'He has lost his mind.'
'Forget him – look, death, terrible death, it comes-'
'Mad? So what. I'd rather listen to him than any of you. He said listen, he said that, and so I shall.'
'We will all listen, idiot – we have no choice, have we?'
Destriant. We got it all wrong. Don't you see? All I have done… cannot be forgiven. Can never be forgiven – he's sent me back. Even Hood – he's rejected me, flung me back. But… it's slipping away, so tenuous, I am failing'Failing, falling, what's the difference?'
Reaching.
'What?'
My hands – do you see them? Cut loose, that's what happened. The hands… cut loose. Freed. I can't do this… but I think they can.
Don't you see? 'Senseless words.'
'No, wait-'
Not Destriant.
Shield Anvil.
Reaching… look upon me – all of you! Reach! See my hands! See them!
They're reaching – reaching out for you!
They… are… reaching…
Barathol swam down into darkness. He could see… nothing. No-one.
Chaur, oh gods, what have I done? He continued clawing his way downward. Better he drowned as well – he could not live with this, not with that poor man-child's death on his hands – he could notHis own breath was failing, the pressure closing in, pounding in his skull. He was blindA flash of emerald green below, blooming, incandescent, billowing out – and at its core – Oh gods, wait – wait for meLimp, snagged in unravelled folds of canvas, Chaur was sinking, arms out to the sides, his eyes closed, his mouth… open.
No! No, no!
From the pulsing glow, heat – such heat – Barathol fought closer, his chest ready to explode – and reached down, down**** A section of the aft deck floated free from what was now little more than pummelled wreckage. The firestones tore down on all sides as Cutter struggled to help Scillara clamber onto the pitching fragment.
Those firestones – they were smaller than pebbles, despite the fistsized holes they had punched through the Grief. Smaller than pebbles – more like grains of sand, glowing bright green, like spatters of glass, their colour changing, almost instantly, into rust red as they plummeted into the depths.
Scillara cried out.
'Are you hit? Oh, gods – no-'
She twisted round. 'Look! Hood take us – look!' And she lifted an arm, pointed as a swelling wave lifted them – pointed eastwardTowards Otataral Island.
It had… ignited. Jade green, a glowing dome that might have spanned the entire island, writhing, lifting skyward, and, rising up through it… hands. Of jade. Like… like Heboric's. Rising, like trees. Arms – huge – dozens of them – rising, fingers spreading, green light spiralling out – from their upturned palms, from the fingers, from the veins and arteries cabling their muscled lengths – green light, slashing into the heavens like sword-blades. Those arms were too big to comprehend, reaching upward like pillars through the dome-as the fires filling the sky seemed to flinch… tremble… and then began to converge.
Above the island, above the hands of jade reaching up, through the billowing green light.
The first falling sun struck the glowing dome.
The sound was like a drum beat, on a scale to deafen the gods. Its pulse rippled through the dome's burgeoning flanks, racing outward and seeming to strip the surface of the sea, shivering through Cutter's bones, a concussion that triggered bursting agony in his ears – then another, and another as sun after sun plunged into that buckling, pocked dome. He was screaming, yet unable to hear himself. Red mist filled his eyes – he felt himself sliding from the raft, down into the foam-laden wavesEven as an enormous clawed foot reached down, spread wide over Cutter – and Scillara, who was grasping him by an arm, seeking to drag him back onto the raft – and talons the size of scimitars closed round them both. They were lifted from the thrashing water, upward, up**** Reaching… yes. For me, closer, closer.
Never mind the pain.
It will not last. I promise. I know, because I remember.
No, I cannot be forgiven.
But maybe you can, maybe I can do that, if you feel it's needed – I don't know – I was the wrong one, to have touched… there in that desert. I didn't understand, and Baudin could never have guessed what would happen, how I would be marked.
Marked, yes, I see now, for this, this need.
Can you hear me? Closer – do you see the darkness? There, that is where I am.