Chapter 9 | Part 4

A red glow appeared ahead, faint enough to vanish whenever spray crossed his eyes.

Drusniel did not trust it.

He rowed toward it anyway.

The predator had not returned.

Everything else remained.

The left oar would bite into thick resistance while the right moved freely. The horizon slipped when he stared too long. A sequence of strokes still refused to remain a sequence.

He stopped trying to measure the crossing.

He let his shoulders rest while the boat drifted, then tested his grip on the oars.

One more stroke.

Then another.

The light remained ahead.

That was enough.

Gradually, the resistance against the blades grew even. For several strokes he no longer had to brace against a sudden slip.

Then ten.

The horizon held.

Wind chilled the water in his clothes. He was shivering.

Drusniel counted three breaths.

He reached the end without losing his place.

He counted five strokes.

He could remember each one.

The Null had stopped pulsing.

He pulled the pouch away from his chest and tucked it into his pack. His magic did not return.

The debt pulsed once beneath his ribs.

Drusniel kept rowing.

The red glow lit a coast of black sand, with low rocks breaking the shallows. Above it hung a red-grey sky without a visible sun.

No current pulled him toward it.

No force helped.

He rowed until the oars scraped bottom.

The sound was ugly and ordinary.

Beautiful.

Drusniel tried to stand.

His legs failed.

He fell out of the boat into knee-deep water, crawled the last few feet, and collapsed onto warm black sand.

For several breaths he did nothing.

He dragged a finger through the sand, then drew two more lines beside the first.

They stayed where he put them.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the lines were still there.

Find Szoravel.

Zaelar’s next instruction.

Drusniel tried to push himself upright.

Nothing.

He let his forehead touch the sand.

Behind him, the reinforced boat rested half in the shallows, battered but intact.

Zaelar had been right about that too.

Footsteps approached.

Drusniel could not turn.

A shadow crossed the sand and stopped over him.

The pain beneath his ribs pulsed again. He had agreed to something out there.

One debt.

Then he lost consciousness.

End of Chapter 9.4 —> 9.5: The Nightmare Sea: Black Sand