Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 5 - The Cerulean Storm (27 page)

The dhow's hull began to scrupe along the mud crusts ringing the shoals, adding to the
difficulty of the dwarf's meditations. He began to hum a single note, as he had taught
Rkard to do when the boy was learning to meditate.

At the same time, the ghostly fleet began to move forward. Caelum found himself puzzling
over its path. The cutters were trying to cut them off-but their course would take the
ships straight through the middle of a shoal.

As the dhow moved deeper into the channel, the fleet's gossamer sails disappeared behind
the dense foliage to the dhow's starboard. Sighing in relief, Caelum concentrated on his
devotions. This thicket seemed heavier than that rising from the last shoal, so the dwarf
had trouble seeing the sun itself. Nevertheless, by the halo of red-tinged leaves in the
center of the copse, he knew where to look. He opened himself to the orb and breathed in
slow, steady whispers.

This time, the dwarf's meditations were more successful. He barely heard the shrill
whistles and eerie cackles erupting from the shoals as the dhow sliced through the narrow
channel between them. Soon, he felt the sun-mark on his forehead burning hot and red, then
the halo shining through the forest became round and whole. A crimson flame flared over
his brow, and he knew the sun had risen.

Caelum stood and turned toward his wife. “It seems I had time to finish my devotions,
after all,” he said. “For which we'll
all
be glad when those cutters return.”

“Let's hope so,” she retorted.

Neeva stood with Rikus, both of them holding their weapons in their hands and looking past
him down the channel. Behind them, Sadira fished through her robe pocket with one ebony
hand and effortlessly held the boom line with the other. Tithian sat upon the floater's
dome, his beady eyes darting back and forth between the shore and the Dark Lens.

The shoal suddenly fell silent. Nothing happened for a moment, then a cloud of birds
erupted from the tangled thicket. Their beating wings filled the air with a tremendous
throbbing as they passed overhead.

Caelum saw a cluster of gossamer sails approaching through the boughs over the shoal. The
diaphanous sheets passed through the tangled fronds as though immaterial, not disturbing
so much as a leaf. In contrast to the sails, the cutter's black prows drove through the
muddy shoal like a farmer's plow, cutting great harrows and uprooting every plant they
passed. The majestic trees fell away almost silently, their heavy boles becoming snarled
in a nest of vines and boughs long before they could crash to the ground.

Neeva and Rikus came forward. His wife hefted her battle-axe and asked, “Well, husband,
can you sink those ships?”

Caelum raised a hand toward the sun. He waited until his flesh glowed with a brilliant
crimson light, then pointed back at the dhow's mast. He cast his spell. A globe of scarlet
light formed around the base of the pole and slowly rose upward. When the shining ball
reached the top, Sacha shrieked, shooting off his perch as though someone had kicked him.
The head fell, trailing wisps of red smoke, and struck the shoal's sun-baked beach with a
hollow thump. The red sphere took his place on top of the mast and shone down on the dhow
with a warm, rosy light.

“Stupid dwarf!” cursed Sacha, wobbling into the air. “You could have warned me!”

“What'd you do?” asked Rikus.

“Protected the ship from undead,” Caelum replied. “Now the animated corpses on the cutters
can't board us.”

The dwarf had barely finished his sentence before the clack-clack of firing catapults
sounded from ahead. He spun around to see a barrage of small boulders arcing toward them.
Rikus and Neeva ducked. When Caelum did not instantly do the same, his wife kicked his
feet from beneath him. The dwarf dropped unceremoniously into the bilge.

Most of the volley went wide. The stones crashed through the sun-crusted beaches to either
side of the channel, shooting plumes of mud high into the air. Unfortunately, a number of
rocks did find their target. Two boulders glanced off the Dark Lens and bounced over the
gunnel. Though the impact caused no apparent damage to the lens, it drew an alarmed squeal
from Tithian. Three more stones landed amidst the cargo casks, spraying chadnuts and
precious water in all directions. One rock even struck Sadira in the chest. The impact
drove her down on her seat, but seemed to cause her no harm. She pitched the stone over
the side, then stood up again.

Caelum stuck his head up and looked over the gunnel. Two cutters had sailed into the shoal
off the port bow and were turning to approach the dhow on a parallel route. The third ship
was positioning itself broadside across the channel. The last two vessels remained in the
starboard shoal, and were turning their bows toward the dhow. On all five cutters, the
ungainly corpses were slowly cranking the catapult spoons back into firing position.

“They're trying to catch us in a crossfire,” growled Rikus.

“They won't have a chance,” said Sadira. “By the time they're ready to fire again, their
missiles won't be able to reach us.”

With that, the sorceress took Tithian's place at the tiller and cast her flying spell. The
dhow rose out of the channel at such a steep angle that Caelum had to grab the gunnel to
keep from sliding. The Dark Lens slipped back against the water casks, pushing them toward
the stern. Sadira braced her feet against the last two barrels and held the entire load in
place.

“Now, this is magic!” exclaimed Neeva.

“Magic that will betray us to the sorcerer-kings, if they're still near,” Tithian
complained.

“If they're that close, the battle would alert them anyway,” said Rikus, peering over the
gunnel. “I doubt we could sink five ships without creating a lot of smoke and thunder.”

Caelum also looked over the side, feeling a little foolish for bragging about how his
magic would prevent the corpses from boarding the dhow. The little craft was already as
high as the treetops and rising. Far below and ahead, the corpses were still loading
boulders into their catapult spoons, but the dwarf did not think the stones would come
high enough to strike their craft.

As they came nearer to the cutters, Caelum noticed that not all of the corpses on the
decks were decomposing. On each ship, one looked strangely preserved, with leathery skin
and an emaciated body. The shriveled faces of these figures looked remarkably similar,
with gaping cavities for noses and eyes of green fire. But each also had a distinctive
feature setting him or her apart from the others: a pair of smoking horns, fingernails as
long and sharp as needles, chitinous scales of armor, lacy wings of fire, a sharp beak
instead of a mouth.

“What are those things?” Neeva asked. She pointed first at the corpse with the smoking
horns, then at the one with the chitinous armor.

“They're the ship commanders-some sort of spirit lords,” offered Sadira. “And I doubt they
happened on us by chance. Borys probably sent them.”

The one with fiery wings leaped off his ship's deck and shot up to intercept the dhow.

“There's no need to worry,” Caelum said. He glanced up at the red sphere still shining
down from the top of the mast, hoping his spell would prove useful after all. “He can't
come into the light.”

“Who's worried?” Rikus asked. “But we can't let him follow us, either. Better to kill-er,
destroy-him now.”

The mul gripped his sword with both hands and stepped into the bow. It was the only place
on the dhow where the protective light of Caelum's spell did not extend beyond the
gunnels, and so it was the only place the corpse could attack the craft itself.

The spirit lord seemed to sense this, for he streaked straight to Rikus. The mul swung.
The corpse fanned his fiery wings and stopped instantly, allowing the Scourge's blade to
flash harmlessly past his face.

“Stupid mul!” the spirit lord hissed. “Come with me!”

The corpse slipped to the side of the blade and clamped both hands over the mul's wrists.
The lord's wings flapped furiously, trying to back away and pull Rikus from the dhow. Each
time they beat forward, long tongues of flame curled off their lacy edges to lick at the
mul's face and arms.

Screaming in pain, Rikus dropped down to shield himself behind the bone prow. He braced
his feet against the gunnel and pulled, trying to draw his attacker into the glowing
circle cast by Caelum's spell. The two foes seemed evenly matched. The mul's wrists
remained poised at the perimeter of the rosy light, trembling with strain and agony. The
corpse's wings beat madly, filling the air in front of the dhow with yellow whorls of
flame.

Neeva ducked under the sail and stepped forward, chopping at the spirit with her axe. The
steel did not bite into his flesh, but she caught the crook of the blade behind the
corpse's neck. She added her strength to Rikus's and pulled, dragging their enemy across
the gunnel into the rosy light of Caelum's spell.

The spirit lord howled in pain. Black tendrils of smoke spewed from his body, and his
flesh fell away in flakes of black ash. Caelum could hardly believe what he was seeing.
The spell was having an effect, but hardly what he had expected. The corpse had to be as
powerful as a banshee. Otherwise, he would have been consumed by crimson flame as soon as
he was pulled into the circle.

Caelum turned a hand toward the sun, calling for the magic to incinerate the spirit. A red
glow crept over his hand, and he pointed his finger at the corpse.

Before the dwarf could cast his spell, Sadira uttered an incantation from the back of the
boat. A bolt of black energy streaked past Caelum's head, striking the spirit in the
center of the chest. A tremendous bang shook the dhow, nearly knocking the cleric from his
feet and blasting the corpse out of the bow. A ball of ebony fire swallowed the lord, and
he plunged toward the shoals below. By the time he reached the ground, all that remained
of him was a cloud of ash.

Caelum sighed, feeling more useless than ever. He went to the mul's side and said, “Let me
see those burns, Rikus.”

The mul shook his head and started to rise. “Later,” he said. “They're not serious.”

Caelum laid his palm on the mul's blistered arms. “I'll tend them now,” he insisted. “If
all I'm good for is healing other people's wounds, at least let me do it well.”

With that, the dwarf released his healing energy. The mul hissed as the magic poured into
his body. The blisters quickly subsided, leaving only a red tint to show where the mul's
skin had been burned.

“Thanks,” Rikus said. “That does feel better.”

The clatter of catapults sounded from below. Caelum looked over the gunnel in time to see
a volley of gray boulders crossing paths beneath the hull. The four ships that had fired
the stones were almost directly below the dhow, one pair to each side of the silt passage.
The fifth cutter lay a short distance ahead, still blocking the narrow channel between the
shoals.

In spite of the catapults' obvious inability to hit the dhow, the mindless crewmen cranked
the spoons down to reload. “Go ahead, try again!” Rikus yelled.

As they passed over the last cutter, a loud sizzle sounded from the ship's deck. A
brilliant flash of blue streaked from its stern. There was a deafening boom, and the whole
dhow bucked. The hull erupted into a spray of gray splinters. Caelum grabbed the gunnel to
keep from flying out and felt his feet dangling free. Realizing the dhow had no bottom, he
looked down. The cargo casks, the floater's dome, Neeva's axe, the Dark Lens, even the
boat's sail and mast were arcing toward the shoals far below. Only the people remained,
clinging to the gunnels for their lives.

Caelum watched the dhow's cargo fall. With the sail still attached, the mast was caught by
the wind and lost its forward momentum the fastest. It landed about a hundred paces from
the cutters, plunging through a shoal's mud crust and standing upright. The water casks
and Neeva's axe were strewn over the crusty banks a little distance beyond, while the Dark
Lens continued the farthest before plunging into the silt channel.

“No!” Tithian screamed. “The lens!”

The king released his grip and dropped away, raising a plume of dust as he followed the
lens into the dust passage.

“What now?” cried Neeva.

“Turn around,” answered Caelum.

The dwarf looked back toward the cutters. Already, the spirit lords were leaping off their
ships. “I don't care about Tithian, but we can't lose the lens.”

“Swing in low near the sail, Sadira,” Rikus ordered. The mul pointed at the dhow's mast,
which still had the rosy orb of the dwarf's protection spell glowing from the top. “Caelum
and I'll drop off to hold them back. Then you take Neeva back to find the lens.”

Sadira brought the dhow around. She swooped in so low that Caelum could have counted the
cracks in the beach below. The dwarf waited until they passed into the rosy glow of his
protection spell, then let go of the gunnel.

Almost before he felt himself falling, Caelum slammed into the crusty mud and felt it
crack beneath the impact. He allowed his momentum to carry him forward and tumbled head
over heels across the hot ground. He came to a rest on his back, staring straight up the
mast at the red sphere of his spell. The mast was wobbling slightly, as if it might fall
at any moment, and it was tilting toward the silt channel at a slight angle.

Caelum noticed that he felt nothing from the waist down, and feared the fall had broken
something in his back. He tried to kick his legs-and nearly choked on the resulting cloud
of dust.

Realizing that he had nearly rolled into the dust channel, Caelum pushed himself back. He
stood, already raising a hand toward the sun, and spun around to face the spirit lords.

To his surprise, he did not see any coming after him. The only undead he saw were the
decomposing corpses back at the cutters. They stood beside their catapults, staring into
the air with vacant expressions and blank eyes. Caelum suspected that their spirits were
magically bound to the ships, otherwise they would have been climbing over the gunnels to
attack by now.