This was why he had entered into a life of esoteric study in the first place, not just so he could put wards on war ships and equip fisherman with cantrips to better their hauls. Magic was supposed to be wielded in the pursuit of the extraordinary and with the Llothriall they were opening up Twilight's ancient legacies.
Something of Emuel's song still resonated within the gem room and as Kelos listened to its echo he felt it reaching back, harmonising with the voice of a distant and fascinating past. The secrets of the millennia old forces now at his fingertips overwhelmed him for a moment — these songs that had never before been sung by a human, these magics woven from a tapestry so rich that not even the highest mage on Twilight had the barest inkling of its complete design — and his concentration was masked, for just a moment, by his awe at the power surrounding him.
The ship lurched suddenly to starboard and Kelos was shaken from his reverie to bring the magic back under control, righting the vessel.
Then he smiled to himself, shook his head and reached out to the threads.
It was just a small lurch but on the deck above Katya groaned as she staggered down the corridor. Their flight from the Chadassa had left her feeling nauseous and weak and the knowledge that they were pursued by enemies fanatical and demonic made the impending birth of their child seem all the more overwhelming. She mounted the steps to the main deck and, as she emerged into the sunlight, Silus held out a hand to steady her.
"Come on, the fresh air will make you feel better."
"What would make me feel better is not being on this bloody ship. You know, I never imagined that our child would be born at sea."
"If it's any consolation, Father Maylan has performed the duties of a midwife before and we have enough supplies to sustain us for quite a while. I'm sure that we'll find land soon."
"Really? And what if all of the rest of this world is just one great ocean? Had you ever considered that? What if the reason that there are no records of what the original elf ships found is because there was nothing to find?"
As Katya raised her voice there was laughter from above her and she looked up to see Ioannis enjoying their little dispute. The look that she shot him soon had him scrabbling back up the rigging and out of sight.
Looking back at Silus, Katya's anger softened as she saw the hurt in his eyes. After all, she considered, none of this was really his fault. They had been swept up in a maelstrom of events out of their control and Katya didn't think that any of them could have done anything differently.
"I'm sorry," she said.
There was a gentle kick then and she put a hand to her belly.
"Are you alright?" Silus said.
"Yes, I just think we may have woken someone up."
Silus put his hand over Katya's.
"Feels like our child is going to be a fighter."
"Then he or she will take after the father."
Katya smiled and the infant kicked again.
Chapter Nine
For five days they saw nothing but rough seas; the iron green waters rising and falling around them like a range of wild and constantly changing hills. Rain lashed the sails while lightning arced down to discharge itself into the water. Through all of this the Llothriall remained the one calm point, the deck remaining steady beneath their feet.
The ship sighed and sang as it made its way through the maelstrom. The magic that flowed through the Llothriall warmed it so that the temperature on board felt always like a balmy summer afternoon. On top of the subtle incense-like scent of the warm timbers was a stronger odour, like the musk of an ancient book or bales of perfumed cloth.
Kelos had told them that each strand of magic had its own particular smell and that sometimes they combined to produce heady, otherworldly scents. Ioannis was of the opinion that these otherworldly scents were more to do with the strange weed that Father Maylan was in the habit of smoking.
On the sixth day the sea calmed a little and Dunsany postulated that they had broken through the Storm Wall, the first vessel manned by humans ever to have done so.
That evening they celebrated and Ioannis introduced them all to a variety of sea shanties that Katya was grateful her child was not yet born to hear. The drinking would have continued well beyond the point where the majority of them were comfortably drunk, had not Dunsany pointed out that they probably didn't want to exhaust their supplies this early into the voyage.
And so, the crew offered their goodnights. The only one not to do so was Emuel, who had retired long before.
In their cabin Silus admired Katya as she slept, impressed that she had managed to hold court with as much elan as the drunken men who surrounded her. He kissed her as she sighed in her sleep, she didn't need drink to be witty or to be persuaded into song. Silus watched her for a moment more before leaving the cabin.
On the main deck the wheel held steady, set to a course that Dunsany and Kelos had decided between them. The boards of the deck steamed slightly as the recent rains dried and Silus enjoyed the touch of this gentle mist as he lay down.
Kerberos seemed to hang lower and larger in the sky than usual and he wondered whether the seas they were traversing would prove to be a path to the seat of the ancestors. (Father Maylan had told him that all paths lead to Kerberos, but Silus didn't fully understand what he meant). Taking a telescope from a pocket he trained it on the azure orb and watched the play of clouds that covered its surface. He wondered how many times he had sent entreaties into those impenetrable vapours. How many times had he asked a blessing of the ancestors who resided there, or cursed the unknowable sphere for some imagined bad luck or malady?
Silus put the telescope down and closed his eyes. Below him, the deck pitched gently and, for the first time during the voyage, he felt calm, though always there was the fear that the Chadassa would find them.
The susurrus of the sea and the touch of a gentle wind conspired with the alcohol in his blood to take him into sleep, and he gave up consciousness gladly.
He was falling towards an endless sea of clouds. On the horizon the first rays of a rising run sent shards of light across the slowly evolving landscape below. Flickering tongues of lightning erupted from hills of vapour, heavy with the threat of thunder while clouds parted to open up on great amethyst pools, their depths endless and hungry.
Far above him hung a blue-green sphere and he knew that it was from there that he had fallen.
He drifted down into the purple sea and the clouds parted only briefly to mark his passage.
He had no way of measuring the speed of his descent. On all sides he was surrounded by slowly rolling thunderheads, skeins of mist and great valleys and peaks that constantly shifted and changed.
A shadow passed him and he saw that there were other travellers in the storm.
He noted the look of serenity on the faces of those that fell past, arms outstretched, before they faded from view. Others rode the columns of cloud that boiled up from the depths below. He recognised one man, rocketing towards him, as Pandrick, the owner of The Necromancer's Barge. Windmilling his arms, he managed to get out of the way before Pandrick collided with him. He shouted a greeting to the publican, but any response that he may have called was eaten by the howling winds.
He only had a moment to consider what lay below him, on the other side of the clouds, before he was through and he saw for himself.
Silus was thrown out of sleep, across the deck and into the side of a locker as the Llothriall came to a sudden halt.
He struggled to regain his breath as, with a clatter of footsteps, the crew rushed up from below.
"I though that you said nothing could stop this ship." Jacquinto shouted.