Ship hovering in the sky and the other plummeting crazily toward the sea.
With a mighty crash theEphyra hit the waves, sending a plume of water high into the air. She bounced, then crashed violently down again into the ocean. As the seawater fell around her, Khristos strained his eyes, hoping that the ship had been smashed into kindling. When the scene cleared, he raised his fists and shook them at the sky.
TheEphyra had survived.
He watched transfixed as the Black Ship heeled over and nearly cap-sized. To his chagrin, she finally righted, her rigging swinging violently to and fro as she settled down. Many of her spars were broken and one of her masts lay across the main deck, but she looked otherwise intact.
Casting safety to the winds, Khristos cursed and ran toward the shoreline. Again raising his silver staff, he pointed it at the stricken ship’s bow. If he couldn’t destroy both ships, he would at least try to send one of the black bastards to the bottom.
But just as he raised his staff, a figure lunged across his path, blocking his view. Khristos snarled and was about to sidestep the fighter when he saw the pair of dark blue eyes boring into his and sensed the stranger’s supreme blood quality.
TheJin’Sai.
As the battle whirled around them, for a moment the two enemies glared at one another. Then Khristos screamed and pointed his staff at Tristan’s chest.
With the imminent threat washing over his senses, Tristan’s blood tingled with yet greater strength and his sword blade suddenly glowed with a bright azure hue. This had happened only once before, during the climactic battle to take the Recluse. But there was no time to think. With Aeolus’ warnings again ringing in his ears, Tristan widened his stance and stood his ground.
This second bolt Khristos sent at Tristan was again a narrow one, designed to cut theJin’Sai in half. Tristan raised his sword with blinding speed. As the searing bolt struck his dreggan blade, its power was immediately reflected back toward Khristos. Had the wizard’s reflexes not been so fast, it would surely have killed him.
Khristos wheeled but the bolt struck his right shoulder, causing him to drop his staff. Tristan lunged forward and kicked the craft weapon far across the sand. Weakened with shock and falling to his knees, Khristos again tried sending a bolt Tristan’s way, this time from his fingertips. But the bolt fizzled halfway to its target and crashed into the beach, sending charred sand high into the air. As the sandy cloud cleared, Tristan raised his dreggan high and charged in for the kill.
But again the wizard was too fast. Summoning his last bit of power, Khristos levitated from the sand and soared away to seek protection among his many vipers. As he left the ground, Tristan swung his blade at him, but it fell short.
Enraged, Tristan tossed his sword into his left hand, then reached behind his right shoulder to grip a throwing knife and let it fly. The silver dirk cartwheeled over and over, its double-sided blade a whirling blur.
Seeing the knife coming, Khristos twisted in midair, causing the blade to miss his heart. But he hadn’t been fast enough to avoid it altogether, and the dirk buried itself in the same shoulder that had been struck by his returning bolt. Screaming in agony, he pulled the knife from his shoulder, then crossed the sand and landed amid another group of battling vipers. Hissing and drooling, the hideous things quickly surrounded their beloved master and defended him with their lives.
Khristos could no longer be seen, but Tristan knew where to find him. TheJin’Sai was about to charge across the bloody sand and tear into the group of vipers when he felt a strong hand grip the back of his left shoulder. Knowing that he was being attacked by another viper, he had no choice but to forget Khristos and whirl around.
Reaching across his chest with his right hand and raising his bloody sword high with his left, he grasped the enemy’s wrist and swiveled left. As he came around he found himself staring into a familiar face.
There stood Ox, bloodied and exhausted. Ox immediately shouted out an order, and he and Tristan were quickly surrounded by more Minion warriors to keep yet another throng of advancing Blood Vipers from reaching them. The massive Ox gave Tristan a desperate look.
“Wigg say you must come now!” he shouted above the fighting. “Black Ships safe but we losing fight! Wigg say hurry! Must cross blue sea!”
That wasn’t what Tristan wanted to hear. Instead of sailing away, he wanted to kill the unknown Vagaries wizard if it was the last thing he ever did. Then Ox grabbed Tristan by the shoulders and roughly spun him around to face the rocky wall on the other side of the beach.
“Look, Jin’Sai!” Ox screamed. What Tristan saw sent icewater pouring through his veins.
The sand between him and the rock wall was covered with the dead and the dying, blood, and body parts from both sides. The casualties seemed to be roughly equally divided between Minions and vipers, but in the continuing melee Tristan couldn’t be sure. Then he looked to the rock wall, and he knew.
Thousands more vipers still poured from hundreds of tunnels, threatening to engulf the Minions once and for all. But no more fresh warriors were jumping to the beach to confront them. The tunnel floor from which the warriors had exited dripped blood down the rock wall, and vipers were slithering inside it to look for wounded stragglers. Some of the Minions still struggling on the beach had taken to the air to hack their dreggans downward on the vipers. Even so, it was clear that the odds were turning against them. Tristan knew that without an order to retreat, his forces would fight and die to the last. He swung around to look into Ox’s pleading eyes.
“Wigg say we must go now!” Ox shouted. “There be too many vipers! He say if we stay, all warriors die!”
“Where are the other Conclave members?” Tristan shouted. “Are any dead?”
“Ox not know!” the warrior shouted back. “But we must go!”
“Have all our warriors exited the tunnel?” the prince shouted. “I refuse to leave anyone behind!”
“Only warriors in tunnel be dead ones!” Ox answered. “I be last one out! Please, Jin’Sai! We must gonow!”
Finally surrendering to the desperate situation, Tristan angrily put aside his desire to continue the fight.
“Blow the retreat!” he shouted.
With a relieved look on his face, Ox quickly reached for his bugle. He sounded the retreat call twice, then scooped Tristan up in his beefy arms and took to the air. On hearing the bugle and seeing theirJin’Sai leave the beach, the surviving warriors also took flight, many of them carrying wounded comrades in their arms. As the warriors soared away, the thousands of vipers slithered toward the shoreline, waving their arms and hissing loudly in celebration of their bloody victory.
Tristan looked out to sea to find theTammerland and theEphyra sitting atop the waves about one hundred yards from shore, each twinkling brightly with subtle matter. One of theEphyra ’s masts and some of her spars had come down, but Tristan was sailor enough to know that she could be repaired. And then to Tristan’s amazement this subterranean world began to change.
It didn’t start slowly, or with prior warning. Instead, its coming was sudden and earsplitting. Because Tristan was being carried in Ox’s strong arms, he could do nothing but watch in horrified wonder.
The Azure Sea started to churn, and great steaming geysers exploded from its depths to launch hundreds of yards into the air. Tristan couldn’t believe what he saw next, but the irrefutable proof lay directly before him, bewildering his senses. The Azure Sea was literally boiling.
Suddenly worried for his fleet, he snapped his head around to see another geyser erupt just off theEphyra ’s port bow, sending the great ship dangerously rocking atop the waves. Nearly capsizing, she listed hard before righting.
Then Tristan heard terrible screaming, and he saw some Minion crewmen being tossed from theEphyra ’s pitching deck toward the boiling sea. The quickest snapped open their wings and took flight just before reaching the superheated water. But some could not and they hit the boiling waves, the sea immediately overcoming them, and they perished on the spot. Tristan watched in horror as their scalded bodies and limp wings bobbed atop the boiling sea, some of them bumping against theEphyra ’s hull.
As yet more geysers and superheated steam exploded into the air, Tristan soon doubted that he and Ox would reach theTammerland alive. As the sea birthed one geyser after the next, the rising steam had become so thick that Tristan could barely see his hands before his face, to say nothing of the Black Ships. Tristan suspected that Ox was straying off course, but turning around to fly back to the beach and its thousands of swarming vipers was unthinkable. And so they pressed on, the air becoming hotter and deadlier by the moment.
