‘Where is he?’ Brexan sounded sceptical. ‘Did he swim off to find us a boat or something? And how did he know to find us out there? And how did he warm the sea up?’
‘Well, those are all good questions, and I don’t want you to be alarmed, but I think he’s here with us now.’ Versen’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead in an effort to convey lightheartedness.
‘What do you mean?’ Brexan frowned.
‘Okay, you’ve got to absolutely promise not to panic.’ She looked at him strangely and he laughed. ‘Not helpful? I can see that. Just remember: Gabriel saved us, all right?’ She nodded agreement and held Versen a little bit tighter.
‘Gabriel O’Reilly is a wraith, a spirit of sorts, here from Steven and Mark’s Colorado. He provided a body for Nerak to travel between Colorado and Eldarn a little over nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons ago.’
‘So when you say “here with us”, you mean floating around here somewhere?’ Brexan began searching the skies, squinting into the twilight.
‘No, I mean, here, with us.’ He placed a finger on Brexan’s breastbone, just below her neck. ‘Inside us, warming us from within, and lending us the physical strength we need to survive.’
Brexan looked askance at him. ‘Inside us? Us both?’
‘I am,’ a gentle voice echoed in her mind.
Brexan cried out in surprise, ‘Great gods of the Northern Forest!’ and renewed her iron grip about Versen’s neck. ‘Was that him? Did you hear it too?’
‘I did,’ Versen said, stroking her arm in an effort to calm her down, ‘he and I have been talking for much of the past aven. You were unconscious, but he kept you alive as he helped drag us along through the water.’
‘But how is he doing that? How did he get inside us like that?’
‘He did it to save our lives – without him, I would be- we would both be dead by now. He tracked us from the Blackstones; I don’t know how, but I’m surely glad he did. And he’s brought news of the others. They were attacked by an army of spirits, similar to him, but thousands of them – and definitely not on our side. My friends were holed up in a little cabin on the northern slope of the Blackstone Mountains, not far from the Falkan border. Steven and Garec were preparing to fight them off.’ He paused.
‘What happened?’ Brexan asked, her mouth hanging open a little. Versen smiled, pleased her curiosity had overcome her initial fear.
‘I had to flee.’ Brexan jumped a little as O’Reilly’s voice spoke inside her head.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It may take me some time to get used to having you in there.’
‘My apologies. I will try to surprise you less frequently as we make our way to shore.’
Brexan was so preoccupied at the thought of a thousand-Twinmoon-old spirit haunting her mind that she had briefly forgotten she and Versen were still a long distance from shore, and still in danger of drowning.
‘So, what of Versen’s friends?’ she asked, returning to the topic at hand. ‘Why did you run away?’
‘The spirits who attacked the forest cabin were like me, souls summoned by Nerak to hunt down and retrieve the key to the spell table in Sandcliff Palace. There were thousands of them. I would have been tortured and cast back into the Fold had they detected my presence. If I was to be any assistance to your cause – to our cause – I had to get away.’
The wraith’s voice was a smooth baritone; Brexan wondered if their curious saviour sounded the same to Versen.
The spirit continued, ‘In the moments before the attack, I warned Mark, and then fled west to find you, Versen.’
‘I am extraordinarily glad you did so,’ Versen said with a chuckle.
Brexan smiled at the sight of Versen speaking aloud to no one. He was alive, so very much alive. His head was cast back slightly, and he spoke in a raised voice, as if the wraith was floating above the surface of the water rather than communicating from inside their bodies. She grimaced suddenly; she wasn’t sure how keen she was on some disembodied spirit being inside her while she and Versen were kissing. She flushed bright red. If Gabriel O’Reilly had read her thoughts, he must be appalled at her forwardness… Brexan blushed again, and buried her face in the water for several moments. Changing the topic, she asked, ‘You said “our cause” – how is this your cause?’
‘I am – I was – a bank manager, and it was I who allowed the miner William Higgins to open the account that sealed the far portal and Lessek’s Key away for almost a thousand Twinmoons. I was the last man to carry the evil prince back to Eldarn across the Fold.’ The spirit’s voice hesitated, then continued softly, ‘I suffered an agony unlike anything I had ever imagined when that man – that thing – was inside my body. I could feel parts of me dying, and yet I could do nothing to save myself. I could not cry out, could not bandage my wounds, could not share my thoughts with anyone. I was at his mercy, and in all these years, these Twinmoons, I have been able to do little more than relive that memory, again and again.’
Gabriel O’Reilly’s voice seemed to crack, and Brexan found herself touched by the wraith’s tragic story. ‘So you have issues to settle with our sovereign lord as well,’ she said, her tone icy.
‘Indeed I do.’
‘Then let’s get moving. We need to get to Orindale and see if the others have made it into the city.’ She started swimming, then stopped again and said, ‘Thank you. I don’t think we’ve actually said that, have we? You saved our lives, and for that alone we can never repay you. And thanks to you, we know the others cleared the Blackstones. That’s an amazing accomplishment in itself. If they managed to escape the wraiths, they might already be in Orindale.’
O’Reilly answered for both of them to hear, ‘There are several fishermen pulling nets not far from here. They will take us to shore. I will remain in you until you have slept and regained some of your own strength. Then we can travel north together.’
An elderly fisherman, shocked anyone would be swimming so far from shore, heaved the duo roughly into his small skiff. Brexan cringed as she landed in a heaping pile of enormous jemma fish. She slipped along the seaman’s scaly carpet and curled up in a small space in the bow. She was asleep before her head hit the deck.
Versen spent a half-aven talking with the fisherman, attempting to explain how he and the young woman had managed to become lost, and then survived the cold autumn waters, when no vessel had been sighted since the twilight aven began. The fisherman, Caddoc Weston, continued pulling in his nets as he humoured his new passengers. He did not believe they had been on a sailing vessel that sank suddenly when some planking came loose in her hull, and a few carefully worded questions about navigation, prevailing winds and rigging confirmed the big Ronan was lying. Versen knew nothing of ships save what little he had gleaned while chained up in the Falkan Dancer. Realising he was caught out, he shrugged and gave a half smile. The fisherman nodded and the matter was dropped.
In an effort to redirect their conversation, Versen asked about the pile of jemma fish.
‘Good night tonight,’ Caddoc said laconically. ‘Large schools of jemma are moving south this Twinmoon. The fishing’s been good.’ A series of hacking coughs racked his frame and he spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm over the side.
‘Are you all right?’ Versen moved to assist him.
‘Fine. I’m fine.’ A second coughing fit had the veins in his neck bulging. Wiping his chin on the back of his wrist, he added, ‘We all die. I get to do it out here.’ He gestured with a bony hand at the Ravenian Sea and Versen realised for the first time since leaving Strandson that the southern ocean was beautiful.
‘You should get some sleep too,’ Caddoc suggested. Versen thought, unnervingly, that he already looked like a skeleton in the waning light.
Picking his way forward to join Brexan in the bow, Versen marvelled at the irony of an alarmingly thin fisherman surrounded by such a bounteous catch. ‘He must not eat any of it,’ he mumbled to himself.