Void Spheres, page 31
Even so, the fear and stress had been too much for their doctor—and not just Crane. Six others had died before the mages had driven the gobvar King’s power from their ship.
Including Faithful Hammerhead, which tore at Brushfire’s heart. Her mother’s cousin had been present through her entire life. Never one to lead, Faithful had still lived up to her name and been a rock of support for the whole tribe for Brushfire’s entire life.
Now she was gone and Brushfire didn’t even have time to go see her body, because every minute that passed, they were half a dozen leagues closer to the Blood King. One of the officers had needed to check on Crane, to be certain they’d lost one of their mages, but even that was taking more time than she could justify.
“Take care of them, Sky,” she told the sailor. “Thank you.”
“We’ve got them, sir,” Sky told her. “We’re going to get the bastard for this, right? And for the others?”
Brushfire bared her teeth in what no one would mistake for a smile.
“Or we’ll die trying, Sky; you have my word,” she told the elvar. “No more.”
There was only one answer left. Well, other than ramming the bastard, anyway—and if her plan failed, they’d probably get to that one, too.
She strode from the infirmary to find Armand waiting outside, his blue robe in his hands as he worked it like a stubborn lump of dough.
“Brushfire.”
“Armand. Come with me,” she told him.
He did, adding a touch of confusion to his clear distress.
“I have a plan,” Brushfire continued. “What did you want?”
“I… don’t know,” he confessed. “I feel like everyone is looking to me, but I don’t have any answers.”
“You do, I think,” she said bluntly. “You’re just afraid of them, and we’re past time for fear.”
He didn’t argue with her, just keeping step with her as she reached the stairwell.
“What’s your plan?” he demanded at last, something in his voice telling her he was guessing part of it.
“Well, first, this.”
She was enough taller than Armand that kissing him required half-stepping, half-hopping to a point two steps lower than him on the stairwell. His surprise bought her enough time to do that, but he didn’t attempt to pull away, either, though his surprise was clear.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. You and Cat aren’t the only ones whose emotions are going to fuck up the meld, are they?” she asked him.
“No. My feelings for… both of you complicate matters and could render the meld nexus extremely dangerous.”
“And one mage wouldn’t add enough,” she agreed. “But I read the book, Armand. Each mage is a multiplier, not an addition. Two regular mages working together are more like two and a quarter. But three is more like five.
“Adding us to you isn’t much, but where adding one regular mage—or one and a quarter—wouldn’t make much difference, adding four mages’ worth of power?” she asked. “We will not quietly lie down and die, Armand. I think you have to be the anchor, but it needs to be all three of us.
“Shaman and Captain, Captain and Archmage. Three. Against him. I’ll back those odds if you’ll try them. If you have the strength.”
“I have the strength,” Armand told her. “But I am afraid. Of losing myself… Of losing Cat. Of losing you. Of losing us all. Of failing.”
“If the Blood King kills us all, I think we fail,” Brushfire pointed out. “Wouldn’t you rather die trying?”
“I do not think you understand what we risk,” the archmage said, but he was starting to move up the stairwell. “Death will come, eventually. But first we would lose everything we are into a slurry that might not contain anything of any of us once the damage is done.”
“Or maybe there’s something beyond the line where this experimenter panicked,” she told him. “Something he was afraid to risk enough to try—or something that the presence of an archmage might change.”
“I doubt it. But we have no choice,” Armand agreed with a sigh. “We must try.”
Chapter
Forty-Nine
Armand was more than a bit dazed by the sudden turn of events as he trailed Brushfire onto the control deck. All four of the ship’s surviving officers were now present, though Streamwater and Smallwolf both looked clearly distressed.
Cat, somehow, only seemed calmer and more certain of things as things grew closer to the knife—and Alloy had settled into a frozen mask of imperturbability that was clearly a mask but otherwise revealed nothing.
“Range?” Cat asked, glancing back at Armand and Brushfire and giving them a welcoming nod.
“Four hundred leagues. Closing rate just ticked up to seven,” Streamwater reported. “That’s not on our side, which means he decided to push that ship up to four leagues a minute.”
“I wouldn’t expect her masts to take that for long,” Cat observed. “Long enough, I suppose. Any word from Fistfall?”
“He sent a runner saying he was going out onto the hull five minutes ago,” Smallwolf reported. Her voice almost broke as she said her lover had stepped out into the void, but she bore on steadily.
“We’ve discussed the plan,” Cat told her. “At this point, he’s to fire whenever he thinks he can hit until he’s out of bolts—and to be back inside the hull before we reach a hundred leagues.”
“Is he going to hit anything?” Brushfire asked.
Armand was still trailing in her wake but stopped at the edge of the central circle dais holding the sextants and main control wheel. Streamwater and Smallwolf had the sextants, and Cat, of course, held the wheel.
Alloy was seated at the instrumentation panel off to the side, and Armand moved to join him. Somehow, he knew that he needed to be on the control deck. Whatever happened next, he needed to be there.
An hour left until things were decided, he judged.
“There is a chance that he will hit once,” Cat told Brushfire, loudly enough that everyone could hear him. “Right now, the Blood King is splitting his focus across over a dozen ships. All of them are flying straight courses, with no maneuvers.
“That means we might hit. And that hit might be lucky—but as soon as the Blood King realizes what’s happening, he will maneuver that ship so we won’t hit a second time.”
Armand stood silently, waiting for Brushfire to make her pitch.
“What range is he going to be able to hit us at?” she asked—and it took Armand a moment to realize she was asking him.
He coughed to clear his throat, then shrugged as he recognized his complete lack of knowledge.
“I wouldn’t be able to stretch past a couple of leagues, even with what I have learned from Cat,” he told them. “We would be well served to assume he could strike at ten—or even a hundred—times that.”
“Well, we’ll try to get you to that couple of leagues,” Cat promised. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make him miss his first few tries.”
“Fistfall has fired,” Streamwater reported. “Fourteen leagues a minute compared to us. Twenty-one leagues relative to the Blood King’s ship. Eighteen minutes to contact.”
“So, we wait,” Cat declared.
Seconds ticked by like molasses, interrupted only by Streamwater reporting the continuing sequence of Fistfall firing. He’d had five thunderbolts loaded into the magazine on the ballista—plus four spares—and he’d emptied the magazine in a pattern that would hopefully give them a hit.
They waited. Armand knew what Brushfire’s plan was. He knew that he could probably wreck the ninesail if they got close enough, but he doubted they would manage it.
He was surprised that she hadn’t said anything. His shaman stood next to his Captain, silently watching the stars where they couldn’t even see the enemy.
“I prefer it when I can see the people coming at me,” Cat said aloud. “Or at least their ships.”
“Enough of our ways to see that ship are magical that we wouldn’t see him,” Armand pointed out. “His shield against scrying would block any of the magical telescopes.”
There was very little to the magic Armand had seen Cat use to survey a sphere—or the telescopes in the sextants, for that matter—that would count as scrying. But it would still be blocked. The shield around the Blood King was the strongest Armand had ever sensed.
“I figured that when my oracle deck stopped drawing anything except the Blood King,” Cat pointed out wryly. “Time, Streamwater?”
“Should be about… now.”
There was nothing. A strike by even a single thunderbolt would have been visible as a brighter star above them, but a bolt that missed would just continue on into the void. Four more bolts were in the void, closing the distance behind the first, and Armand tried not to hold his breath.
“There,” Streamwater suddenly snapped. “Last bolt hit one of the masts!”
“Damage?” Cat asked.
There was a long silence, one that stretched on past Armand’s liking.
“She lost two of the three masts on one deck, but it doesn’t look like there was any hull damage,” Streamwater finally reported. “He’s slowing down to balance the sails and maneuver, I think. Looks like two leagues a minute.”
“Well. Let’s get some maneuvers of our own in play,” Cat ordered, reaching for the ship’s wheel. “We’re out of time and out of clever ideas. We dodge whatever we can, get the archmage into range for his magic, and then we ram them.”
“The prow is made of steel, but it’s not particularly reinforced,” Alloy warned. “I don’t know if we’ll survive that.”
“We won’t survive doing nothing,” Cat replied. “So, we do what we can.”
“There is one more option,” Brushfire said, finally pulling the book she’d apparently taken from Armand’s tables out of her jacket and laying it on the secondary instrument panel next to Cat. “I’ve gone through the meld ritual you and Armand did, Cat.
“The effects of additional mages act as multipliers,” she told the Captain. “Adding just me or you to the mix doesn’t change much for Armand, but adding both of us does.
“Especially since we’re all using foci from the same archmage. The original tests found that helped, but didn’t have access to an archmage to test. But since Armand made his own foci and you and I have foci from him…”
Cat looked back at Armand, who raised his hands palms upward in a shrug.
“She’s not wrong,” he told the elvar. “And we’re out of other choices. The three of us will be more powerful than the two of us, and it should help stave off the effect of our having melded before.”
“If three is good, four is better,” Alloy interrupted grumpily, stepping into a conversation that had excluded the rest of the room with clear intent. “And, well…”
He gestured around the three of them.
“Emotions fucked up the first meld. The bloody emotional polyhedral the three of you have going on isn’t going to help this one any better. You need someone involved in the meld who isn’t tied up in each other’s bits; you get me?”
Armand couldn’t help laughing, shaking his head at the darvar.
“He’s… not wrong,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “But you know the risk you’re taking, Alloy?”
“Loss of self, loss of mind, loss of life?” the darvar reeled off. “Yeah. But that”—he gestured at the red-sailed ship approaching them—“is definitely going to cause loss of life. So, we fight.”
Alloy nodded firmly. Brushfire met Armand’s gaze and nodded too, leaving the archmage holding Cat’s gaze.
“I don’t see any other way,” he told his Captain. “And I don’t know that even the four of us together can take him. But I know that the prophecy put you and me and Brushfire together for more than just making sure we had the right crew for this trip.
“And Alloy, I’m realizing, was always meant to be here. The four of us, as one, against the void. It was meant to be.”
Cat nodded slowly.
“You’re right.
“What about us?” Streamwater asked, gesturing at Smallwolf. “Four mages good… but six mages?”
“Someone has to fly the ship if this goes sideways,” Cat told her. “Someone has to finish the mission. That will fall to you two and Fistfall, to take care of our crew and find out what’s going on with the dragons.
“Understand?”
From the second officer’s expression, she hadn’t been thinking about that part of the task before them. Just surviving the next twenty minutes.
Which, to be fair, was what all of this was about.
“Foci,” Armand instructed. Each of his sworn servants produced their foci. With all of them made by him, they had a resonance he didn’t normally pay attention to. As the three other mages gathered around him, that resonance seemed to hum around him.
He took Cat and Brushfire’s hands, covering Brushfire’s focus as he did so, and watched as they took Alloy’s hands.
“Let us… begin.”
He closed his eyes… and they opened theirs.
Chapter
Fifty
Four became one with a smoothness that made the merger of Cat and Armand seem rough and unsteady. Two of them knew the meld nexus now, and while the pull between the three emotionally entangled with each other was strong, that knowledge and Alloy’s calm steadiness stabilized the entire link.
When two had become one, the pull together had been ever-present and dangerous, even if they hadn’t realized it at the time. Now, with four, that pull was balanced. The fears passed aside into certainty.
Other certainties spilled out around with that. Armand and Brushfire’s feelings for each other came crystal clear alongside Armand and Cat’s feelings. The complexity of the emotional polyhedral, as Alloy had named it, was laid bare and naked.
Brushfire’s feelings for Cat were there too, but even the four-as-one were surprised by how little concern that raised. Cat didn’t return them as she did, but they were not unwelcome.
Three-as-one or even a normal conversation might have sorted out their issues. Or maybe it was Alloy’s calm outside perspective on it that allowed the polyhedral to be assessed, weighed, decided on and put aside for future resolution.
The realization that the meld nexus could become useful to relationship counselors across the spheres brought a smile to all of their faces, but then the moment of threat was upon them.
With Cat’s sense of the aether and Armand’s sense of the weave of magic, the void around them fell into clear patterns. They conjured an illusion of their enemy, alongside a constant steady sense of the distance between the two ships.
But while the scrying illusion couldn’t see the Blood King, their senses could feel him. He was too powerful, too immense a pool of magic and emotion, to hide at this distance. Somehow, his rage, his anger, his hunger combined to register on Cat’s aether sense—almost an anti-aether, unlike both void and aether.
It was the same sensation he’d been able to track the wraiths and the hunger of the sphere with across four void spheres, but so much denser and fiercer as to make its structure and nature clear.
The Blood King and the ritual of his ascension were antithetical to the very nature of the aether spheres. He had been born of a wound in the aether. The wound remained, and its damage had pursued them across their journey, but he was the blade that cut the fabric of reality.
They wrapped the power of an archmage around Void Flyer in a shield of power and will. The power of an archmage multiplied—but as their ship passed a hundred leagues, they faced the truth of their enemy.
The bolt of power crossed the distance between the two ships in a moment, a blaze of bruised fire whose mere presence tore at their souls and magic. The shield they’d summoned held, and they tightened it in places they didn’t know existed before, driving back the subtler warping effects before they could harm the crew.
It was a shock when the four-as-one realized they could feel the Blood King’s frustration. Either the ancient gobvar was unused to concealing his emotions at all, or the mages who could sense the aether—and his emotions through it—were rarer among the gobvar than anyone thought.
Or perhaps it was an intersection of not only being in the void—removing the background sensation of an aether sphere—but being in the very void where the King had ascended. There, he was unguarded.
There was no one to guard against except them, after all, and he was very determined to kill them.
The Blood King’s next step was an entire salvo of the same bolts, bruised purple-green fire hammering against the shield the four-as-one held around Void Flyer. Again and again, two or three or four at a time, blasts that should have shattered their fragile ship hammered against the shield.
Not as many struck as could have. The four-as-one couldn’t spare the attention to fly the ship, but Faith Streamwater held the wheel, and if she wasn’t as good a navigator or pilot as Cat Greentrees, few were.
She ran the lift crystals at full power and spent fuel the four-as-one wasn’t sure they could afford, but she dodged almost half of the bolts. Not by seeing them coming but by simply not being where the Blood King thought Void Flyer would be.
Without those maneuvers, the four-as-one knew they would have been overwhelmed. With them, they held against the King’s wrath for ten leagues. Twenty. Thirty!
But seventy leagues remained, and the meld nexus couldn’t strike from much farther away than Armand on his own could. The Blood King ceased his strikes, and they could feel his angry contemplation at a distance.
A whole minute passed in silence. Two. Ten more leagues of distance vanished before the King struck again, and this time, there were no games or distractions.
Pure dark power, the essence of the void itself, suddenly hammered against their shield from every direction. Force and energy pressed in on Flyer and their shield, trying to crush ship and crew and meld nexus alike.
They threw open the link to the Source that beat under Armand’s heart, drawing on the substance of the universe to defy the attack. As the Blood King brought void and nothingness, they drew on the aether and the Weave, the Source of all reality, to protect them.
