Siren
stared at the sun. The mists of the
night had cleared and so she had been able to mark its progress with ease all
morning. Noon was fast approaching and
just a couple of the patrol groups she had sent out had yet to return, although
that she could count Ellis' group amongst them was concerning.
She knew that the area she had asked Ellis, Greta
and Luke to reconnoitre was one of the larger ones and so she had expected them
to return later than the others, but something about the way the day had passed
so far made her nervous and she was anxious that he should return, safe and
with no news.
Certainly none
of the others had had anything to report.
There was no sign of the Dusk Raider for miles in any direction
and Siren was beginning to think that the galleon had simply returned to
port. In that case the drama would be
over and though she had lost, she could accept that as preferable to being
hunted down and murdered by forces beyond her understanding.
Something had
been in charge of that ship the night before and she was pretty sure that it
hadn't been Harker. For one, Harker
wouldn't have been able to resist stepping out onto deck and taunting her. He was arrogant and he loved to show-off, so
his visible absence implied his physical absence as well. If he was anywhere it was probably in a bar
in Shalereef, waiting for news, bragging.
No, something else had taken his place as captain and the thought of
those eerie lights emanating from the cabin made her skin crawl. Had Harker made some sort of deal,
she wondered, and if so, with whom, or with what?
The lack of news then, should
have been reassuring and she was, at least partly relieved, but even so,
something made her wary and every minute Ellis was away was a minute in which
her heart seemed to tighten and twist all the more beneath her ribs.
Franck was the only other
member of the ‘crew’ who had remained with her at the makeshift campsite whilst
the rest went scouting and he had been talking with her for much of the
morning, discussing plans and ideas for mechanical tweaks which would make the
Shoalstrike vessels run that much more efficiently. He had conspicuously avoided talking about what might have
happened to Rockspark, M. Marveille and the rest of their mechanical fleet, as
had Siren, but despite this he had been fairly animated and chatty for several
hours. Now he stood off to one side,
much like Siren herself, and he wore what she assumed must be a similar
expression of thoughtfulness and concern.
He didn’t like to demonstrate it very often, but anyone who knew him
would know that he cared a great deal for Ellis. And so do I, Siren admitted to herself, so hurry up and
return to me you stupid, clumsy Earth
boy!
“Here comes another,” someone
shouted from near the shoreline and Siren craned her neck to see past the
forest of upturned stone wrecks at the little boat thrumming its engines across
the smooth black waters towards them.
She closed her eyes as she realised it wasn’t Ellis, counting to ten in
her head before she opened them again and smiled.
“That’s great,” she called out,
trying to sound as light and effervescent as possible, “only one group left!”
She turned away and took a deep
breath, catching Franck’s eyes for just a moment as she did so. The spindly old Philosopher let out a sigh
and walked towards her.
“I’m sure Ellis will be back
soon, my dear,” he said in his softest, most reassuring tones, but Siren could
see in his eyes that he wasn’t really so certain, “his group did have a
lot further to travel than most and you know that those inlets can take a while
to explore properly.”
“Of course,” Siren replied
almost dismissively, “of course I know that, it’s just… Why did I send him so far away? He’s the least experienced - he’s hardly
seen any of this world – and he would have been much more helpful remaining
here with us where the medallion could be put to good use. What was I thinking?”
Franck gave her a long,
searching look, before replying, very slowly and carefully, “Are you struggling
to deal with what Doctor Gristfinkel discovered?”
“I…”, she averted her eyes,
unable to hold Franck’s piercing gaze, “I don’t know, Franck. I’m not sure what I feel.”
“You like him a lot, don’t
you?” Siren was about to object, but he
raised a hand and quickly added, “Now, now, I’m not so book-addled that I can’t
tell what’s been going on between you over the past two weeks. Our new knowledge about Ellis must
complicate that, of course it will, but it probably wont change what you’ve
been feeling all this time.”
“But what have I been feeling,
Franck? I was confused even before I
knew – now… I don’t know.”
“And I think that is why you
sent him away, and why you’ve kept him at arms length since the good doctor
left my house. You can’t keep doing
that, it isn’t going to help your confusion.”
Siren nodded, slowly, then
added, “All I know is that, whatever he is, whatever our relationship is, I
just want him back safe and sound.”
“As do I, Siren, my dear. As do I.”
They watched as the returning
scouts pulled their boat onto the sandbank and began talking to the other
crewmembers. One of them, a girl named
Judita, approached to give her report.
Siren stepped forward to receive it, preparing a smile as she did so,
when suddenly the light dimmed, as if the sun had just gone behind a thunder
cloud. It was so sudden and so unexpected
that everyone, Judita and Siren included, looked up at the sky to see that
there was nothing above but clear, pale green atmosphere with hardly a cloud in
sight. It was the sun itself that
appeared dimmer, somehow. Siren stared
at it, wondering how that was possible, and then the air began to chill,
growing steadily colder until her breath came out in a thick cloud and she had
to hug her arms to stop from shivering.
“This is not natural,” Franck
was muttering behind her, “not natural at all, no, no.”
She turned around, trying to
stop her teeth from chattering. “What’s
going on?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Franck replied,
“but I’d hazard a guess that it was some kind of attack.”
“Then how do we respond?”
A shot echoed across the
rolling, wreck-strewn sandbanks, closely followed by a ricochet and crumbling
stone. Another few seconds of
inaction and there’ll be screams as well, Siren realised. She turned away from Franck and faced out
towards her crew.
“Everyone take cover!” As they scrambled to obey, dashing behind
the ribs of the ancient vessels and the hulls of their own rather more modern
boats, she continued, “Ready your weapons and don’t worry about the cold,
because you’re about to have plenty of opportunity to warm up!” then she too dropped behind the jagged
remains of a centuried stone hull - Franck appearing at her side with
ever-surprising nimbleness - and drew her flintlock pistols.
Peering over the top of the
wreckage she tried to catch sight of their enemies, but, now that her crew were
hidden, the shoals seemed completely empty and the mysterious twilight and
increasingly deathly cold seemed to only heighten the silence.
“Where are they?” she
whispered.
“I could try that equation to
summon forth hypostatick energy again, if you like,” Franck suggested.
“And let our enemies know
exactly where we are? I don’t think
so.”
“Hmm… well I suppose I could
refine it somewhat, tweak a few variables here and there, add a pinch of logic,
that kind of thing.” He stroked his chin.
“I might be able to trace the source of the energies maintaining this
change. They must be quite
considerable, so I don’t think it would take too much effort. In fact, it would be just like the time when
I tried to find out who had played that prank on our chef, subsequently maiming
him, by hiding thirty-one hungry fastclaw crabs in his stewpot, only I would be
doing it for real this time and not trying to hide the fact that I had really
done it myself. I was only eight at the
time, of course, but-”
“Could you stop talking for a
moment and just perform the equation, Franck?”
“Look down. I’ve already done it.”
Siren glanced down at the sand
beneath her feet to see that Franck had indeed been scribbling away whilst he
had been talking. The glowing letters
and symbols of the equation were already fading as the energy took effect and
when she looked up again Siren saw shimmering trails of light all around them,
as if the very air they breathed and the sky above were all being manipulated
by some kind of ethereal puppet master.
“Well, well,” Franck said,
sounding genuinely impressed, “this is a much more complex manipulation of
hypostatick energy than I would have given Harker credit for.”
“There’s no way this is
Harker’s doing. Not directly at
least. He’s made a deal with something
evil, I’m sure of it.”
“Oh yes, you are quite right
about that. He has indeed. And I can
tell just by looking at these energy strings exactly what he has been
dealing with on this occasion, but that’s not what I meant. To convince a creature like this to do so
much as make a bad cup of tea would have required great skill and knowledge in
binding and controlling hypostatick forces, and I don’t think he’s got that in
him, does he?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
“Well, don’t worry about it for
now. Tell your crew to target the area
where the strings converge, over… there.”
He pointed across the sandbank at an area where the shimmering lines of
light seemed to merge into a sphere of glowing energy.
Siren nodded, stepped up
briefly above her cover, pointed at the source of all the energy and shouted,
“Fire at the ball of light!” Almost
immediately a volley of rounds filled the air and exploded upon the
sphere. It seemed to crack slightly, as
if it was made of extremely tough glass.
A second volley followed the first, with Siren joining in this time and
even Franck took a pot-shot at the unnatural orb. Return shots were fired from somewhere out of sight and there was
a painful yelp as someone was hit, but Siren could not turn her gaze away from
her target, not without risking more casualties. Another volley of fire sent sparks flying away from it and there
was the sound of spreading fractures.
Siren took one last shot and then the orb exploded, sending a shockwave
of energy across the shoals, accompanied by such a blinding light that she had
to duck back undercover and hide her eyes for a moment before she could look
again. When she did so the light had
returned to its usual mid-morning levels and the cold had diminished somewhat,
but most notably she could now see their enemy and, for just a moment, she
wished she could not.
“Oh my,” Franck whispered
beside her as he too peered over the ancient hull at the nemesis before
them. “I was expecting something like
this and yet, now we can see what we’re really facing up against,” he
continued, rather shakily, “I suggest we run.”
Siren gazed at their foe, at
the way Harker’s men greatly outnumbered her own, how their weapons appeared to
be all the more powerful and hypostatickally enhanced, how none of them were
wounded. She saw the looks in their
eyes – the almost vacant horror, the weary, fear-whipped frenzy. Most of all she saw their new captain in all
its skeletal finery, draped in a robe of crimson viscera which barely obscured
the purple lightning coursing through every bone and joint to thunder beneath
its barrel-like ribcage: a dark heart of pure hypostatick energy. She saw it holding high an enormous cutlass
made from the jawbone of a glasswhale, ready to swing it and so mark the charge
of its soul-slaved minions. She saw
this Lich and she knew that Franck was right.
“Retreat!” she cried and as one
her crew fled, some falling from gunfire and lightning even as they did so, to
run, desperately, haggardly, hopelessly deeper into the Stonerib Shoals,
for where else was there to go?
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