Chapter 37
A Dread Tide Rising by Walt Shuler
It’s Monday and Spring Forward. Time is fake, and everything’s made up. Put the new chapter of ADTR in your eyeholes to make things suck less.
Previously: Mac and company finally got their audience with Lord Eric Abassis.
Currently: We return to Kye and Molly who are having a swimming time of it.
A Dread Tide Rising is a serialized, pulp-flavored, epic fantasy novel that follows the Talon, a group of mercenaries, thieves, and smugglers, as they come face-to-face with an ancient enemy intent on the destruction of the Rakkian Empire.
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Chapter 37
Saltwater burned her nose. Kye coughed and managed to open one eye. Above, ragged, dark clouds streamed across the sky, the storm’s fury spent. It took her a moment to realize where she was. Instead of tossing in the waves, she lay on solid ground. She struggled upright and immediately wished she had not. A wave of nausea hit, and she was noisily sick.
Wiping her mouth with the back of a salt-encrusted hand, Kye struggled to her knees and looked around. She sat on a long stretch of gray shingle and sand beach. A few feet from her lay the piece of mast she and Molly had clung to in the aftermath of the wreck.
“Molly?” she managed to croak out. She coughed again, clearing her throat. “Molly?” she called again, stronger this time. Her only answer was the rush of the surf over stones and the distant cry of seabirds. Kye’s heart sank. Had the other woman drowned? She shuddered, as much at the thought of Molly floating somewhere bloated and cold as the realization that she might be alone in a strange land.
A sob caught halfway in her throat, but she choked it back. Something hot and fierce rose in her gut then, and she fought her way to her feet. There would be time for grief later, she told herself. Right now, she needed to focus on other things to survive. She needed water, shelter, and food, in that order. Her instructors had drilled it into her in the Faceless.
Of course, in a city like Rakka, shelter was usually easy enough to find, even if it was nothing more than a stone culvert to protect against the rain. Water was the more challenging of the three, for despite sitting on the coast, Rakka had precious few clean wells available to the public. Her current situation was similar. She glanced to her right. League upon league of water and not a drop to drink. Resigned, she picked a direction at random and set off down the beach. If there was water here, it would have to come to the sea at some point, she reasoned. She was sure to find something if she walked far enough.
As she walked, the sea breeze started to dry her clothing. She felt it stiffening as the salt hardened. She quickly removed what she could, doffing leather in favor of cloth, although she might regret that decision after the sun had set. Lighter and moving more freely, she started walking once more. She saw nothing of interest for an hour, other than fragments of what was likely The Ocean’s Daughter after her disastrous encounter with the storm. Then she saw something dark on the beach ahead.
It was impossible to tell in the fading light, but it looked like a figure. Key continued her trek, and within a few minutes, she was sure it was another person. A few more minutes and she could tell the other person was coming her way. A minute later, she realized the person was running. She could see something dark behind them. More people? A few more feet down the beach, and she could tell the other person was waving their hands over their head. A warning? Her stomach knotted. Whatever this was, it felt like trouble.
Looking to her left, she found there was nowhere to go. The beach had followed a line of low, rolling hills, but those had transformed into a sheer cliff perhaps twenty feet high. With nothing to climb with, it might as well have been a hundred. Not eager for any kind of confrontation, Kye did a quick about-face, but it was only a few minutes before she could hear the other person’s footsteps crunching on the shingle. She glanced back and stopped in her tracks.
“Molly?” she yelled, incredulous.
“Kye!” the older woman yelled. “Go! Run!”
Kye did not wait to be told a second time, although she set off at a slow enough pace that the other woman caught up to her within a few moments.
“What happened?” Kye asked. “When I woke up, I was alone.”
“Me too,” Molly answered between heaving breaths. “I went searching for you but found them instead.” She jerked her head behind her. Kye could now see it was a clot of men following at a run, most with weapons drawn. Their shouts and jeers carried clearly over the shortening distance.
“Bandits?” Kye asked.
Molly did her best to shrug while running. “Bandits or scavengers, it doesn’t really matter. They’re looking for anything of value, and that includes flesh. We need to find somewhere to hide.”
Anger surged through Kye. What gave them the right to take whatever they wanted? Something blossomed inside her, fueled by that anger. She felt it flow upward from her navel into her chest, reaching tendrils up the back of her neck and head. With the sensation came pressure building within her, looking for an outlet.
Unthinking, she slowed and turned to face her pursuers. All that mattered was releasing the pressure that threatened to destroy her. The pursuing men saw her turn and stop, and something about the scene made them falter in their headlong charge. Kye opened her mouth, feeling the pressure mount. Any second, it would come pouring from her in waves, crushing force, pulverizing their pursuers, pulping flesh, and turning bone to powder. She shuddered, whether in terror or ecstasy, she was not sure, and then the pressure vanished. Whatever had been building within her was gone. She looked from the men on the beach to Molly, who had stopped to see what Kye was doing.
“Run!” Kye yelled.
“What happened?” Molly asked as they resumed their flight.
Kye shook her head. “I don’t know. My power was there, but then it wasn’t. I couldn’t do anything!”
The bandits hesitated but then resumed their chase, but silently this time. Kye heard their footsteps in the sand and their ragged breathing, but they no longer shouted. Thank Mali for small favors, Kye thought to herself, but she was unsure if she meant the silence or that her power had vanished.
“Into the hills,” Molly huffed. Kye realized the cliffs had given way to a line of broken hills eroded by wind, waves, and rain. The two women broke from the beach, hoping to find shelter. Kye felt the difference in the terrain immediately. The soil was more forgiving than the beach’s shingle, and they could run faster, putting a little more distance between themselves and their pursuers. She risked a glance backward and realized she could no longer see the bandits, although she still heard them.
Turning back to watch her path, a dark opening down a side valley caught her eye. “There’s a cave,” she hissed to Molly, trying to keep her voice from carrying.
Molly’s eyes lit up at the prospect. “What do we have to lose? They’ll catch us eventually at this rate.” The pair rushed into the valley. It was little more than a ravine, but widened as they went. The cave entrance Kye had spotted was a few feet wide, enough to admit them if they crawled on their bellies. If they had been even a little larger, they would not have fit. Kye and Molly wedged themselves deeper into the cleft, the younger woman whispering a prayer to Mali to hide them in the shadows. Barely breathing, they waited for their pursuers.
They did not have to wait long. With the crunch of rocks under their boots, a pair of bandits jogged past the cave’s mouth.
“This is a waste of time,” one of the men grunted.
“Of course it is, but you know Tash will skin us alive if we don’t at least make a pretense of searching,” his companion replied.
“Damn Tash to a watery grave,” the first man muttered.
“Shut that mouth,” his friend hissed. “You want him to hear you? Worse, you want Mali to hear you? We’ll both be dead men.”
There came the sound of falling stones and a grunt of pain. “Come on, they’re not down this gods-cursed valley. Let’s get back. They must be up ahead somewhere.”
The footsteps receded the way they came. Kye’s lungs burned, and she let out a pent-up breath, only then aware that she had been holding it.
“Let’s give them some time before we venture out,” Molly suggested. Kye nodded in agreement. She could imagine the look on their pursuer’s faces if they returned to find the two women scrambling out of the small valley.
“Yeah, let’s wait a bit,” she agreed. With the immediate threat past, Kye tried to make herself comfortable. The little cave was tall enough to fit Molly and herself if they knelt or squatted, so she twisted around to find a better position. Finding that it was not quite wide enough to accommodate her legs, she squirmed toward the back wall, only to discover that there was none. What they had initially assumed was the rear of the cave was a projecting rock face. The cave itself wound around the rock, widening as it went.
“Molly, you need to see this!” Kye called. Small rocks clattered as Molly crawled through the tight space.
“It might be more comfortable to rest back here,” Kye said when the other woman joined her, waving her hand toward the dimness around them. Enough light filtered in from the cave mouth to illuminate some of the space in shades of gray, but it did not penetrate very deeply. The women sat for a moment, stretching tired muscles and enjoying the relief from not having to crouch.
“How far do you think it goes?” Kye asked at last.
Molly shrugged. “There are caves all over the island, and some of them run for miles. For all I know, this one connects to another system. It could cross the entire island.”
Kye lit up at the thought. “There are caves on Rakka, too. The ones by the harbor used to be used for storage before the city grew. There’s even a rumor that the keep itself is connected to the water by caves that run through the whole of Sun Mount!”
“I’ve heard that,” Molly replied. “A secret escape route for the imperial family or something.”
Kye nodded. “I don’t know if it was ever used or if it even exists.” She stared into the cave’s depths, willing herself to pierce the darkness.
Molly laughed. “Let’s find a branch or something.” She tore a strip from the bottom of her now-dry tunic, and Kye did the same. A cursory search yielded several fair-sized branches and some dry kindling, likely washed in by storms. From somewhere, Molly produced flint and pyrite. She chose a space well behind the false wall and built a small pile of twigs and dried bits of grass. Within a few moments, she had a small fire crackling. They each lit a torch, and then Molly stomped out the little fire. No point in leaving it behind, in case the bandits stumbled on the cave.
“Ready?” Kye asked with a grin.
Molly nodded but did not smile. “I am. Let’s see where this goes.”
Raising their torches, the pair walked into the heart of the earth. The cavern before them widened as they went, the path going ever downward at a slight grade. And it was a path, make no mistake. Someone or something had worn a narrow track almost smooth along the center of the floor. Eventually, Kye began noticing things that seemed out of place: a smooth branch that could have been a walking stick, a mound of stones too symmetrical to be the work of nature.
“I think others have been this way before,” she said quietly. The place virtually demanded silence. Kye felt as if she were leagues below the earth, with tons of stone and soil above her head, waiting for a too-loud girl to trigger a tremor.
“Probably many others, for a very long time,” Molly replied, glancing around. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this joins a wider path. Remember when I told you the people of the Fingers held to the old ways?”
Kye nodded. “You said they worshipped Kukai,” she prompted.
“Good memory.” Molly paused for a moment to pick her way over fallen, shattered stone. “Kukai is a fire god, but there is no fire mountain in the Fingers. He made his home underground near rivers of flame. The people here would venture into the earth to honor their god.”
Kye’s eyes lit up. “And this could lead us to one of those areas? We could find our way out of here without having to go back to the beach.” The excitement lasted only for a moment before she remembered the crushing weight hanging above.
Molly nodded. “That’s the idea.”
Kye frowned. “But all of our gear!”
“I saw none of it on my walk. It’s probably at the bottom of the sea by now.” She tousled Kye’s hair. “Besides, we can get new stuff. This way, we don’t have to deal with bandits.”
It would not take much to replace the little clothing and other items they had packed for the trip. It would also give her a chance to dress more like the people of the Fingers, she realized. It was always better to blend in as long as possible rather than being marked as an outsider from the start. “I like that idea,” Kye said.
Kye did not know how long they had walked. Molly called a halt twice, both times near small pools of fresh water. The water was cool, tasting of minerals; Kye thought it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. They waited beside each pool to recover their strength before walking on. There was no food.
Kye’s stomach growled for what was probably the tenth time. Molly chuckled but said nothing. There was nothing to say. Until they found their way out from beneath the earth, there was little hope of anything to eat.
The path they followed had sloped gently downward since they began their trek. Now it began to steepen. Large boulders littered the alien landscape. Something else was different, but it took Kye some time to realize what it was.
“There’s light,” she muttered, more to herself than to Molly.
“What was that?” the other woman asked.
“Light,” Kye repeated, gesturing with her guttering torch. Beyond the torch’s dying light, a dull reddish glow lit the cavern’s walls. Kye wiped sweat from her brow. “Warmer, too.”
“Well, that’s an interesting development,” Molly breathed. Kye couldn’t tell if she was worried or relieved.
The path they followed widened as others joined it, like tributary streams to a larger river. Within a quarter of an hour, they no longer needed their torches to see, and Kye gratefully tossed hers aside and watched it gutter and die. Molly did the same.
“What’s wrong?” Kye asked. Molly’s frown etched a deep furrow between her eyes.
The other woman shook her head. “It’s nothing I can put my finger on. Something feels…off.” She scanned the boulder-strewn cavern floor for a moment but found nothing out of the ordinary.
A few moments later, they discovered the source of the red light. They stood atop a small rise; the cavern floor dropped away before them, running rough down to a red-gold river that smoked and seethed. No, not a river, Kye saw. A sea. It was an inland sea of molten stone. She could make out a figure not far from the edge outlined against the hellish glare.
“There’s someone down there!” Kye said. She could feel the heat even from this distance. Who would want to be any closer? Who could stand it?
Molly nodded. “That’s who we’ve come to see.”
“Kukai?” Kye’s tone was disbelieving. “Where are all the worshippers?” She searched the shoreline but caught no hint of anyone else.
“I don’t know. We can ask him ourselves in a moment,” Molly said, striding purposefully down toward the steaming shore. Kye was unsure she wanted to meet a god close up, but if Molly was going, then there was no getting out of it. She drew a deep breath that tasted of ash and hurried to catch her companion.
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I wonder if Kye's power vanished because of her proximity to someone else on the island? Or because of that little second-guessing shudder?
I really love the underground molten river and the god they encounter.