Robin Owens - Echoes in the Dark

The afternoon before had consisted of a quick tour, then lunch, then bathing in a wonderful spa-like pool under one of the buildings, a massage, then dinner.

Learning to live with a soundtrack had taken a lot out of her and she’d retired early.

Now she said, “Flying horses?”

Of course.

They stared at each other. Chasonette clicked her beak. Come to the window, then. She flew there.

Jikata slid off the high bed, grabbed a robe hanging on a garment rack, slipped it on, tied the belt, then sauntered over to the window.

Chasonette gave a piercing whistle that had Jikata stumbling back, then the bird turned her head and ruffled her comb. Wait. They are not as fast as birds.

Jikata shrugged, looked for her backpack. Obsessive or not, she always checked it every morning and every evening. The bag, and smaller pouches within, were all she had of her own…world. Everything was there, but a little jumbled, not in the order she liked. She arranged the smaller bags.

Chasonette whistled again, and Jikata looked up, irritated.

And froze.

Hovering outside her window was a gorgeous animal.

It looked like a horse with wings.

The song coming from it was ravishing.

It is one of the Abbey volarans. It is glad to see you so it can gain status with gossip. But it is not good at staying in place. Chasonette tapped the window glass with her beak. The horse flung up its head, then fell away, wings beating.

“Wait!” Jikata dropped her pack, but by the time she reached the windows it was out of sight.

I am your companion, Chasonette said. She slid a glittering gaze toward Jikata. But I don’t think I need to be with you when you have your lessons from the Singer this morning or visit the Caverns of Prophecy this afternoon. She fluffed up her feathers as if cold.

Jikata felt a chill, too. Of change, of premonition.

Marshalls’ Castle

Raine watched her beautiful model boat cruise around the sacred pool in the Temple. She was pretty sure this design would work to take an invasion force to the Dark’s volcanic island. It had room enough for crew, provisions, twenty-five pairs of Marshalls, twenty of the top Chevaliers, six Circlets of the sorcerous persuasion, six Friends from the Singer’s Abbey, flying horses for all of them, the four Exotiques and their mates and the remaining two Exotiques, which included her.

She didn’t want to go invade a hideous evil so huge and ancient it could suck the life out of a planet.

It was the biggest ship she’d ever designed by herself or with her family in Connecticut. It was all wrong that she should be working on a galleon, a battleship, instead of a yacht. It was beautiful.

She’d gotten used to building models by magic here in Lladrana, designing them on heavy handmade paper, cutting and folding them until they looked like the ship she’d seen in her mind, setting them in water, then concentrating hard with her Power, and making the pulp in the paper into wood that was a model ship. She didn’t think the process would work for a real, full-sized ship.

Not to mention it lacked a power source.

The model floated and cut through the water of the pool fine, pushed around by her Power. She couldn’t imagine even the most Powerful of the mages on Lladrana mentally propelling the ship. Wouldn’t it drain them quickly and leave them stranded?

Of course it had two big masts, two small ones and sails. They could take advantage of the wind.

Except no one had consulted any sailors. The anger of most of Lladranan society toward the Seamasters who had messed up Raine’s own Summoning was still in force.

Raine’s early days on Lladrana were fading into a bad dream.

But right now she was all too aware that she couldn’t build the ship, power it, sail it, alone.

That meant she had to release the last bit of grudge against the Seamasters and make the first overture, bring them into the fold to help plan the defeat of the Dark.

She’d spent a month understanding the needs of the Lladranans, designing and revising the ship. It was a fine vessel and a work of art and would carry exactly what everyone told her it needed to carry. She had different versions for different power systems, steam and diesel.

Here in the Marshalls’ Castle and her tidy house in Castleton, she’d hidden and healed. Now she was nervous about the time it would take to build the ship. All the prophecies of this land stated that the battle would take place this year.

Since time flowed the same here as at home, that meant they were in the beginning of August. Casually, she’d dropped questions about shipbuilding to Marian, who spent most of her time working on the final “City Destroyer” spell. Marian thought it could take out the Dark’s island.

Probably with all of them on it.

But most were primed for the suicide mission, to sacrifice their lives to destroy the Dark.

Raine had never planned to “go” that way.

So she’d concentrated on the ship instead, as all of them wished, and had asked Marian how long it took to build a ship. Marian had gone all distant, as if recalling something she’d read. She’d absently replied, “Three days with Power,” turned her mind back to her studies and didn’t see Raine stagger away.

Looking again at her model, which had floated to the center of the pool and sat in dead calm, Raine shook her head. She could do another test of seaworthiness on it—making the pool ripple with huge waves to batter it. Raine had lived with tides and oceans all her life and knew to the salt of her blood how they moved. But the ship was excellent, one of her best efforts.

It had no Power source.

Time to look at a real ship.

Everyone had been very protective of her. Except for the strange flight a couple of nights before, Raine had stayed in the Castle and the city for the past month—she’d never lived inland and away from the sea for so long. She yearned for the scent of the beach, the sound of the surf.

Just as the month before that she’d yearned to be able to go inland more than a couple of miles.

She really wanted to come and go as she pleased.

She left her ship in the pool and exited the Temple to a cloudy summer day, cool for Connecticut and cool for Lladrana. The planet was dying under the onslaught of the Dark, the weather chilling. She’d welcomed the two previous days of sun.

The courtyard of the Castle bustled, as usual. That morning there’d been an alarm that monsters were invading from the north. Marshalls and Chevaliers had flown to battle. Raine had clutched her newest model in her hands and run to the Map Room, had seen that the incursion was minor, and forced herself to finish her last experiments in the Temple. She had really wanted to stay and watch the animated map, particularly the orange-red shields that were Faucon and his team. But she had her own task.

Now she heard the clang of the siren pulse in notes that told everyone the Castle teams had been triumphant, and waited, heart squeezing, for the pause then the indication of casualties. The quiet went on and on and she heard a couple of soldiers next to her sigh as she did. No deaths.

They bowed to her, a man and a woman, and she smiled back, cleared her throat. “How long will it take for the Marshalls and Chevaliers to return?”

The man’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “They were north and far to the east. Quite a distance. A few hours.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Seamistress Exotique.”

She jolted inwardly at the title but didn’t let it show. They walked away, the woman whistling.

Seamistress Exotique. The title was wrong. She could design pretty ships, make sure they were seaworthy, but knew little enough about the seas and oceans of Lladrana—the Brisay Sea dotted with islands off the western shore, the colder waters north on the way to the Dark’s island, the narrow channel between continents that was the only way to approach the island.