Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter 2

LOGAN

WE CHASE ONE another, tumbling through wind and water. I whip the sea’s surface, shooting spray high into the air, where it sparkles with the sun’s light in a rainbow of color.

One of the Old Ones laughs, and the sound is high and light. She shapes water into a human face, peeking above the surface like a naiad from the old stories. She vanishes.

I dive into the water behind her, and now I am fluid, slower and more languid. The light fades as I move deeper, but it doesn’t matter. My senses become those of the ocean: vibrations, subtle shifts in temperature, little currents, the slide and undulation of sea creatures.

Schools of fish dart past me, thin slivers of light gleaming on their bright scales. They are finer, more beautiful than gold.

A gurgling, trilling sound pulses through the water. It starts low and rises high. It sounds playful, like a question, like a mystery.

Closer to me, I hear an unmistakable giggle. It beckons me to follow. We chase through the deeps until far above us glides the massive form of a whale. Light limns its paddle-like fins. The tail sweeps up and down. For all its size, I have never seen such grace.

My companion giggles again and dives deeper. The light is gone now, a thing only of the world above, and I am darkness, a rich, mysterious darkness.

Bluish light blooms, enveloping me, and the sea floor stretches to infinity, an otherworldly landscape of caverns and cliffs. We dive into one, slipping through nooks and crannies, brushing past branching coral and soft, rippling fronds that might be plant or animal, or perhaps a little of both.  Thin-legged crabs skitter away. A creeping octopus shrinks back into a cave with a pop and slide of his suckers.

My companion laughs at him and shoots upward. I follow, laughing as she does. We pick up speed as the light grows. Fish, some small and darting, some large and menacing, streak away from us. We explode through the surface like the spray from a whale’s spout, only a hundred—a thousand—times more powerful.

We dash across the surface, blending water and air. Others dance around us, laughing. Some leap through the water like dolphins. Maybe they are dolphins. The difference doesn’t matter.

My companion dives low again, but I don’t follow this time. I am too light, moving too fast.

When a boom sounds from below, it is deep and resonant. The sound shudders through my being, and I nearly burst with the power of it. I feel the tremors coming, and I laugh when the waves rise and toss. They swell and swirl, a mountain in one moment and a valley in another. I skim along one rise then ride the top as it surges.

Something in the distance catches my eye, a shape too regular and straight to be natural. Curious I streak toward it. My companion bursts from the waters, a streaming nude form. She laughs and follows me.

As I draw near the shape, my joy falters. A feeling gnaws at me. I try to ignore it, to lose myself again in simple, uncaring joy. But the creaking of wood, the ripping of cloth, and the frightened shouts of men weigh me down until the joy is gone, and horror slides into its place.

Chapter 3

THE DRIFT SHIVERS with diffused energy. I sense the push and pull of water, the whipping air, the trembling earth, the bite of the sun. They bleed through, too forceful to be contained within the physical world. Or perhaps the source of it all is here and is bleeding outward. Five elements, my mother believed, all interwoven.

Most of the fish and other sea creatures have fled. We are reaching the heart of the storm.

Ahead, Gaiana swims through the swells. She struggles more now, her tail beating against the currents, but she is pushing on, trying to reach them.

I follow her far into the ocean before I see lighted forms gathered, contained within the shape of a tossing ship. The ship rises on a swell before plunging into a trough. I cringe, expecting it to smash, but the wave eases just enough for the ship to rise again.

I hate to leave Gaiana. If she needs help and I am not here to give it, how could Logan forgive me? But she is making her choice. The men on that ship have none.

I streak toward it.

I slide from the Drift onto the ship’s pitching deck. I try to brace, but the heaving waves are too strong. I roll and scrape across the wet deck until I snag a rope and anchor myself to the gunwale.

Men shout with fear as the ship rises again, though their voices are all but lost in the roar of water. They are past trying to fight. They cling to the ship as to life, but they have given themselves over to fate.

At least, all have but one.

A man, white-haired and weathered, is bound with ropes to the mast. His head is tilted, face lifted to the shifting sky. I see no fear in him, only focus. Despite the madness around him, he is calm.

An Earthmaker.

The ship plunges again. He works the waves to slow our fall, but he is not enough. The descent is too steep.

I work an eye over the side as we plunge. My stomach soars into my throat at the sight of a mountain of water and the unforgiving trench into which we are racing. I draw hard on my energies, frantically shaping a blast, a shield, a battering ram.

I send the blow to the ship’s prow and let it barrel into the water ahead of us. Water divides and sprays as the ship strikes the trough. My blow cuts a path, keeping the ship from tipping, letting us ride up and through the next wave.

Men scream as the ship sweeps to the top once more. We climb nearly vertical, and my legs hang in the air. The ropes, wrapped around my arms, strain against flesh, and my shoulder sockets threaten to give. A scream fades as someone tumbles down the deck and into the deadly waters.

I thud to the deck as we crest and plunge again. I blast another path as the Earthmaker slows us as best he can. I brace for impact, for the cold rush of water, but once more it’s only spray as we whip through the trough.

Again and again, we rise to the top of the world then fall into its depths. My body is distant, a strain and thud, something not quite real. I am only this eternal, unstoppable motion.

Eventually, sensation fades. Darkness edges into my vision. I reach further into myself for the Drift, but the energy is a sluggish pulse, and my next blast cuts no more than a shallow trench before us. Water slams the prow of the ship and streams over us like a waterfall. The ropes tighten around my arms until pain flares through my numbness. I wait for the ship to crash, to shatter its huge, fragile body like a glass hammer on the iron surface of the ocean.

Slowly, the deck eases toward the horizontal. The torrent diminishes, water streaming away until only a trickle slides along the deck, then nothing. The ship settles in eerie calm.

We are no longer moving.

Above is only sky.

I peer over the side. At the sight below, I clutch the ropes in renewed terror. We are floating in the air, hovering above a rearing mountain of water. Under the ship’s belly water whips and swirls, a whirlpool in the mountain’s hollowed crest.

A gust of wind blows across the deck, and I know that sensation. I tear my eyes from the mad sight below to the splintered and soaking deck as Logan shapes himself from the wind.

His eyes find mine at once.

My mouth works uselessly. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.

He looks angry.

And yet, he also looks like he’s not quite here.

He strides toward me, his body shimmering and dissolving as he moves.

He says, “The hull is breached. Can you hold it together with Drift-work?”

I swallow and find my voice. “For a time.”

“Be ready. Once I drive them off, I will set the ship down.”

I nod.

“If the ship crashes, if I fail, you will take yourself into the Drift at once. Promise me, Astarti.”

“I promise.”

He looks for the truth in my eyes before he turns away.

“Logan.” He shifts back to me. “Your mother. She’s here somewhere, in the waters.”

Surprise flashes across his face, but he nods.

Chapter 4

LOGAN

I HAVE NEVER been good at splitting my focus, but now I must. One part of me must remain with the ship, holding it above the murderous waters. I will do everything I can to save the men, but above all I don’t trust Astarti to protect herself. It’s not that her promise was a lie, but she will stay a moment too long, try a little too hard, and that moment could kill her. Fear slides through me at the thought, and it’s an effort to keep moving away from her.

While I leave a bit of myself behind, I must also drive off the Old Ones. My fury is compounded by my guilt. Like them, I lost myself in selfish enjoyment, and look what has happened.

I tear through wind and water, seeking them, letting my anger seep into the elements. My companion comes to me, unafraid but confused. Her face shapes itself from wind and water. She looks to the ship, then to me. Anger hardens her expression. Though she looks young, her eyes of water and wind are ancient and filled with bitterness and pain.

She dashes toward the ship. Water fans around her and a rooster tail of spray leaps behind. I chase after her, horrified to see her form darken as she grows into the shape and bulk of a whale with a head like a battering ram. The huge tail drives her to a speed no whale could achieve. In her wake, others are coming, drawn by her energy and her anger.

I strain for speed, but I cannot catch her.

I shape water and air into a net, hardening it with the impenetrable will of the earth, and hurl it before her. She screams as her massive whale’s body slams into it.

Fins become hands. Her tail splits into flailing legs. She screams with rage and terror as the net snares her.

I sweep to the other side, blocking her path to the ship.

I touch her hand, trying to tell her to calm down, that she is not trapped.

She stills and eases her hands from the net.

Her eyes meet mine, and I see her hurt, her feeling of betrayal. Behind her, others hover, uncertain.

Biting her watery lip, she turns and streaks away across the ocean. The others follow her.

Loss echoes through me, and I am tempted. For half a second, I am tempted. With the ship a fragile life behind me, with Astarti behind me, that impulse, the way I rock toward them as they flee, makes me feel worse than anything.

Even with the Old Ones gone, the waves leap and toss. I blend with them and try to ease them to stillness, but I have little calm to impart.

I plunge deeper, seeking enough pressure and darkness to fill my mind. The mountains of water finally begin to sink toward the ocean’s bed, quieting. Far above, the ship settles to the rocking surface.

When something swims toward me, I float to meet it. Drawing closer, I recognize the blend of movement: part human, part ocean creature. It calls me back to my childhood.

I let my shape become familiar, though she clearly knew me without it. My mother laughs and dances around me.

She takes me in her arms, and I am a child. My hands are small and soft as they tangle in her hair. She kisses my cheek.

Time flows like water around me, and I move through this moment as through a dream, not knowing if it’s real.

“Bright Fish,” my mother laughs.

I laugh with her, and a rocky, chuckling voice sounds from the deeps.

He rises slowly, and when my mother turns to look at him, her eyes dance with delight.

“Kronos,” she calls.

He emerges from the dark heart of the ocean, his face like the coarse, strong bones of the earth. When he smiles at me, the sun seems to blaze from the ocean’s dark and secret depths.

I reach for him, laughing, but the vision fades. The brightness is gone. My hand is extended—a man’s hand—reaching for nothing. My mother floats nearby, watching me with worry, perhaps even fear.

Doubt settles like a stone. What was that? A dream? A memory? But that never happened. And that name, Kronos. I’ve never heard it before.

The drifting ship draws a shadow over me, and I force my thoughts to the present. I take my mother’s hand and draw her toward the ship.

We skim under it, where a faint glow of Drift-energy spans the gaping hole. When we break the surface beside the ship, I shape my mother and myself into the wind and take us to the deck.

I let our energies settle into their usual forms. My mother is nude, and I shift before her, shielding her from the view of strangers. I tug off my sodden tunic and wring it out. Water splatters the already-soaked deck. I shake out the tunic, and my mother takes it with a wry quirk of her mouth. She has never been modest. She struggles with the wet cloth for a moment. With an aggravated look, she suffuses it with heat and air. When she pulls it on, the damp hem reaches to mid-thigh.

I spin to meet Astarti, whose quick footsteps tap across the deck. I grab her into my arms. Her clothes are soaked, her braid heavy with water. I pull back enough to see her face, and her pale blue eyes cut right to my heart. How can it be that anything in the Old Ones drew me away when she is right here?

“You’re all right,” I say, needing to speak aloud what I see.

“And you?” Her hands tighten on my waist. There is uncertainty in her tone. Don’t I look all right? I try to still myself further, to close down my mind. So much skitters along the edges of my thoughts.

“What are you doing here?” Unable to fully banish my lingering fear, I shake her a little. “You could have been killed.”

She frowns, drawing away from me, annoyed with my tone, or my shaking her, or my evasion. I take three deep breaths. I have to restrain myself better with her. She, above all things, does not want to be controlled. I understand that all too well. I don’t want to control her. I love her freedom. But she scares me. When she takes these risks, she scares me to death.

“I followed your mother, then I saw the ship.”

My mother comes to my side. “You followed me? I never saw you.”

“I was in the Drift. I was worried.” Her tone is apologetic, as though my mother will be angry, but my mother offers her a small smile.

My mother’s smile fades, however, as she looks around the deck. “I will see to the wounded.”

Men lie twisted in ropes or slumped over barrels, groaning, stunned and exhausted, some injured. A few bodies are completely still. Only one man is upright, and he is pulling against the ropes binding him to the mast.

I cross the deck toward him. Astarti’s footsteps follow. Amidships, she sucks in a breath, and the man at the mast freezes. I look over my shoulder to see what the problem is. I follow Astarti’s gaze down my body and jolt.

My form shimmers and fades, and I realize I have not been hearing my own footsteps. I will my body to solidify. The returning aches in my bad knee and shoulder mark my success. I didn’t feel them before, and I have a terrible suspicion that this is the first moment I have been fully within my body.

Astarti’s lips thin. Normally she would touch me, but she holds back, as though afraid I won’t be there.

I force myself onward and find blue, Earthmaker eyes trained on me. The man’s face is weathered and grim. He is the oldest-looking Earthmaker I have ever seen. Gray eyebrows draw low as I approach. His look is a challenge and a warning. I stop.

“I only want to untie you.”

He gives a short nod. I edge around behind him and work at the knots, but the wet rope holds fast.

“Astarti? Do you have a knife?”

“I always have a knife, Logan,” she says with a hint of amusement, and her humor—no, simply her voice—helps me sink into the calm I need.

I move away as she shapes her spear. It glows silvery-blue. It is menacing and beautiful, like her. She slashes through the ropes, and the Earthmaker collapses to the wooden planks.

“I have to go below deck. I feel my patch weakening.”

I nod, but Astarti hovers beside me. Her fingers brush my arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps.

“Get us in quickly, all right?”

I want to touch her, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to let go, so I just nod again, and Astarti is gone.

I turn back to the Earthmaker. His eyes focus on mine briefly, widening a little. I try to still myself, to force my eyes to hold blue, but I’m too unsettled. I can’t see them, of course, but I know. The Earthmaker’s gaze drops to my bare chest, skimming over my scars. I think of those on my exposed back, which I am showing to everyone. I force the thought away.

Though the Earthmaker’s wet clothes cling to his wiry frame, I see he wears the loose linen trousers and billowing shirt typical of a sailor. Even so, I ask, “Are you a prisoner?”

His eyebrows slash downward. “I told them to tie me as soon as we saw the storm coming.”

I glance around the ship, noting for the first time the huge dark blood stains, the crossbow-like contraptions mounted along the gunwales, and the brick stove for boiling blubber down to oil.

I look at the Earthmaker again. “This is a Valdaran whaling ship.”

“Yes.”

“And you an Earthmaker.” If he is not a prisoner, there is only one explanation for his presence here. Stricken. Long ago, I suspect.

“So are you.” His eyes narrow. “Kind of.”

I ignore that. “Are you the captain?”

He snorts and jerks his chin to where my mother is crouched beside a man with a face white from pain and a forearm bent at a sickening angle.

As I make my way to the captain, impatience gnaws at me. I must get this ship moving.

When my footsteps fade, I have to stop and concentrate on forcing myself back into my skin. I hate the extra delay, but I can’t help these people if I can’t control myself. Measured breathing doesn’t work, so I imagine a whip lashing across my back. I let memory bring me the pure, mind-clearing flash of pain. I let it anchor me in my body. I let it settle into my bones with familiar weight.

Centered now, I open my eyes.

“Logan,” my mother calls from across the deck, “help me straighten his arm.”

Impatience seethes, but I go to them. I need the captain’s help.

I crouch beside him. I grip the man’s elbow, pressing it to my knee to keep it stable.

“Ready?” my mother asks, and I feel the captain tense. He nods, and my mother, gripping his hand, pulls the arm out and straight. The captain howls with pain, and I don’t blame him. I hold his arm steady while my mother lays her hands on the rapidly swelling flesh.

The captain clearly had no idea what to expect because when the pain vanishes, he jerks away. His face is full of wonder. He says something in the guttural tongue of Valdar. I know enough of the language to understand his, “thank you,” but what he adds after is lost on me. It doesn’t seem to be lost on my mother because she laughs, blushing a little.

I say in crude Valdaran, “Sail, up.” I point to the helm with its huge wheel. “You, steer. Kelda.”

The captain shakes his head and says something I can’t follow, though I think he says something about Ibris. I look to my mother for translation, but the strange Earthmaker speaks behind me. “He says we are headed for Dalamas, in Ibris.”

“Tell him he won’t make it to Ibris with a hole in his ship the size of a whale’s head.”

Before an argument can ensue, I stride across the deck. Most of the deck has been washed bare, but I step around the occasional groaning sailor or mass of tangled rope. I pass the broad brick oven, where even the torrents of water haven’t cleared away the lingering stink of oil. Behind me, the captain shouts orders.

We are on our way more quickly than I dared hope. I drive the ship across the waters, filling tattered sails with wind. A split in one lengthens with the sound of ripping canvas, but I don’t give the shouting sailors time to take it back in. I stir the waters to push us even faster. Astarti looked exhausted. I don’t know how long she can keep the ship together.

I try to hold my body to the ship, to let only a fragment of myself enter the elements.

I don’t make it more than a mile.

I glide through wind and water, reveling in the freedom, driving the ship with rolling waves and relentless wind.

The hull groans a warning. Another sail rips.

I try to ease the push, to find a balance between freedom and control. I let a sliver of wind slip through the cracks in the ship to touch Astarti, and the answering hum of her energies settles me.

I sense the rise of the ocean’s floor as we near Tornelaine, then the rocky bluffs jut from the water. I itch to drive the wind and water against the cliffs, to feel the impact of the elements.

I slow myself. I don’t want to smash the ship.

Of course not.

As we draw near Tornelaine’s harbor, the waves rush ahead to knock broken ships against one another. When I try to draw the waters back, I only manage to bring a wave against the prow. Men shout as spray explodes across the deck. The Earthmaker onboard tries to calm the waves. He’s not powerful enough to counterbalance me, however, and we come wobbling into the harbor, spraying water over the port road as the captain steers us alongside.