Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

Without waiting for further encouragement or the results of the argument, Chastity lifted her skirts and ran.

Hopelessly out of breath, she reached the beach just as the boat did. It slued sideways and tipped. The next wave hurled it over. She saw the occupant fall clear before it turned turtle. She plunged into the water, struggling to run as waves tugged at her skirts, beat against her knees, her thighs, her waist. The boat rolled and bounced, its mast leaping alongside in a tangle of ropes. Chastity went down and was submerged. A wave rolled her and thumped her on the seabed; she swallowed water; choked. Then she sat up and found her head above the surface. She coughed. A big green wave curled up before her.

Strong hands grabbed her and pulled her erect. The sailor! She clung to him as the wave broke around them. Then the two of them stumbled awkwardly shoreward together, holding each other, gazing at each other in joyful wonder.

He was not young—about her own age. Thin silver hair was streaked over his face and scalp, white stubble adorned his cheeks. But his face was a wonderful tan color and his eyes a wild, mysterious black. And he was a priest! Any lingering doubts about sin could be forgotten if a priest was involved, and he certainly was involved. He seemed even more frantically eager than she.

“Wet clothes!” she said. She must get him out of his wet clothes before he caught a chill, and apparently he had the same idea about hers. She was fumbling with the buttons on his back before the two of them were even out of the water, then her patience gave out. His clerical habit was tattered already—she ripped it apart. He might not be young and muscular, but he had a wonderfully hairy chest. He wore some sort of packages strapped around his waist, and she had trouble getting them off him because he was busy with her underwear and the two of them kept getting in each other’s way. He was moaning with frustration and impatience.

Then it was done, all except for his socks, which didn’t matter. He might be scrawny-limbed and pot-bellied, but oh, how beautiful he was! His lips pressed against hers. She clasped him to her, hairy chest against breasts. They sank to the sand together. As her last rational thoughts were swirled away by storms of passion, Sister Chastity realized that the doubts she had felt earlier had been answered.

There was much good in hurricanes.

3

Rap hit the water with an impact that half stunned him. In a moment he became aware that his clothing was slowing his descent into the depths, but already the light had faded to green darkness and he was choking. He tried to kick, fought against panic as his boots resisted, watched the daylight grow slowly, slowly brighter. Saltwater filled his nose and mouth. At the last possible moment he broke surface and gasped life saving air before he went under again.

He tugged his right boot off; seized another breath, then set to work on the left. After that he took a brief rest, treading water, before he began tugging at sodden garments. By the time he had, stripped to his breeches, he already felt exhausted.

He had been a strong swimmer twenty years ago. Now he was twenty years older and had not swum a stroke since. Bluegreen swells raised him, lowered him, and there was nothing but sea anywhere. He snorted water out of his aching nose. This might all be some sort of elvish prank, but more likely Thume’s occult defenses had skewed the sorcery and deflected him.

How far? If he was as much as a league out to sea, then he would never make it. And which way? North was usually landward in the Summer Seas. Calling up blurred memories of charts, though, he recalled that the coast of Thume trended almost north-south, so he ought to head eastward—unless he’d been bounced right over the land and come down in the Moming Sea instead. The water felt warmish, so he’d best assume he hadn’t. The early sun would he roughly southeast . . . except that he’d gone a long way east and the sun would be higher here.

Time for sorcery! He must remove his body shielding and use farsight—and hope that the defenses, whatever they were, did not make him forget where he was supposed to be going, and also hope that the Covin had not detected a hint of his arrival and set watch for more power in use.

His shielding would not budge, he remained mundane. That was ridiculous! He stopped treading water for a moment, letting himself sink as he tried again, but again his power failed to operate. No one could make a spell so strong he could not undo it! It was impossible. This must be more Thumian mischief. No help for it, though, he would just have to swim.

He kicked back to the surface, turned until the sun was over his right ear, and began.

Sometime in the long ordeal that followed, he worked out what had happened to his sorcery. Three of the four words he knew were feeble wraiths of words, words that Inos had crippled years ago by broadcasting them to a multitude of listeners. The only effective word of the four was the one she had never known, the one he’d bullied Sagorn into sharing with him, long ago.

So now he knew what had happened in the sky tree after he had been sent on his way. Obviously, Lith’rian had unraveled the sequential spell in order to administer justice on Darad. Thrown to the winds, the warlock had said, and no imagination was needed to understand what that meant in a sky tree. The jotunn was probably dead already. He had attempted a massacre and might have slaughtered everyone present had he not been balked by sorcery. Killing had been a reflex to him, he had been a wild beast. Rap could not find it in his heart to mourn.

He felt no sorrow, only guilt. In retrospect, he saw that he had let personal gratitude blind his judgment. He had been wrong to include Darad in the meld when he replaced the sequential spell. He should have left the jotunn out and transported him to Nordland, where his behavior would have been controlled by others of his own kind.

Yet who could say what Darad might have done then? Free of the time limits of the spell and knowing a word of power, he might easily have won himself a thanedom and led murderous raids southward to ravish the coasts of the Impire. ”Might have been” was not a game for mortals.

Lith’rian had not harmed the others. Sagorn, Thinal, Jalon, and Andor must at least be alive, for they were Rap’s problem. The word of power must now serve five where it had once served only two. He could not remove his own spell. He was even less of a sorcerer than he had been before.

He was a lot less of a swimmer, too. He kept up a slow, leisurely stroke, telling himself that he was conserving his strength and trying to avoid a killer cramp. In fact, of course, it was all he was capable of. He was going to drown.

There were worse ways to die. It was better than falling into Zinixo’s clutches, for a start. His biggest regret was that Inos would never know what had happened to him. He wished he had been less brusque when they said good-bye, three-quarters of a year ago. He had walked out of her life without warning and she would never know that his corpse had fed fish in the Sea of Sorrows.

He began taking rests, floating on his back. The rests grew longer and more frequent.

He had no memory of the end of the swim. Suddenly he was in surf, and his knees hit sand. He rolled, scrabbling vainly with his fingers to resist the undertow. Then he was lying on a beach with shallow water racing away around him. Behind him, he could hear the next wave coming.

His limbs would not take his weight. They were made of dough. Froth surged over his legs, lifting him, bearing him landward. Again he grounded and dug fingers in the sand to fight against the back flow. He dragged himself a span or so up the beach and the next surge did not move him.

So he was in Thume. Or perhaps the Keriths, or almost anywhere. He was deadwood; he could not lift his head. He needed a drink. He needed shade, for the sun was a furnace on his back. He was going to go to sleep. Sleep was death. Couldn’t help it.

A flapping sound made him open his eyes. A large gull had settled near him and was busily tucking its wings back into storage. It studied him with one cruel yellow eye.