Remembrance

Chapter 11:

Black Waters

~an excerpt

A great swell formed, blocking their view of the serpentine battle. It surged up and up, far above all the waves before it. Then it broke the surface, water pouring over them multitudes harder than the rain. Magnus felt all the air steal out of his lungs.

The creature’s head resembled that of a person. But that was it. Where it should have had a mouth, a nest of tentacles extended from its face. Fins like razors arced in lines over its scalp instead of hair; spikes jutted out from each vertebra in its back. Its skin shone like oil, but unlike the serpents writhing around it, its tone was deep green, like the iridescent vines in the king’s gardens.

But it was the eyes that paralyzed Magnus. Blazing like fire, they cast light on the surface of everything they set their gaze on, like searchlights from a haunted lighthouse.

It searched for the source of the noise, the chattering and squeals. When its searchlight gaze found the serpents, it raised an enormous arm, then swept it over the surface of the water. It backhanded the creatures, sending them tumbling across the sea. Three more shot out of the water close to the boat. Hissing and snapping, they lunged at the exposed arm and chest of the great being. Bellowing with a tone like metal scraping metal, it stumbled back, cascading massive waves across the dark sea. It swung at the serpents, seizing them in its enormous hands and flinging them towards the mountains, where they vanished behind walls of waves. One serpent soared just over the boat, splashing on the far side of the deck. Magnus let out a piercing scream as another torrent of icy water dumped over them.

Then they were standing, soaked through to the bone, in a beam of sunlight. Even through his clenched eyelids, Magnus knew they’d been found. Like a cork bouncing up and down in a shallow pool, they were utterly helpless.

That’s when Magnus realized everything had gone quiet. Rain still fell, and waves still rose and fell around them, but the screeching of wild beasts had ended. And yellow light still flooded his eyelids. Heart pounding, he cracked them open.

The first things he saw were long green spears curling over the railing. Then they moved, and he realized they were not spears but fingernails, connected to hands he could not see. Beyond them were arms thicker than the columns supporting the base of the Bahlkyrm palace; a torso rivaling the width of the victory arch marking the entrance to the palace grounds. Slowly, his gaze drifted up, and at the same time, the object of his attention drew lower in his line of sight. The crashing of the sea sank beneath them. The thunder above seemed as though it were far away.

Beams of yellow light swamped the deck of the ship, not from above, but from the side, just peering over the railing. Magnus stared into the enormous eyes of the sea god, barely breathing. A gentle rumble traveled up its arms to its hands, which cradled the battered ship. The tentacles on its face drifted through the air slowly, as if rapt in thought. And its yellow eyes, though enormous, did not harbor the hostility Magnus had seen so clearly in the guards of Riverton.

When he found the air to breathe again, Magnus whispered, “Help us. Please.”