Shallows of Night - 02 by Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online Page B

truly what you encountered, then The Dolman is closer than I suspected.” His eyes closed. “Is there still time? Oh, Chill, there must be! There must be!” He looked up. “Ronin, we must make all haste southward. Nothing must stop us, nothing, do you understand?”
    “Calm yourself, Borros,” Ronin said gently. “Nothing shall stop us.”
    Late in the afternoon the day darkened prematurely and the violent storm which they had been attempting to outrun began to overtake them with an inexorable fury.
    The wind shrilled in the rigging like the screams at the gates of the damned and Ronin went to reef the storm sail.
    “No!” bellowed Borros, the gale causing his voice to sound muffled. “Leave it up! We must make all speed no matter the risk!”
    Ronin looked to the sky. The racing purple-black clouds, thick now and lowering menacingly from the west, were gathering themselves. Within them, the storm.
    “We may turn over if it does not come down!” He yelled into the wind, the words blown from his mouth like crisp leaves.
    Borros’ face was mottled in fear.
    “I have seen the sister ship again! She is closer! Ronin, she stalks us!” His eyes bulged. “I will not be caught!”
    Ronin began to reef the storm sail.
    “You have only seen what you want to see; no one is following us. I want to survive this storm!”
    Moments later, slender fingers grasped his arm, tugging feebly. He turned and looked into Borros’ rolling eyes, saw the line of sweat freezing along the Magic Man’s forehead.
    “Please. Please. The ship comes after us. If we slow, it will surely overtake us.” Borros’ voice came out in puffs of steam on the chill, dense air. “Do you see? I cannot go back. I can take no more. Freidal has done what—”
    Ronin touched him gently. “Return to the wheel and guide us,” he said softly. “The storm sail will stay up.”
    Gratefully Borros went again aft and Ronin retied the knots, vowing to reef the storm sail at the first sign of the gale’s full force.
    So they raced onward, riding before the gathering wind.

TWO
Aegir
    H E HAS TURNED FROM the west, away from the murder of the sun at the grasping hands of the ice plateaus. Frightened now, he flees before the turmoil of the vast sky. He feels, just behind him, the intense excitation of the storm as it bursts open and he is engulfed now by the fierce bite of the high winds, the pressure of the roiling banks of dark cloud, the kinetic scrape of leaping lightning.
    Of these elements he is not afraid as he soars upward in a futile attempt to fly above the storm. He has ridden out many a gale, safe on the shifting wind currents, the whirling flurries of snow, the hard pellets of ice affecting him not at all.
    The fear is of another kind and he is frantic to escape. His silver plumage a blur, he dips now, the air this high too thin for even his avian lungs, and desperately he tries to find a swift current to take him away from the feel of the living thing behind him, its frozen breath on his spread tail feathers, a pulsing caress of death. For it rolls on at his back, alive and malignant and indefatigable; something beyond life, beneath life. Coming.
    He flies like a bolt into lurid purple cloud, out again, his flesh alive with crawling sensation. He tries to call out in his terror, cannot. Down and down he plummets until he sees the surface of the ice sea, dull and flat and comforting. It rushes by beneath him.
    It was useless, and worse than that, suicidal. Through the curtains of blinding snow, dense and dark and turbulent, blotting out all else from sight and hearing, Ronin went aft, mindful of the slick layer of ice already forming on the deck.
    It had hit with an electric jolt, one moment behind them, the next surrounding them in a frenetic shroud, dancing, swirling, driving. The gale was far too strong; even with both of them gripping the wheel, the ship was being hurled about as if it had abruptly lost all weight. Better by far for them to be