other way, but Urzaia grabbed her out of the air and tossed her onto his shoulder.

The ocean shook with the wrath of a storm, but the Lyathatan neither faltered nor fumbled, dragging them forth as a team of dogs drags a sled. Calder mustered enough focus to wrap ropes around the entire crew, steadying them and ensuring he wouldn’t lose them overboard.

While he did, he considered the explosion behind them. At first, he wished he could extend his senses far enough to pick up some Intent, but he had to admit the truth to himself. He knew what had happened. Silverreach had been destroyed.

Whether Ach’magut had blown the town to pieces for secret reasons known only to the Elders, or whether something they’d done had led to the town’s collapse, Calder had no idea. But the Overseer had sent them away with an urge to flee only minutes before an explosion came from the direction of Silverreach. Either the town was gone, or they’d been deceived by the most coincidental earthquake of all time.

Calder knew which way he’d bet.

The night passed before the Lyathatan started to slow down, and Calder had enjoyed no sleep at all. He doubted anyone else had either. His bunk remained steady enough, though it was pitched at a fifteen degree angle thanks to the ship’s speed, and he was certainly exhausted. But the Great Elder’s words haunted him, prodding his consciousness like red-hot needles.

The throne will soon be empty,
he’d said. And,
Hail the Emperor of the world.

If there was ever anything to be excited about, inheriting the entire Empire would count. Calder spent the entire night turning the Elder’s intentions over in his mind, trying to find the angle. The hidden agenda. He knew beyond a doubt that Ach’magut had a plan, and a Great Elder wouldn’t care if that plan involved exalting Calder or crucifying him. One human life was simply irrelevant, on the Overseer’s scale.

So there was every possibility that the prophecy might doom him, which was how every folk tale of Elder prophecy usually ended. But one thing Calder never doubted: the Great Elder wouldn’t be wrong.

He might be playing Calder for the benefits of a game millennia in the playing, but he wouldn’t be wrong.

Which meant that Calder would get revenge for his father after all.

At the first glimmer of dawn, the Lyathatan finally slowed to a crawl, and Calder bolted from his bunk. He threw on some clothes, replaced his hat, and shot outside.

The crew was already waiting for him, and they looked worse than he did. Foster’s hair and beard had escaped his control entirely, hanging around him like an angry stormcloud. Petal leaned against the railing, holding her knees to her chest. Jerri paced back and forth, muttering, and Andel stared into the distance with his hat in his hand.

Urzaia, by contrast, beamed at the rest of them. “How wonderful is sleep after an adventure!” he said, and Foster glared.

When Calder emerged, they all turned to him. For a second, no one spoke, so Calder cleared his throat to break the silence. “So. I suspect we have a few things to talk about.”

Foster turned his glare to the Captain. “You think so? About what?”

Calder looked from him to Petal to Urzaia. “Jerri and Andel know my story already, and I’m sure you’ve picked up pieces of it. But in light of recent events, you deserve some...context.”

So Calder told them. He told them about his childhood, the sale of Imperial relics, his father’s arrest, his time with his mother and with the Blackwatch, and his own mistakes that had led to his banishment to the Navigators. To his father’s execution.

“I know the Emperor as well as anyone alive,” Calder said. “I’ve tracked his movements to get to relics, I’ve Read a relic or two myself, and I’ve even met the man. He doesn’t care about us. He’s so far distant he might as well be an Elder himself.”

He kept an eye on their faces as he spoke, looking for disgust or rejection. He was speaking blasphemy, essentially, but he had to know they could handle this much. What he saw pleased him. Andel’s face was a mask, Foster looked like he agreed, and Petal stared wide-eyed like a child hearing a story.

 
“When I was a child, I realized that the Empire needed to change. And it wouldn’t, as long as the Emperor remained in charge. Well...it looks like he won’t be there much longer. Now’s our chance to steer the Empire where
we
want to go, and if I get a chance, I intend to take the wheel.”