She sagged in his grasp, limp and unmoving but he could feel the faint beat of her heart as his hands pressed against her chest. Clay’s hands fumbled at the weighted belt about her waist for a few agonising seconds before it came free. He began to kick for the surface when something fast and large streaked out of the gloom directly ahead, Clay having time to register the sight of two triangular rows of teeth before instinctively unleashing his Black. The Green recoiled as if it had charged into a brick wall, blood seeping like crimson smoke from its nostrils as it twisted and vanished into the gloom, tail whipping.
Clay twisted about, seeing a sleek narrow shape cut through the murk a short distance away, quickly followed by another moving in the opposite direction. They’re circling, he realised, head swivelling left and right. His body spasmed then as the product in his veins started to thin in earnest, lungs now like fire, the Greens coming closer with every circle. He knew with awful certainty that the attack would come soon and all at once, the whole pack rending and tearing at the hated intruders in a frenzy. It was as if they knew his product was fading and all they had to do was wait.
Panic rising he lashed out with Red at the closest drake, leaving a lightning-fork-like trail of bubbles through the water. The Green veered away, more in confusion than distress as Clay could see no apparent damage to the beast. Stupid, he thought, skin prickling in the suddenly warm water. Boil them and you boil yourself. Which left only the Black, and there were too many to push away.
He convulsed again, clamping his mouth shut against his body’s instinctive need to gasp. A strange, reflective calm overtook him then, the panic vanishing as the imminence of death became a certainty. A last serene notion slipped into his head as he felt Kriz begin to slip from his arms. Too many to push . . . Then don’t push, pull . . . Pull the water.
Water. More substantial than air, which could be affected by Black but only in the most unfocused way. Water was different, water could be pulled.
Clay used the last vestiges of his reason to marshal his Black, focusing his attention on the space separating them from the drakes, then expending it all at once to draw the water towards them. The effect was immediate and dramatic, the pressure of so much water compressing at once shooting the pair of them to the surface.
They broke through into a cacophony of sound and beautiful, sweet-tasting air. Clay heard his uncle call out before they plunged down. He kicked for the surface and dragged more air into his lungs as they bobbed back up. He could see the raft a little over ten yards away, which suddenly seemed a great distance in light of what lurked beneath. Uncle Braddon and Preacher were both kneeling, rifles pointed in his direction whilst Sigoral stood to the side, tipping a vial of product down his throat. Clay began to call out for a rope but the yell died as Sigoral cast the vial aside and focused his gaze. Clay felt the invisible hand of Black close around him and a heart-beat later he and Kriz were being dragged through the water at a considerable rate of knots.
Braddon and Preacher fired several shots in the time it took for them to reach the raft, Sigoral lifting them clear of the lake at the last instant to deposit them in the centre of the raft. Clay was forced to spend some time gasping for breath before he began to get the helmet off Kriz’s head.
“I got it,” Braddon said, crouching to pull the helmet clear, revealing Kriz’s slack, unresponsive features. Braddon held a hand to her mouth then, muttering a curse, lay her flat on her back and delivered several hard shoves to her sternum with both hands. Clay’s gaze was dragged away by a sudden commotion, turning to see a Green frozen in mid-leap close to the edge of the raft. Sigoral held the beast in place long enough to aim his carbine and put a bullet through its skull. The lieutenant cast the Green’s corpse away and Clay turned back, watching his uncle pumping Kriz’s chest.
“Must’ve had some air left in the helmet,” Clay said, knowing it was a desperate notion. “I felt her heart-beat, Uncle.”
Braddon said nothing, continuing his rhythmic shoves, Kriz’s head lolling in response with not even a flicker to her eyelids. He kept at it until Preacher’s rifle fell silent a minute or so later. Braddon sat back on his haunches, turning to Clay with a grim shake of his head. “I . . .”
All four of them started as Kriz jerked, a gout of water erupting from her mouth. She spent some time convulsing, breath coming in deep, saw-like rasps, eventually choking into a bout of violent coughing. Clay moved to clasp her hand as she continued to cough, finding it closed into a tight fist.
“I . . . I found them,” she said when the coughing had subsided, meeting Clay’s gaze with a bright smile. She opened her fist to reveal two objects. One was a small crystal shard, little bigger than an arrow-head, and the other a glass vial. Clay initially took it for product but the colour was strange, possessed of a rainbow-like sheen as it caught the light.
“What are they?” he asked.
Kriz’s smile broadened and she reached out with her other hand to caress his face. “The keys . . . to convergence.”
“Seems we came an awful long way for such small things.” Loriabeth peered at the two objects in Kriz’s palm with a dubious gaze.
“Density is relative and often deceptive,” Kriz replied. “Everything you can see or touch is made up of mostly empty space.” She sat huddled close to the camp-fire, a blanket about her shoulders. They had retreated a good distance from the lake-shore before making camp, Kriz having to be carried most of the way. She had shivered continually during the trip and even now spoke with a pronounced tremor to her voice. “I need Black,” she said, looking at Clay.
He frowned, concerned by her wan face and red, over-bright eyes. “You don’t want to wait awhile . . . ?”
“Black.” She held out her free hand, continuing in her own language, “As you know, I have waited a very long time for this and find myself out of patience.”
Clay duly handed over a vial of Black, Kriz drinking a quarter of the contents before focusing her gaze on the crystal sitting in her palm. It floated free and drifted away from her then seemed to shimmer as it began to vibrate, Clay detecting a familiar tinkling sound he had last heard in their trance in the hidden enclave. The rest of the company let out a mingling of gasps and surprised profanity as the crystal abruptly unfolded. Narrow spikes lanced out from the core, catching the fire-light as it spun under Kriz’s manipulation, eventually slowing to hang serenely in the air, resembling a star in the way it glittered. Clay stepped closer to it, memory racing with recognition. The trance in which Kriz had shown him the cavern where Zembi had created the first White, the four crystals, Red, Green, Blue . . . and one so dark it seemed to swallow the light.
“The Black crystal,” he said, reaching out to press a tentative finger to one of the spikes. “We actually Seer-damn found it.”
“Kinda begs the question of what we do with it,” Braddon said, moving closer to peer at the crystal.
“It will enable communication,” Kriz said. “Between drake and human, specifically Black drakes and humans.”
“Clay can already do that,” Skaggerhill said.
“Only with Lutharon,” Clay said. “And that was thanks to Miss Ethelynne. If he’d stayed with us any longer things would’ve gone bad sooner or later, for us and him.” He turned to Kriz. “We can command them with this, right? Make them join us?”