they held with their hezhan had been cut off from them.
“My heart,” Udra said, “it’s been ripped from my chest.”
“Worse than that,” Jahalan added.
The ship began to drift downward, twisting in the wind. They were completely at the mercy of Ghayavand.
Nikandr shifted along the gunwale, keeping the island in sight.
Udra uttered a keening, a sad and empty sound in the silence of the sky. She dropped to the deck, her hands patting the surface gently. “ Neh!” she moaned.
Nikandr didn’t understand, but moments later he felt a tickle, as if insects were crawling beneath his fingers. The railing before him, its surface puckered and grayed. Small cracks ran along its length. The same was happening to the deck, to the masts, to the spars and the hull.
A cracking sound became audible. It was soft at first but soon the entire ship was alive with it. It became deafening.
An almighty snap-as if the bones of Erahm itself had just been broken-resounded through the ship. Nikandr could feel it through his boots and in his chest. Another snap came, this one just wide of his position. The masts were being sundered.
What in the name of the ancients was happening to his ship?
Another crack, louder than the others, was followed by the scream of a crewman. A sliver the size of a spearhead had pierced his chest. He fell, grasping it hopelessly and wailing from the pain. As something deep within the bowels of the ship gave way, sending a shudder through the ship, the man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell unconscious.
Like a blooding, the very life of the ship was being drawn from it. It remained afloat, but it would not last. At any moment it would plummet into the waves to become lost forever among the ceaseless currents of the oceans. Even if they could somehow safely reach the shores of the island, the Gorovna would never fly again.
Before Nikandr could even attempt to understand what was happening, the sounds around him fell away. His breath was drawn from him as if it were his last. His heart fluttered, and his eyelids drooped.
Somewhere far ahead, the skiff they’d been chasing for over a week has touched down.
Nasim stands upon a stone perch, an eyrie crafted in the style of the ancients. He paces its length, moving onto the rocky cliff to which it is affixed and then the wide field of grass beyond. He runs his fingers over the tips of the stalks, allowing them to tickle the palms of his hands. He can feel in that moment every part of the island, every blade of grass, every chittering insect, every breath of wind, every turn of soil. It feels as though he is looking through a window that reveals the land as it was before the Grand Duchy, before the first settlers, before even the Aramahn. It feels pristine.
And still, there is imbalance. Ghayavand is one of many islands, isolated on a shelf in the sea but connected by the water, by the roots of the earth, by the ceaseless currents of the wind. It stands out in its perfection. It has withstood the blight, but the pressure is growing. In time, it too will succumb, and he finds himself saddened.
He pulls back into himself, unable to withstand the pain, but as he does, he senses the prince, the one to whom he was bonded on Hathshava, the island the Landed call Uyadensk. This connection had felt foreign then, wrong, but now it feels right, like a warm fire after days in the cold.
There is something else, as well, a feeling that he has been here before. He is of this place, though he knows not how. The memories are at the very edges of his mind, so close but still out of reach.
Above, among the clouds and the winds, a lone havahezhan dives among the drifts and eddies of the wind. And then it is gone, returned from whence it came.
He follows.
And Nikandr woke.
Someone was screaming his name.
His stomach was churning and turning as if he’d tumbled upside down without realizing it.
He was gripping the railing for support, but it crumbled at the slightest touch. He stared at the desiccated fragments still sticking to his hands, unable to comprehend who he was, where he was. His mind was reeling, not from the physical nature of what was happening around him, but the realization of what he’d just seen. It had been Nasim somewhere on Ghayavand. But the havahezhan… Nikandr knew it-or knew of it, at least. It had been the same hezhan that the Maharraht had summoned on the cliff below Radiskoye, the same one that had attacked him on the maiden voyage of this very ship. But how?
“Nikandr!”
How could that be?
“Nikandr, leap!”
Nikandr shook his head violently.
The ship was diving toward the sea, her nose tipped seaward, the white-capped waves high and moving fast. Jahalan was standing on the windward mainmast, ready to leap free.
Nikandr launched himself toward Jahalan. He fell only a few steps out and slid down the deck as the ship continued to rotate. Jahalan reached for him, but Nikandr shot past.
He managed to leap and grab onto the ratlines leading up to the starward mizzenmast. So brittle was the wood that the mizzen snapped, and he found himself sliding once more.
He struck the forward hull and latched onto it as the ship’s starward masts tipped toward the horizon. “Go!” he commanded.
Both of them leapt just as the ship crashed into the sea.
Bitterly cold water enveloped him as he plunged beneath the waves. Hundreds of feet of rigging and yard upon yard of sail fell around him, occluding his vision. Something bit into his ribs, and began pulling him downward. He pulled himself free, feeling something scrape against his skin as he did so.
He fought for the surface. When he finally broke free of the waves, he drew on the air as if it were the liquor of life itself while wave after wave rolled over him. The spray was high, and it was difficult to see anything but the blue-white waves, but among the flotsam, he thought he saw one of the crew. He swam in that direction, using a barrel that had floated free from the ship. He was nearly exhausted by the time he reached him.
It was Viggen. He was face-down in the water, and Nikandr knew as he turned him over that he was dead.
“Jahalan!”
He screamed his name again and again.
A short while later he heard a muffled cry for help behind him. He turned in the water, seeing nothing for a moment, but then he saw a form beneath a swath of canvas that was still attached to the mast. He swam, fighting the waves with every stroke, and felt something strike his leg beneath the water. He dove under, and saw the long white tail of a serpent slither into the dark.
He regained his breath and then sucked in one last intake before heading under. He kicked beneath the rigging and reached Jahalan, who was caught beneath the sail. His movements were frantic. Nikandr could see that he was trapped in a mass of ropes and netting, and the struggling was only making things worse.
He pulled the kindjal from the sheath at his belt and with his free hand began to pull some of the ropes away. He hoped that once Jahalan realized he was here to help he would stop thrashing. He did a moment later, but Nikandr realized it was because he had fallen unconscious.
He sawed at the ropes that would not come free easily, but in his haste, he cut Jahalan’s thigh. His thoughts turned to the white serpent, but the best thing he could do now was to free Jahalan and swim for the island.
Above them, the ship rolled further. The sails were pulled down on top of them, dragging them beneath the surface.
The water was dark, making it difficult to see, so he swam deeper, the only clear way to get out. He kicked away from the ship, hoping he could distance them enough that they could clear the sails.
His lungs burned. His legs and arms and chest screamed from the struggle to gain distance. But he kept going.
His breath finally gave, and he had no choice but to surface. More rigging blocked his path, but here it was sparse, and he managed to drag Jahalan through it.
He broke the surface, but not before taking in a lungful of salty water. He released long, wracking coughs. While supporting Jahalan’s head to his chest, he leaned back into the water and kicked away from the ship.
