She saw the vault's ceiling rush down... no, the ship lurched upward toward it.
Anusha flinched from the expected impact. When she opened her eyes again, the vast cavern she'd spied through the porthole was gone. Now the glass showed layers of dark material that dropped away one after another. Sometimes the dark matrix was veined by traceries of pale blue, green, and crystal. The continuous but ever-changing consistency of the subsiding material was mesmerizing. It seemed Green Siren had indeed been outfitted to sail on more than seas. She realized she was watching a crosscut through hard bedrock. They were rising up through it!
"It's beautiful," she said.
"Not nearly as beautiful as you," said a voice behind her.
Anusha turned.
Japheth stood in the doorway.
The room suddenly seemed warmer.
A tension she'd been holding in her back relaxed. He was alive! But the anxiety gave way to a wholly new tautness in her chest.
"Beautiful? I'm skinny as a starved child," she said.
"No. You take my breath away." Without light from the porthole, the only illumination in the room emerged from the lantern. Its waving light spilled shadows across the room, over Japheth's body, and across his face. His eyes reflected the dancing flame.
"What do you see through the glass?" he said, pointing to the porthole.
"I don't know! The rock, I guess, as we rise through the earth." Anusha motioned him over. "Come, look with me?"
*****
Japheth entered the cabin and closed the door. In three steps he was across the narrow chamber until he stood just behind Anusha at the glass. He smelled her fragrance, vital again after slowly fading while she lay limp and senseless.
The sight of her nearly melted him.
"Are we finally safe?" she said, face pointed toward the glass so that he studied her profile. He couldn't imagine more shapely features.
"For now. The Eldest remains... partly bound. The worst will not come to pass."
She looked at him, waiting for further explanation.
"I took into myself a portion of the Dreamheart's energy. Energy the Eldest might have used to catalyze its full awakening. It didn't realize I'd done so."
"Why does it matter what it realized?"
"Because," he continued, "it may gain partial Awareness. I had to leave the Dreamheart in the Eldest's possession to assure your freedom."
Anusha furrowed her brow but continued to gaze through the glass. Finally she said, "I'm glad you left that terrible thing behind." "Yes."
She sighed, then leaned back into him. His arms wrapped around her slender form without conscious direction.
Her scent overwhelmed him, and her warmth brought blood to his face. He rested his chin on her damp hair.
Tin glad you're no longer a formless dream," he said.
She laughed.
They watched the mottled earth flow past together, until Anusha tipped her face up and back. He dipped his head and shoulders to bring his lips to hers.
They kissed.
She tasted of joy, and life, and passion.
She turned into him, maintaining the kiss, and embraced him in turn. How long had he hungered to feel her arms around his body? It didn't matter.
The long months of attraction, building desire, and sundered heartache were washed away. Euphoria was a warmth that raced in his veins instead of blood. It seemed to him that her pulse matched his heart's cadence.
Japheth broke the embrace. When his breath was back, he said, "You have become the world to me."
Anusha, also breathing harder, brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. She met his gaze and held it with her dark eyes. In the dancing light, they seemed like the eyes of a tigress avid for the hunt.
A slow grin spanned her face. "Show me," she said.
They collapsed into each other, their lips meeting again, this time with a passion that could ignite a fire.
Their limbs entwined in that most human of all embraces. In his arms, Anusha was a star, a burning angel that cleaved to him.
He said her name in wonder, in worship. He silently vowed to never let her go again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars
Green Siren burst from beneath the surface of the water like a leaping dolphin. The ship's prow fell back level with the horizon and the keel crashed down into the water, spawning frothy waves that raced away in all directions.
Raidon stepped clear of the ritual circle. The smeared perimeter was hardly even recognizable.
The shimmering penumbra surrounding the ship wavered, dulled, and finally collapsed. A rain of tiny, jewel - like fish dropped into the water, drained and dying after swimming so far and long away from their home.
Green Siren was a ship capable of sailing only water once more, and hardly the worse for wear despite her incredible journey.
He rubbed at his eyes until he saw sparks against blackness. Mortal exhaustion, physical and mental, tried to drag him to the planking. Out of habit, he resisted. Voices in his head screamed at him for all his sins. It disturbed Raidon that all the voices sounded like his own.
A distant rumble brought several hands to the starboard rail. Fingers pointed to the west, where a storm brewed.
Clouds boiled out of clear air over the horizon, piling one atop the next until a thunderhead towered over the sea. Exclamations rang out among the crew, who, by their chatter, had never witnessed a storm appear so suddenly: Neither had the monk. He frowned.
A wind out of the west slapped Green Siren, scattering the crew to trim the sails under the direction of the captain's harsh calls. It smelled first of salt, then rancid fish.
Raidon squinted into the wind and watched the storm build.
The water beneath the storm moved in a great circle. The Cerulean Sign on his chest cooled. The monk's frown became a scowl.
The swirling water dipped at its center. The concavity deepened until a vortex of whirling water lay across the waves, so wide that its mouth was visible even over the miles that separated it from Green Siren. The spinning walls danced with phosphorescent glimmers.
A long shape burst up from the vortex, shooting skyward in defiance of its catastrophic bulk. Gasps of dismay broke from every mouth.
Lightning sizzled down from the clouds and limned the massive obelisk in eye-searing white. The flash revealed the thing that crowned the obelisk. It was the Eldest. Unmoving and stiff as stone... but free of the rocky catacomb that had entombed it since it fell to Toril so many ages past.
Even before answering thunder boomed across Green Siren, the calamitous bulk of Xxiphu completed its skyward leap. It lodged in the thunderhead's belly.
Raidon touched the sign on his chest. The symbol wakened to blue fire.
He murmured, "As I failed Ailyn, and the child I cut down in the city, so I failed you."
Imprecations yammered in his ear as if from a hundred throats, though none of the nearby freebooters seemed to hear. The monk listened to all the voices, achieving a kind of focus by taking in the sound without concentrating on any individual voice, until their combined fury, fears, and maudlin inanities became as the sound of the surf, crashing and falling behind his thoughts.
The world would discover soon enough the depth of Raidon's failure. Then more than imaginary voices would decry the half-elf—at least until their calls for retribution against the one who failed to save them turned to cries of horror.
Xxiphu hovered above the Sea of Fallen Stars swaddled in the storm's heart.
T