The Silent Guide, page 20
“Any ideas?”
“Only one way to find out.”
They descended into darkness that grew thicker with each step. Not Mimic darkness like Jerath’s ability—this was natural, the absence of light rather than the presence of shadow. Ellie found a fabricated light crystal in her pocket, taken from the unconscious guard, and activated it with a touch.
The hold was full of crates, each marked with symbols that seemed to shift when studied. Mariel approached one, running her fingers over the markings.
“Containment seals,” she said. “Whatever’s in these crates, they didn’t want it getting out during transport.”
“Or anything getting in,” Ellie added, noting that some of the symbols faced inward rather than outward.
Footsteps above them moved with purpose. The search had begun in earnest.
“We don’t have time to investigate everything,” Ellie said. “But this one…” She indicated a crate set apart from the others, surrounded by a circle of salt mixed with what looked like silver filings. “This one’s different. The power emanating from it is unlike the others.”
“Different how?”
Ellie approached carefully. The crate was smaller than the others, made of wood so dark it seemed to absorb their light. No markings, just smooth, polished surface that reflected nothing.
As Ellie traced her hand along the surface, she could feel power inside the crate. She wasn’t sure what it was, only that the power seemed to build and seep outward, leaving her feeling a kind of energy that she was unclear of, but she recognized that whatever power existed inside was more than she had felt before.
She reached for it, and her Blade ability and her Kindling mixed, surging from her.
With an explosion, the crate came open.
Inside she saw a small sphere with symbols etched into it. She could feel the power radiating from it.
“What is it?” Ellie asked.
The other woman shook her head. “I don’t know. Never seen anything like it. Never seen writing like that.” She looked up, meeting Ellie’s eyes. “But if they are after it, then it can’t be anything good.”
No. And for some reason, the pain in Ellie’s side surged, as if the darkness that she still dealt with, that corruption that lingered within her, reacted to this thing. She was tempted to try to pulse power through it, to see if there would be a way for her to disrupt it, but she wasn’t sure she could really do anything. And so she just reached for it. The moment she touched it, she felt a surge of unknown power.
The footsteps were closer now. Voices grew louder as well.
“Up,” Ellie decided. “We go up, straight through them.”
“That’s absurd.”
“No, it’s unexpected. They think we’re hiding, so they’re searching systematically. If we attack directly, we might break through before they can coordinate a response.”
Mariel considered this, then nodded. “I know another who would have approved of that. Another Blade.”
Ellie frowned at her. “Was it Zaren?” It was too much to hope for.
The woman frowned, too. “You know him?”
Ellie sucked in a breath. “Yes. He is—was—my mentor.”
“Yes, well, I was helping him research. Unfortunately, I was not much of the researcher that he needed.”
They climbed the stairs quickly but quietly, Ellie leading with the sphere tucked securely in her belt pouch. She could feel it humming against her hip, a constant reminder of the power she now carried.
The deck was chaos when they emerged. Servants scattered across the ship, some searching the rigging, others checking every shadow where someone might hide. The heavily fabricated sections of the ship were more obvious here—platforms reinforced with power, angles that had been altered through fabrication to provide better defensive positions.
Jerath stood near the wheel, no longer wearing his Servant robes but dressed in strange armor. It seemed to drink in the morning sunlight, creating a zone of twilight around him.
“Find them!” he was shouting. “They can’t have—”
His eyes widened when he saw them, not with surprise but with something like hunger as he noticed the bulge in Ellie’s pouch.
He studied her. “I’m not surprised that you would have been drawn to that. Can you feel it? Can you tell what it is?”
“Something fae,” Ellie said.
“No,” he said. “Older.”
Older than the fae?
That would be… She wanted to say impossible, but she knew that it wouldn’t be. How could it be impossible when she had seen—and felt—things that had been equally impossible? It only felt that way because she wasn’t sure what to make of it, and she wasn’t sure what power, if any, she could use from it.
“What’s it for?”
“It is meant to stabilize the pathway through.”
“So the fae don’t get diminished when they come through the gates?”
Jerath scoffed. “The fae? There you go again.”
“Then the Quell.”
“Not even him. His power.”
“So you want it.”
“There is very little that you can do with it. Even with your power—”
She threw the sphere.
Not at Jerath, not overboard, but upward, impossibly high. Every eye tracked its movement, the perfect orb spinning as it rose, seeming to pause at the apex of its flight.
In that moment of distraction, Ellie and Mariel moved.
They didn’t run for the rails or try to fight through the Servants. Instead, they went up—climbing the rigging with desperate speed, using the crew’s moment of confusion to gain height.
The sphere began to fall, and Jerath moved to catch it, but Ellie had aimed the throw perfectly. It would land in the water, just beyond the ship’s edge, close enough to retrieve but far enough to require someone to go after it.
“The sphere,” Jerath shouted. “Get the sphere!”
Strangely, Ellie could still feel it. She didn’t know if she was somehow drawn to it or if it was because of the injury she’d sustained that carried with it a bit of corrupted power that might have tethered her to the other side of the Twilight Gate, but she felt it. She wondered if she could damage the sphere, even from here, knowing Jerath wanted it.
“Now what?” Mariel gasped, clinging to a yardarm.
“Now we—” Ellie began, then stopped.
The item was floating in the water.
She hadn’t expected that. It had too much weight for her to have imagined that it would float. Why—and how—was it able to do so?
Maybe because it was being drawn in some way?
Not by her. She didn’t feel any connection to herself. Instead, she wondered if it was something the Servants had done, some connection that they had to it. And if that were the case, then she had to wonder if there would be a way for her to sever it.
But for now…
For now, she would do what she could to keep it from being used.
If it was meant to stabilize, she could destabilize it, couldn’t she?
She was a Blade.
But she was more than that, she had come to see. Even if she wasn’t entirely sure what she was, she knew she was more than she ever thought. She pressed through her Blade ability, sending out a pulse of power, and in doing so, Ellie felt the radiating energy as it surged out from her. There was a burst of it, power that expanded and expanded until it exploded.
And she sent it directly toward what she felt of the sphere.
Somewhere nearby, someone cried out.
A crackling that felt almost like a rumbling sensation hit Ellie.
And then everything exploded in fabricated light.
“Now!” Mariel shouted, seizing the moment of confusion.
They slid down the rigging, the rough hemp burning their palms as they descended to the deck. Ellie landed in a controlled roll, coming up with the twin blades from Jerath’s arsenal in her hands. The weapons felt natural, balanced for her grip, their unenhanced steel gleaming in the strange light.
“What did you do to it?”
“I did what was necessary,” Ellie said. “I did what you refused to do.”
“I refuse to do nothing.”
“Well, I did what was necessary to keep you from using it.”
She could feel the power of the item, and strangely she could feel some part of it and wondered if perhaps there would be a way for her to continue to push against it. She tried to focus on it, continued to allow that energy to build within her, and then let that power course out from her. It was a rhythm, a cycling of her Blade ability, but it worked with the Kindling as well. The two powers compounded, and by joining together, she felt the resonance within it.
She pushed again.
Once more, she felt a crackling, potent and powerful.
Then there was a surge of mysterious power that she could not believe.
A disturbance at the harbor entrance drew everyone’s attention. A ship had appeared, cutting through the morning mist with purpose—a familiar silhouette that sent a rush of hope through Ellie’s chest.
“The Stormwind’s Resolve,” she breathed. Captain Harwick’s vessel, its sails billowing as it made directly for Jerath’s ship.
“What is that?” Mariel asked.
“Reinforcements. Apparently they found me.”
Jerath had already decided to ignore Ellie, and was going after the sphere. She could still feel the power within it, sizzling with that energy, as if she had activated it in some way.
Oddly, it reminded her of how it had felt when the power from the gates expanded and the Priest had released that energy.
She struck again, using a mixture of her Blade ability and that of the Kindling.
The approaching ship was close enough now that Ellie could make out figures on the deck. Captain Harwick stood at the prow, his weathered face set in lines of determination as he directed the attack. Beside him stood Ralen, and her heart leaped at the sight of his familiar figure.
“They’re going to ram us,” Ellie realized, noticing the Stormwind’s trajectory and speed.
Jerath reached the same conclusion a moment later. He gestured sharply, and the Servants nearest the wheel moved to change their course—to evade the incoming vessel. But it was already too late. Harwick had calculated his approach perfectly, leaving Jerath’s crew no time to maneuver their larger, less nimble ship out of the way.
“Hold on to something,” Ellie advised. She braced herself against the mainmast.
The collision, when it came, was deafening. Wood splintered and metal screamed as the reinforced prow of the Stormwind’s Resolve slammed into Jerath’s vessel just forward of amidships. The impact sent everyone staggering, and Ellie had to fight to keep her balance as the deck tilted beneath her.
As they collided, she pushed one more time, and power expanded. There was another explosion of energy that came from the sphere, and Ellie was tossed back just as she closed her hand around it.
All around her, the Servants were readying, but Ellie wasn’t quite sure what they were readying for.
Until she saw it.
A boarding party from the Stormwind’s Resolve swarmed onto the tilted deck, led by Ralen.
“Ellie!” he called. His blade cleared a path through the Servants who tried to block him. “This way!”
She could feel the sphere beginning to destabilize. Ellie didn’t know what else it was going to do, but she was aware of that power and how it continued to build around her. She fought that destabilization, pushing with the Blade ability, until there was another explosion of energy. That explosion sent everyone tumbling, staggering.
Mariel’s expression changed to one of alarm. “We need to get off this ship. Now.”
Above them, the sky darkened unnaturally, storm clouds gathering despite the clear weather that had prevailed all morning. The sphere’s pulse synchronized with Ellie’s heartbeat, creating a resonant frequency that she could feel spreading outward, affecting the very air around them.
Ralen fought his way to their position, his movements efficient and deadly as he disabled rather than killed the Servants who opposed him. “What’s happening?” he demanded. His eyes fixed on the swirling clouds above.
“They have something that they were hoping to use to stabilize the power coming through the gates. I’m just choosing to destabilize it,” she said. “Only…”
Only, as Ellie felt it, she wasn’t exactly sure that she had control over it. She noticed that something was pushing against her. It reminded her of what she had felt all around before, the way there had seemed to be that subtle energy and different pressures of creatures, Servants, and other gates that were failing. Almost as if…
Could she have done what they wanted?
“Oh no,” Ellie muttered.
“What?”
“I might have made a mistake.”
What if this was exactly what the Servants had needed from her? How could she stop it now?
On the Stormwind’s Resolve, Captain Harwick steadied himself against the wheel. His ship was locked to Jerath’s by the impact of the ram, both vessels taking on water but still afloat. All across the decks, his crew fought alongside what could only be described as a ragtag fleet of reinforcements—coastal smugglers and mercenaries in mismatched gear but fighting with coordinated purpose.
Through the churning waters surrounding the ships, Ellie glimpsed more vessels approaching, the smaller craft moving with the unmistakable precision of a coordinated fleet. Their sails bore no recognizable insignia, but their purpose was clear as they closed in on the damaged vessels.
“When you went missing, we started organizing other ships,” Ralen explained. “Apparently your father has some connections. I suppose that shouldn’t be terribly surprising, considering all that we know about him.”
“And you just found us?”
“Your Kindling,” he said. “Apparently, he has been able to track that.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how long that’s been the case, but I suspect that he’s been able to do it for longer than we have known.”
Could that be true? Could her father have been able to track her all this time? And if so, how did she feel about it?
Ellie ignored that thought. “We need to get off the ship.”
She could feel the sphere’s energy expanding and still changing. More than that, there was still a part of her that seemed as if it were linked to it. She had to disrupt it. She wasn’t sure how, but somehow, she had to do so.
A massive harpoon launched from somewhere on Jerath’s ship, its barbed tip trailing a heavy chain. The weapon arced through the air toward the Stormwind’s Resolve—and found a human target. Captain Harwick cried out as the harpoon struck him in the shoulder with enough force to pin him against the wheel he still held.
The captain’s scream of pain cut through the storm’s roar, momentarily silencing the deck. Blood spread across his oilskin coat, darkening the already wet fabric. But his hands remained firm on the wheel, his face a mask of determination despite the agony.
Ellie could see what he was doing. And she understood it. The ship had begun to back up. She knew that he was using fabrications now. She could feel it. She didn’t know why, but she could feel that power. And until she had a better sense of what he was going to do or how she could help, she avoided using her Blade ability.
“Ellie,” Ralen said.
They didn’t have time now. They were running out of it.
The Stormwind’s Resolve had completed its reverse maneuver and was now bearing down on them once more, gathering speed with every passing second. Ellie could feel the energy of the fabrications used to make that work. Captain Harwick remained at the wheel, blood flowing freely from his wound but his determination undiminished as he guided his ship toward its final target.
“Brace for impact!” The shout went up from both vessels as sailors secured themselves to whatever fixed points they could find.
As much as she wanted to try to find the sphere, she knew she had to get moving. Soon, everything would collapse around them, collapse around her.
They were halfway to the stern when a section of the mast collapsed, timbers crashing down across their path. Ellie dove forward, rolling beneath the debris, but found herself separated from Ralen and Mariel.
Through the gap in the wreckage, she saw Ralen trying to clear a path. “Go!” she called to him. “I’ll find another way!”
“Not without you,” he countered. He was already pulling at the tangled beams.
“There’s no time,” she insisted. She pointed toward where Karishel’s small fleet had drawn closer, their crews ready to pick up survivors. “Go! I’ll meet you in the water!”
On the Stormwind’s Resolve, Captain Harwick remained upright at his post despite the harpoon pinning him to the wheel. His face had gone ashen, his life draining away with each beat of his heart. The dying captain’s gaze found Ellie across the gap between ships, a moment of recognition passing between them. He gave her a small nod before returning his attention to the task at hand.
The impact came seconds later. The reinforced prow of the Stormwind’s Resolve tore into Jerath’s already damaged vessel, splintering wood and bending metal with a sound like the world ending. Both ships shuddered violently, timbers protesting the unnatural union.
Ellie was thrown off her feet by the collision, sliding across the tilted deck until she fetched up against the base of a broken mast. The sphere pulsed once against her side, as if registering the violence around it, then went still again.
Through the chaos of the collision, she caught sight of Captain Harwick. The impact had jarred the harpoon, tearing his wound wider.
With the last of her strength, Ellie pulled herself up and made her way across the disintegrating deck to the captain’s side. His skin had gone waxy, his breathing shallow and labored.
His eyes, already growing distant, fixed on hers with startling clarity for one final moment. “The sea claims its own,” he said, the traditional sailor’s farewell flowing naturally even in his final moments. “But we choose the currents we follow.”
