Fire Heart (The Titans: Book One) (49 page)

The thought of Borost sent a painful jolt through her, and she tried unsuccessfully to will it to the far reaches of her mind. For over five hundred years she had pushed him away, ever since that fateful night in Falcos, and now her chance was gone forever. She wondered if, had she taken an alternate course of action, things would have been different.

Perhaps she could have been happier.

I cannot dwell on that now,
she thought. Her gaze roved back to Feothon, and after a moment she said softly, “Will needs you.”

The Forest Lord turned toward her slightly and raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“I said Will needs you,” she repeated. Something flickered through his eyes—anger? Amusement? She could not tell.

“I know,” he said simply.

“It is not your time,” Serah continued. “I can see that you are ready to cross over, Feothon, but the world is not. Will is not.”

“I know,” he repeated, more softly this time, and then he looked away and sighed. “'Tis becoming...difficult.” His words were almost a whisper, but the wind carried them obediently to her ears. “Sometimes I do not know where I am. No, that is wrong...sometimes I do not know
when
I am. I feel like I am slipping through time. Seventeen hundred years...'tis a long time, Serah. If I survive for five more I will be the oldest Titan to ever have lived, save Forod himself.”

Had he told her that Falcos was under attack by all five surviving traitors, Serah would not have been more frightened. To hear from his own lips that her oldest, wisest brother was losing his grip on reality terrified her more than anything she had ever felt. More so even than the night terror that had slaughtered her tribe all those years ago.

“How much longer do you have?” she asked quietly. “Has Leyra foreseen anything? Does...does Asper know?”

Feothon smiled. “Leyra foresees everything. What she chooses to share with us is a different matter entirely. But no, she has told me nothing. And...I believe Asper suspects something. She has been different lately. Happier, though, since Clare arrived. She has taken an immense liking to her.”

“That is good,” said Serah. “She needs some female companionship. She bears a heavy load, no?”

Feothon nodded slowly and murmured, “That she does. This time, my son will not be a simple human.”

They fell silent for a time, both lost in their thoughts. Serah's gaze drifted over to Leyra, who stood some distance away with her back to them. As always, the Lady of the Mountain was as solid and unmoving as a boulder, the sunlight gleaming from the blade of her axe. Her golden hair, untied from its usual braid, blew serenely in the wind, but Serah could almost feel the suppressed violence beneath her sister's careful veneer of calm, and it both frightened and exhilarated her. She went and stood next to her,
her boots tapping softly along the Leviathan's armored plates.

“What ails you, sister?” Leyra asked after a moment. She did not turn to look at Serah.

“Do I require an ailment to speak with my family?”

Now Leyra did turn her gaze down, and her pale blue eyes held such pain that Serah felt her heart grow instantly cold. Such a look could mean only one thing. She had seen it once before, so many years ago, on Renne.

“Who is it?” Serah asked softly.

Leyra opened her mouth to answer, but closed it again abruptly. “I will not say,” she finally replied a moment later, and her gaze turned back to the shifting sea once more.

“Is it...Will?” Serah asked, her voice nearly a whisper.

“No.”

“Clare?”

There was a short silence. Then, “...No.”

Serah looked away, finding suddenly that she did not wish to know more. “How far into the future can you see?” she asked.

When Leyra finally answered her, her beautiful voice had fallen into a hoarse whisper. “A long way.”

“I am sorry.”

The pale blue eyes found Serah's again, and the Lady of the Wind was surprised to find that they were wet. “I bear the curse gladly,” Leyra replied. “But I would never wish it on another.”

“I am here for you, you know. We all are. You do not have to be so distant.”

Leyra's head sank to her chest, and her eyes slid closed. “My apologies, Serah. I had not meant to be. It has been difficult of late. Sifting through the glimpses and choosing which ones to block out is exhausting. And lately, there are so many of them.” Her eyes opened and she looked down at Serah. “But that is no excuse.”

Serah hugged her. It was all she could think to do. For a moment, Leyra's body tensed in surprise; but then she melted like wax to a flame, and one muscular arm wrapped around Serah's slender shoulders. “Thank you,” Leyra said softly. “Sometimes I forget that I am not alone in the world.”

Their tender moment was shattered abruptly by the trumpet of a distant conch shell. Serah turned and scanned the horizon, and saw a ship near the front of the fleet raising a red flag—the signal for battle stations.

“Make ready!” she heard one of the men aboard the Leviathan cry, and the clatter of weapons and armor filled the air.

That sound is becoming all too familiar lately,
she thought. She heard Leyra tighten her grip on the haft of her axe and turned to look at her. The earth Titan's masculine face had taken on a terrifying visage, and Serah found herself almost recoiling from the sight of her sister.

“Do you know what it is like to be able to see the future, but have almost no power over it?” Leyra asked, her normally beautiful voice a soft growl. She reached into a pouch at her waist and took out a small, round piece of flint, which she began to toss absently into the air. It hit her hand with a soft, continuous smack.

“I know what it is like to see my brother die,” Serah replied, “and to be so far away that the fastest winds could not carry me to his side in time.” Her eyes followed the flint up, down, up, down. Finally, Leyra caught it, her grip tightening around its small form so that it disappeared in her grasp and the tendons stood rigid along her hand.

“There are two of them,” the Lady of the Mountain said after a moment's silence, and Serah looked at her in confusion. “Strife and Despair. They are here, down in the waves with their nightmares.” She lifted the stone to her forehead and pressed it into her skin, where it immediately began to twist and grow. It covered her face, and then crawled back to engulf her head completely.

When she took her hand away, the small piece of flint had transformed into a full battle helm, and Leyra's pale blue eyes glared out from the narrow vision slits, daring the world to face her. Serah noticed
that her sister's normally alabaster skin had taken on a grayer hue. When Leyra spoke again, her voice had a strange, filtered quality. “They will be stronger,” she snarled. “Pestilence's demise has empowered them further.”

“Why do you never speak of these things before they happen?” Serah asked, her words hushed. Leyra turned her stony glare down on her.

“Because when Renne tried that, it got her killed. I still have a part to play in this performance.” She shook her head in frustration.

Serah could think of nothing to say, for Leyra was right; and though Serah knew Renne's intentions had been to save one of her siblings, her meddling with the future had come at a terrible cost.
But...what if that had been her intention all along?
she wondered.
What if there are multiple futures, and she was guiding us along the path of the best one? What if...what if Leyra is doing the same thing?

“I understand,” she said finally.

Leyra nodded and turned away. Her next words were tinged with bitterness.  “And because I was able to see them for only a moment,” she muttered. “I look for them along the timelines and I am met only with shadows and whispers, just as it was when I looked for Clare in the Dark Forest. Nothing is certain. Why they allowed me this one glimpse, I do not know.”

Serah was not surprised. It seemed the Fallen were invisible to the Titans, though by what means she could not fathom.

The first staccato booms of the cannons began to sound in the distance, signaling an end to the weak illusion of peace that Serah's soul had been clinging to. She closed her eyes, and opened the eyes of Sorr.

In an instant she became the wind; she could see two Eastlander nomads haggling over a waterskin in Falcos, and watched as a woman in Brightstone dropped a ripe melon from the basket atop her head. In the north, a blonde-haired raider stood at the bow of his longship and hurled a harpoon at the cresting back of a great black whale. And in the west, far out among the unending waves, the water began to boil and froth in a massive line at the front of the world's largest armada.

All of this she saw at the same time, and all within the span of a deep breath. She concentrated on the sea, and watched as a horde of dark, nightmarish forms darted and twisted just beneath the water's surface. Those ships that had already come about fired their cannons, the reports deafeningly loud. Cannonballs streaked through the air, whistling softly as they went before colliding with the sea in great plumes of water. The iron missiles found their targets, and Serah saw the first casualties drift to the surface, their twisted bodies broken and torn asunder. The sea began to turn dark red, the creatures' blood clouding the water so that it frothed pink and each wave sent torrents of diluted crimson splashing into the air.

Serah opened her eyes and the scene became distant once again. Far away, the booms of the ships' guns had become tinny. “They are tamyat,” she said quietly. “The black serpents.”

“I know,” Leyra replied simply, and rolled her shoulders. The Leviathan groaned beneath them and sped up, eager to join the battle.

“I just thought of something,” Leyra said, and the flint battle mask peered down pensively at Serah. “If we are on the Leviathan, what happens when it starts to fight?”

~

Will had never seen coral. For that matter, he had never seen the sea, so everything at the moment was something of a surprise to him. But up on the surface, where the City in the Waves had been a stark, glaring white, he had never expected to see the forest of vibrant colors that greeted him now. Reds and greens and blues and purples, the coral beneath the waves was every color of the rainbow. Some was long and spindly, some short and round and shaped like a brain. Tiny fish darted to and fro, flitting through the protective cover that the City provided. There were bigger creatures too, serpentine beasts with mouthfuls of needle teeth that hid in the countless crevices, and strange bulbous things with too
many arms that nimbly picked their way over the City's surface.

And there were giant fish with the sleek, streamlined bodies of predators that drifted lazily through the ocean, undulating from side to side in slow, deliberate movements. Their mouths hung open as they swam, and the light that played across them afforded Will terrifying glimpses of jaws filled with rows of far too many serrated fangs.

He looked over at Clare and saw her watching one of the giant fish warily.
What is it?
he asked, and when her eyes flicked to his he saw fear.

Those are sharks,
she answered, and Will could have sworn that the voice in his head quavered the slightest bit. He could understand her fear. Just catching a glimpse of one from the safety of a boat would have been enough to send a shiver up his spine.

I've never heard of them before,
he said, watching a shark as it glided through the water with the ease of a creature that knows it is king in its realm.

Sailors are terrified of them,
Clare said.
They are always the first to find a shipwreck. Often they are the only ones.

Will's gaze roved across the rows of jagged teeth, and a shudder went through his body.
So they're like the plains lions of the sea.

Yes.

The shark, however, seemed wholly uninterested in them. Will would have even said it looked serene, were it not for the shiny black eyes that his imagination told him were following his every movement. They were nothing like the water drake's. There was no intelligence in those eyes—only cold, indifferent hunger. Soon it drifted away and was lost to the infinite vastness of the shimmering sea.

They began to move down the face of the City, and it was not long before the brilliant colors ceased abruptly and gave way to white once more. Will looked over his shoulder in confusion, wondering at the change in hue, but caught only a fleeting glimpse of the receding reef; the water drake had picked up speed again, and the light behind him was fast being swallowed up by the encroaching darkness of the depths.

As they went, though, Will noticed something strange: he could see. Despite the dim blue twilight that enveloped them, he was able to see the people around him quite clearly. Their bodies seemed to be outlined in a pale golden glow, and for the first time he was aware of just how many merfolk there actually were. There were not hundreds, as he had originally believed, but
thousands.
Not all of them were a part of Borbos' entourage; many seemed to be busying themselves about the base of the City. What they were doing, he could not be sure, but it looked almost as though they were singing. There had to be more merfolk around him than the entire population of Prado. He gaped, astounded; how had he never heard of such creatures before when there were so many of them?