INTERLUDE 4C: SPEAK TO THE WIND
“Do not expect too much of your idols, and if they fall short do not behave unwisely by rejecting the wisdom they shared when they shone the brightest. Who knows not the lash of spite, the brimming overboiling of needless ceaseless wrath? Who knows not what it is to be submerged in foul temper, drowned in grey mood? Who has not felt the weeds of temptation snared about him, pulling him down, down into the depths where the meaning of a narrow slice of the world is worth more than Everything? I say again: surely in the name of Everything you will permit me Anything.”
– from ‘The Book of Lithiguil’, 7:87-92
“I don’t think we have any other option,” Ibbalat said grimly, looking deep into Redgate’s eyes.
The champion smiled back, aloof, untouchable.
“There’s always another option!” Kani cried desperately. “Please, Ibb, you can just –”
“No, Kani. It’s over.”
Anathta tittered as Ibbalat pushed his remaining cards into the centre of the table.
“All in,” the mage declared, trying not to look at the grinning girl. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Redgate and Anathta turned over their reserves – and when she saw at a glance that they were victorious the rogue gave a little chirp of delight and wrapped her hands around Redgate’s arm, leaning her head against his bicep and squeezing into him.
Ibbalat flicked his eyes away again, busying himself with gathering up the cards, passing them to Kani to shuffle. He hadn’t ever thought that being trapped on a ship with one of the most famous champions of Mund would be a drag, but here he was. Redgate was not only a learned magician, a brave fighter equipped with the powers and lore commensurate with his esteemed position – he was also a rich, cunning young man, clearly possessed of a penchant for seducing impressionable young women… and it was obvious from Anathta’s responses that Redgate had the charm to match his desire.
Other than the mysterious disappearance of one of the crewmen, Pelteron, halfway through the voyage, it’d been plain sailing all the way. They’d played cards a hundred times already, and Ibbalat lost far more than his fair share. How did Redgate always seem to get the best deal? Surely there wasn’t a power for that?
He took the cards back from Kani and went to deal the next round, when a surprisingly-heavy wave struck the ship – the waters had been calm all evening, and Ibbalat was looking forward to a peaceful sleep tonight. The table and the few cards he’d managed to deal went sliding off towards the stern as the ship bucked the wave – then the table came back to meet them as their chairs, burdened by their occupants, were only just starting to scoot across the hold towards it.
Putting on a sigh, he stood and excused himself, heading to the ladder. Secretly, he was just glad to get away from the loved-up couple.
When he got onto the deck he was struck by the cold. They’d long-since left behind the Mundic Sea for Hadhae, the open ocean – but even here in the south, the air was unnaturally dead, still. He was a little shocked to find it was dark already. They had to have been playing cards for longer than he’d realised. He could only just see the sun’s light, burning low and muted yellow along the horizon.
Then he spotted Phanar at the rail, and even without the crew going berserk, shouting and pulling on ropes, the look on the enigmatic warrior’s face was plenty enough to tell the mage that something was wrong.
“Sudden storm,” Phanar reported, nodding up at the starless sky and broken seas ahead of them. “Or worse. It came out of nowhere.”
Ibbalat came to the rail, gripping it as another wave rocked the ship, and frowned. He’d used all but one of his weather-control spells. He always held something back for times of emergency – times like this – but the other workings had been plenty to see them through the last days of sailing. What had changed?
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He sighed again. There was no telling. It could be a natural occurrence, even with the spells he’d cast on the Dremmedine, on the sky and the sea…
“Virdut’s craw!” a sallow-skinned sailor muttered, heading past with a coil of rope in his hands.
Ibbalat ignored the man, concentrating. After a moment he lifted one hand from the rail, his fingers forked, and raised his voice in a solemn chant.
The mage’s mind was a line or two ahead of his lips, supplying him with the extra-planar words he’d studied again that morning, the incantation used to shape the forces of reality to fit his desires.
It was his mightiest working: the Storm-Shatterer, beloved by magic-users for centuries, capable of saving whole cities threatened with flooding or freezing. As he released the energies coiling within his song, within his veins, he let go of the rail, drew the griffon feathers from the pouch at his belt, and tossed them overboard to fly free in the wind.
Another wave struck the ship – Phanar’s hand snapped out automatically, taking hold of Ibbalat by the shoulder as the motion threatened to send him sprawling on his backside.
“Thanks,” he gasped, clutching hold of the rail with both hands once more.
“Unless you’ve got something in that demiskin of yours that will let you turn into a fish,” Phanar said, “I’d try to stay on the deck, if I were you.”
Ibbalat’s eyes brightened. “Maybe not a fish – but I’ve got that spell that will turn me into a sea-gull – for all of fourteen minutes…”
Phanar smiled. “We aren’t quite that close to Tirremuir yet, my friend.”
“Tomorrow?”
Phanar nodded. “Late morning, if we are lucky.”
The mage drew in a breath. “If my spells keep working, you mean…”
“What is supposed to happen now?” the warrior asked, gesturing at Ibbalat’s spell-components pouch.
“We wait. The storm dies down. Hopefully it won’t take too long, either.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “Hopefully…”
Ibbalat and Phanar stared out over the waves, which at least didn’t seem to be growing any taller.
“You are never going to get anywhere with her like this, you know,” the warrior said.
Ibbalat looked across at him, startled, and not just a little afraid.
How does he know?
Phanar wasn’t smiling.
“I – you know – didn’t really have anything to do with those vestal virgins – I was just trying to impress Ana – if you just –”
Why did I have to go and leave my wane downstairs?
“Calm down,” the warrior said. “I am not stupid, Ibbalat. What is in your heart for my sister is plain to read upon your face whenever you are together.”
Horror-struck, the mage briefly considered throwing himself overboard, fish-shape or no fish-shape. But if Phanar was talking about it like this… did that mean he didn’t approve of Anathta’s infatuation with the arch-sorcerer?
“Does she…” Ibbalat bit his lip, “does she know?”
Now Phanar smiled. “She could read the intentions of a snail at a hundred paces, and miss your love for her for a thousand years.”
“Must run in the blood,” Ibbalat remarked softly, then chuckled to himself.
“Run in the blood?”
“You know,” Ibbalat felt awkward suddenly, wishing he hadn’t said anything, wishing he had his wane, “in the blood is like, from your ancestors to –”
“I understand the expression,” Phanar cut him off, brow furrowed in thought, “but what do you actually –“
“Wave!” cried one of the sailors, a roar that rippled across the deck –
The two adventurers threw themselves clear of the massive swell that broke over the front of the ship, but Ibbalat saw as two of the crewmen were dragged, kicking and choking, over the edge and down into the vast, black ocean.
It was as though Phanar were the magician, not him – one moment the warrior was staggering for footing, then the next he was fastening a rope around his waist, pressing the other end into Ibbalat’s nerveless fingers, and sprinting across the deck to dive overboard.
Almost too late the young mage came to his senses, running to the edge, tying the rope to the rail in big stupid desperate knots the sailors would surely mock. At the same time he was yelling, to warn the others off or to ask for their aid he wasn’t quite sure – Phanar was gone, over the edge, and –
And then Redgate was there. Masked and robed and half-shadow, a vision of pure power made manifest. He floated six feet above the deck, and seemed to be striding calmly across the air as though he stood suspended upon some invisible tight-rope.
Casually, the champion walked over the rail, angling down at the choppy waters –
“Wave!” came the next cry.
While Ibbalat braced himself using Phanar’s rope, taking a good slap from the wall of sea that broke over the deck, he saw the wave pass unhindered through Redgate as though he were no obstacle to it at all. It was clearly no obstacle to him.
Then all of them were gone.
* * *