Scimitar Sun (40 page)

“We do not name her, but this day she is not our foe. This day she and my Lord together bestow their gifts to you.” Then the great creature smiled and gestured. “Welcome him properly, daughter of flame.”

Edan turned, sensing a presence behind him.

Flicker hovered there, but she was no longer the sprite-sized creature he knew. She was his own size, and the glee on her face, the sheer joy, lit her up like a pyre. Her coppery hue glowed from within, and her eyes flared white. Her hair was caught up in the cyclonic winds and whirled into a tornado of its own, climbing and spiraling upwards in fiery tendrils.

She reached for him, and her touch was cool on his skin. Behind Edan laughter boomed out, the rolling thunder of an erupting volcano, but his eyes did not leave Flicker, for she had drawn him close, her lips parted in a smile of desire.

“Yeee eeess mieeen teees dayeee, Eeeedan.”

“Flick! You can speak!” he said, astonished. His surprise doubled as her hands quested over him, clutching him purposefully.

“I alweees speeek to yeeee, Eeeedan,” she said, her lips nearing his. “Yeee deeed no heeeer meeee, but I speeek to yeee.” Then her lips were on his, and he felt a rush that had nothing to do with his sudden and irresistible lust for her.

She bore him up on the wind and he felt it buoy him, cradle him in its embrace, just as she did. The volcano erupted around them, a cyclone of fire from the core of the earth roaring in his ears, and Flicker in his arms, grasping him, clutching him to her, guiding him as her shapely legs wrapped around his hips.

He felt the fire enter him as he entered her, and the wind took him, filled him to overflowing. Flicker’s lips were on his, her tongue a flame in his mouth, her hair enveloping them, and she moved with him in the rhythm of her fluttering wings. He felt he would burst into flames, that he could not hold it all within him.

The universe opened in his mind, a million-billion bits of burning stardust, whirling in a glittering pinwheel of fire. And he understood…

In that instant, he understood
everything
…

≈

*This is not right!* Tailwalker signed, obviously agitated, his colors shifting from light to dark and mottled, then back. *There is magic! Sea magic and another magic. They are together, but not the same. Odea is stirring, but she is not alone!*

*It is not the seamage’s magic?* Quickfin asked, risking a peek above the surface. The ship was still sailing away from the burning mountain, sails flapping in the building wind. But atop the mountain, clouds were building, and the fire was rising to meet them. *The burning mountain is rising into the sky!*

*The burning god! Odea must be opposing him, or…* Tailwalker’s features flashed with a question, an impossible question. *Could Odea be…joining with the burning god?*

The others stared at him, then at the burning mountain and swirling clouds, fire and sky mingling in a glowing cyclone. *It must be! Odea is helping! The seamage was right! Odea and the burning god are working together!*

*Impossible,* Chaser signed in disbelief.

*I can feel their power together!* Tailwalker signed his own surprise barely contained. *Seamage Flaxal’s Heir was right! Fire and sea are allied to make her friend a mage of both sky and flame!*

*The Trident Holder must know of this!* Chaser signed, glancing at the other two. *I cannot go. I was told to watch Seamage Flaxal’s Heir.*

*Tailwalker should go!* Quickfin signed, fluttering his fins in agreement. *The Trident Holder will listen to him, and he knows what he feels. We will stay and watch!*

*But…* Tailwalker looked into the beseeching faces of his friends, and words failed him. They were right and he knew it, but he hated to leave them. *Very well, I will go. But watch closely, and be careful.*

Distant cracks and pops of hot stone meeting the sea reverberated through the water, and Quickfin and Chaser nodded their agreement. *We will be; you may be sure of that, Tailwalker. Now go!*

Tailwalker nodded once, flipped his tail and was gone in a swirl of bubbles. Chaser and Quickfin looked at each other for a moment, then peeked again above the surface.

*Odea!* Chaser stared as a rain of burning stone fell into the sea.

*I do not want that in my gills!* Quickfin signed, tugging at Chaser’s arm. *We should move away, out of this fall of burning rock!*

*Agreed,* Quickfin signed, diving for clear water and heading north, fear urging the frantic flips of his tail.

≈

“Here it comes,” Cynthia said, more to herself than to anyone in particular; no one but Mouse could have heard her over the howling wind anyway. The moment had come…the convergence. She sensed Odea’s presence, and knew Edan was in the midst of his trials. “Feldrin! You might want to watch this!” she shouted, unsure whether he heard her. She gripped the taffrail with both hands and brought a tendril of the sea through the transom to wet her feet.

She would need all the power she could summon if they were to survive this.

Cynthia wasn’t sure whether the winds brought the fire into the sky, or whether the volcano threw itself into the heavens; regardless, the result lit the sky crimson, as if the clouds themselves were burning. The mountain shuddered; compression waves shook the ship like a cork in a rum bottle. She calmed the waves and dampened the shocks enough to keep the hull from being crushed, ignoring the shouts of alarm behind her. She tried to ask the wind to aid them, but it wasn’t answering her; she could feel it, but could not speak to it. The side of the mountain split like an egg on the edge of a china cup, and hell itself rushed forth. It poured down the mountainside in a glowing torrent, right at them. Cynthia knew that if lava hit the sea this close to the ship it would explode beneath them, cooking them in a cloud of steam like a clam in its shell.

The wave she called rose in a mountain of its own, pulling the ship back toward the island. She pushed the water up the slope where it met the flood of molten rock. Great gouts of steam erupted from the contact, but the cyclonic winds tore it away before it became too thick to see. When the water receded they could see that it had solidified the lava flow. Mouse cheered a shrill cry of triumph in her ear, then eeeped in alarm when more lava plunged down the slope. Cynthia sent another wave up the mountain, building a dam of solidified rock in a broad crescent; whenever the lava broke through or spilled over, she sent water up to quench it.

“Cyn! Look!”

At Feldrin’s shout she tore her eyes away from the mountain, maintaining the defensive flow of water by feel. She turned and saw his upthrust finger and the rain of burning rock that was falling from the sky. Mouse’s cry of alarm almost deafened her right ear, but she ignored him. The winds were slacking and the tornado abating, but burning bits of mountain fell all around them. Most were just tiny pieces of ash or brimstone, but others were larger, and hot enough to burn the ship if they struck her.

“Can you do anything about that?” Feldrin asked, already directing the crew to fill buckets and douse any ember that landed onboard.

“Odea is controlling the winds!” she screamed, glancing back at the mountainside and adjusting her flow of water, trying to divert the flow of lava rather than stop it. “I can’t send water into the sky without the wind. Short of sinking the ship, I don’t know how I could — ” Her eyes widened, and she saw Feldrin’s recognition of the idea in his face.

“Eee eeep?” Mouse asked, looking at her as if she were crazed.

“Cyn, no!”

“Batten down all the hatches!” she shouted. “I won’t sink her, love, but she might ship some water!”

Feldrin hesitated to give the order, but when a head-sized sized piece of burning brimstone hit the sea only a boat-length away, his resolve solidified. “Batten all hatches for weather! Dog ‘em tight, lads! Rig life lines! Every man, lash on!”

True to their form, his crew leapt to his commands, slamming and hammering closed every hatch on the ship. The last was dogged tight and every man was tied to the ship in less time than it took him to adjust his course and turn back to Cynthia.

“Do it!”

She asked the sea to rise, and it answered.

Water flowed up the sides of the ship and through the scuppers, over the bulwarks and across the deck. Shouts of surprise were quelled by a rebuke from the captain as the flow increased, covering the hatches and climbing the sides of the cuddy cabin. Mouse cried in alarm, but Cynthia wasn’t done yet; she sent tendrils of the sea questing up the shrouds, ratlines and the masts, flowing over the booms and canvas. The weight of the sea bore the ship down, timbers groaning in protest, and still Cynthia brought more aboard, coating every surface until the men on deck stood knee-deep in warm water.

Cinders hissed and popped as they fell from the sky onto the water-coated vessel. The cyclone abated further, but the volcano raged on, spewing even more ash and smoke into the sky. The trade winds bore it to the west, right over them. Cynthia spared a moment to look at the lava flow she had stifled, and noted that the dam of solidified rock had directed it to the south. She released the sea there, and it was like an immense weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Water cascaded down the side of the mountain in a hundred streaming rivers of grey foam, saturated with ash and soot. To the south, steam billowed into the sky from where the lava flow finally met the shore, and they could feel the undersea explosions through the hull, even from miles away.

“We’ve got to bring her north!” Feldrin shouted, fighting the wheel through a foot-deep covering of water and batting at burning cinders that fell on his shoulders. “She won’t sail like this, Cyn, but we’ve got to get out of this ash fall!”

“Yes!” She gritted her teeth, fighting back a wave of fatigue at the strain of holding so much water in place. Mouse fluttered around batting at embers that landed on her, allowing her to concentrate. By comparison, exerting pressure on the hull to move the ship was easy, and
Orin’s Pride
surged forward.

“If I’d have known the whole bloody mountain was gonna bloody explode, I’d have anchored upwind, and to hell with a lee shore!” Feldrin cursed and checked his crew, making sure they were all securely lashed down. They stared at him wide-eyed, knee-deep in water and covered in soot and ash.

Slowly, it seemed, the ship came out of the ash fall. When only a few cinders drifted down on the wind, Cynthia thanked the sea and sent it slithering back down the sides of the ship. Mouse landed on her shoulder, singed but whole, and collapsed in a panting heap. Feldrin relinquished the wheel to the helmsman, ordered more sail aloft and sent men below to see how much water had been shipped. Cynthia felt an odd sensation, a feeling like she had been missing something but was now whole, and realized that she once again could touch the wind.

“It’s over, Feldrin,” she said, accepting his help to one of the benches beside the cuddy. “Edan’s trials are over.”

They both looked up at the peak of Fire Isle and cringed; it was still erupting, spewing ash and smoke into the sky and sending rivers of molten rock down its sides. She’d seen it erupt before, with plumes of ash or cracks that emitted lava, but nothing like this. Rivers of yellow-white molten rock streamed down all sides of the peak from great fissures that had opened in the caldera’s rim, and a pillar of ash rose thousands of feet into the sky, swept to the west by the trade winds and blotting out the renewed sun.

“I wonder if he survived,” she said, peering at the burning mountain.

“Well, I don’t think the gods would’ve made such a hullabaloo if they were just gonna squash the lad like a bug, but I don’t see how anybody could survive that.” Feldrin nodded toward the erupting mountain. “And even if he did, I don’t know how we’re gonna get close enough to pick him up.”

“If he’s alive, we’ll find him, Feldrin.” Cynthia’s voice was edged with exhaustion, but also with determination. “Keep an eye on that slope. I’ve got to lie down for a bit.” She struggled to her feet and staggered, but Feldrin was there in an instant, his huge arms supporting her.

“You’ve overdone it, love,” he said, earning the mocking glare she leveled at him.

“You think?” She chuckled as he helped her to the cuddy cabin and down the steps.

“Well, maybe a bit,” he said, grinning at her. “But we’d all be cooked to a crispy well-done if you hadn’t.”

≈

Sam heard the hatches open and cursed, dashing forward to her hiding place. She’d searched the ship from stem to stern while the crew was on deck battling the fires from the volcano, and still she’d been unable to find the stash of fire casks. She’d only had a few minutes, and with the ship being tossed around and water dripping through the overhead hatches, she’d been a little distracted by visions of being trapped below as the ship sank. She’d given up searching the fo’c’sle and tried aft, even venturing into the captain’s cabin, but to no avail.

Now she slipped into the stores bin and burrowed into her corner, clutching her only valuable find. The acrid scent of scorched earth, brimstone and ash filtered down to her, threatening to make her sneeze. She pinched her nose and held as still as possible, forcing her heart to ease its trip-hammer cadence. As shouts rang out and the heavy bilge pump clattered, she pulled the cork from her prize and took a swallow. The smooth rum eased the tension in her throat and calmed her nerves.

“Medicinal purposes,” she muttered, taking another healthy jolt before replacing the cork. With any luck the cook wouldn’t even miss the bottle he kept stashed under his cupboard. She wondered about Edan again, whether he had survived, and if she would see him again. She let that thought settle into her like the warming heat of the liquor, wondering what it would be like to be with a firemage.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Pyromage

On Plume Isle, the false dawn of the passing eclipse was greeted with welcoming smiles. Most had never seen or even heard of such an occurrence, but some of the old sailors had experienced one before. With the coming light, tensions eased between the crowds of natives and the marines and sailors lining the shore. Conversations broke out within the groups, and a few even spilled over from one group to the other. One intrepid young woman lowered her spear and plucked a flower from the string of her breechcloth, the only garment she wore, and threaded the stem through the button hole of the blue jacket worn by one of the marines. This brought a few chuckles and off-color comments from his mates, and reddened the young man’s ears.