watched, she made a gesture like a fisherwoman casting a net, and a lattice of power, complex and tight, flew forth from her hands.
It enmeshed the Eagle of Lothern, bolstering its timbers and strengthening them against the storm, aiding it to cut through the water. The ship, which had been heeling before the wind, righted itself. The timbers creaked but held. He sensed that in some way Lady Malene was communing with the vessel. It was bound to her as she was bound to it.
An enormous wall of water smashed over the prow and raced towards them. Teclis saw Tyrion brace himself for impact. Lady Malene gestured and the waters parted in front of her, sloughing off over the afterdeck, leaving Tyrion standing a little bemused at being hit only by spray.
No sooner had she completed weaving that spell than she began another, summoning sentient vortices, forming the wind into air elementals, calming their anger and directing them about the ship as if they were a second crew. The sails billowed outwards but did not rip or tear or drive the ship down. Some of the elementals ran before the ship, shielding it from the worst buffeting of the storm; others gathered the fury of the wind and harnessed it, sending the vessel scudding along like a cloud over the angry sea.
Teclis was no longer frightened. He no longer worried that the ship would go down. He understood that Malene was completely the mistress of the situation and as long as she remained so, the Eagle of Lothern was safe.
Here was something he understood, could do. This woman was capable of teaching him it. Chance or fate, whatever anyone might choose to call it, had placed her in his path and he was determined to make the most of the opportunity. For long hours he watched fascinated, as she as much as the captain and crew brought the ship through the worst of the storm.
As suddenly as it had come upon them, the storm passed, leaving the sea calming in its wake as it raced off inland towards the mountains where it could continue to wreak havoc. The ship continued to sail its course, moving on steadily towards its goal, the only sign it had ever been captured in the storm’s embrace the pools of water left puddling on the deck.
Lady Malene looked a little tired but also triumphant. Perhaps the oddest thing and certainly the one that impressed itself most on Teclis in that moment was that, though everyone around her was soaked to the skin, she was absolutely dry. Neither the sea nor the storm seemed to have touched her.
‘That was the worst storm I have seen in a long, long time,’ said Captain Joyelle.
‘Yes,’ Malene said. ‘And there was dark magic in it. I fear that it may serve some fell purpose before it is done.’
The captain nodded and was silent, unwilling to discuss the matter further.
Lady Malene turned and looked at Teclis knowingly. ‘You saw all of that, didn’t you?’
He nodded. ‘It was very impressive.’ The words were an understatement but they were all he could think to say. ‘I have read about such things but I never thought to witness them.’
‘You will witness far more impressive things before you are done, unless I miss my guess,’ she said. ‘Work them too.’
‘I hope so,’ he said. She smiled at him again and walked off the deck and down the stairs below. The looks of the captain told him that now she was gone, he and Tyrion were no longer welcome on the command deck either. He did not really care. He went below himself and for the first time in a long time, he did not feel sick.
The storm blew in from the east. It toppled trees and blew off roofs and hurled the seas around Ulthuan forwards in great churning waves. Enormous winds drove brutal, black thunderclouds before it. Savage rains poured down as if intending to drown the world.
The storm roared through the mountains of Ulthuan, passing over a carved stone so ancient it was crumbling. The runes on its face, despite their magical protections, were all but obscured by the millennia-long erosion of the elements.
As if tossed by the hand of a wicked god, a bolt of lightning surged down and struck the ancient waystone. Sparks flew and the stench of ozone and something else filled the air. Thunder roared and then died away and for a moment there was eerie silence. Then