Bone War (28 page)

Warm. The water and the air were warm. That meant . . .

“We're in the northern part of the South Sea!” he called to her, not knowing for sure if she could hear. “We must be pretty close to land, too.”

Aisa's massive tail flukes slapped the water behind him, though he couldn't tell if that was acknowledgment or disagreement. She swam carefully off with Danr trying to maintain a handhold on the ridge on her back.

After a fairly short time, Danr came to the conclusion that riding whale-back was far from a comfortable way to travel. It was slippery, so he was always fumbling for a handhold, which was tiring, and the wind turned even the warm air uncomfortably chilly. He was thirsty from the salt water, and he wished the sun would come out.

And they had to find the Bone Sword. A week, the Gardeners had said, or ten days at most. How in Vik's horrible name had they come down here, in the middle of the ocean, when they should be on a pair of wyrms, running to Alfhame to find the Bone Sword? Gwylph was poised to invade Balsia with her horde of flesh golems while the world crumbled around her, and the only people who could stop her were a half troll and a pregnant whale. He would have laughed at the absurdity of it if he weren't so worried. Aisa swam with strong strokes of her tail, though he had no idea where she was going. Perhaps she had none, either.

Danr became hungry as well as thirsty. His hands and arms ached from keeping his position on Aisa's back. At least in his human form, the daylight didn't bother him. How far away from land were they?

A terrible smell wafted past. It reminded Danr of rotting meat and festering sores. His eyes watered. He wondered if Aisa could smell it. Maybe something had died in the water and was floating on the surface. The smell faded but returned a moment later. Danr turned his head, trying to find a way to escape it, but it wouldn't leave him alone. It was like sliding through a cloud of awful insects that insisted on following him.

The smell abruptly vanished. A speck appeared on the horizon. The speck grew. A tiny mast climbed over the edge of the world and grew larger. White sails appeared
like little clouds. Danr drummed excitedly on Aisa's back. “A ship! Do you see it?”

Aisa was already swimming toward it. Her speed increased, and he had to work harder to cling to her back. Wind sang in Danr's ears and blew his dark hair back. The ship rushed toward them now. When they were forty or fifty yards away, Danr managed to stand up and wave. One of the sailors waved back and tossed a rope ladder over the side. That was when Danr recognized the vessel.

“It's the
Slippery Fish
!” he shouted. “Aisa, it's Captain Greenstone's ship!”

Aisa slapped a fluke in acknowledgment, circled around, and swam up alongside it, bringing Danr under the ladder. Several sailors were peering over the gunwale now.

“You all right, mate?” one of them shouted.

“Vik's balls! That's a whale!” said another.

“We'll get you some clothes,” called a third.

Danr remembered then that he was naked—his oversize clothes had peeled off him when he squirmed out from underground in the Garden. At least the ocean had washed the dirt off him. He grabbed the rope ladder, and Aisa sank beneath the surface, leaving him to scramble onto the rung. A moment later, Aisa burst above the surface, flinging the hair from her face. Her tattoos were gone, which meant she was human again. The sailors shouted in consternation and surprise.

Danr hauled himself up the ladder to board the ship, then turned to help Aisa aboard. Something to his surprise, none of the sailors made a single remark about a wet, naked woman heaving herself over the gunwale. Then he caught sight of the females among the crowd of sailors and remembered where he was. Of course they wouldn't say anything. Not with—

“You!” bellowed a familiar voice. “Vik's thundering ass cheeks, what are
you
doing here?” A big woman, as tall as Danr himself when he wore his birth shape, rumbled
across the deck and hauled both of them into an embrace, one in each massive arm. Her jaw jutted forward, letting her lower fangs poke upward just a little, and her swarthy face was hidden under a wide felt hat from which peeked a lot of coarse, dark hair. She wore her habitual loose white blouse tucked into red trousers with a curved sword sheathed at her waist. No boots. Like Danr, she preferred to go barefoot. As did most half trolls.

Danr and Aisa had met Greenstone almost two years ago. She was one of the few female ship captains on Erda, and the only one to hire female sailors. Her ship had taken them to the Iron Sea and the Nine Isles on their search for the power of the shape. More than once she had saved their lives. At first Danr had been a little put off by her gruff manner and expansive personality, but later he had warmed to her and now counted her as a close friend. Privately, he occasionally wondered what kind of turn their friendship might have taken if he hadn't already fallen in love with Aisa.

“Captain Greenstone!” Danr said into her shoulder. He was grinning with relief and happiness, though no one could see it right now. “You have a talent for showing up just in time.”

“And you and Aisa have a talent for showin' up naked in the most amazing places,” she said, releasing them and turning to her first mate, a tall, wiry man with receding sun-bleached hair. “Harebones! Our friends need some clothes! And probably food and water, yeah?”

“Indeed, yes,” said Aisa. “I do not believe I have ever been so glad to see you, Captain.”

“I'd say the same about you two,” Greenstone said, releasing them, “if I knew how you got out here and why the Vik you ended up on my ship. And why you're in human form again, Danr-boy. I thought you'd gone back to your trollish ways like the rest of us. And where's Talfi? If he's gone and gotten himself killed again, I'll beat his
regi
ass.”

“It was the Garden!” Danr said in sudden realization.

Greenstone scratched her head beneath her heavy felt hat. “Garden?”

“I found your plant in the Garden just before Aisa and I left,” Danr said, not sure whether to be excited or mystified or both. “It was a spineflower. I must have been still thinking about you and the crew, and that pulled us here, close to the ship.”

Harebones showed up with a pair of cloaks, which he dropped over Aisa and then Danr. Danr pulled his more tightly about himself, but Aisa barely seemed to notice hers. The deck moved up and down beneath Danr's feet and over his head creaked the tall white sails.

“That would be . . . odd,” said Aisa. “Only a Gardener or Death can Twist to and from the Garden.”

“I didn't Twist,” Danr protested, accepting a mug of water from one of the sailors and taking a long pull. “If I did anything, I just . . . pulled us.”

“Hmm.” Aisa took her own mug. “We will have to discuss it later. We have bigger problems.”

“What's going on, then?” Greenstone demanded.

Danr and Aisa gave a quick sketch. Greenstone's eyes grew wide, then narrow, then wide again. “Ten days to find the Bone Sword,” she repeated at the end.

“Where are we, exactly?” Aisa asked.

“About halfway between Flor and Briat,” Greenstone replied. “We're heading to Briat right now.”

“Can you change course? Take us to Balsia?” Danr said. “Or maybe even sneak us up the coast to where the Sand River meets the sea? We can get to the Lone Mountain from there.”

Danr and Aisa exchanged frantic looks. “That won't leave much time. The Tree is tipping.”

“Then we'll sail like Vik himself is coming for our tits and testicles.” Greenstone raised her voice to a bellow. “Harebones!”

They sailed five, six, seven nervous days. Danr barely
slept, wondering what Kalessa and the orcs must be thinking, but there was no way to let them know. Aisa refused to enter the Garden for fear she would emerge only to find the
Slippery Fish
had moved away while she had not, stranding her in the middle of the ocean and unable to find the ship again, but she was plagued by visions of creatures rampaging through the Garden, and Danr smelled rot on the air almost continuously. He became certain the smell was connected to the Garden, and Aisa agreed.

On the morning of the eighth day, a great gout of water spouted into the air and a dozen forms vaulted over the edge of the gunwale. They landed gracefully on the rail. Everyone, including Greenstone, jumped back. Merfolk. Men and women both. Their spiky scarlet and cobalt blue facial tattoos were seeded with pearls, turning their faces into ferocious warrior masks. None of them wore clothing, and they carried wicked two-pronged spears or thin, curved swords. Their strong tails gleamed like living gems.

“Are they your family?” Danr breathed in Aisa's ear. “Maybe they can help.”

“They are not here to help,” Aisa breathed back. She looked as though she wanted to be anywhere else.

“The merfolk are always welcome aboard the
Slippery Fish
,” said Greenstone, stepping forward. “I already paid the toll back in—”

“Aisa,” hissed one of the women. “I am glad for this day. I have waited a long time.”

Aisa let out a short breath and straightened her spine. “Imeld. It is good to see you.”

Imeld. Danr had never met her, but the name sent a chill through his veins. Just before the Blood Storm, he and Aisa had rescued a mermaid named Ynara from slavery and returned her to her people. That was when Aisa had discovered she herself was half mermaid on her mother's side. In gratitude, Ynara's mother, Imeld, had welcomed Aisa into
their home. Later, after Danr and Aisa's showdown with Grandfather Wyrm, Aisa had brought the power of the shape to the merfolk, including Ynara. The power had granted its shape-shifting magic to Imeld, but it had killed Ynara. Aisa had fled Imeld's wrath and had not visited the merfolk since, not even to see her own rediscovered family.

“Do you know what we do to people who kill merfolk?” Imeld said, sliding a finger along her sharp, thin blade with grim delight. “We slice their skins off, piece by piece, and drag them through a school of little sharks and baby barracuda. For you, Aisa, I have much worse in mind. You made a mistake when you tried to cross my ocean.”

“Your ocean?” Aisa said. “You are not—”

“Queen?” Imeld finished. “But I am. You infected the elder members of our clan with the power of the shape and killed them. It left me queen. Or did you not think of that when you killed my Ynara?”

“I did not want to kill Ynara,” Aisa said with a note of pleading in her voice that half broke Danr's heart. “On so many nights, the guilt has wakened me and stopped my breath. If I had known the power of the shape would do that, I would never have brought it to you. I would have killed myself first.”

“We will help,” said Imeld.

The other merfolk made a hissing sound. Their own weapons glinted in the sun, seeming to slice the light itself. The sailors reached for weapons of their own, but Danr was all too aware that all the merfolk had to do was dive overboard and start sawing.

“My lady,” Danr said, stepping forward with his hands out, “we have a bigger matter here. The entire world is—”

Imeld threw her two-pronged spear. It
thunk
ed into the deck at Aisa's feet and stood quivering. “This is the only matter. Defend yourself, Aisa!”

She changed into a great eel and launched herself across the deck.

*   *   *

Aisa flung herself aside just in time to dodge the eel's snapping teeth. The borrowed cloak twisted around her legs. Imeld gathered her long coils with a great hiss. Sailors scattered in all directions. Danr stood on the deck looking stunned. Aisa had heard of shape-shifting duels in old stories but never dreamed she would take part in one. All the ones in the stories ended in the death of at least one of the participants.

Imeld lunged at Aisa again. Aisa drew on her power and snapped into the shape of a hummingbird, which zipped out of the cloak just ahead of Imeld's teeth. Imeld changed into an osprey and flapped after her. Aisa's tiny heart skittered within her feathered breast. She had to get away from the ship. If Imeld took on a large shape, she might sink it and kill everyone on board. The osprey screeched and picked up speed. So did Aisa, and the ship fell into the distance. Damp air penetrated Aisa's feathers. The hummingbird shape was fast, but it was not suited to the ocean. She skimmed over the wavy surface, trying to think, and in desperation popped into the form of a sea otter and plunged into the water.

A great splash came directly above her. Imeld had changed into a shark, and she dove straight at Aisa, showing rows of pointed teeth. Her flat black eyes reflected nothing but darkness. Aisa changed into a great sea turtle and pulled in her legs and head. Imeld bit at her, but her teeth did nothing more than scratch Aisa's shell. Imeld changed into a black-and-white killer whale large enough to bite Aisa in half and swallow her whole. Her great pink mouth opened wide. Aisa was growing tired after so many rapid shifts and she was not sure she could manage another change. Then she felt the line of magic leading from herself to Hamzu. He gave and she took. Power rushed through her, and she snapped into the first thing she could think of—another killer whale.

It was a poor choice. Imeld was already poised to bite her, and she bit hard, tearing a great piece of flesh from Aisa's side. The pain ripped through her, and Aisa screamed in an orca's voice.

And she remembered then Imeld's father, Aisa's own grandfather, speaking to her after Ynara died and Aisa fled Imeld's anger.
“If you ever need us,”
he'd told her,
“cry for us like the orca. Three times.”

Aisa cried again as loud as she could, and then a third time. She turned, leaving a trail of blood in the water, and rammed into Imeld, who backed away. Aisa rammed Imeld again, and Imeld screeched in pain, a sound that echoed back and forth across the sea. That was when Aisa noticed it. The sound echoed strangely, in a way she could not describe because she had never been an orca before. There was a dark spot, an empty spot, an odd silence in the middle of the return sound. Something big was coming toward them, and it was moving very, very fast.