They rode along the coastal road, a mere two miles inland, too close for comfort. She contemplated staying to watch them pass, longing for a better look at them, but resisted the dangerous temptation and retreated into the cave. Within its cool confines, she listened to the approaching thunder of their steeds’ hooves, remembering Horran. Harness and armour jingled and clinked. The steeds snorted, but the Black Riders rode in silence, apart from the rumble of hooves.
Talsy’s heart thudded as they drew closer and passed by, and her horse tossed his head and rolled his eyes. She decided that if they discovered her, she would run into the sea, for she would rather drown than be torn apart. The thunder of their passage seemed to go on all afternoon. Their numbers must have been in tens of thousands, and it was only half of them. When at last the rumble faded, she ran outside to watch the last of them ride away at a full gallop. Rashkar was a sprawling mass of rubble and ashes. Amid the debris were the bodies of tens of thousands of people, yet she shed no tears for them. Perhaps she was so much like a Mujar now that she had even become as uncaring as one, she mused.
The following day, scavengers arrived in the form of flocks of crows, gulls and vultures, and packs of wild dogs and wolves. A ship sailed up to the harbour, turned and headed along the coast. She did not doubt that whatever town had sent it would be massacred before the ship returned, so she resisted the urge to run onto the beach and try to flag it down; she was safer here now. Several ships came and went over the next few days, then no more arrived. After a week, the carrion-eaters left the remnants for the maggots and worms.
Each day, she took her horse out to let him graze. Many horses had survived the battle and wandered around the city. Some still wore harness, and these she caught and divested of their badges of slavery. A few were injured, and she tended to their wounds as well as she could. After a while, she realised that she did not need the beast she kept, and released him to run with the others, since she could always catch him again if she needed.
As the weeks passed, her supplies ran out, so she resorted to fishing and hunting game for the pot. The cultivated lands filled with weeds and grass, but she found vegetables to dig up. She was occupied with this one day when a lone rider approached the city and stopped to stare at the ruins for several minutes. He turned his horse away, and then rode over.
“When did Rashkar fall?” he asked as he reined in his horse.
She looked up at the rather plump man. “About three weeks ago.”
“How long was the battle?”
“About half a day,” she said.
“How’s that possible? Rashkar had the mightiest army in the land.”
“They came out of the sea.”
“Black Riders?”
She nodded.
“On ships?”
“No, they rode out of the sea.”
His jaw dropped, and Talsy went back to her digging.
He dismounted. “How did you survive?”
“I wasn’t in the city. I was on the beach.”
The man gazed at the sea, his expression dazed and hopeless. “All the great cities are falling. Jishan, Rashkar, Margan, Lorton, Vishnar, Horran…”
“Horran’s fallen?”
“Two months ago. Is that where you’re from?”
“No. I passed through there.” She dug up a potato and added it to her pile.
The man licked his lips. “I could sure do with a good meal.”
“Sorry. I only have enough for myself.”
“I could take you to a town.”
“It’s safer here.”
“I suppose you’re right. Don’t you get lonely?”
“No.” She frowned at him. “Be on your way, mister. If you need a fresh mount, there are plenty wandering around. Take your pick; no one owns them anymore.”
The man nodded, caught a fresh horse and rode away.
Another month passed in an endless routine of fishing and hunting, digging up vegetables and cooking simple meals. In between, she sat on the beach, lost in memories of the gentle man who had been her friend. She cursed the people who had condemned him to a living death because he was different.
Two months after Rashkar’s fall, weird creatures emerged from the sea to sun themselves on the beach. The beasts had rainbow skins, frond-like fins and fin-tipped tails. They slipped back into the ocean when she approached, but more and more of them appeared, gathering at times to sing strange moaning songs. Sometimes, at night, she would listen to their mournful dirges, and once she crept out in the moonlight to watch them dance on the glittering moon path in the sea.
When she ran to join them, they vanished beneath the waves without a ripple, but she danced anyway and sang a song of sorrow. Peculiar beasts also emerged from the forests or flew down from the sky. Some were huge, bird-like creatures with butterfly wings of many iridescent colours, long necks and beaks. They settled on the sand and scooped it up until their crops were full, then flew away. The land creatures were like no animal she had ever seen before. They splayed upon the ground and spread wings of multi-coloured skin to bask in the sun. They did not appear to eat at all.
Even more bizarre, were the horse-sized beasts with stilt-like legs, which selected a spot and drilled their legs into the ground. They stood for hours, hooting occasionally, before plucking their thin limbs out and wandering off. They seemed to like the soft soil around the city, and many came to stand there all day. Like the other alien beasts, their skins were patterned with many brilliant colours, making them appear unreal. None would allow Talsy to approach, and she observed them from a distance, marvelling at their weirdness. The horses left them alone, and many quit the area, as if afraid of the peculiar creatures.
Talsy wandered along the beach, humming a tuneless song, when a man walked out of the sea. She froze, then gave a glad cry and ran towards him, soon tiring in the soft sand. The creature’s skin gleamed silver and translucent flaps joined his arms and legs like the wings of a ray. He turned to face her, but then strode back into the waves. Talsy shouted and tried to catch up with him, running into the surf. The waves drove her back, and her struggles made no headway against the sea’s might.
The man dived into the waves with a flash of silver and vanished. Talsy trudged back up the beach and sank onto the sand, tears stinging her eyes. The strange man was clearly an ocean creature, and might be able to find Chanter, if she could only tell him of the Mujar’s plight. She sat on the beach until dusk, her heart aching with loneliness and grief.
The next day, the silver man reappeared, but this time she just sat and watched him roam the beach. He wandered up and down, foraged in the sand and ate whatever he found, but stayed away from her. Two days later, he appeared again, and she observed him with growing despair, the hope that he might come close enough to talk to fading as he stayed out of earshot. The following day he returned, and she approached him again, this time at a sedate pace, so as not to alarm him, but he slipped into the sea before she could get close enough to speak to him.
The next night, as she sat in front of the cave staring out at the calm, moon-silvered sea, a flash of movement in the water caught her attention. A winged man-shape swam along the shore, making the ocean’s sparkling black surface seem magical and inviting. The man always escaped into the wild sea, but now the ocean’s tranquillity and his proximity offered a rare opportunity to approach him in his element. Perhaps then he would not be so afraid of her.
Talsy rose and marched down the beach, determined to communicate her need to this creature, who might be able to help Chanter. The ocean welcomed her into its cold embrace, and the waves pulled her in and sucked her out to sea. She swam towards the silver man, trying to keep him in sight while she fought her dread of the black depths. He turned towards her, probably alerted by her splashing, but, as she opened her mouth to call out to him, he dived. She trod water, waiting for him to surface again.
Several minutes passed, and her legs grew weary. She swam back towards the shore, surprised
at how far she was from the beach. It receded despite her swift strokes, and she shivered as she realised that a powerful undertow washed her away from it. She increased her efforts, but, no matter how hard she swam, her futile exertion merely sapped her strength, and despair chilled her.
Gasping with fear and fatigue, she forced her aching legs to kick, coughing as water splashed into her mouth. The pale strip of beach dwindled to a faint line, and the waves grew bigger as she encountered the deep ocean swells. With the last of her strength, she redoubled her efforts, knowing that if she was swept any further away, she would never make it back. She cursed herself for swimming out into the ocean as if it was no more dangerous than a mill pond. Her limbs grew numb, and waves washed over her face.
A cold hand gripped her arm and pulled her back to the surface, and then her rescuer towed her towards the beach, unhindered by the current that had defeated her. She tried to grab him, and encountered soft wing membranes that made her recoil with a snort. The shore approached at an amazing speed, the sea foaming around her, and soon her feet touched sand. The sea man hauled her onto the beach, his long webbed fingers gripping the back of her jacket. Talsy coughed and wiped stinging brine from her eyes as she peered at him.
A jagged, knife-thin ridge of bone ran over his skull in a short crest that broadened into a nose and ended in a pair of tiny nostrils just above a gash of a mouth. His deep-set green eyes seemed to glow and his ears were flat areas of skin, designed for hearing underwater. Parallel gill slits, like a shark’s, ran along his jawline. The moonlight gleamed on his smooth silver skin and shone through the translucent wings that joined his wrists to his ankles.
The sea man dragged her up the beach and dumped her on the dry sand, then swung away. Talsy made a grab for him and caught hold of a slippery wing. He tried to prise her fingers free.
“Don’t go!” she said. “Wait, I need your help!”
He cocked his head and stared her, nictitating membranes flicking across his round eyes.
“He’s in the sea, somewhere out there! I need you to find him!”
The man cocked his head the other way. He clearly did not understand her, but was merely entranced by her voice.
Talsy strengthened her grip on his fin. “He’s Mujar! Out there! In the sea!”
He tensed, his eyes becoming intent.
Talsy grasped at the straw of hope. “Mujar! Out there!” She pointed at the sea, and the silver man’s head turned to follow her finger. She tried to shake him, desperate to get through, but her fingers slipped from the translucent webbing, and she lunged at him to renew her hold. He slipped away, pausing out of reach.
“Mujar! Mujar!” She pointed at the sea, and he studied her. He mimicked her gesture, and she nodded. “Mujar!”
Talsy crawled towards the water, but he returned to pull her back and push her down, avoiding her clutching hands. His meaning was clear. He did not want her in the sea, but it could have just been because her corpse would foul the water. She pointed at the moon-silvered waves again.
“Mujar.”
The sea man walked down to the sea and dived in with hardly a ripple. Talsy relaxed, grateful to be alive, but too tired to trek to the cave and dry herself. The night was warm and still, however, and her exertions had banished the cold. After the ocean’s biting chill, the beach seemed comfortable. Resolving to rest until some strength seeped back into her leaden limbs, she closed her eyes.
A crab crawling over her leg woke Talsy in the morning, and she walked to the cave, where she nibbled cold potato and drank water to wash away the sour taste of salt.
Chanter’s awareness was little more than a numb sensation. Before, he had rolled around on a sandy seabed as currents had played with him, washing him this way and that. Now he had become wedged into a rock shelf. The sea soothed him with gentle currents, and seaweed caressed him. He vaguely remembered the soft thud of hooves on sand, muted by the water. Now only the currents whispered to him. The sea’s song reached him in warped, muffled dirges, mixed with skirls of sound that prickled his dull mind. Fish brushed against him, and he was aware that he was being incorporated into the reef, growing attached to it as it made him a part of it. The gold around his neck blocked the Powers and reduced the world to a blurred, senseless muddle.
Time had no meaning, no way of being measured. He might have been there for a day, a month or a year; he had no idea. Chanter remembered the pain of being thrown into the sea so badly injured. The rush of Shissar’s healing, so sudden and strong, had transcended even the gold’s muting to lash him into a screaming frenzy. That, too, was gone now, however, like his powers, like the world of air, and Talsy. None of that concerned him anymore. He knew only the gentle tug of water and the soft sea sounds. At least it was probably better than a Pit.
Talsy sat at the cave mouth and watched the ocean. Four days had passed since the sea man had rescued her. She had not seen him roaming the beach or playing in the waves since then. Was he searching for Chanter? Would he find him in such a vast expanse of ocean? The Mujar might have been washed far away by now, up or down the coast, depending on the current and how far out he had been dumped. Had the sea man understood her? Did he even care?
Tiny fish jumped in the shallows in waves of silver sparkles. The thought of cooked fish made her mouth water, but she had nothing with which to catch them. She threw away the piece of potato she had been nibbling, and a gull swooped to snatch it and wing away, pursued by others. The tide was out, exposing a plethora of shells on the rocks below the cave. She rose and went down to collect some, using her knife to prise open shells and scoop out the salty meat. The shells were nutritious, and she gathered more to take back to the cave and cook for dinner. She hoped the sea man had understood her, and hunted for Chanter.
Chanter became aware that something tugged at him, making the coral that held him creak. The sudden, unknown stimulation made him jerk away. A cold hand grasped his wrist again and pulled, and the coral cracked, but held. The sea’s endless surging had wedged him far into the rocks, and coral had grown around him. He opened his eyes, but the gold blurred the images of soft blue light, dark coral and seaweed. Something flashed silver nearby, and the tugging on his arm strengthened. He pulled back in an instinctive, muddled reaction, and flashes of pain came from his torso. Confused, he retreated from the strangeness of his senseless surroundings and relaxed.
The pulling continued, first on his arms, then his legs. For a while it stopped, allowing him to sink back into the peacefulness of unknowing, the sea’s gentle washing and seaweed’s caress.
The tugging returned with renewed vigour, other hands joining the task. He opened his eyes. Blurred silver shapes surrounded him, and he reacted to the abuse with violent jerks that threw off his attackers and banged his head against the rocks. The stimulation roused him slightly, and he became aware of his coral prison crumbling. Tiny creatures scuttled for cover as their homes broke. Pain flared in his back, and the blueness around him became tinged with brown.
Buoyancy returned as he drifted partially free of the rocks that had trapped him in their cold embrace for so long. A leg held him back, and his attackers concentrated on the limb, twisting and pulling. More pain shot from his ankle, but the silver flashes persisted. They turned him over to try to free him, and the blurred world moved around as it had not done for a long time. In their efforts to free his leg, his attackers paid little attention to the rest of him, and his face hit the seabed. He closed his eyes as his collision kicked up a cloud of sand. Masses of matted blackness covered his face when he opened them again, strands of pink and brown mixed with it.
The silver flashes seemed to have a great deal of difficulty freeing his ankle, and slime engulfed the offending limb. The silver flashes gripped him with many hands and pulled mightily. Some slipped and drifted past, then returned to renew their hold. The pain in his ankle made him jerk and kick. The silver flashes hung on, and the water cushioned his mindless reactions to a harmless flopping. With a bur
ning pain, his foot slid free, and he shot from his attackers’ grip to drift away on the current. The silver flashes caught up and took hold of him again, towing him along.
Chanter closed his eyes to block out the blurred world that the collar denied him, and the water’s soothing flow lulled him back into his deep fog.
Talsy sat on the beach and tossed coral pebbles into the sea. The midday sun warmed her back and the sea wind chilled her front. She lay back and watched the clouds drift past, changing shape as they did. The wind blew over her and the sun warmed her more. Gulls wheeled and mewed high above, riding the wind on narrow wings. She envied their freedom, longing to fly like they did. The breakers’ pounding died away to a soft swishing as the tide ebbed, revealing white sand sprinkled with seaweed and shells.
Talsy sat up and yawned, scanning the beach, and a movement caught her attention. A man rose from the sea and moved towards the beach, pulling something. She wondered who he was. The object he dragged looked like another man, his head swathed in black hair and seaweed. Curious, she rose to her feet. The sun glinted on silver skin, and her heart leapt. Talsy ran along the beach, the soft sand dragging at her feet.
The sea man hauled his burden up the beach and dumped it on the sand. The matted black shape lay still as the sea man looked up and down the beach before he spotted her floundering towards him. Water ran down him, dripping from his nose and chin. When she reached him, he stepped aside, and she stumbled past to fall to her knees beside his prize.
She cried, “Chanter!”
Talsy hesitated, her hands hovering over the Mujar. A film of green slime covered him, and patches of barnacles crusted his hands and knees, as well as the tattered remnants of his vest and leggings. The sea’s action had worn away his clothes until little remained but a few strings. With trembling hands, she parted his matted hair and pushed it back from his face.