The flippercraft suddenly dropped beneath Tylar’s feet. Someone screamed from the back of the ship. Then the deck came crashing back up, knocking Tylar to a knee.
Captain Horas landed lightly. He waved an arm outward, at the sky, at the storm. “The storm gods have grown wise to our artifice. It is not only Dark Grace we must fight. Bile can’t block a wind. The storm turns its winds against us, seeking to drag us out of the skies.”
“What can we do?” Tylar said.
“Fly, your lordship. That’s what my ship was made for!” He said this last with a savage grin. “We’ll keep flying until the ground stops us.”
Tylar gained his feet.
The pilot called from his spar. “Captain!”
Tylar and Horas turned to the man. He motioned below.
Tylar leaned over the rail. Below, the black Eye was now streaked with white. “We’re losing bile,” he said.
“Snow and ice…stripping us…” Horas shoved away from the rail and hurried back to his station.
The ship rolled, first to one side, then the other. Though still blinded, Tylar felt the pressure in his ears.
“We’re losing Grace!” Horas called. “They’re breaking through! Open all taps! Full flow!”
As Tylar watched, a large swath of bile washed off the Eye. Through the rent in their protection, the storm swirled white. He searched below, expecting a dark eye to form, to peer inside. Instead, far below, globes of light floated and rolled near the bottom of the storm, like luminescent fish at the bottom of the Deep.
As he struggled to discern the source, the pressure continued to squeeze his ears. They were plummeting into the depths of the storm. The strange lights below grew larger.
Captain Horas passed him again, drawing his eye. “The more power we burn,” he called as he passed, “the more Grace they steal!”
Tylar followed him across the deck. “Then stop burning Grace!” An idea grew in him. He joined the captain and the mate at the wall of mekanicals.
“Then we’ll fall to our deaths that much sooner,” Horas said.
Tylar kept his voice fierce. “You said this ship is built to fly! Then fly her! Cut the flow of Grace. Use the winds for as long as you can. Convince them we’re lost-flying Graceless.”
He read a growing understanding in the captain’s eyes. “You’re mad…”
“Gain as much distance as you can.”
The captain nodded. He waved for the mate to obey. Together the pair began shutting valves and turning knobs. The bubbling in the mica tubes slowed.
“Captain!” the pilot cried, sensing the sudden loss of Grace.
“Keep her nose up! Into the wind. True south!”
Tylar backed a step as the mate and captain stifled the flows. The tubes still steamed, but all that bubbling died.
“Keep the mekanicals stoked,” the captain said. “Hot and ready. Wait for my word.”
Horas led Tylar back to the rail. The deck tilted nose down. The pilot fought to pull her up, shoving the bow of the ship into contrary winds. The craft jarred up momentarily, gaining a bit more distance, a few breaths where the ship rose instead of falling. But it was a doomed struggle.
Down the nose went again.
Tylar bent over the rail. The floating lights grew as the land rose. The lights, azure and scintillating with power, grew clearer. Globes of lightning, trapped in the heart of the storm.
The plunging flippercraft sailed across a wide field of the glowing orbs, stirring them up with the wake of their passage. Below, the hills of Tashijan sped past, lit by the deadly cold fire.
But the hills weren’t empty.
A vast army spread across the hills.
“Wind wraiths,” Horas said, recognizing the spindly forms as they spiraled into the air, men and women born under alchemies of air, like loam-giants and wyld trackers.
But even from this height, Tylar saw the twist of their bodies. He remembered the tortured figure that had attacked them from the air in Chrismferry. The same here. Wind wraiths corrupted by Dark Grace into beasts.
“They’ve been ilked,” Tylar said.
A shout from the pilot warned them back from their dark observations. The hills climbed toward them. The captain watched, studying.
“Be ready!” he yelled to all.
Another breath…the ground rushed up at them.
“Now!”
To the side, the mate yanked a large bronze lever. Flows, boiling and pent, were finally released again. The mekanicals gasped with a thick wheeze of steam.
The pilot hauled on his controls, leaning back, as if by muscle alone he could pull the nose back up. But it wasn’t just muscle that powered the flippercraft now.
Grace slammed through the mekanicals.
A tubing exploded with a spat of flaming alchemies.
Horas rushed to aid the mate. Tylar kept his post by the rail.
The hills continued to rise toward them, snowswept waves ready to accept the keel of their craft. The army of wraiths vanished behind them, along with the globes of lightning.
The flippercraft raced across the frozen landscape.
Slowly…slowly…the nose lifted to an even keel. They flew no more than the height of a man over the hills. Then began to climb. Caught by surprise, the dark forces were sluggish in bringing their Dark Grace to bear. The churning alchemies remained steeped in the air aspect.
The pilot tilted their nose up, shooting back into the skies. The land dropped away, vanishing into the swirling snow.
Then in one breath, they were through the clouds and shot out into open air, like a bile-streaked arrow. The world opened and stretched ahead of them. Moonlight and starlight cast the world with a silvery gloaming.
“We made it,” Captain Horas said, making it sound more like a question.
“We did,” Tylar mumbled.
He turned to stare toward the stern of the flippercraft, but his eyes did not see the ship any longer. He pictured the wraith army-and the towers lost in the heart of the storm.
But mostly, he pictured two women’s faces.
Despite his fear for them, he turned his back on the storm. He had no choice. He had his duty.
Off to the east, the night sky purpled, heralding dawn and another day.
“Head south,” he ordered the captain.
“Aye, ser.”
The flippercraft swung toward the open sea. They would stop at Broken Cay, to wash their ship and freshen their alchemy. Tylar would send ravens flying in all directions. The First Land must rally, but he knew it would not be his war.
The skies continued to brighten to the east as the world turned, oblivious to the struggles of man and god.
Another day.
It was all a man could truly hope for in life.
One more day to make it all right.
Tylar stared south, beyond the curve of the world. He had escaped, but it was only a small victory. Saysh Mal and the hinterlands awaited. There were battles yet to be fought.
Still, something troubled Tylar.
Something he had forgotten.
Far below Tashijan, she sat in a stone chair. A spider, blanched white by a life beyond the sun, crept across her veined hand. Its legs suddenly curled, its body dried to a husk, and it rolled from her flesh.
Mirra did not move. She remained very still until a thin smile stretched her lips. Then she slowly rose to her feet.
“So he has slipped our noose,” she said to the darkness that surrounded her. The only illumination came from her stone seat, a melted drape of volcanic flowstone. It shone with a soft sheen of putrefaction and decay. She trailed one finger along its arm as she stood, sensing the whispers of her naethryn masters.
“No matter. Tashijan will fall all that much faster.”
She crossed to where the putrefying glow met the darkness. In that border, her creation abided, her last and most perfect. Twelve others circled this margin between corruption and darkness. They would serve their new master.