“Edrin!” Cillian shouted from her platform of water, voice booming unnaturally loud. I blinked and looked up, realized that she’d tried to get my attention more than once. “What did you do?” she said.
I didn’t have time to answer. The creature launched itself at her, moving impossibly quickly for something of its bulk. She didn’t have time to scream before it enveloped her. The platform of water burst apart and they plummeted towards the water. Her terror hit me hard. Before I knew what I was doing I flung myself onto its back. Dissever rammed into the twisted flesh as all three of us plunged deep.
My skin burned as the creature tried to devour my magic and absorb my flesh. I shoved Dissever deeper, sawing. The beast flinched as I stabbed through pulsing muscle and hit something hard – I glimpsed a glow through the wound, something vital. A heart of magical crystal. I hacked at it, once, twice. It cracked and gave way. Light flashed and heat bloomed as the arcane core of the creature exploded. It convulsed, smashing into the rock wall, body breaking apart as the inner light guttered and died.
Cillian’s motionless form floated free of the mess. The wall crackled and crumbled, water pouring through a hole into the watercourse beyond. I didn’t believe in worship, but right then I started praying to everything I’d ever heard of. Dissever wrenched itself from my grip and flowed back into my wound rather than risk being lost in the watery depths. I grabbed hold of Cillian and held on tight as the torrent sucked us through.
Chapter 24
The current tossed us around like rag dolls. Dazed, I scrabbled for purchase on slick rock, nails cracking. I clutched Cillian tight to my chest, blindly trying to keep our heads up and snatch breath from pockets of air. Icy water flooded my mouth and up my nose, choking me. The water fell away, as did my stomach, and we were washed down a long chute. All air exploded from my lungs as I bounced off a wall and tumbled end over end, one of my boots tearing free.
I flailed in vain, tried to slow down, couldn’t tell which way was up. My lungs screamed. Panic filled me, the need to breathe overwhelming. Our heads burst out into air and I sucked in another desperate lungful before a surge sucked us under, submerging again and again until a roaring filled my ears. We went over a waterfall and plunged deep into a pool; the impact tore Cillian from my grasp and the river pulled me backwards. I flopped this way and that, unseen tunnel walls pummeling me like a hundred hidden fists. With one last surge those walls were abruptly no longer there. The current dissipated.
Saltwater stung my eyes and a wavering light filtered down from what had to be up. Cillian’s motionless form was blurry shadow above me. Foul-tasting gunk clogged the back of my throat, like I’d bitten into something rotten. I tore off my remaining boot and took hold of Cillian’s arm in one hand, pulling great handfuls of water with the other as I made for the light, the wound in my leg burning with each kick. The surface neared with agonising slowness. Panic set in as the need to breathe overwhelmed me. My vision started to darken. With one last desperate stroke my face burst free and I took ragged heaving breaths. I’d never take air for granted again! Cillian didn’t move, unconscious or dead.
Coughing and spluttering, I wiped blurry, stinging eyes and treaded water, struggling to keep us both afloat amidst a froth of sewage and refuse. I gagged and spat at the foulness in my mouth. The underground river had washed us out to sea near Pauper’s Docks.
I started a painstakingly slow and pathetic paddle towards shore, towing Cillian behind me. Clumps of splintered wood and debris floated nearby, evidence of a ship going down. A dozen Setharii navy cogs were limping into the docks, their sails torn, hulls charred and studded with arrows. One of them was listing badly, a gaping wound in the starboard side bearing what looked like teeth marks. The road winding up to Pauper’s Gate thronged with wounded coming off the ships, and people running back and forth carrying tools and weapons.
I wallowed my way through the waves, already tired from the exertion of flailing around like a diseased hog. By the time I dragged us both onto the shingle beach I was panting and aching all over. I rolled Cillian onto her back. She was covered in angry welts and patches of raw skin where the creature had touched her. Four long bloodless gashes marred either side of her neck, as if something had tried to tear her throat out. She wasn’t breathing so I opened her sodden robes and fumbled for a pulse in her neck with frozen hands. Nothing. I had no idea what to do. I pressed on her stomach and water gushed from her mouth and from the gashes in her neck.
“Breathe,” I snarled, pumping her stomach. I tried to get it all out, but she still didn’t take a breath.
“Come on, Cillian. You are better than this. You were meant to do great things, not drown in the dark. Burn it, breathe.”
She didn’t.
I collapsed to the stones, trying to marshal enough will and strength to haul myself up and stagger towards the docks. My stomach growled, informing me that I was literally starving after all the quickened healing I’d had.
There wasn’t much of me left that wasn’t battered, bruised or bleeding. Some homecoming. If I wasn’t a magus I would have died five times over. How often did we shrug off injuries that would cripple or kill a normal person, without so much as a thought? It wasn’t surprising many thought themselves so far above mundanes as to be a different breed.
Eventually I managed to stagger to my feet and peeled off my torn clothes to wring most of the water out. I tried not to look at Cillian. I had no reason to feel guilty, but I’d known her well once and couldn’t help but feel responsible in some way. My body was a tapestry of black, green and blue bruises. Some were already blooming out into yellows and purples. I probed my head with my fingers and fortunately it didn’t seem like I’d broken anything after battering it off rocks, but then my medical skills extended as far as wrapping bandages and hoping for the best. Lynas always said I was thick-skulled. A hand raked through my hair dislodged squidgy debris it was better not thinking about.
The weeping hole in my leg burned from the saltwater. “Get the fuck out,” I said to Dissever, imagining the pain belonged to somebody else.
Tendrils of liquid black writhed from the wound. I clamped my jaw shut to muffle screams as Dissever birthed itself in a welter of blood. It clanged to the stones, jagged blade embedded a hairsbreadth away from severing my big toe.
“What are you, you vile thing?”
It replied only with alien mirth.
I scowled and tore off strips of tunic to bandage my leg, grimacing as I took a few experimental steps. Dissever was carefully hooked under my belt and it was obvious I carried an unnatural weapon, but the time for subtlety was long past.
I wiped the worst of the blood and filth from Cillian’s face. We had not been friends at the end, closer to enemies in truth, but I could never hate her. In some other world I might have saved her, been a hero. But that wasn’t me. I sat her up facing the sea, dabbed away some more filth from around her eyes and nose. She would have liked to go with a view of the sea. “Goodbye, Cillian. And… I’m sorry.”
She opened her eyes.
I jerked my hand back, fell arse-first onto the beach.
She doubled over, coughing up water and clutching her head. “Where am I?”
My mouth opened and closed like an idiot fish.
She probed her matted hair with her fingertips, wincing as she found a lump the size of an egg. She looked at me blearily. “Edrin? What… Where are we?” She suddenly realized that her shoes were missing and her robes torn open and absolutely indecent. She hastily rearranged them and shot me a suspicious look.