Scimitar Sun (39 page)

“He’s at the top,” he finally said, lowering his telescope. “He’s gone into the caldera.”

“Odea help him,” Cynthia said, the irony of her plea unintentional. Asking a sea god to help in the creation of a pyromage was only slightly more insane than asking a seamage to do the same. And yet, with that plea, her stomach did a little flip-flop that had nothing to do with her pregnancy. She could no longer ignore the feeling of foreboding that had been building in her since they had put Edan ashore.

“The sea…” she muttered, her eyes sweeping the gently rolling swells around the ship.

“The what?” Feldrin asked, attuned to her feelings and premonitions perhaps even more keenly than she was herself. “What about the sea?”

“Something’s not right. The sea is feeling this convergence, but I’ve never heard of…” her voice trailed off and every crew member within hearing fell silent. Mouse landed on her shoulder, his face set in a mien of surprise; he looked at her, then up at the waning sun, then back at her. All eyes were now on her instead of the growing eclipse. She strode to the starboard side rail and a tendril of water wormed its way up through the scuppers to wet her bare feet. At the sea’s first touch, her eyes widened.

“Give me the glass, please, Feldrin,” she said, her tone shifting from mild worry to deep concern.

“Sure, lass, but what in the Nine Hells is goin’ on?” He handed over the glass and she extended it and trained it aloft. “Careful there, Cyn! Ya look at the sun through that and you’ll blind yerself!”

“I’m not looking
at
the sun, just near it.” She moved the tube carefully, her feet rock steady on the deck, the sea around the ship suddenly as flat as a mirror. “Damn! It’s still too bright. I can’t see a thing!”

“Can’t see what, lass?” Feldrin asked with concern. When a seamage began to worry about the sea, a sailor would have to be insane to ignore the warning. “What’s got ya so riled?”

“I don’t know, but I feel something that I haven’t felt since the day of my ascension.” Mouse emitted a series of high-pitched chirps and eeps and she looked at him, then at the looming mountain to windward, then at Feldrin. “Perhaps it would be best if we stood a bit farther offshore.”

“But I thought you could calm the seas,” he said, her unease catching up in his own voice.

“I can, Feldrin, but if Odea chooses to bring a storm down on this island, there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it.” She looked at the sky, at the shrinking sun, and then back to Feldrin. “Set out to leeward…now!” Mouse eeped in agreement and buzzed like a crazed hornet around her head.

Feldrin needed no more urging than the tone of her voice, and the crew needed no more urging than the words “Helm to leeward!” from his mouth. “Set sail! Get us outta here, Horace!”

They sprang to with an alacrity born of unbridled, well-founded terror.

≈

*The convergence comes,* Quickfin signed, pointing up at the surface and the darkening sky beyond. *Come! I want to see the moon eat the sun!* He flipped his tail and shot for the surface. Chaser and Tailwalker exchanged a worried glance but followed in his wake. The three mer broke the surface and squinted to focus their vision in air instead of water.

*Seamage Flaxal’s Heir is moving the ship!* Chaser signed, nodding to the triangles of white cloth that the landwalkers used to harness the power of the wind for their ships. *They’re sailing away from the burning island!*

*Perhaps she has decided that this is a bad idea after all,* Quickfin signed. He glanced up and saw a blinding white crescent: the moon covered nearly the entire disc of the sun.

*Wait!* Tailwalker looked around suddenly, as if they were being circled by a school of sharks, but nothing threatened. *Something stirs the sea! Can you feel it?*

Chaser and Quickfin looked at each other and signified the negative, but they did not doubt Tailwalker’s claim; he was the Trident Holder’s son, and the gift of sea sense was stronger in the blood of leaders. No mer had the power of a seamage, an irony that many mer found insulting and grounds for a lasting hatred of all landwalkers, but those with the gift could sense shifts in the power of the sea. They could feel when the call of the scimitar moon focused Odea’s might, or when an opposing power manipulated the sea against its will, as the pirate lord’s witch, Hydra, had done.

*What is it, Tailwalker?* Quickfin asked, trying to watch the sky, his friend and the approaching ship all at once.

*I don’t know. I’ve not felt this before.* He still glanced around as if trying to find the cause of the curious feeling. *The sea’s power is coming together, but there is something else, too.*

*We should move away from the fire mountain,* Quickfin suggested, nodding toward the approaching schooner, now flying all her sails. *If Seamage Flaxal’s Heir feels this and is fleeing the danger, we should also.*

*Agreed,” Chaser signed, tugging at his friend’s arm. *Come, Tailwalker. If the sea is going to swallow the mountain of fire, we want to be far away.*

Chapter Twenty-Seven

From a Flicker to a Flame

Smoke wisped up from his smoldering shoes with every step as Edan descended into the caldera. His lungs burned with the hot, noxious fumes that seared his throat. The heat beat against him, as impenetrable as a wall of stone. He coughed, drawing in breath too fast, and cried out at the pain in his nose and mouth. And still Flicker tugged him forward, step after burning step. The lava pool was now only a few yards away.

He grabbed his water flask and poured the contents over his shirt, then clapped the wet fabric over his nose and mouth, breathing in grateful gulps of the slightly less-scalding air. He couldn’t see well through the haze of heat, but he knew he was close. He glanced up and stopped. The moon obscured only about two-thirds of the sun. He had
minutes
to endure before the eclipse was complete.

I can’t do this
, he thought, glancing back, then forward. He could not stand this heat for minutes more. Flicker had pulled him forward too soon; he would collapse and burn to death before the eclipse! But if he went back, would he ever be able to force himself forward again?

“EEEK!” Flicker cried, tugging at his smoldering sleeve until it came away in charred swatches in her hands. “Eee Eeek! Skee Neek!”

He stared at her frantic gesticulations and shook his head. He’d never seen her so wound up, but she was pointing to the sky, to the partially eclipsed sun, as if the convergence was happening right now.

“No, Flicker! Not yet!” he shouted through the barely damp shirt, screaming at her through the pain. “If I do it now, I’ll just die! I have to wait until it’s a full eclipse!”

“Neee!” she cried, grasping his chin and tugging it upwards, forcing him to look at the darkening sun. “Seee Teeee Steees!”

“What?” He stared at her in shock. It was almost as if he could understand her, but no sprite could actually speak. At least, none that he’d ever heard of.

“Tee Steees!” she cried, pointing up. “Teee heets! Teee Sceeeteee Seeen!”

“The what?” He looked up, squinting through the heat haze at the shrinking sun. Just a crescent now, but still too much. Then he saw them, and his jaw fell open, the scorching hot air burning his tongue. He coughed and looked again, just to make sure.

Six tiny stars stood out from the waning horn of the sun: The Hilt constellation, favored by Odea. Together, the stars formed a perfect scimitar, hilt and blade. It was barely visible, but there nonetheless. The seamage had spoken of the Hilt in conjunction with the moon at her ascension; the scimitar moon.

“Scimitar sun?” he murmured, and he stumbled forward another step. His shoes were almost on fire now, his pants charred to the knee. He could see the skin of his ankles blistering, cooking in the heat. The pain of it was impossible, more than he could take, but he looked at Flicker and he saw such joy in her face, such rapture…“Are you sure, Flick?”

“Yeees! Yeees!” she shrilled, nodding and tugging him forward again.

“All of it, then,” he said to himself, staring at the space between him and the pool of lava. “All…or nothing…”

He took a step.

Clouds suddenly formed above the mountain, thick and ominous, swirling around the sun in a halo of burgeoning darkness. In the same moment, the air around Edan came alive, whirling in a cyclone that flung bits of ash and fumes aloft, reaching up to the clouds to pull them down. He took a second step, then another, and he stood at the edge of the pool, close enough that bits of molten rock spattered him, burning holes in his already-charred clothes.

The blazing heat was killing him, blistering his skin, blinding his eyes…but now he could feel the power. He felt his ascension approach, not only from the fire beneath him, but also from the sky overhead, from the very air around him. The power of the wind fluttered his smoldering clothes in a cyclone of super-heated air. Two powers were coming together, and he was in the middle.

He stepped forward.

≈

“There!” Cynthia cried, one hand white on the taffrail, the other thrust at the sky, at the thin crescent of the sun remaining. “The Hilt! The stars are there!” Mouse pointed and chirped, dancing a jig on her shoulder.

“What? What stars? Where?” Feldrin squinted up at the sky, shading his eyes. “I don’t see any…”

“There! By the lower horn of the crescent! It’s like the scimitar moon, only it’s the sun!” Cynthia swayed on her feet; the feeling she’d experienced a moment before was even more intense, so much that she staggered dizzily. “It’s Odea! She’s doing something!”

“What would Odea have to do with this?” Feldrin asked as he steadied Cynthia. Then he snapped toward the helmsman, “Watch yer course, Rhaf, not the bloody sky!”

“But Capt’n, what’s that there?” The man pointed aloft, to the sky above the volcano. “Them clouds weren’t there before, and they’re startin’ to move round in a circle like a — ”

Mouse looked up with the rest of them, let out an “Eeep!” of alarm and ducked behind Cynthia’s shoulder.

“It’s a bloody cyclone!” Horace shouted. He fired off orders to shorten sail before Feldrin could even open his mouth.

“What the bloody Nine Hells is goin’ on, Cyn?” Feldrin tried to keep his voice level as the winds shifted and began to howl.

“I don’t know!” she shouted back, her eyes alight. “Either Odea’s going to rain on Edan’s party, or She and Phekkar are going to give that boy something special.”

Orin’s Pride
heeled sharply as gale force winds slammed into her sails. Cynthia gritted her teeth and the ship steadied, but the winds would not abate.

“I can’t touch the wind!” she cried over the howling gale. “I can keep us on station, but you’ve got to get her hove-to before something breaks! Douse her sails, Feldrin!”

“Bring her into the wind and slack all halyards!” he bellowed, turning to take the wheel himself and haul it hard over to windward. “Stormsail and tris’l only! Lively now, damn you all!”

Sailors scrambled to shorten canvas and Feldrin fought to bring her helm into the wind as the swirling clouds thickened, blotting out the waning light of the sun. The sky plunged into darkness and as the blood-red glow of the volcano lit the clouds from below, the wind howled even higher.

≈

The instant before Edan’s foot touched the seething pool of lava, his clothes burst into flames. His skin charred and pain lanced though him, but there was no turning back. His foot sank into the magma. In that instant of agony he still felt no fear, only disappointment.
I failed…I will burn and die here
. He opened his mouth to cry out a final plea…and there was nothing.

The pain vanished as if he’d been dipped in cool water.

He opened his eyes, not realizing that he had closed them, and looked down at himself in astonishment. He stood knee deep in the swirling, bubbling pool of molten rock, a cyclone of super-heated air swirling around him, yet he was untouched. His skin was whole — unblistered, unburnt. He took a breath, inhaling air as hot as the inside of a furnace, and it felt like breathing a warm summer breeze. He looked down at his hands and stared; the skin was new, even his old scars were gone.

Edan looked around, marveling at the swirling tornado of fire, ash and sparks ascending into the leaden sky. The cyclone was still building, the burgeoning clouds mingling with the fire as if they were smoke. Through the eye of the storm, directly overhead, the scimitar sun — a bare sliver of fire with a hilt of stars — shone down on him.

Then something moved under his feet. Stepping back, he watched the lava heave up and flow away as a huge figure, sinuous and glowing yellow-white with its own inner fire, rose from the pool. It towered over him, molten rock cascading like water from its skin. Its arms were as thick as the masts of the ship that had brought him here and they opened wide as if to embrace him. Its face, like something between a dragon and a great cat, tilted down toward him, the lips curling back from teeth like rows of smoldering coals.

“Phekkar,” Edan whispered, but he knew instantly that he was mistaken.

“No, little one.” The voice was the roar of a thousand raging fires, the gaping maw an opening into hell itself. “I am only a servant of The Flaming One, but I bring his gifts.” The huge hands spread wide, and the lava seething about him rose to join the wind in a whirlpool of incandescent fire.

Edan stood speechless, his mind blank save for the understanding that he had succeeded. Phekkar had accepted him. He was a pyromage.

“No, little creature of flesh, you have not yet received The Flaming One’s gifts,” the being corrected him as if reading his mind. It gestured down at him, and Edan felt a wash of warmth surround him, as if a great hand held him. “You are to receive more than one gift, little one, for the other one — the harsh mistress — has joined with my Lord this day, granting him the key to the winds. So these, too, are his to bestow.”

“The harsh mistress?” he said without thinking.