James Clemens - Shadowfall

Tylarclung to Kathryn as the flippercraft plum meted. Smoke filled the cabin, steaming from the slagged mekanicals as the blood alchemies burned. Beneath the floorboards, the grind and scream of strained iron and steel shook through the ship. Shouts and cries echoed to them from the forward sections.

Slowly the steep cant of the deck rolled slightly more even. The ship turned, attempting a slow spiral. The captain and his helmsman must be wresting the craft by sheer muscle and will.

But it was Tylar’s chance to move.

He clutched Kathryn’s elbow.“We must get to the others… to the captain’s deck!” he yelled to be heard above the howl of the winds through the broken stern window. He had no plan, but they could do nothing here.

She nodded.

He helped haul her to her feet-and she helped him. The freeing of the naethryn daemon had healed his wounds, but it hadn’t replaced the blood he’d lost. He found his vision narrowing.

“The daemon…” Kathryn glanced back to the smoky deck.

Earlier, Tylar had explained about the naether-spawn. Kathryn had studied the black palm print with interest. But to see the naethryn rip from his body, shattering its way out, had transformed mere words into true horror.

“What it did to you…” she said as they reached the door.

Tylar grabbed the door’s locking bar. “That broken man you saw was not the work of the daemon, but the slave pits and circuses.” He could not keep the bitterness from his words, even when he caught the wounded look in Kathryn’s eyes. “The daemon keeps me whole.”

Tylar freed the bar that Darjon had set. The door fell open under him. They tumbled through into the main passage… into chaos. Smoke wafted here, a pall lit by fires licking up from cracks in the floorboards. The lower ship, the mekanical spaces, must be on fire.

Travelers crowded the passage, abandoning cabins. They tangled and fought in panic. Orders were shouted, prayers raised, cries echoed.

“There!” Kathryn pointed.

Tylar spotted the flash of bronze. It was Master Gerrod, brilliant in his armor. He stood braced in a doorway a few spaces down the tilted passageway. One metal hand gripped Rogger by the shirt collar, keeping him in place.

Across the passage, Eylan shoved several folks out of her way with the handle of a long ax. The Wyr-mistress’s dark eyes found Tylar and narrowed. Her efforts grew fiercer. Her duty had been to act as his bodyguard, to keep his valuable seed safe from harm. She seemed furious at how difficult he was making her chore.

Tylar and Kathryn hurried to the others.

He turned to Rogger and Gerrod. “We must get to the captain’s deck.”

Another explosion bucked the ship savagely. It rolled to port, throwing everyone to the wall. Cries grew sharper in alarm. Tylar snatched Kathryn around the waist. He felt her heartbeat pounding. He stared through the open door of a passenger’s cabin and out its window.

With the ship rolled over, the city appeared beneath the flippercraft. Tall towers stretched close. He spotted townsmen on the streets, near enough to see their faces staring up. He knew what they were seeing. A flippercraft, trailing a tail of smoke and fire, about to strike the city.

Then the ship swung back even, taking away the view below-only now the craft’s nose dipped more steeply.

A hand grabbed his elbow, as hard as any shackle.

He turned to find Eylan hauling him up.

Tylar attempted to shake free. “My seed will have to wait.”

She scowled at him. Using her free arm, she stopped one of the crewmen with the butt of her ax handle, pinning the young man to the wall. “Take us to the foredeck,” she demanded in a voice that offered no mercy.

The crewman balked, near blind with panic.

Not a good sign.

“I may be able to help the captain.” Tylar grabbed the man by the shoulder, shoving the ax handle away. “I have Grace that may serve to save the ship.”

The man’s eyes fixed to him, to any hope, then nodded.

Gerrod and Rogger joined them. With Eylan in the lead, roughly knocking folks aside with the flat of her ax, they forced their way forward.

The crewman unlocked the hatch of the captain’s deck. “We’ve lost all aeroskimmers. We’re riding on the dregs of Grace. If you can do anything…”

Tylar led the others into a mirror of the stern common room. A deck overlooked a curved wall of glass, the captain’s eye. But instead of open decking, the space was occupied by an arc of control seats. To the right and left, men fought to wield the starboard and port aeroskimmers. Smoke poured from one side, flames lapped on the other.

In the center, directly ahead, the helmsman sat, strapped to a chair that protruded out over the window, like the bowsprit of a ship. The position gave the man a full view of the city hurtling toward them. His feet worked a set of pedals, his hands a vast wheel. Smoke framed his form. A spat of flames danced under his toes.

It was deathly quiet as the team worked to save the flippercraft, to save the passengers, to save themselves. The captain stood behind his helmsman at the foot of the bowsprit. His brows darkened at the sight of the newcomers.

Tylar had no time for pleasantries. He hurried forward.

Below, the city filled the window.

Tylar recognized immediately the desperation of the captain’s plan. The Tigre River lay directly below them. The captain was dropping the flippercraft into the river, plainly hoping to cushion their crash, and in turn, spare the lives of the townsfolk below.

But there was a problem with his plan.

Directly ahead, a massive structure blocked the river. Nine towers and a keep. Chrism’s castillion. They were falling too fast. With the aeroskimmers out, they could not swing around. It was a dead man’s drop. They might strike the river, but like a skipped stone on a flat pond, they would crash headlong into the keep itself. Though the castillion was raised up on giant pillars to allow river barges to pass beneath, it was not high enough to accommodate the bulk of the flippercraft.

“Captain,” Tylar said, “where’s your main plumb to the alchemical tank?”

The captain pointed to the left. “We used all our reserves. We have nothing left.”

Tylar was already moving. Kathryn followed, along with the captain. They reached the plumb feed used to fill the tanks. It was a column of thick glass, sealed at the top. The entire crew’s eyes were on them.

Tylar ordered the captain, “Open the plumb.” He turned to Kathryn and bared his wrists. “Your sword. Cut deep.”

To her credit, she did not balk. The blade slid free with a flash of silver. With a speed borne of desperation, she thrust her blade’s edge across both wrists. She was not gentle. She sliced to bone. Tendons severed. Blood poured.

Tylar swung his arms over the open feeding tube. His blood flowed down the glass, heading for the mekanicals in the ship’s belly.

Rogger appeared at his side. “Your Grace’s aspect is water. Not air. This is no Fin.”

“It’s about to become one.” Tylar nodded to the window, hugging the tube, wrists on fire. The Tigre River swelled out the window. The castillion lay an arrow’s shot away.

Tylar closed his eyes and willed his streaming blood. He pictured the crimson river reaching the main mekanicals that flew the ship. He recalled the explosive effect his raw blood had on the Fin as they fled Tangle Reef.

Pure, undiluted power.

He prayed it was enough.

He cast his will along with his blood to the heart of the flippercraft. He flowed his Grace through the mekanicals and over the keel of the craft.

Water…

Into an ocean he had been born, birthed as his mother drowned in a sinking scuttlecraft off the Greater Coast. He touched that place, drew upon half memories buried deep within. Water flowed back with his first sensations of this world. He was pushed from warm womb to cold sea.