Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Trilogy) (17 page)

Gasping now, Reyland pushed harder. The red pushed back for a
n
instant, then met the white in the room in a wavering line, one pushing forward, one pushing back.

It was a contest of wills and it would not be won by brawn. It was all the physician could do to talk.

“Any time you want to help me
,
girl,” he gasped, “feel free.”

He wasn’t sure she had heard him for what seemed a long time, but was in reality only moments, and then from underneath and around the red light, an explosion of colour came, brighter than the sun. Reyland almost blinked, but forced his watery eyes to open further. The bright shards of light tore into his mind and he cried out in pain, just as the girl had before him. Still he did not look away. His heart pounding wildly in his chest, and his ears pounding from the girl’s scream, which grew ever louder, he pushed ever ounce of power from his eyes, drawing so much of himself and the light from the window into the healing that he thought he would burn himself out, his eyes bursting with the last vestiges of the ancient talent, never to heal again.

And yet he held. Quivering, he watched in amazement as the girl’s colours joined the fight, not destroying the red, but drawing it into her own colours, so that it joined an army of colours.

Suddenly, the colours seemed natural again, and the girl’s cries ceased.

Colours swirled in the sunlight, like a perfect prism refracting pure
light.
The thrashing underneath him stopped, and Reyland allowed himself to blink.

The girl blinked too. And then she smiled.

Reyland took a deep, shuddering breath and returned the smile. “I thought you’d be too much for me, girl,” he told her, his voice rasping with effort as he spoke, “but you’ve power I’ve never seen before.”

“You, too, have powers unseen in an age. Thank you, Master Uriwane.”

Reyland took a moment to register that the girl’s lips never moved. “Can you not speak?”

She shook her head sadly.
“Once, I could. But the battle has scarred me already, and I think it will scar me further before it is done. But the fight is not your concern, and you have healed me as completely as any could.”

“I’m sorry, girl. I tried my hardest, but I fear it was more than I could handle. I have not seen the blight in many a long year, and have never fought it before. I am sorry you cannot speak.”

“Do not be foolish,”
she spoke into his mind, with more years than he would have expect
ed
from a mere slip of a girl. But she was a seer – the years had little meaning for her. What must she have seen, he wondered, while her mind travelled the planes?

“I have seen much,”
she told him, as if she had been reading his thoughts.
“I have seen the birth of suns, the end of ages and the creation of new lands from the ashes. I have seen enough to know that there must always be balance. There must always be payment.”

“I need no payment from you. We have already agreed the price.”

“You cannot lie to me, Master Uriwane. I know what you need. It is not gold, but a reason to go on. Your good wife has been dead long years, and you never had children.”

“I always wished…” his voice cracked, and he could not go on. He blinked in surprise, shocked at the depth of emotion that still remained after all this time.

“Payment does not always have to be in money. There is a boy-child, thirteen years. He has led a life of the blind, his eyes are white, like yours. You must teach him. He will be your apprentice in the arts. You have years enough left to do so, and he will be greater in the arts than you. He will be like a son to you, and you like a father to him. Give him nothing but your love, and your wisdom, and he will grow.”

She told him where to find the boy, and rose to a sitting position, hugging him fiercely.
“Find your son, live long, Master Uriwane. It is good to feel kindness again. I am glad it was you who woke me from my dreams.”

“And I was glad to know you, girl. What is your name?”

She touched his cheek sadly.
“I do not know. But I call myself Sia. Fitting, I think, that the name should match the purpose.”

“I am old
and foolish sometimes, but allow me to impart a little wisdom before I leave. You may be a seer, but you are not your purpose. You are a girl. Soon you will be a woman. Do not forget to live your life.”

She nodded, thoughtfully.
“Good advice, I think.”

He rose and bowed as deeply as his back would allow. “Goodbye, Sia. Peace favour you.”

“Peace be with you, healer.”

He closed the door behind him, realising as he went that he had left his pack behind. With a rueful shrug and smile, he took the stairs.

Tirielle was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairwell. “How did it go, Reyland? Is she cured? Could you help her?”

“Peace, lady. She is fine. You may see her.”

She hugged him fiercely with a cry of joy, and ran past the bemused healer, bounding up the stairs. Quintal shook his hand with thanks, and took a pouch out. Reyland laid a hand on top of the paladin’s.

“Payment has been made, warrior. Peace favour you. Now, I have work to do.”

The paladin’s watched him go.

Quintal smiled. Soon, it would be time to go. But for now, they had new hope, in the face of a fresh girl. He called the barmaid down, and ordered himself a large drink. Time enough for a meeting later. For now, he was tired, and looking out the window at th
e full dark that had descended,
he raised a glass at the receding, crooked back of the healer.

“Some arts are greater than others,” he said to Cenphalph, who was watching him. With a sigh the leader of the Sard rearranged his dagger and sat to wait the night out.

             
Upstairs, Sia wasted no time. She told Tirielle where she had to go, and of the pain she would yet have to bear. And yet Tirielle’s heart was light once again. One small success, sometimes, is enough to be going on with.

*

Chapter
Thirty-Four

The boat sailed true across becalmed seas. Renir stood at the prow, hair whipped by the winds, spray wetting his face. Beside him, eyes wide open, stood Orosh. From his strange blue eyes light flowed forth, weighing down the seas, which were fierce beyond belief out of his range, but calm as a pond surrounding the boat.

Shorn touched him on the shoulder and Renir jumped. The hum from Shorn’s sword should have warned him of the warrior’s approach, even if his soft foot falls had not. It was an ever present song, though, since they had joined the Seafarer’s vessel. He had grown so used to it that he ignored it now, its sonorous hum responding to Orosh’s magic.

“I should have heard you,” said Renir in a self-admonishing tone.

“It’s no surprise you didn’t. You’ve been staring out to sea for hours.”

“I suppose I’m shocked. I knew the sea was large, but we’ve been out of sight of land for two days now. I’m waiting for land again. I feel uneasy, and I’ve spent hours on a boat before.”

“Well, I’ve spent years on a boat, and I am always amazed at its size. The seafarers say the ocean is bigger than all the lands put together. You could spend your life at sea and never hit land.”

“When will we get there?”

Shorn, whose eyes were sharper than Renir’s, laughed. “I’m surprised you haven’t seen it yet. You’ve been staring at it for long enough.”

Renir squinted, straining his eyes. There was nothing there but the endless expanse of blue, the suns high in the sky and a grey cloud sat across the horizon. Shorn waited patiently.

Renir frowned. The cloud never moved…but it couldn’t be…the winds were so fierce, and the boat was travelling out to sea. “Is that it?” he asked, unsure as to what he was seeing but now sure it was no cloud. “Is that Teryithyr? But it can’t be. It should be to the north west, and we are travelling east…what is it?”

“Not Teryithyr, of that you can be sure. That, my friend, is a boat.”

“What?” said Renir. Disbelief rode his voice like the ship rode the waves. “But it almost covers the horizon.” Renir strained his eyes again. “It looks grey from here. Like the cliffs of the Spar.”

“It is no cliff. It is our home – one of them. That is Daindom, the fifth ship of the fleet, and th
e largest,” said Orosh
. “Would that we had land to call our own, but it serves the Feewar well.”

“But it’s as big as an island! How does it stay afloat?”

Orosh never took his eyes from the seas, but answered as if reciting from memory. “Until the Feewar find land again, the sea shall be our home. Until the seas fall, or land rises, the Feewar will sail. Our boats will grow, our magic is strong. Upon the great blue seas until the renewal.

“It is what we are taught in the cradle – we are cursed to roam the seas until we find our land again, but we have been given gifts, too. There are those among us that can calm the stormy seas, and our ships are living things, grown from the Ulian, a strange tree that needs no soil, only sea water. It floats forever on the sea, as do our people. We live in harmony with the Ulian. Without it we would need land, and on land we sicken.”

It was as long a speech as Orosh had made. Renir wondered quietly to himself why the Seafarers had been cursed in the first place, but he thought that impolitic to ask. I would have not thought on someone else’s sensibility before my journey, he thought to himself. Perhaps one day I will become a Thane, and keep the people happy with my new found thoughtfulness. Perhaps one day I will forget all about asking the questions that matter, and lead my subjects to destruction.

He suppressed a smile. His subjects. He didn’t even have a home anymore, let alone a people to call his own. Delusional! Who would want to be a leader of the people?

Instead, he asked “What do you eat, then? Stuck at sea, forage must be sparse.”

“Wait, and you will see. Things are not always as they seem over the h
orizon.” Orosh replied
.

Renir waited at the prow, staring at the approaching leviathan. As the
ir vessel drew closer
to Diandom, Wen and Bourninund joined him, Bourninund in as deep awe as Renir, Wen with an expression of studied boredom on his dark face.

“Big, ain’t it?
” said Bourninund.

Wen hawked into the sea.

“As ever, the master of understatement,” said Shorn.

“Why beat fancy with words when one will suffice?”
said the dark warrior.

As they approached Renir noticed he could make out features on the boat (island, he thought to himself. More island than boat.) There were cliffs, the brown of the Seafarer’s remarkable trees, and an inlet. It was a bay, and beached (for want of a better work – Renir thought he might have to invent a new word for what he was seeing) there were five boats, similar in size and construction to the one he sail on. Trees grew proudly upwards, but also sideways, on the deck (land? He wondered. It was the only word he knew which would suffice). People walked down to the lower ground from the main deck of the ship, all dressed as brightly as Orosh and his crew. They stood, outlined against the sky, watching their approach.

Renir remembered Drun’s caution, and looked around for the old priest, but he was facing the other way, as though this new phenomenon was of less interest to him than their wake. Renir unconsciously fingered his axe, then realising what he was doing put his hands to his sides, hoping none of the crew had noticed. Whatever threat they faced, whatever it was that troubled Drun, he could not face it alone, and with Orosh standing beside them, there was little
he could do to draw the priest
’s attention to the matter.

“Farewell Bay, friend Renir. That is where we bid farewell to the old ones. The birthing bay is on the far side, always facing the east.”