“What in Umberlee’s name is going on up there?” he said.
He grabbed Mharsan’s arm. “Go to the sleeping woman’s cabin. Tell Yeva to wake Anusha!”
Mharsan nodded and dashed away. Thoster kept his eyes on the sky.
A series of jolts shook Green Siren. He ripped his gaze away from the spectacle above.
Waves tore at what had been a calm sea moments earlier. Water frothed into a foaming ridge, forming a vast circle centered on the floating city far above. And his ship was caught inside the circumference!
Thoster opened his mouth to scream orders at his crew. A shrieking gust of noisome air rent the words from his mouth, and tried to liberate his hat in the bargain.
He clamped a hand to his head and grabbed a mainstay with the other. The blast caught the ship from the stern, which was lucky. Instead of just pushing her over in the water and drowning everyone, it propelled the ship forward. The wind didn’t blow straight though; it coiled, round and round. Green Siren plowed through the ocean, following the curved line of the foaming water, tracing the edge of a bounded region of boiling sea.
Thoster assumed a maelstrom was forming, and was about to suck his ship into the depths. And without the benefit of a school of gleamtail jacks. His crew and his ship would be lost. His own abilities, however, would probably see him through, assuming the current didn’t dash his head against the hull of his splintering ship-
Wait.
He stared hard out into the center of disturbance, though seaspray stung his eyes. Instead of dimpling down at the hub as he’d expected, the water bulged upward. In the very center, the bulge birthed a waterspout of madly spinning water that reached still higher.
“What the …?” Thoster said.
Above, the racing clouds completed their weave around the impassive aboleth city. A funnel of vapor and sparking lightning formed directly beneath Xxiphu. The spinning structure dropped away toward the surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The funnel was like to the one beneath it on the water. The thinning, twining finger stretched down from the sky, and another one reached down from the surface of the sea.
Thoster felt the ship buckle and scream. Spars snapped, and masts broke and tumbled away, even as the hull was pulled higher and higher, up the narrowing path of the swirling cone of water.
When the two funnel tips finally touched, a soundless explosion of purple light raced away in every direction. Thoster blinked several times, trying to clear an afterimage of gnashing teeth. When he could see again, he saw a hole lay behind the expanding wave of light. It was like a yawning mouth in the air, inhaling reality.
The spinning funnels of cloud and water tattered and ripped apart, sending scudding fragments of vapor every which way. Xxiphu, completely exposed, was pulled into the maw like a fly on a frog’s tongue.
The cavity’s growth slowed, then ceased. A heartbeat later, it began to collapse back on itself.
Green Siren hung midway between the crumpling fissure in the sky and the unforgiving face of the Sea of Fallen Stars below.
It might have gone either way, but with a sudden jerk, the ship was pulled into the fissure the instant before it closed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Feywild
Long before he had been old enough, Raidon had yearned to join Xiang Temple. He’d been certain he’d love fighting. His mother had let him observe the choreographed but nonetheless spectacular fights the monks demonstrated on festival days. Watching all the ways someone could move and evade, and manipulate a foe with a subtle twist or hip rotation was all the magic Raidon had ever craved.
When he was eight years of age, he enrolled. His expectations were fulfilled, and more. He loved the forms, the conditioning, and the camaraderie. The first years numbered among his most cherished memories. And after all those years, he still relished the complexities of striking, despite where his vocation had ultimately led him.
Remembrances of his training came to Raidon as he moved through the fey forest. A towering tree reminded him of the pillars that graced Xiang. Firefly gleams flaring in the shadows to either side recalled the fantastic lanterns that hung over the main dojo. Above, the sun glimmered through a ragged cloak of green and gold leaves, which was in color like the silk belt he was given upon achieving his first rank.
Then Japheth stepped out of the black cavity of his cloak. The warlock didn’t shake loose any pleasant associations.
Their trip through the woods of Faerie was rapid, at least. Raidon could move much faster than his companion, but Japheth could take shortcuts and leap ahead. Raidon would then make up the distance with a quick burst of reaching strides.
The monk tried to recall the contented glow of his early training again, then allowed the image to fade. The moment was past.
The memory of the petrified Traitor returned front and center. Seeing the statue, as it slipped down the hound’s path of shadow, had shaken Raidon.
Something terrible was loose, and he didn’t know if anyone had the knowledge or the power to stop it. The thought actually worried him. He’d imagined he had gone beyond the ability to feel concern. And so, paradoxically, Raidon was also grateful.
Of course, he wished he could have made the return to human feeling via some other route. Each time he concentrated on the gnarled, twisted shape of Stardeep’s “escaped” prisoner, the Cerulean Sign became as ice across his chest.
The half-elf shook his head. Worry was an old friend, much preferred to the desolate winds howling across his soul since the … incident … in Xxiphu. He’d believed his mind was shattered for good.
Yet here he was. Pushed past the breaking point, he’d located the grit to keep trying. And in that resilience, in the uncomplicated striving, he’d found a simple peace. It was the peace he’d once taken for granted, but forgotten.
Achieving one’s goals was not what brought lasting satisfaction-it was the journey itself that gave peace. When one stopped trying for what was new or what was right, finally satisfied in one’s past achievements, or maybe too tired to continue trying to make or find something new, then life was finally over.
It was entirely possible his current mood was an aberration, and doomed to go the way of all his earlier hopeful thoughts, but he was determined to enjoy the calm it brought while it lasted.
Ahead, Japheth translated across a chasm, and Raidon leaped it. A press of wide trunks lay on the chasm’s opposite side, obscuring the view ahead. He sprinted through the trees, leaning into each course correction, laying a hand on warm bark when necessary to make particularly sharp turns.
When the monk regained sight of the warlock, the man stood at the edge of a clearing amid the towering trees. It was the clearing holding the stone dais on which they’d arrived in the Feywild.
A figure stood on the platform, the suggestion of a smug smile tugging the corners of his mouth.
Raidon felt as if someone had just punched him in the stomach.
“You!” said Japheth, his tone incredulous.
The Lord of Bats’s smile widened. The green glyph slithered on his forehead like a leech looking for blood. Its influence woke a cool resonance in Raidon’s spellscar.
An iron spear appeared in Japheth’s right hand. It glowed cherry red from infernal heat. The warlock hurled it. Before it could find its mark, the archfey opened his mouth, releasing a torrent of screaming bats that instantly filled the hollow. Flapping darkness hid the spear’s trajectory.