I nodded. I could give him that.
He was sitting astride the back of the boat, his muscles rippling as he easily pulled on the lines, guiding the small sail back and forth with the heavy wind effortlessly. His hair had ripped free from the tether and was flowing in the salt spray air. For the first time, there was peace on his face…
“I need you to trust me, Bravo. I need your chosen four to trust me. We have a war coming, it appears. Fenvitz and his men are not going to go easy.”
I gripped the side as we crashed up over a huge wave. It came down hard on us and soaked the boat. The wind was rushing at us now and it was getting hard to hear his words.
“I am no stranger to taking out dissidents and rivals, but, I have always faced them with loyal soldiers.”
The sky had blackened around us, yet still Skarde persisted to sail forward. I grit my teeth. This was getting ridiculous. We were testing the bounds of what this little boat could take.
He swerved the boat skillfully to the side to avoid two waves crashing against each other, taking the right course, but it made me fall against the mast, nearly at his feet. I looked up at him as lightning flashed, illuminating that wild, crazed look in his eyes and I saw the Berzerker there, not for the first time.
“Turn us around, Skarde!”
“It’s your turn, now!”
“What?”
“I sailed us with science and skill to this point. Prove to me your arts, your mental arts, the ones I need to trust to control me so that I can beat Fenvitz, and sail us home using those!”
I stared at him as I moved back to my seat in the bow. He was pulling the sail in so that it hung limp. His eyes were locked to mine, goading, taunting, a slight smile on his lips. He couldn’t be serious… Skarde stood up and held the sail to the mast as best he could. It flapped lamely in the wind, beating against his skin. The boat swayed ungainly, tossed, thrown, a toy in the swells of the storm.
Rain broke and crashed down on us as lightning flashed just overhead and thunder roared.
I stood up, braced myself in the bow, took a deep breath, held my hands out to my sides, and pulsed out a telekinetic shield. The rain around us quivered and broke away, a bubble forming.
We were in a vacuum for a moment, while I tested out my telekinetics. It was a disarming sensation and there was a suction on my skin. The sound of the storm raged, but there was no sensation of it. No more spray hitting us, no more waves rocking, no wind in our hair. Even Skarde’s eyes grew wide. He knelt down beside the bow and released the sail. Slowly, I pulled up its sheet, letting it move to catch the wind, but I didn’t let the wind in, yet.
There were a few inches of water in the bottom of the sailboat, cast in by the waves that we had suffered just from fighting the storm to get out into the depths of it, a ploy Skarde had been daring just to get to this point, to test me, to try and prove to me and to himself that the tele arts were worth submitting to.
I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, then opened them slowly, as I let the wind in…
The wind caught the sail and jerked us around, the sailboat taking off swiftly toward home.
We could look up and see the rain crashing down above us, but hitting a shield and breaking away, droplets drenching down and streaking away, pillowing to the sea like drizzling down a window. Lighting rippled through the dark clouds above and thunder raged, lighting up Skarde’s stark face as he watched me, crouched against the mast. I held my hands up and directed the sail as we streaked across the ocean, battling the swelling waves, fighting their crest and crash.
My heart was racing, my temples thudding as the surge of the biggest battle of telekinesis I had ever commanded rushed through me. This was a tactic I had never commanded before, demanding nature obey me. It was like I was under a spell, it was completely mesmerizing, so all-consuming, a life-and-death situation that was close to the in-the-zone sensation of a battlefield, but also so different...
The deluge was growing stronger, pounding down on us, and it was weighing on me, when Skarde started moving. He crept closer to me, then was kneeling in front of me. My heart beat even faster. I couldn’t look down at him, couldn’t move my concentration from demanding the rain not touch us, demanding the waves not over-roll our little skiff, that the lightning not strike us, that the sail keep the right course.
“Ilisa,” Skarde said, “I will let you control me…” Then, he ran his hands up my legs, a firm, sliding touch, and my heart nearly exploded, leaping into my throat.
Lightning glorified above and around us, the raging ocean lighting up, sparks danced all around us on the whitecaps, the reflection of our diminutive mast showing on numerous waves, and then his hands were on my waist, squeezing, and his fingers were finding their way under the band along my pant line.
I gasped, my pulse out of control.
“What are you doing, Skarde…?”
“May I, Ilisa?”
I couldn’t believe what was happening, what I was feeling… The extreme power and fatigue of the telekinetic pull of the storm, and then Skarde was unbuttoning my pants and tugging them down my hips. I cast a quick look down at him and then back at the storm, unable to spare a moment away from what was life or death if I was distracted.
This power… This power I had never felt before…
Permission… Was I giving him permission?
“I think you have already given me permission, Bravo Ilisa…”
How
