Call of Kerberos: Twilight of Kerberos, The - Jonathan Oliver Page 0,32

in a maelstrom of events out of their control and Katya didn't think that any of them could have done anything differently.

"I'm sorry," she said.

There was a gentle kick then and she put a hand to her belly.

"Are you alright?" Silus said.

"Yes, I just think we may have woken someone up."

Silus put his hand over Katya's.

"Feels like our child is going to be a fighter."

"Then he or she will take after the father."

Katya smiled and the infant kicked again.

Chapter Nine

For five days they saw nothing but rough seas; the iron green waters rising and falling around them like a range of wild and constantly changing hills. Rain lashed the sails while lightning arced down to discharge itself into the water. Through all of this the Llothriall remained the one calm point, the deck remaining steady beneath their feet.

The ship sighed and sang as it made its way through the maelstrom. The magic that flowed through the Llothriall warmed it so that the temperature on board felt always like a balmy summer afternoon. On top of the subtle incense-like scent of the warm timbers was a stronger odour, like the musk of an ancient book or bales of perfumed cloth.

Kelos had told them that each strand of magic had its own particular smell and that sometimes they combined to produce heady, otherworldly scents. Ioannis was of the opinion that these otherworldly scents were more to do with the strange weed that Father Maylan was in the habit of smoking.

On the sixth day the sea calmed a little and Dunsany postulated that they had broken through the Storm Wall, the first vessel manned by humans ever to have done so.

That evening they celebrated and Ioannis introduced them all to a variety of sea shanties that Katya was grateful her child was not yet born to hear. The drinking would have continued well beyond the point where the majority of them were comfortably drunk, had not Dunsany pointed out that they probably didn't want to exhaust their supplies this early into the voyage.

And so, the crew offered their goodnights. The only one not to do so was Emuel, who had retired long before.

In their cabin Silus admired Katya as she slept, impressed that she had managed to hold court with as much élan as the drunken men who surrounded her. He kissed her as she sighed in her sleep, she didn't need drink to be witty or to be persuaded into song. Silus watched her for a moment more before leaving the cabin.

On the main deck the wheel held steady, set to a course that Dunsany and Kelos had decided between them. The boards of the deck steamed slightly as the recent rains dried and Silus enjoyed the touch of this gentle mist as he lay down.

Kerberos seemed to hang lower and larger in the sky than usual and he wondered whether the seas they were traversing would prove to be a path to the seat of the ancestors. (Father Maylan had told him that all paths lead to Kerberos, but Silus didn't fully understand what he meant). Taking a telescope from a pocket he trained it on the azure orb and watched the play of clouds that covered its surface. He wondered how many times he had sent entreaties into those impenetrable vapours. How many times had he asked a blessing of the ancestors who resided there, or cursed the unknowable sphere for some imagined bad luck or malady?

Silus put the telescope down and closed his eyes. Below him, the deck pitched gently and, for the first time during the voyage, he felt calm, though always there was the fear that the Chadassa would find them.

The susurrus of the sea and the touch of a gentle wind conspired with the alcohol in his blood to take him into sleep, and he gave up consciousness gladly.

He was falling towards an endless sea of clouds. On the horizon the first rays of a rising run sent shards of light across the slowly evolving landscape below. Flickering tongues of lightning erupted from hills of vapour, heavy with the threat of thunder while clouds parted to open up on great amethyst pools, their depths endless and hungry.

Far above him hung a blue-green sphere and he knew that it was from there that he had fallen.

He drifted down into the purple sea and the clouds parted only briefly to mark his passage.

He had no way of measuring the speed of his descent. On all sides he was