The serpent had begun to uncoil, his movements utterly silent, but I somehow felt them—through the floor, through the air, like ripples in water.No, therewereripples in water, black water that lapped around my ankles and hid the keys from Maren’s searching hands.The sound of splashing was muted, distant and distorted, but I heard it as clearly as I heard Olsa’s sudden intake of breath and Illya’s low curse.
“What is happening?”I whispered.The serpent weaved through the instruments on the platform, delicate despite its massive size, and the eerie pallor of its light filled the room.
Maren cursed and Olsa dropped down to help him search.
The first Black Tide is coming in, Tane replied, her ghisten form beginning to shift across my skin as she prepared to manifest.
The serpent’s head dropped down towards the floor—the Dark Water, somehow transposed—and its coils began to follow, lengthening and bunching as it lifted high out of the water and prepared to strike.
Tane stood manifested between us and the looming serpent.A large feline shape joined her, Olsa’s Ris, along with a disembodied mist—Illya’s Noek—which eddied around their feet.
“Can that… can it hurt us?”I hissed to Illya, resisting the urge to step behind his larger bulk.My inability to run tormented me, and I eased the weight on my bad leg.“Directly?Physically?”
In response, Illya stepped in front of me.
“Ah!”Maren’s victorious gasp snapped my eyes back to the door.
The chamber exploded into sound.Cracks and splintering filled the air, followed by shrieking whistles shards of wood—shattered chairs, broken shelves—which sang towards us like canister shot.
Tane flicked one wrist.The first wave of shards went wide, but another was already shattering, tearing through the air, splintering desks and tables in the time it took me to inhale.
Ris vanished, joining Noek in a chaotic barrier of swirling ghisten smoke.Shards fell like rain but more than one broke through, peppering the stone around us and embedding in flesh.
Illya recoiled, twisting as a shard opened up the side of his face, slicing through beard and ear.Olsa turned to take the assault from the side, earning hand-length spears of wood to the hip and thigh.Maren and I, largely hidden by the pair of them, were less exposed, but I still nearly took a shard in the calf.
I turned away like Olsa and, out of the corner of my eye, saw Maren slide a key into the lock on the door.It turned, and the Mereish man threw his shoulder into the barrier.
It did not move.Ghisten light began to spill from its wood at the same time as the serpent vanished.Shadows surged, leaving us in a bubble of light from our own ghistings and the unyielding, possessed door.
“Mar Oke!”a voice shouted.
We looked back as one to see a small figure stride into the room, her challenge directed at the place the ghisting had been.The door glowed more brightly, and other lights began to appear, every shardof wood, every remaining wooden object in the room taking on an ominous illumination beneath the Dark Water.
I felt the movement of the serpent again, though he remained hidden in the wood.
The newcomer continued speaking, this time in Mereish.With Tane manifest and distracted, I had no translation.
Every glowing piece of wood in the room shuddered, casting rivulets of trembling light and shadow through the ankle-deep water, across us, the walls, even up to the ceiling.The Dark Water vanished and hundreds of fragments of light surged together, re-forming into the serpent in coiled, haughty repose on cool, bare stone.Other than itself only the door remained ignited, locked in place as the four of us faced the ghisting.
Enisca Alamay strode towards us, but spoke to the serpent.“Now,” she said in Mereish, finally a word my mind could interpret.
The light faded from the door.Maren immediately darted through and held it open for us.
“Who are you?”Olsa demanded of Enisca.
“Go, quickly,” the newcomer urged, ignoring the query.“Through the door.”
That was all I needed.I limped painfully through, self-preservation driving me, and Olsa and Illya followed.Enisca, to my surprise, trailed us with one last word to the ghisting, then shut the door at our backs.
Tane, Ris and Noek came last, slipping through the now-abandoned wood of the door and back into our bones.With Tane’s return, my thoughts tangled, assaulted with a chorus of new images and thoughts and implications, but my relief outweighed them all.The pain in my leg eased.
“What are you doing?”I asked Enisca in Mereish.When she did not look at me, instead starting up the dark passageway, I grabbed her arm.“Are youhelpingus?”
“I just saved you from the Mar Oke ghisting,” the other woman returned, glancing from me to my companions.“I would think thatis obvious.”With that, her voice changed.She slipped into flawless Usti, her vowels rounding and her posture shifting.She met Olsa’s eyes, then Illya’s.“I am Enisca Alamay, and I am an Usti spy.If you want to escape, follow me.”
I stared from the Uknaras to Maren, who hovered the farthest up the passage, looking as though he were about to abandon us if we didn’t move soon.
“AnUstispy?”I repeated.Connections began to weave in the back of my mind, threaded memories of Jessin Faucher and his notions about the Usti, along with the thought of the papers he had entrusted to Samuel.Where were those papers now?Had they been seized along with the Uknaras?
