Chapter 9 | Part 1

The water shifted against the rocks without a wave to move it.

Drusniel stood where black stone met black water, the Null cold against his chest.

He tried to measure the far shore.

One estimate put it at two miles.

The next made it five.

On the third, the horizon shifted while he watched.

He stopped trying.

Three hundred paces north. Black rocks shaped like broken teeth.

Zaelar’s route had been exact. The cove was where it should be, hidden behind the black rocks. The boat waited inside the cave on wooden rollers.

The boat was small, with room for the oars and a coil of rope beneath the seat. A waterskin lay wedged beside them.

Enough.

Drusniel ran a hand along the metal-banded hull.

Zaelar had been right about the boat.

That did not make him right about anything else.

He pushed it into the water and climbed aboard.

The hull settled too slowly, then dropped half an inch without warning.

Drusniel gripped the gunwales.

The Null pulsed against his sternum, leaving a cold ache beneath the metal.

His sense of the air dimmed with it.

He reached toward a draft and stopped when the ache sharpened. Zaelar had warned him: working magic would give the wards a presence to find again.

Rowing was safer.

Drusniel rowed.

The first ten strokes behaved almost normally.

On the eleventh, the water thickened around one oar and thinned around the other.

The boat yawed sideways.

He corrected.

Twenty strokes later, he looked back and found open water where the shore had been.

There was no mist to hide it. He turned farther, searching, until the boat rocked beneath him.

Grey light remained without a visible source. It cast no useful shadow. The horizon expanded and contracted by fractions he could see but not quantify.

Drusniel counted strokes anyway.

Twenty-three.

Twenty-four.

Twenty-three.

He stopped.

He remembered pulling the twenty-fourth stroke. He also remembered the one after it coming first.

The air tasted metallic.

He kept rowing.

A swell rose ahead without wind.

His water affinity reacted before thought did.

Drusniel touched the sea magically.

Something touched back.

Attention closed around the boat from below.

He severed the contact at once.

The wave struck broadside.

The hull climbed, hung at an angle his body insisted should capsize it, then slammed flat again. Heavy black water spilled over the side and pooled around his boots.

The presence below remained.

Drusniel did not reach for water again.

He rowed until his shoulders burned.

Then the water thickened around both oars at once.

The boat nearly stopped.

Drusniel looked at the grey air sliding weakly across the stern.

He turned his cheek to it, waiting to feel which way it ran.

He caught the current, compressed it, and redirected it backward.

The boat lurched forward.

Pain struck behind his breastbone as he dragged the current into reach.

The presence below sharpened.

He let the current go, but the cold pressure below kept pace.

The burst had carried him only a little farther. His arms shook when he took up the oars.

Something moved under the hull.

Not attacking.

Following.

He pulled cautiously. The shape held its distance beneath him. Another stroke; still no closer.

Slow was all he had left. He settled his feet against the ribs of the hull and rowed.

End of Chapter 9.1 —> 9.2: The Nightmare Sea: The Count