Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Thirty-Five

The trip down the rigging was a careful mix of falling and falling slightly faster. Rae’s hands burned as he lunged from rope to rope, his shoulders wrenching each time he grabbed onto the guideline, the harness biting into his waist. Somewhere to his left, one of the crew slipped and fell silently into the open sky.

A hand grabbed Rae’s arm at the bicep. He flinched aside, drawing the wraith and starting to form the wicked blade in his hand. The crewman spun him around.

“What in the eight hells are you doing in the masts, Kelthannis?” he yelled. It was Turney, another ensign, several years younger than Rae. “Get down from the rigging before I throw you to the deck myself!”

“What the hell is going on?” Rae shouted, though not loudly enough for anyone to hear him in the storm. Turney was already off, clambering to where the crewman had fallen to resume the dead man’s task. Another blast of wind shook the sails. Rae took the last twenty feet at a dead drop, barely holding on to the guides. The impact shuddered through his knees and clapped his jaw shut, drawing blood from his lip. He uncurled himself and looked around warily.

The terrible sound of the ship tearing itself apart was much clearer here, away from the stormnest and the thunder. It roared through the deck, shivering up his legs in a steady thrum. Rae was barely to his feet before the deck shifted again, sending him stumbling against the gunwale. He crawled hand over hand back to the aftcastle, kicking open the hatch and climbing inside, then spinning it closed behind him.

The inside of the ship was in chaos. Most items were tied down, especially heading into weather, but the Pearlescent had taken a few rough pitches that were more than the tie-downs could manage. The passageways were littered with broken bottles and other detritus. The smell of smoke crawled through the vents. As Rae made his way forward, the Pearlescent took a hard turn and began a corkscrew dive, bleeding off altitude. Rae pressed himself against the wall, which was briefly the floor, and even more briefly the ceiling, until the ’ship straightened out. They were listing, though Rae couldn’t tell if it was to port or starboard. He was completely turned around, and pressed blindly into the depths of the ’ship, looking for his sister.

A crewman lurched into view. She was dragging one leg behind her, and clutched at a wound in her side. By the half-buttoned tunic and unfastened combat harness slug across her shoulders, the crewman hadn’t been on duty when the disaster started. Rae steadied her, checking her wound. Blood seeped through the torn coat of her uniform, dripping through the soft fabric of her off-duty fatigues. He grabbed her chin and peered into her eyes. She was falling into shock.

“What’s happening? Where’s the captain?” he shouted. She blinked at him slowly. “What the hell is going on?”

“I didn’t think it would be a knife,” she said. “Lotta ways to die in the skies. Knife not usually . . . not usually . . .” Her head lolled out of Rae’s hand as she collapsed to the floor. Rae tried to lay her down gently, but the ’ship bucked just then, and they both flopped gracelessly to the deck. He was still trying to disentangle himself from the dying girl when a figure came around the corner.

“Hey, give me a hand here! I think she’s dying!” Rae shouted. The figure turned toward him.

“Oh, I’m sure she is,” the figure said. It was another of the crew, a man Rae recognized, though he didn’t know his name. But Rae recognized the knife in his hand. It was covered in blood. The man grabbed a lantern from the wall, twisting the wick all the way open so that the flame cast a garish light through the passageway. “I’m sure we all are. There’s no other way to get any sleep around here.”

He raised the lantern over his head and threw it to the ground. It shattered, spraying burning oil and glass across Rae and the unconscious girl. Rae scrambled to his feet, yelping as he tried to slap the flames out on his chest. Bright flames consumed the floor. The girl didn’t move as the pool of burning oil reached her fingers. The crewman walked through the fire, ignoring the flames as they crawled up his legs, and tried to stab Rae, almost casually. Rae backed up. The man’s face loomed in the shadows. He had the same haunted, vacant look as Collins.

—everywhere, child. waiting for you. watching.

“Leave me alone!” Rae shouted at the wraith, but the mad crewman thought it was directed at him.

“The dreams won’t leave any of us alone, Raelle Kelthannis. Not until you’re dead.” He advanced again, the knife held awkwardly in his hand. “Even then . . . even then . . . the grave is better.”

“I promise it’s not,” Rae said, drawing the wraith. A wave of cold mist surrounded him, as the gray cloak rolled down his arms and swept across the floor. He could see the dying girl’s spirit, hanging loose from her body like a broken door. The mist smothered the flames, replacing it with glittering frost. The wraithblade formed in his hand.

“Take me, Oblivion!” the crewman yelled, throwing himself at Rae. Death was just a matter of a stroke across the man’s chest, a backslash that pulled his blood from his throat, and the crewman collapsed to the ground. His soul was a tangle of corrupted roots and flickering darkness. Rae ignored it. With the wraith still wrapped around his shoulders, he knelt by the dying girl.

There must be something I can do. Some way I can help.

—do not meddle in the affairs of death. those who are taken must go.

You would say that. The ’ship lurched again, forcing Rae against the passageway wall. It’s just a knot that wants untangling.

The girl’s spirit hung on by a thread. Rae could trace the constellation of lights, the misty veil of her soul, fluttering in an unseen wind. Her soul was quickly unraveling, the edges fraying as it disappeared into the realm of Death. Rae dipped into the shadowlands. The girl’s spirit grew more distinct, even as her body faded from view. He dropped his hand through her, grabbing the fleeing fabric of her soul, anchoring it to his body. Then he returned to the material plane, dragging it with him.

She woke with a scream of horror. Her arms twitched as she struggled to her feet, kicking away from Rae. “What have you done? What have you done? What am I?” She stood, but her eyes were dark pits, as empty as inkpots. She grabbed at her chest and started tearing, fingernails digging deep ruts in her skin, screaming the entire time. Finally, she turned and fled, disappearing deeper into the ’ship.

—have we learned a lesson about meddling with the dead?

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Rae mumbled. “I was just trying to help.”

—pray that she dies soon, and peacefully. for her sake, as well as your own.

Without answering, Rae stood up, snatched the knife from the dead crewman. He wanted something to defend himself with, and he didn’t fancy wandering the corridors of the ’ship with the glass sword in hand, or the wraithblade. He shrugged off the wraith’s form. The Pearlescent shuddered under his feet. Steadying himself with one of the guidelines hanging from the ceiling, Rae continued deeper into the ’ship, hopefully in the direction of his sister.

He came across another of the dream-maddened crew. The man lay dead in the middle of the corpses of five of his shipmates, their uniforms covered in blood. He had bludgeoned them to death with a boarding cudgel. Rae stepped over the carnage, then bent next to the dead crewman. Drawing the wraith, Rae laid a mist-wrapped hand across the man’s face.

—he is gone. i don’t know what you hope to accomplish.

“Someone is doing this. Sending Collins, and now these. They keep talking about their dreams. I thought dream was a fragment of Oblivion, shared with Elysium,” Rae said. The wraith billowed across his shoulders. “There should be some trace, shouldn’t there?”

—madness carries more of chaos than it does of death. and these fools are mad.

“Will you just look? You’re bound to me, aren’t you? Look, and tell me what you see.”

Stiff resistance pushed against Rae’s will, but he pressed back, and the wraith relented. Spiritbinding isn’t quite what I thought it’d be. This damned wraith is as willful as a bag of cats. He thought he heard the wraith chuckle at that, but then his attention was absorbed in the dead crewman.

The man’s soul appeared under Rae’s hand, separated from the material plane by a long, coiling rope of silvery light. His spirit was tangled in something dark, like a vine of rot shooting through the trunk of a healthy tree. Just like Collins, Rae thought. “What’s the cause of that, do you think?”

—unsettled spirits. poorly digested cheese. the souls of the mad, the wraith whispered. mortals are such fragile contraptions. prone to breaking in the most interesting ways.

“I don’t care about other mortals. I want to know what happened to this one, and why,” Rae said. “Can you focus for one long second on something other than dire pronouncements and try to be helpful?”

—helpful as a bag of cats?

“Damn it,” Rae swore. He pulled his attention away from the corpse at his feet, letting the crewman’s spirit drift back into the shadowlands.

—i am not some universal key to the human condition, rae. whatever happened to these people, it happened swiftly. they appear haunted. like something is touching them from beyond the veil, even though i see no direct connection to oblivion. The wraith sounded distant, almost contemplative. a spirit trapped between life and death, perhaps.

“This Rassek bastard? Estev claims he keeps coming back to life.”

—impossible. oblivion does not release a soul, once it has fallen from the living world.

“We’ll see about that,” Rae said. He stood up, just as the ’ship lurched hard to port. “We’re descending.”

—this vessel has been falling for a long time. if i were not already dead, i would be sharply concerned about that.

“Yeah, well, I might have an opinion on the matter.” He looked around, trying to get his bearings. “Where’s the damned aftdeck from here?”

—aft. i’m sorry, is that not obvious?

“Land of mercy, I wish you’d just give me a direct—”

—this way. your sister and her tumultuous friend are already there.

“And Estev?”

—nearby.

“Then that’s where we’re going!” Steadying himself against the wall, Rae shuffled carefully down the corridor. All around him, the ’ship groaned in protest, and the sounds of fighting and dying and fear filled the air.


Back | Next
Framed