Sword and Sorcery Seven, chapter thirty-nine_Sword and Sorcery, a Novel

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 Sheraza was lady and heir no longer, leaving her utterly numb and bereft; wrapped in a layer of self-imposed ice. Her uncle had fallen to enemies, and everything… all of his lands, his wealth and his titles… had been stripped clean away.

 Sheraza had felt it when the blades struck flesh and slashed bone, hewing her uncle’s head from his ravaged body. Had seen through his eye, the face of the drow whose sword-point her uncle was speared upon.

 …And she would never forget, could never forgive, nor give over. Now, Sheraza was captive. Her uncle’s head was a trophy of war. A mere thing to be traded. Mocked at. Displayed. No clean fire, no final death for Lord Arvendahl, whose last-magic curse hung over the empire like a fiery sword. Blocked… so long as his lordship didn’t quite die.

 Sheraza had turned herself over to imperial justice in the form of Prince Nalderick, to save what was left of Milardin. To give Uncle Falcoridan’s curse some time to work free. She would be taken to Karellon, the girl knew.

 And there, while His Majesty once again soared on a great golden dragon… while crowds cheered aloud, and the drink poured in rivers… Sheraza would face the imperial justiciars. She would fight them, of course, trying hard to keep the few secrets and last bits of power she held.

 …But they’d have it all out of her, anyway. She knew that. No one resisted their methods for long. Sheraza hugged herself, drawing her cloak tighter around a slim and shivering form.

 She must not fall into their hands, Sheraza decided. She had to escape them, with two goals clutched hard in (couldn’t weep, not here, not in front of her uncle’s smug enemies) that broken young heart. Two goals that kept her alive, when nothing else could. She would retrieve Lord Arvendahl’s head and his corpse for honors and burning, then bring justice to those who’d encompassed his ruin.

 With everything else stripped away, vengeance was all she had left to live for. That, and the strange pull and image tugging her thoughts toward Low Town, in Karellon. There was a sword, and it sang in her mind like a banshee, revealing its purpose and power. With that blade and one perfect strike, the girl sensed, she could bring down an empire, free a trapped god… unleashing Chaos and hell.

 She felt the sword’s call, but she could not respond. Couldn’t answer its summons. Not from a cell aboard Majesty. At least… not at once. Prince Nalderick cared for her, though. He was “in love”, she understood. He thought her a delicate, beautiful, helpless prisoner, and those feelings might be made use of.

 That’s why she didn’t murmur when it was Nalderick who brought in her meals every day and supervised exercise time on the main deck. She managed to answer a few of his conversational sallies, even… but slowly, groping after impossible lightness and normalcy. “Flirtatious” and “charming” weren’t numbered among her skills.

 Still, she could lean on the dreadnought’s polished brass rail, her face turned into the wind, watching stolen Alandriel pass underneath. Nodding from time to time, as Nalderick poured out his hopes and his feelings. Did not resist when he pressed his hand against hers, on the rail. Let him hope. Let him dangle in loving desire. Doing so kept her bonds light, letting Sheraza build manna.

 Then a Constellate Grand Master arrived, and Sheraza was summoned to an inquest, facing her uncle’s enemies across six feet of polished and carved wooden table. They’d been summoned to meet with the paladin, but not to speak of Lord Arvendahl. Rather, three of the Grand Master’s brethren were missing. The same three roving paupers who’d opened a chapter house in Milardin, surprisingly. Sheraza provided a bit of information. No reason why not, when offering facts might loosen her magical bonds even further.

 After that… and a private dinner with Nalderick… everything turned upside down, yet again. There was another attack on Majesty. Something struck hard, just after the prince departed her cell. Not imps, boulders or sky-vines, this time. From Sheraza’s perspective, inside, it was as though a vast maw had taken hold of the dreadnought’s keel, striking shark-like from out of the clouds below.

 Majesty shook and lurched violently upward. A sudden, tornadic gale roared to life, and the heeled-over vessel started to spin. Giant, electrified fangs splintered the hull timbers, one of them piercing Sheraza’s cabin with an apocalyptic CRUNCH! It glowed like a thunderbolt; blue-white and terribly powerful, as manna gushed from one of the airship’s badly pierced tanks. A vortex.

 Alarms tore through the air. Marines and aerriors, mages, clerics and nobles leapt to the ship’s defense as Majesty struggled to free itself. Her chance. Possibly the only one that she’d get, and better by far than justiciars closing in with compulsion spells and bright knives.

 “They’ll think me dead, all of them…” Sheraza thought wildly. She stooped to her cabin’s bucking and slanted floor (no magic to waste pretending the airship was upright. Not in the midst of battle. None to expend keeping her pent, either.) “Now, or never at all!”If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

 Sheraza scooped up a piece of glass that had broken away from the shattered porthole. First, tore her own clothing and scattered the bits, then slashed at the flesh of her left forearm, in a place that would bleed but not cripple her. Next spun about to spread her own blood all over that luxurious cabin; heart pounding, breath coming raggedly fast.

 “If only the vortex will shift, if it takes a new grip on the hull!” she pled wildly, to whichever dark gods would answer a trapped and desperate girl.

 Then Majesty lurched violently sideways, hurling Sheraza to the slanted and shuddering floor. She rolled, fetching up at an inner bulkhead, tangled in broken furnishings and the ornate bedclothes that Nalderick had probably hoped to stretch out on. The more fool, he.

 That lightning- bright fang ripped free of the hull, as the vortex took a new crunching hold on Majesty. A second, volcanic creaking, grinding and splintering noise made the girl’s head swim and her vision blur, shaking the air and the dreadnought… but a hole was left in the hull, and through it Sheraza glimpsed streaming dark wind and a maw that pierced time and space.

 They’d been the very first natural gates, these vortices… a portal for those with more daring than sense, or nothing at all left to lose. Sheraza fought her way clear of the storm-wrack at her cell’s tilted rear wall. Half climbed, half lunged her way upward, leaving a long smear of manna-and-terror spiked blood the whole way. Gained that splintered and gaping wound in the hull, and then did not hesitate for a moment. Instead, she threw herself outward, directly into that tempest-made-flesh. There was a flood of leaked manna. Almost too much, but Sheraza absorbed all that she could and then more. She glowed like a star temporarily, like a comet plunging down into a cavernous, fang-and-lightning-shot throat. Spun crazily all the way down to its wild-port center, thinking only, “Karellon! Low Town!”

 And then…

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 Up on the shuddering main deck, meanwhile, Prince Nalderick fought like a demon. Defended the airship, directing his forces, mages and passengers as they rushed out to help. The drow Grand Master was present, still, filled up with Oberyn’s might. And, glory, they needed it!

 The vortex had struck from below, attacking Majesty’s keel, trying to break the dreadnought in half. A screaming gale now had them pinned in a rapid and deadly flat spin. The end of Majesty, unless the creaking airship could somehow break free.

 Lady Solara floated at mast-height, golden hair blowing loose all around her as she unleashed spells at that sentient, malevolent windstorm. The lordlings… Filimar and Valerian… had shot skyward, as well; one with his crossbow, the other with firebolts, striking at the swirling, electric-blue eyes of the vortex. Even Scander the healer fought back, summoning a mithral homunculus and an eldritch hand-cannon.

 Lashing, lightning-flare tentacles swept marines and aerriors off the badly-slanted deck. Manna spurted from Majesty’s riven tanks, causing chaotic changes all over the struggling dreadnought.

 So… Nalderick wasn’t a very good mage. He couldn’t bend wind or summon a god. Fighting near Captain Prentiss, he focused on striking with sword and shield at whatever was solid enough to be hit. That vortex was a sending of Chaos. A living and ravenous storm, but it did have some physical bits, and Nalderick hammered at those.

 There in the howling tempest, swirling all around Majesty, were blobs and tendrils of flesh, the storm’s life and its distributed mind. Each time that one of those chunks spiraled past him, Nalderick slashed at the thing, or else fired a bolt of pure force from the end of his magical sword. Beside him, Prentiss wielded her lance, piercing and thrusting at crackling hide and rubbery, sucking innards.

 It was hard, dirty work but they kept at it, all of them. Then, with a world-shaking BANG! one of the deck timbers split, exploding into a hell-storm of splinters. One of them would have pierced Nalderick, only Prentiss shoved him out of its way, losing part of her arm in shower of blood. Scander got there in time to keep her from fainting, riding his homunculus’s polished shoulders and spraying potion out of a hose.

 Once, Nalderick had a clear shot at the “princeling”, Valerian. The northerner was right there alongside the airship, unleashing Firelord’s wrath at one of those dark, shifting blobs. Nalderick could absolutely have hit and distracted him, causing Valerian’s death. No one at all would have known… but for complex reasons of his own, he didn’t do it. Nalderick was a Valinor prince, and his loyal people were sacred… even the possibly dangerous, family-secret ones. On this day, here and now, Valerian lived.

 In the meantime, the Constellate Grand Master hovered just over Majesty’s ruptured stern tank. He was praying, and though the storm-winds snatched away words, they could not erase sigils as Darron called on his god.

 The vortex released Majesty, but only long enough to shift its grip sternward, trying to snap at that glowing-bright paladin. Its renewed grapple tore loose the captain’s office and part of the rudder, wrenching Majesty roughly sideways. Sent the Grand Master tumbling away through that cyclonic tempest, but the damage was already done. Lines of holy power plunged into the vortex, down to the living gate that pulsed at its heart. Caged the wild thing in bonds of pure, divine magic.

 It was like harpooning a breeching world-serpent, and Darron was whipped back and forth at the end of his crackling tether, fighting just to hang on. Meanwhile, Nalderick leapt to strike at a tumbling blue storm-eye, Filimar and Valerian combined their power to bring down a third drifting mind-blob, the halfling’s eldritch cannon fired again and again, and Lady Solara cradled the dreadnought with vast, glowing mage hands.

 The wind dropped at last. Writhing blobs and glaring eyes plunged past them or fell to the deck to be swarmed and hacked into shreds. Solara reeled in that half-conscious paladin, while Nalderick lunged to catch Prentiss (missing her lower right arm where that splintered timber had shorn it away).

 And… in all of the chaos of quick repair and desperate head-counts… nobody noticed that Lady Sheraza was gone.

MillionNovel

Sword and Sorcery Seven, chapter thirty-nine