***
She awoke on the deck of the ship. The Turtle lay next to her, staring with huge and worried eyes.
Are you okay?
“I’m fine,” Esmeralda said as her eyes adjusted to the surrounding night. “Thank you.”
“What did you see?” Raahi asked. “What did he show you?”
“Just…things,” Esmeralda shook her head groggily. “Things about Ko.”
The flute was by her side, warmly occupying her pocket. She wondered whether it was really possible to play anything. Raahi said that the flute could be made to do anything; but what did that mean? How could she take these opposing forces, Creation and Destruction, and all of the terms under them, and attempt to make some kind of music?
“Can you play now?” Robert asked.
“I don’t know,” Esmeralda said. “Probably not.”
“Why do you say that?” Raahi said.
Before Esmeralda could speak to this, a very large, dark-winged bird came out of the sky and landed on the railing surrounding the deck of the ship. There was a small canister tied to its right leg with a little, tightly-rolled parchment within. The creature, having found its perch, stretched its wings for moment, stared right at Raahi and heartily squawked twice.
Raahi came over to the bird, cooing softly, and removed the parchment. He read aloud: “Chandrasekhar, regardless of the status of your mission, having achieved or not the possession of the Sacred Entity, you must move with all possible speed for the Shining City. Repeat, abandon all activities and seek Song. The Counsel.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Raahi said and called below deck for Ngare.
“What’s the matter?” Ngare asked after he had arrived.
Raahi handed him the message. “What do you think?”
Ngare read it over quickly. “I think we had better open wide the sails,” he said. “Do you have a song that makes wind?”
Raahi smiled. “No. Not even I am that good a player.”
Ngare screamed below deck for the Elite Guard. They assembled in half a moment and began carrying out his orders with precision and agility. Up to this point, they had been lazily cruising across the sea, enjoying the evening sail and in no sort of rush. They might have spent the night at Bartrem, awakening in the morning to breakfast and the day’s ride into Song. Now they would need every ounce of speed that could be pulled from the rather unimpressive wind.
“It must be Alavariss,” Ngare said, having given his orders. “Perhaps the Counsel learned of the army turning from the Phoon and heading toward us.”
“But why would they?” Raahi wondered aloud. “How could they learn anything about the Princess after only a day and night of fighting in the Phoon jungle?”
“There is also the question of how the Counsel would know.” Ngare lifted an eyebrow. “The Counsel sees far but they don’t have the eyes of gods. Could Alavariss have marched on Song?”
“No,” Raahi said definitively. “They wouldn’t risk an attack on Song unless they knew without a doubt that the princess was there. There simply hasn’t been enough time for them to find any of this information out. Besides, if Alavariss was attacking right now, the Counsel would never order us into the middle of the battle!”
“True enough,” Ngare said. “Then what is the answer?”
“There is none right now,” Raahi said. “We simply go as fast as we can.”
The Ivory Turtle tapped his little foot on Esmeralda’s shoe and looked up at her, his eyes thick with worry.
What is happening?
“Um, nothing really,” Esmeralda said, attempting a reassuring tone of voice, “We are just trying to get back home.”
But something is wrong. I can’t understand what they are saying, but I feel it in you.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Esmeralda said, trying to mean it. “We are going to Song. Everything will be fine.”
Esmeralda put the flute to her lips. She thought that if she could do something with Ko, she might help at least to ease the tension. She remembered that the Songs of Ko begin with all of the buttons pressed, and so she did that, prepared her lips, and began to play.
The sound came thick and unwavering, sliding through the air to all present, and caused even the Elite Guard to pause in their various duties to take notice. She let the note play for as long as she could sustain it with her breath, not only because she was not sure what to play next, but because she felt this was right, that this statement ought to extend into the air for some time, making itself known to the world. She came to the end of her breath, quickly refilled her lungs and this time lifted her fingers from two of the buttons, one from Creation and one from Destruction, so that she was playing through Love, Knowledge, Art, Greed, Fear and Dominance. This note had an entirely different character from the first: higher, less loud and not quite as sweet. It cut across the middle register of the instrument and brought with it a hard edge. She quickly changed to play through Love, Knowledge, Compassion and Art, all four of the Creation Buttons. This note soared high above the last, though it was brittle sounding and in a way incomplete. There was an internal difficulty with the sound, a kind of dissonance—if that is possible—within the single tone. As it sounded, she feared that the note might shake itself apart and perhaps take her with it. She felt that she had done more than could have been expected of her, and, oddly, she was fatigued after playing these three notes. She took a breath, released all of the buttons and let sound the opposite of All for as long as her lungs would allow.
For a moment nothing happened, and Esmeralda was a little disappointed, though she knew on some level that what she had done was something of an accomplishment. But soon afterward, a kind of shower of little lights descended into her vision—nothing particularly substantial or representative, just sparkling lights, coming briefly from the sky and disappearing into the deck of the ship.
“Robert, did you see…” Esmeralda began.
“Yeah,” Robert interrupted. “We all saw it.”
The Turtle looked up at her, beaming.
You did very good.
“You think so?” Esmeralda said.
Oh, yes. Can you feel it? Can you feel the song in you?
Esmeralda thought that she might. A warm feeling rising from somewhere in the depths of her stomach, a calm was settling in her. She wondered if it was attributable to something produced by the flute or just a feeling of accomplishment at having played Ko.
No. We all feel it.
“Robert,” Esmeralda said, “do you feel kind of…?”
“Warm?” he cut in. “Yeah, it feels good, like, reassuring.”
“You have played a wonderful song,” Raahi said, “but short, and the effect is already leaving me.”
“And myself as well,” Ngare agreed. “Look to the horizon. The weather is turning mean.”
13. Fire in the Night.
The weather coming off the shore grew ever more ominous, while strangely the waters did not grow difficult or choppy, and there was no increase in wind to help speed them along. The travelers found themselves sailing rather lazily toward heavy, black clouds that threatened great violence.
And then, far in the distance, came a glimmer of light. At first it seemed that those manning the port had set a lighthouse beacon for them. But soon, as they neared the harbor, it became apparent that a terrible fire raged there. Esmeralda, Raahi, Ngare, and Robert stood peering out over the bow of the ship, pondering. Behind them, the assembled Elite Guard went about their duties with grim eyes.
“It looks as if the whole town is ablaze!” Ngare said.
“Attacked?” Raahi asked. “There is little of great value in Bartrem, and it seems that what they had is now burning.”
“Could be the Phoon,” Ngare said. “They are known to attack for no reason other than destruction. They don’t steal, just burn.”
Ngare redirected the ship away from the flaming harbor toward a stretch of de
serted beach immediately to the south. They came closer, within two hundred fifty yards, when Esmeralda screamed out.
“Turn around!” She pulled on Ngare’s arm. “Stop the boat! Turn around!”
He saw it too. Ngare ran from the front of the ship to scream orders to the rest of the Elite Guard. The place became a mass of kinetic activity, all stomping boots and gripping hands and wide, concentrating eyes.
“What?” Robert said over all the bustle. “What is going on?”
“Robert, look, to the right of the fire, on the beach in the dark…”
Esmeralda was interrupted by many flaming lights rising at once in the area she was trying to point out to Robert. These made her explanation unnecessary, illuminating what was waiting on the shore for them. Alavariss was waiting: thousands of soldiers arrayed and at attention, with huge, black-steel Crawlers and other strange machines studded with menacing spikes. Catapults, spaced throughout the assembly, sat armed with great fiery boulders; it seemed there were hundreds of those angry lights onshore. Behind all of this, somewhere in the dark, was the Emperor. Esmeralda knew it. He would be there grinning his iron grin; looking over his incredible war machine; and waiting to destroy her friends, claim her with the flute Ko, and take the Ivory Turtle to those hopeless prisons in the dark of Alavariss.
Raahi stared over the bow of the ship, saying nothing.
The solders in the hateful army all wore dark armor and metallic masks that shielded their eyes. They were as one thing, a unity expressing the foul wishes of a single master. They began screaming in a strange, guttural tongue, and the sounds drifted and intermingled while passing over the water; from the boat, it was as if a huge, frightfully alien organism shouted at them from a distance.
What is happening?
Esmeralda, unsure how something like the Alavarisian army might be explained, looked down at the Turtle. “I’m not sure. But everything is going to be okay. Okay?”
You don’t believe that.
They did not choose their vessel for its speed or maneuverability; they chose it for the space. Consequently, it was horrifyingly slow coming about, and, while the Elite Guard did everything they could, the vessel simply creaked around, inch by inch, helped not a great deal by the almost absent wind.
They had come almost halfway around; the port side of the vessel faced the shore. Esmeralda looked into Robert’s face, a silhouette highlighted in angry orange. Eyes rigid with concentration, he breathed slowly and worried at his lower lip. And like old ghosts, the fire glimmered off of the lenses of his glasses and out of the dark of his eyes.
The volley began. The first of the fireballs left the shore, streaked high into the sky, almost beautiful, and slammed into the waters only a few yards in front of the ship. The first of many. The fireballs were each around seven feet in diameter and upon striking the water churned up the sea, making maneuvering the clumsy vessel even more difficult. The second volley was up soon after the first, flame flying like the gaping jaws of wrathful dragons greedily seeking to devour all things: wood and stone, flesh and bone. The catapults were terrifying but not initially accurate. The air was full of fire, it seemed, and this fusillade landed a little closer than the last, throwing up steam and water. A cloud of mist and flame obscured the view of the shore, and the aggressors on the other side seemed spirits crossing into another world. The Alavarisians were finding the range.
Ngare ran over to Esmeralda and Robert. “Follow me!” he commanded.
He took them across the deck, which was full of frenzied activity with the Elite Guard climbing ladders, pulling on ropes and screaming directions at each other in sharp, clipped military language. The Ivory Turtle followed Esmeralda as best he could, shuffling his squat, square legs with all available speed.
Ngare led them below deck, taking them across the cramped sleeping quarters and into one of the cargo holds full of food and other supplies. The underside of the ship was dark and full of strange shapes; even after Raahi followed them into the hold carrying an oil lamp, the room looked to them full of shadows.
“Ngare, Alavariss. Alavariss is come. How can this…what can we do?” Raahi spoke rapidly, not quite frantic.
“I don’t know,” Ngare said. “Somehow we have been betrayed. I don’t know. I need you to stay here with the children.”
Above them, they heard a crash like thunder but no sound of rain.
“I have no time,” Ngare said. “You stay here with the children, Raahi.”
With that, Ngare ran out of the room, leaving Raahi, Esmeralda, Robert and the Turtle alone in the flickering light. The ship creaked and groaned as they completed their turn to fly from shore. Above them, muffled sounds of shouted orders and swift feet radiated through the wooden ceiling.
“What is happening?” Robert said.
“Alavariss,” answered Raahi.
Robert was getting upset. “But how did they know? How can we get away? Did you see them? There are so many.”
A huge, wet crash came from somewhere just to the left of the wall. Close.
“We will run as best we can. Alavariss is come. They must have come on the march; perhaps they have no sea-worthy vessels to chase us. It seems they put down the resistance of those manning the port by laying waste to the entire area.”
“And everyone in it,” Esmeralda said quietly.
“It seems so, yes,” Raahi said.
The Ivory Turtle was nervously walking around the storage hold, nosing between crates and searching out the areas that the lamplight failed to penetrate. Esmeralda watched, wondering if this searching was a way of removing himself from the tension in the room.
Huge detonation sounds were coming at an alarming rate from all directions through the walls of their below-deck enclosure. Like the clamorous thundering of an orchestra nearing its finale, the sounds of catapult fire streaming into the water around them came closer and louder all the time.
“Are we going to die?” Robert plainly asked.
“No,” Raahi quickly returned, “we are not. We can run from them.”
Robert narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. “How can you possibly know…?”
“Robert,” Raahi stopped him. “No one is going die. I truly am sorry that you and Esmeralda have found so much danger here. These are dangerous times, I suppose, and stakes are high, higher than any of us can really understand. No one is dying here today.”
Another explosion. This time the sound of the blast was more intimate, accompanied by a terrifying movement of the ship. Esmeralda looked to Raahi’s eyes and saw a quite genuine fear. They had been hit.
“Raahi,” Esmeralda whispered.
Raahi set the lamp down and crept forward to the rear wall of the room, stepping between the rows of crates and pressing the side of his face against the wood. He closed his eyes in concentration. Esmeralda and Robert watched him from the other end of the hold, his figure now half-obscured by distance and darkness.
“Raahi.” Esmeralda repeated his name.
“Please,” he whispered, “be silent for a moment.”
Esmeralda took Robert’s hand.
Eyes wide, Robert looked at her. “What’s he doing?” he said.
Above them, the sounds of frantic activity reached a new height, with soldiers screaming orders at each other at such a volume and rate that no information, through the floor at least, could be gleaned from what they said. A feeling of things not going well was present throughout.
“He’s listening…,” Esmeralda breathed, “…maybe.”
Raahi jerked his face back from the wall, bringing his hand up to his cheek. He ran across the hold to Esmeralda and Robert, grabbed each by the hand and began to pull them toward the door.
“What is it?” Robert asked.
“We need to go,” Raahi said, pulling them both with great urgency.
“But the Turtle!” Esmeralda wrenched free of Raahi’s grip. “Where is he?”
In the commotion, the Turtle had wandered of
f to some dark corner of the hold. The room was not of tremendous size, but it was large enough to take far too long to search out something the size of the Ivory Turtle. Raahi ran off into the hold, searching outside the lamplight’s circumference.
“You kids run into the sleeping quarters…” He was on his hands and knees in the dark, looking between barrels of water. “…up the stairs if it comes to that. Only…”
Raahi stopped speaking and stood up straight. A strange popping sound came from the far wall of the room. There was also a lower, more consistent noise, as if the wood were being warped by some powerful, unseen force.
“Go now,” Raahi said.
I hear something.
“The Turtle!” Esmeralda shouted. “Where are you?”
Right over here.
She might have laughed but for the tension. “Come here,” Esmeralda said. “We have to go now.”
The Turtle crawled up over several crates and stopped at Esmeralda’s feet. He stared up at her with strangely calmed eyes. Raahi came toward them and the room’s exit.
The far wall burst into flame, as if the fire had slowly been gnawing on the wood on the other side and finally, with one last strike of powerful, red jaws, came vehemently through. Now it was free to curl up the interior wall to the ceiling, surveying the storage hold for what might be inside to devour.
They ran. Esmeralda refused to leave until the Turtle was safely out the door, but, given the motivation of the approaching flames, the Turtle was surprisingly swift. They stopped in the sleeping quarters, surrounded in the dark by rows of gently swinging hammocks. The noise from above deck was much louder. Raahi eased slowly up the stairs, stopping about halfway to listen for conditions higher. Across the sleeping quarters, through the wall, came the low, rumbling menace of the flames.
Fire.
“Yes,” Esmeralda said. “That is fire.”
I heard something.
Esmeralda stared across the sleeping quarters to the far wall, her eyes waiting for the red wrath of the flames to burst through and send them running again. “It’s probably the fire that you heard.”
No. Something else. Something in the water…
“Can we go up?” Robert shouted to Raahi.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We should wait as long as we can. Looks as if the ship has been hit more than once. There is fire loose on the deck.”
“Well, we can’t stay here!”
And ever the sky rained down fire and noise. The sea was churned up, and the ship seemed barely to creep forward, away from the onslaught. Horrible cracking and hissing sounds came from the storage hold, as if the fire was greedily consuming everything within, never finding satiation. Soon, a dirty, grey smoke began to creep under the door to the hold, filling the sleeping quarters with a hot, dense mist.
…something big in the water.
“Raahi,” Esmeralda said, “we can’t stay here.”
He turned, an unsure look on his face, and quickly his eyes moved past her. The fire had come through the wall. Immediately the room filled with intense heat. The fire chewed lazily toward them, almost with a swagger, eyeing its meal.
Raahi grabbed Esmeralda and pushed her up the steps. Robert followed close after, and then came the Turtle, whose square feet were not particularly suited to rush up the narrow stairs. He struggled, scrambled, slipped. And all the while the fire moved closer, consuming along its way each hammock, savoring its delicacy and using its energy to drive the body of flame onward. Finally, Raahi took the Turtle’s awkward bulk in his arms and pushed him to the top of the stairs.
The deck was a frantic mess. The fire, while exploring below, had made its way above to wreak havoc. People were running everywhere, trying to keep the ship on course amidst falling skies. Below deck, the fire continued to consume the guts of the ship. They had only so long before they would begin to sink.
Ngare, noticing Esmeralda and the others in the confusion, ran over. “What are you doing?”
Raahi answered, “it’s all gone up. Fire eaten through the storage hold. The ship has minutes to stay afloat.”
Ngare led them across the deck, dodging scrambling Elite Guard all the way. Along the port side of the ship, two large life boats were stationed: enough room for all on board and more besides. Ngare put them all in the nearest of these, helping Raahi to lift the Turtle, and with little gentleness sent the boat into the dark water below.
Above them, the fire had its way with the
ship. Esmeralda found herself staring powerlessly at the flaming hulk as they rowed across the water. Ngare was trying to arrange the other lifeboat, encountering some resistance from his soldiers who, on the whole, wanted to stay with him and fight the flames, perhaps with a mind to go down fighting.
And ever and always Alavariss fired its flaming missiles. Esmeralda’s world became a churning sea of intermittent darkness and angry, red light. They floated farther from the ship, and, as they did so, they came to calmer waters. The vessel above them took two more direct hits, smashing the main mast in half and sending to ruin any hope that the ship might sail again.
Look.
“What?” In all the commotion Esmeralda had nearly forgot the Turtle standing in the boat next to her.
Behind us. Look.
Esmeralda did as she was instructed, and, far out to sea, at the edge of the horizon, a dark, black smudge was approaching. It could have been anything, obscured by distance and the blanket of night. Esmeralda feared it was some horrible war machine devised in the crooked mind of the Emperor, something come to collect her and the others, after their ship’s abandonment, and carry them to the shore and the pain that waited there.
“What is it?” Esmeralda said.
It’s what I heard, what I heard before.
“What are you talking about?” Robert butted in. “Keep rowing.”
“Look behind us,” Esmeralda said. “Something’s coming.”
The dark moved ever so subtly forward.
“We’ll turn toward it!” Raahi shouted over the sound of the falling fire and churning water. He began pushing the little rowboat around toward the approaching mass.
“What?” Esmeralda said. ”Why?”
“Because we have to get out of range of the catapults. The ship will go down soon. We have to be out of range before the ship goes down and they look to try and clean up the mess.”
They pressed on. The floating darkness came nearer but was still unrecognizable. Esmeralda considered whether she was rowing to her doom. It could very well have been some horrible Alavarisian dreadnought; it was also possible that it was something altogether benign. But it had to be something, and it seemed they were in a place somewhat bereft of benign things. Ngare and the remaining Elite Guard were still aboard the vessel, fighting for every moment.
They had been moving in its direction a short time when Esmeralda began to see some definition in the approaching mass. It seemed not a formless, expanding shape but a moving body of great size quickly cutting the water as it charged toward them. No trick of the night, it moved with far too much purpose to be some random occurrence, some irrelevance. Soon it was close enough for Esmeralda’s eyes to have a curious revelation. Trees. There were trees all over it. Whatever was coming toward them at this amazing pace was covered over with trees and vegetation.
“The island,” Raahi whispered to himself.
“What?” Robert spat.
Esmeralda’s eyes were wide. “It’s the island, Wane, isn’t it?”
“Has to be,” Raahi said. “And swimming this way.”
The question was whether to keep moving toward it. They had come to a point well beyond the current fire of the catapults, but it was impossible to know how far the army could actually fling those awful missiles if put to the test. Raahi veered them to the left, so that the boat was running parallel to the shore, between the ship and the approaching island. Out of the corner of her eye, Esmeralda noticed Ngare and the remaining Elite G
uard lowering themselves in the final lifeboat. Even from this distance, and through the gloom of night, Esmeralda thought she saw a look of steely acceptance on Ngare’s face. But behind him, another volley was slicing through the air. Ngare cut the lines suspending the boat, sending the tiny vessel plummeting toward the dark water. They landed with a confused splash, righted themselves and quickly began rowing away.
Three direct hits shattered what remained of the ship. In the tumult the lifeboat could not be seen; there was only flaming wood and water flash-boiled in the blast.
“Ngare!” Esmeralda screamed. “Raahi, we have to turn around.”
“Come on,” Robert agreed. “Maybe there are some still…some that we can pick up.”
Another volley of fire leapt into the sky.
“Children, no,” Raahi said sternly. “We have to keep ourselves safe. If not for our own sake, for the Turtle.”
Up through the tumult, Ngare and a few of the Elite guard came treading water helplessly. Esmeralda looked over the face of the sea, knowing that she could never simply rest there and wait for the unlucky ball of fire to fall.
She turned to look Raahi in the eyes, but did not see him. All she could see was the island behind his head, coming forward at double, perhaps triple the speed she had observed just moments earlier. It came within twenty yards of their lifeboat and submerged completely, increasing speed all the time. It flew under them, making not quite a wave but a high, fat undulation that raised the lifeboat yet did not toss it. The island continued on, zooming under the surface of the water toward the shore and the dark army that waited there.
Suddenly it reared up, growing out of the shallowing water, revealing itself. It was an island, but only on top. Under the foliage stood a Turtle. Of such size that it was difficult to see much of the army behind it, the Turtle stood defiantly on flippers that were quickly, by some unknown process, becoming sturdier feet for going about on land. The island was only a superficial covering adorning the shell. The Turtle’s skin was dark and slick, a camouflage for one going by night.
Raahi caught his breath in awe. “The Mother.”
She reared up and trumpeted, a great war cry full of rage, and charged, jaws open, into the assembled ranks of Alavariss. Esmeralda had thought that turtles, on the whole, were slow creatures. Indeed, this idea was so firmly implanted in her mind that she never considered that the Great Turtles might be any different. She found, watching the Mother Turtle engage in such a wide variety of seemingly simultaneous destruction, that her ideas on the speed of turtles had to be drastically changed. The Alavarisians were totally unprepared for such an adversary. Their flaming catapults were set to fire well over the Mother Turtle’s head and couldn’t connect. Their evil crawling machines were helpless, like children under foot, and their little spikes and blades couldn’t pierce the majesty of her skin. A couple of the fireballs struck but seemed not to harm her in the least. A section of the forest on her back was set burning, but no apparent pain was caused. She was only made a more terrifying sight: a blazing rage to rend the night.
“While they’re distracted!” Raahi said, steering the boat toward shore.
Rowing with their greatest unified effort, they sped over to Ngare and the other Elite Guard. They found the soldiers floating there and, for the most part, miraculously unhurt. Beyond them, on the shore, the Mother Turtle was an unstoppable destructive force.
There were too many soldiers to fit onto the boat, and it took some jostling around before they accepted that they would certainly capsize before they got everyone out of the water. They finally decided that Ngare and a couple others were strong enough to swim, even in shifts, until they found someplace relatively safe to dock.
They were about to depart when Esmeralda felt something curious. She felt strangely, suddenly alone.
“The Turtle,” she said. She looked out over the water, and there, swimming with all his might toward the shore, was the Ivory Turtle. Somehow in the commotion they had not noticed him slip into the water. Perhaps going to be with his mother, or just to do whatever he could to help another of his kind, he was swimming into havoc and ruin: into war.
“Raahi!” Esmeralda screamed.
But Raahi had noticed it already. They turned the boat and began rowing toward the fleeing Turtle. All of this was for him, so that he could be saved from the Alavarisians and the Phoon. They would not lose him now.
The Turtle, while small, swam with impressive speed. They did not catch up with him before they reached shallow water. Several yards ahead of them lay the beach and the frenzied war-fighting there. The Mother Turtle showed no signs of slowing and Alavariss seemed all but spent.
“Stop!” Esmeralda called out to the still-fleeing Turtle.
It’s her. I know her. I have always known her.
“I know…but please.” Esmeralda leapt out of the lifeboat as they came alongside the Turtle. “You have to stop. It’s dangerous.”
The Turtle stopped and turned toward her. The water was not yet shallow enough for him to touch bottom with his little legs.
She is here for me.
“She’s here to help you,” Esmeralda said. “She wants to give you a chance to get away.”
Suddenly, it became very strangely quiet. The air had been full of screaming soldiers and the various shouts and trumpeting of the Mother Turtle. All at once this was gone, and in its place was only the sound of the Great Turtle steadily breathing. She stood still, staring over the devastation she had effected, and beheld the one who advanced upon her. He rode a chariot out from the rear of the army where he had watched his soldiers come to such quick and decisive defeat. His chariot was for one, pulled by a team of great black wolves: horrible mutants with dripping, snapping jaws. In his right hand, he held a scepter with a glowing, green jewel at the head; in the left, he held a cruel whip. His eyes were dark and full of arrogance.
The Emperor. Esmeralda wondered what power he could exhibit over a creature with the size and will of the Mother Turtle, but, for a reason she did not understand, she felt a creeping fear for the much larger contender in the coming clash.
The Mother Turtle rushed forward, jaws wide and screaming. The Emperor stayed his hounds, cracked his whip once and held the scepter high over his head. He said something that Esmeralda couldn’t hear, and a brilliant green chain leapt out of the scepter, splitting into many parts as it passed through the air, striking the Mother Turtle, stopping her dead in her tracks. She screamed, but this was not a war cry, the cry of the triumphant. She screamed in pain intense and horrible. She writhed and quickly came to her knees. The Emperor grinned his gleaming grin, his eyes going wide with immense joy at being able to cause so much agony in another creature. His laughter was reverberant through the field of battle and across the dark water.
“It can’t…no,” Esmeralda mumbled, feeble in the face of the Emperor’s seemingly supernatural power.
Raahi grabbed her and tried to toss her into the boat. “We have to go!” he screamed.
Esmeralda twisted her body, kicked and flung her limbs in all directions. She managed to free herself and fell into the shallow water.
Robert jumped out of the boat. “Esmeralda, please, we have to leave.”
“He’s killing her!” she cried out.
The Ivory Turtle began swimming again toward the shore.
You can go. I cannot leave her. Not now.
Esmeralda ran after the Turtle, cleaving the water. Robert and Raahi followed.
From behind, Ngare called out. When Esmeralda turned to look, she saw the Elite Guard, all in defensive position, what weapons still among them—a few bows, a few more blades—drawn and at the ready. She turned her gaze forward, and on either side what was left of the Alavariss army was assembling between her and the Mother Turtle. The raging Mother had done an admirable job, but she hadn’t extinguished their entire force. What was left had taken notice of them, assembled, and prepared to strike.
Esmeralda picked up t
he Ivory Turtle. The creature’s awkward bulk was almost too much for her to grapple with, but she managed to walk it back to the main group. She rushed behind the Elite Guard, who were assembled in a defiant wall—fifteen soldiers, having survived fire, wreck, and ruin, facing an army that still numbered in the thousands.
Ceaselessly, the Mother Turtle howled in pain. The glowing, green chains wrapped around her body, ran into her open mouth and around her eyes. She bucked and twisted, sometimes rising up on her hind legs, but she could not advance. The strange power of the Emperor was complete. Beside Esmeralda, the Ivory Turtle wept. His little body shook with each sharp inhalation of air. And with each new howl from his Mother’s tortured frame, he wept harder.
“It’s not possible,” Robert whispered.
Esmeralda looked at him. She looked up at Raahi, utter disbelief on his face and, worse, fear in his eyes. She thought of the song that she had played not twenty minutes ago. She felt the flute Ko vibrating warmly at her side. She looked down into the water; each of the Ivory Turtle’s falling tears glowed a unique and otherworldly color. Into each little drop of color she peered down, down, down, to its center. What she was seeing was happening, for real, and something had to be done.
The Alavarisian warriors began chanting in whatever warmonger’s tongue they used before the initial volley. At this distance, the gruesome curves of their repulsive silver masks were well defined. The eyes, however, were dead and dark, as they were no matter how close one got.
“Robert,” Esmeralda said, flute music running in her mind, “get a bow and arrow.”
Robert looked at her a moment, saw the expression on her face and sloshed through the water to the nearest Elite Guard holding a bow.
“Um…I need that,” Robert said.
Esmeralda knelt down, held her hands under the Turtle’s shaking face and collected as many of the Turtle Tears as she could. They sparkled and glowed in the palms of her hands.
Robert came up to Esmeralda, holding the bow and arrow uneasily. Over his shoulder stood a tall Elite Guard with a look of maniacal annoyance on his face.
“Here,” Esmeralda said. “Dip the arrow.”
Robert did, wetting the arrowhead with the Turtle Tears.
“Now get ready,” Esmeralda instructed, watching Robert pull back on the bowstring and point it into the air.
Raahi and Ngare watched them both and said nothing.
She pulled out the flute and began to play; all the sounds of battle receded into the background. The pain of the Mother Turtle, the aggression of Alavariss, everything became a blank canvas onto which she painted a song of Ko. She played exactly the notes she had before, waiting until she sounded the Opposite of All to look at Robert and say, “now.”
Robert loosed the arrow and it flew through a field of falling white light. The tip glowed a brilliant blue and accelerated as it moved through the sky.
The Alavarisian soldiers, seeing this, began their charge. Their commanders raised their swords and bellowed, sending their masked troops into a blood rage that had no expression but their bestial howls.
The arrow rose higher and farther than any bow could naturally send it: over the Alavarisian army, over the back of the Mother Turtle. Flying like light undisturbed, the arrow took the place that Esmeralda’s song and the tears of the Ivory Turtle prescribed for it. It landed in the very center of the right eye of the Emperor.
Immediately the green chains disappeared, ending the assault on the Mother Turtle. The Emperor bellowed with impossible volume; his wolves came instantly to action, turning the chariot about and retreating into the night. The Mother Turtle rose to her feet. Leaving the Emperor to his flight into the dark, she spun around and scattered the Alavarisian army before it came within fifty feet of her child. The Mother Turtle moved with renewed strength, laying waste to all those foolish enough to battle. Most of the dark soldiers, seeing how overmatched they were, simply broke and ran. She didn’t chase them. She only stared off into the night as they fled, the Emperor and his slaves. Once satisfied, she turned slowly about, with a small but growing smile on her face, to regard her newborn son.
14. The Mother Turtle and the Return to Song.
As it became clear that the danger was fleeing in terror back to Alavariss, the Mother Turtle’s skin slowly shifted from almost black to a pale blue, luminescent under a newly revealed moon. She came forward out of the remains of battle until her feet were in the water, and her face, now kind, looked on the Ivory Turtle, Esmeralda, Robert and the rest.
“My son,” the Mother Turtle said in a beautiful, fragile voice.
The Ivory Turtle swam to the shore and walked slowly under the shadow of his mother, setting his head adoringly against a tiny piece of her powerful frame. He closed his eyes, and while Esmeralda heard nothing, she knew he was speaking to his mother and she to him. They stayed like this for several minutes, conversing on a plane and in a way foreign to the human beings observing: silently and from a deeper place than words can go.
After a time, the Mother Turtle trained her eyes on Esmeralda. “You saved us…” The Mother Turtle looked down at her son for a moment. “…Esmeralda. That is a pretty name.”
“Um, thank you, I guess,” Esmeralda said. “But I didn’t do anything really.”
The Mother Turtle wore a broad smile. “I think the Emperor would disagree with you right now. And your friends here: Robert, Raahi, Ngare, all of you. You have saved me and shown unfailing courage. I thank you all.”
The Mother Turtle looked down at her son for a moment, and he moved out from under the shadow of her frame. She then knelt down, making her body as flat and low to the ground as possible.
“Now, please,” she said, “come up and I will take you on to your home.”
As she said this, long green vines began to grow down from the forest atop her back, knitting themselves together into a broad and sturdy ladder. Esmeralda and Robert looked at each other, awestruck and grinning. Always the pioneering soldier, Ngare went up first. Everyone soon followed until they were all up on the expansive back of the Mother Turtle.
The surrounding forest had rid itself of the fire from the catapults of Alavariss. The growing things there had somehow regenerated and showed no signs of the damage done in the fight. In fact, much of the forest seemed now changed. The jungle was not so thick and difficult as they had found it when searching for the Ivory Turtle. The forest was full of slender, pale trees, spaced at wide intervals, with a fanning crown atop each. The air was sweet with beautiful, natural smells—perfumes of bark and leaf and fruit. As they stood watching the surroundings, a group of huge fireflies of all colors drifted out of the trees and began swirling over their heads, adding wonderfully to the light of the moon.
And so they went, away from the place of battle, away from the sea, and into the wide and peaceful lands of Song. The Mother Turtle walked under them, tireless through the remaining hours of the night. She kept to an incredibly smooth gait, so that Esmeralda and the others could imagine that they were still and only their surroundings moved. The exertions of the night finally made their way into Esmeralda’s body, and she lay down in the cool grass, face to the sky. The angry clouds had rolled out as quickly as they had arrived, and the night was powerful and precious again. She stared through a sheet of fluttering fireflies to a blanket of uncountable stars. The ground beneath her was soft and warmer than the disinterested earth. The Ivory Turtle lay on one side of her, curling not quite completely into his shell, and together they drifted off to sleep.