CHAPTER NINETEEN
Coughing, Ahearn spat out seawater, waited for the dizziness to fade enough that he could orient himself. He was just a bit beyond a clutter of foam-flecked rocks. The current seemed to be drawing him away from them, but a moment later, it reversed and threatened to push him amongst them. Odd, unless…
He turned, saw the silhouette of the coast behind him. So, not a shifting current, but undertow. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it—he’d hit the water hard—gathered a breath for the long swim, and—
Bollocks! Umkhira!
He shouted her name, treading water, scanning in all directions. He couldn’t remember what had happened after landing among the swells with a smack! Like a stunning blow, he didn’t have a memory of the impact or losing his hold on his ur zhog friend. And with night coming on and the storm still driving rain into his face, he couldn’t see well or far, and she might not have long to—
“Here.” It was Umkhira’s voice, but groggy.
He swam in the direction of the sound. Two strokes and his mind sharpened a bit—enough for him to realize that the noise of the surf among the rocks was tricking his ears. But he had to do something, even if that meant swimming in circles. Except now, damn it all, he’d injured his hand. Or maybe it was just one finger that was throbbing—?
No, not throbbing: pulsing.
It was the ring, sending an urgent surge halfway up his arm whenever he faced the shore to the right. He started swimming in that direction, arms digging deep into the swells.
Umkhira wasn’t far off, but being almost inert in the water, little of her broke the surface to mark her location. He closed the distance rapidly, felt clear thought returning as he reached her. She was still moving sluggishly—the blood from her head wound was flowing again—but she wasn’t so much swimming as pawing the water. Not uncommon among the urzh, most of whom had an aversion to water, but in her case—“I thought you told me you knew how to swim!”
“May have,” she murmured. She sounded both dazed and evasive.
“Ah. I see. Too proud to admit otherwise to a thinskin?”
“I do… do swim,” she insisted crossly, evincing no ability to coordinate the motion of her legs and arms.
“Ah, sure you do, my brave green lass, sure you do. Come now, I’ll just give you a hand—” But as Ahearn slipped an arm around her waist, he discovered another problem: “Gods and sods, woman; do you have coin in all your pockets? Ye’re heavy as a millstone.”
“Tha’s me.” She retched but nothing came up. “Not easy swimming.”
Which made a kind of sense Ahearn had never considered before: urzh had heavier frames, but they did not tend toward fat. So like as not they didn’t float, even with their lungs full of air. “Well, I see why you’re not fond of boat rides. C’mon; lend a hand. And a leg. With me, now. Follow what I do. That’s right. Better.”
And she was doing better, he admitted, but at this rate, they’d be lucky to make the shore by dawn.
Or possibly, next week.
Happily, as Umkhira’s head began to clear, her ability to swim improved, although at first he couldn’t figure out why she moved like a frog; her kicks scissored the water and she swept with her arms right at the surface or just beneath it.
“We learn to swim underwater,” she explained as they neared the shore: a patchwork of faint illumination wherever the two moons found gaps in the clouds. “Easy for us to stay there. Good for hiding,” she added between strokes. “You humans are very messy swimmers.”
“Aye,” Ahearn muttered, “must annoy you no end, being saved by one.”
She was silent. “I repent my remark. It was unkind. And petty. Because although you do splash a great deal, you swim faster and further.”
Ahearn was so surprised that he got a mouthful of water. “Well, now… I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you apologize before.”
“That is because I have not done anything which warrants an apology.”
Which, Ahearn had to admit, was the simple truth. It was also true that despite her extraordinary endurance on foot, her awkward efforts at keeping her head above water taxed what little strength she had left. Once they crested through the rippling froth of the bar, he saw another row of black rocks, arrayed before them like a line of broken crocodile teeth. He scanned them, located the largest, and made for it.
As he hoped, once in the lee of that half-submerged boulder, they were able to rest a moment. The undertow was not strong enough to sweep them around its sides, so all they had to do was keep their backs against it. In the intervals when the water had ebbed out past them, it didn’t quite reach their waists.
“Wait here,” he told her after a minute.
She caught his arm as he turned to swim in the rest of the way. “Where are you going?”
“To find the others. You stay here. I’ll come back out as soon as I can.”
“You need not do so. My head has cleared. And I can surely make the shore from here.”
Ahearn raised an uncertain eyebrow.
“I can!”
“I don’t doubt it, but at night and on a strange coast—with more squalls, possibly—there’s no reason to prove that right now, is there?”
“Well, I—”
“Now see here: if you set out on your own, and then if I come looking, I could miss you in the dark. And then it might be me who’s so weary that I go under and stay there. You wouldn’t want to be the cause of that, now, would you?”
She stared sullenly at him. “Do you think me a child, trying to ‘reason’ with me that way? If you wish me to stay here, I shall—at least until the weather clears and the light is better. Does that satisfy you?”
In fact, it did, but Ahearn frowned and grudgingly conceded, “Well, I suppose it must.”
Umkhira rolled her eyes. “Please. Swim away. Now. Before you try to ‘convince’ me of something else.”
Ahearn shrugged and slid back into the surf. A moment later, the ring started to lead him again, but more gently this time.
The rest of the swim to the shore took less than ten minutes, and the storm seemed to be passing. Rain spat at him once or twice but had given up and gone elsewhere by the time he staggered out of the water in a small inlet. The footing was still treacherous, though: it was a scree-and-sand beach, framed by high sea-sharpened rocks that reached far out into the waves. And it was empty, except for him. Well, damn you, ring; what good are you if you lead me wrong?
But above the crash of the waves against the rocks, he heard what sounded like angry cries: definitely frustrated, possibly desperate. Following the sound led him back out into the water, wading and then swimming around the steep rocks to the right.
There the ring throbbed once as he discovered a narrow-mouthed notch: a round pool that had been scoured from the stone by the pinched inflows of the waves. A vicious circular current bashed about inside the funnel in pulses of foaming fury.
S’ythreni was caught against its back wall, flailing as much as swimming to keep her head above the wild, irregular swells and surges.
Ahearn started toward her.
She saw him, screamed words he couldn’t make out, but her waving arm made her meaning clear; she wanted him to turn around. Whether she was too proud to accept his help or concerned that it might kill both of them was unclear, but either way he was not about to comply; he tried to keep tight to one wall of the notch as he made his way around its periphery.
But to no avail: about halfway to her, a savage current pushed between him and the wall, rolled him away from it, and slammed him down against sharp, submerged rocks. Their presence further explained why the water’s movement was so unpredictable; as it ebbed and flowed between the debris at the bottom of the pool, it created a host of smaller currents that hit and split the waves hammering into it.
After two more attempts, which left Ahearn’s clothing shredded and his limbs marked by many cuts, he began to wonder if the notch was the creation of some malign ocean deity, a watery oubliette designed to drown all who had the temerity—or misfortune—to enter it.
“Begone!” S’ythreni shouted at him the third time he struggled back to a comparatively smooth part of the wall. “You’re distracting me!”
“From what? Dying?”
Despite her rage-contorted face, she threw her head back and laughed. “Well, at least I shall die with a smile on my face.”
“I don’t think you’ll die at all,” said a new voice from above.
They both looked up.
Cerven was smiling down at S’ythreni from a narrow crag in the rocks, a belt in his hand. “When last I saw you aboard ship, you were wearing a belt or sash. Is it still on your person?”
She nodded, had the belt off in a moment. He motioned for her to throw it; he caught it and linked it to his own. As he lowered the much longer lifeline down to her, he glanced at Ahearn. “Do you require assistance?”
Ahearn could only shake his head at the young fellow’s calm competence. “No, I’m not trapped here yet.” Well, I don’t think I am.
Just to be safe, he waited until S’ythreni had climbed up the sheer wall, using the line as a handhold where necessary. Cerven smiled at her as she clambered to safety. She glared at him and snarled gratitude in her own language: “Uuth.”
His smiled widened. “As’aa,” he responded in excellently accented Iavarain.
She started. “Where did you learn that?”
“Iavarain?” he asked. “It was my second—”
“No, that accent.”
“Ah. From a neighbor. Now, I shall seek Varcaxtan, Elweyr, and our fellow traveler.” With a nod, he disappeared back into the crag from which he’d appeared.
S’ythreni glanced over her shoulder at Ahearn; their raised eyebrows were a match for each other.
“I think,” Ahearn began slowly, “that we need to find out where that lad grew up. And whom with.”
“H’ai, he had some ‘neighbors,’” she muttered back, almost drowned out by the fuming vortex in the notch. “He doesn’t just speak classical Iavarain instead of aeostun. He uses archaic idioms and pronunciations that you only hear when you’re around, well… ”
“Around Tharêdæath?”
“I was going to say ‘around Uulamantre,’ but those are just two ways of saying the same thing.” She shook her head and disappeared where Cerven had moments before.
Great, Ahearn thought, as he began edging back along the curving wall of the notch toward the surf beyond, just what this group needs: another walking, talking mystery.
By the time Ahearn had struggled back to the small inlet where he’d come ashore, Elweyr was already there. Less than a minute later, Varcaxtan mounted the dunes at its rear, a wholly unexpected person following behind him: the captain.
“Well,” said Ahearn, trying to sound convincing, “I’m certainly glad to see you survived, Captain. Now, Varcaxtan, about our, er, sickly friend—”
The captain sighed. “Are you truly so dense?”
Ahearn started. “Dragon? Another change? This is getting entirely too confusing!”
“Dragon?” breathed Cerven quietly. “Well, yes—it all makes sense now.”
“Oh, well done, steel-waver,” the “captain” drawled archly. “A capital job, keeping that secret. Perhaps we should tarry here and etch it into the rocks, just so that no one who passes by will be left in ignorance.”
Ahearn, who couldn’t decide whether the heat in his face was from anger or embarrassment, shot back, “Well, how was I supposed to know that—well, damn it all, you miserable wyrm: how the hells did you do whatever it is you’ve done to be inside the captain?”
Varcaxtan cleared his throat. “It’s more a matter of being inside what’s left of the captain, Ahearn.”
Ahearn frowned; the mood of arch banter evaporated. “I’m not sure what that means.”
The captain avatar sighed. “It means that I may have killed the poor creature.”
Varcaxtan shook his head. “Now, that’s just not how it was.”
“Wasn’t it?” The dragon sat on the sand; if Ahearn hadn’t known the self-centered and egotistical being better, he would say that he looked and sounded crestfallen, even remorseful. “You see,” he said, gaze moving slowly about the group, “I knew the other avatar would not survive the ordeal of being flung into wild seas in the middle of the night. She had barely enough strength left to breathe.”
“You said as much,” Elweyr nodded.
“Yes, so I knew I would have to occupy one of the others nearby.” He shrugged. “The captain was the logical choice. He would be recognized as the leader by any survivors, and I meant to get to the bottom of his resentment for Tharêdæath—a rather nasty surprise, that. And I am no longer easily surprised.
“However, he had a stronger will than I expected. What should have been the work of a second became the work of three—and that was the moment the ship capsized. So as he fell toward the water, he was not entirely aware of his surroundings—and was dashed against one of the rocks, in consequence. A blow to the head. When I awakened within him, he was no longer breathing, let alone thinking.”
The dragon sighed, looked out to sea. “I was able to put life back into his heart and lungs, and his brain is not significantly damaged, but it is no longer capable of independent thought. When I leave this body, it will collapse as would a puppet deprived of its strings. So I have killed yet another of your kind.”
“Well, you hardly killed the captain—” began Ahearn.
“Had I not been subjugating his mind at that moment, he would have had his wits about him. And lived.”
Elweyr folded his arms. “You cannot know that.”
The dragon regarded the mantic. “Never before have you made such a blunt asseveration when addressing me. Good for you—and I understand that you are trying to be kind. But these were my deeds; the deaths are justly weights upon my wings.” He sighed. “Assuming I ever have my wings, again.”
Elweyr folded his arms against the sharp wind. “I had no idea that dragons were so… ”
“Philosophical?” the body of the captain supplied.
“Principled,” the thaumancer clarified.
The dragon snorted. “If you should ever meet another of my breed, do not generalize from my behavior in forming your expectations. In that regard, we are as varied as your own species. Probably more so, in that there is little we respect or fear enough to compel us toward moderation in our feelings or convictions.”
“So,” S’ythreni smirked, “you’re saying you’re all self-centered and selfish.”
The dragon could not help but smile. “I wonder what aeostu taste like,” he mock-threatened.
“A discussion for another time,” Ahearn announced, standing and feeling sand rubbing into the cuts inflicted by the whirlpool. “Let’s see what’s behind those dunes: hopefully a windbreak to sleep behind. Because we have our work cut out for us tomorrow.”
“Work?” Cerven said wonderingly. “What kind of work? Searching for more survivors?”
“And salvage,” Elweyr muttered. “We hope.”