"It's too late," she said. "Ruen!" she screamed, and turned to see the monk holding onto one of the rib bones for support. He clutched his chest with his other arm. The short man lay at his feet, a strip of blood leaking from his mouth. His eyes stared vacantly up at the doom working its way down to them.
Ruen jumped into the water. He surfaced five feet from the raft and started to swim to her.
"No!" Icelin waved him off. "Go down," she cried. "Swim down, as far as you can. Get away from the light." She could barely see him now. The light was so bright, she had to squint. "We'll be behind you."
Ruen hesitated. Icelin could almost see him calculating their odds. "I'll try to find an air pocket around the ship," he said. Then he was gone, diving beneath the surface. Icelin crawled to the edge of the raft to follow, when suddenly a heavy weight hit her from behind.
Her breath gone, Icelin fell flat to the raft. She could feel Cerest pressing his body against hers.
"Get off!" she cried, but her scream was lost in the ciy of the wraiths. They dived and hovered around the raft, blocking her escape into the water.
"They still smell the magic," Cerest shouted. His strength held her immobile. The blue light fell over them in a curtain.
The glare brightened to a painful intensity, and suddenly everything went black. Icelin thought she'd gone blind.
Blinking reflexively, she felt a warm breeze against her face. She looked up and saw a crescent of sunlight spilling over a pile of stone. It was the remains of a rooftop.
She was back in the tower. The heat continued to build, just as it had in her vision. Her two realities were merging, past and present bridged by rhe spellplague.
But this time something was different. Icelin rolled onto her side and saw the body lying next to her. Cerest was staring, disoriented, up at the sunbeams and the tower roof.
He doesn't know where he is, Icelin thought. His mind is joined to mine by the plague.
"What happened?" The elf sat up and swung toward her. His face paled visibly. Icelin turned to see the specters of her parents and Elgreth searching the tower. They went about their exploration, smiling and laughing, oblivious to the two figures sitting on the ground.
Cerest's lips formed the name of his old friend, but he couldn't speak. His eyes welled with unshed tears. Icelin couldn't believe the sight.
He's in pain. This pains him. Does he know what's coming? She looked up at the light. It fell in sunbeams and blue threads. Did Cerest know how few breaths stood between his friends, and oblivion?
She reached out, against her will, and touched the elf on the shoulder. "Cerest," she said. "Close your eyes."
"What?" He turned to her, gripping her shoulders. "It's them, can't you see them? They're alive!"
Icelin winced at the pressure he exerted. His hands trembled. Half-crazed joy shone in his liquid eyes.
"They aren't real," Icelin said. "This is memory. Everything's going to burn, Cerest." Maybe us too.
"No!" He shook his head. Sweat dripped from his hair. "Not this time. I'll be able to warn them this time. I'll get them out before anything happens."
"They can't hear you," Icelin said. She closed her eyes. She couldn't watch it a second time.
Cerest continued to hold her in a crushing grip as the heat built to a roar in her ears. She heard the screams. Cerest's raw shriek pricked icy needles all over her flesh. She tipped her head forward, resting against his chest while he wept and screamed, over and over.
He was seeing everything as he had never seen it before- from the inside of the inferno. Elgreth had long since carried her young self away, but the memory and Cerest's imagination had taken over. She could hear her mother crying out for her husband and for Cerest. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
To distract herself, Icelin conjured an image of Ruen, swimming deep in the rotting harbor. She prayed he'd found safe haven from the plague's reach. He'd already drowned in its grip once.
And what about Aldren, Darvont and Bellaril? Would they be safe inside the Ferryman, or would the plague consume the ship and crush them all? She held onto the screaming elf and hoped that one of Aldren's deities would take pity on all of them.
CHAPTER 21
Tallmantle heard Tesleena s scream a breath before the explosion. The keel of the Ferryman erupted in blue fire. Debris shot thirty feet into the air. The flames spewed toward the sky in an arcane geyser the likes of which he had never seen.
"Halt the boats!" Tallmantle raised a hand, but the men were already bringing their oars up from the water to watch the spectacle. A shower of blue flame and what looked like humanoid foims were raining down over the harbor.
"Gods above," said Deelia, who was behind him in the boat. "Are those people?"
"No," Tesleena said. She was in the boat adjacent to Tallmantle's. Her voice sounded detached from her body. Her eyes stared, unfocused, at some distant point on the horizon. "They're sea wraiths." A crease appeared in her forehead. "I understand. My thanks."
Tallmantle looked at the wizard. "What does the Blackstaff — say?
"He's too far away to know how much damage was done," Tesleena said. Her eyes shifted, centering on Tallmantle. "Which also means he has no way of knowing if it's safe to approach. He can't return to the city now. He leaves it up to you to decide whether to go in."
"What do you think?" he asked her.
"I will go," she said without hesitation. "But it's likely anyone who was in the wteckage was killed instantly when the spellplague pocket erupted."
Icelin awoke staring into darkness. She flexed her fingers- grateful that she still possessed the appendages-and cast a spell using the least possible amount of energy.
A pinprick glow lit her fingertip and spread to her whole hand. By its light, her eyes adjusted to her surroundings.
She stared up at the sky. It took her a long time to realize that the Ferryman's masts and rigging had been incinerated by the spellplague blast. Small fires burned at various points along the Ferryman's length.
The entire ship had listed far forward, but by some miracle the leviathan's bones held it stable and prevented their being crushed under its weight. The small chamber created by the wreckage had been reduced to half its size, but Ruen's raft was miraculously still intact. Gaps yawned in the planks like missing teeth. Water seeped freely across the ship's surface, 1 but for now it stayed afloat.
As her vision adjusted, Icelin became aware of the bodies. There was one on either side of her and another draped half on the raft and half in the water directly across from her. She could smell the burning, the singed flesh and hair. Her breath quickened.
The body on her right stirred. Icelin swung her spell light toward the movement. Her wrist stopped in midair, caught in an iron grip.
Icelin's heart lifted. "Ruen," she whispered. She removed his sodden hat from where it had fallen over his face. His skin was wet but unmarked by arcane fire. His eyes, when they opened, were the familiar rust red color. "Are you all right?"
He nodded and released her wrist. "Hat, please," he said.
Icelin helped him sit up and put the hat back on his head. "How did you manage not to get that thing incinerated or lost in the harbor?" she asked.
Ruen looked at her, his expression grave. "Magic," he said.
Icelin had the urge to laugh, but it died in her throat when she remembered the other bodies. She moved the light away from Ruen. Her spell illuminated a face she didn't immediately recognize. The man was beautiful, his face smooth-skinned and symmetrical. His long golden hair fell across ears that were pointed like needles.
"Merciful gods," she said. "This is Cerest."