Not long after the Al-Orizin left the iceberg sea behind, Iyomelka’s spell-driven ship caught up with them again. The island witch’s weed-stitched sails belled outward with a roar of cold winds, closing the distance in a flurry of storms. Saan knew that despite his best navigational prowess, Iyomelka would be upon them soon.
Angry winds came at them from all directions, and the desperate crew scurried to set and reset the sails. The Al-Orizin was forced to tack back and forth, while Iyomelka’s vessel came straight on toward them.
Overhead, the sky turned gray and bruised. As Grigovar winched down a rigging rope, he kept his gaze on the clouds. “That’s not a normal storm, Captain.”
“I wouldn’t expect it to be normal. We’ve seen how Iyomelka can use the weather. We have to try to outrun it.”
“There’s more to the storm.” Sen Sherufa pointed to an even darker set of thunderheads and a splash of intermittent lightning ahead to port, apart from what Iyomelka was driving ahead of her. “That doesn’t look like her doing.”
The ominous knots ahead comprised a separate rogue storm. With the fury of the island witch behind them and the strange tumultuous weather ahead, the Al-Orizin was being trapped between the prongs of hurricane pincers.
A burst of lightning illuminated the sky like a thousand Nunghal fireworks, accompanied by an explosion of thunder that rattled the masts. Behind them, Iyomelka’s ship closed in, and the serpent-skull figurehead stared at them as if regarding prey.
The whitecap waves became huge swells that heaved them up and pitched them back down again. Gale-force winds drove sheets of cold rain nearly horizontal to the deck. Sikara Fyiri locked herself in her cabin, vomiting into a basin or all over the floor, and Saan didn’t blame her.
He fought his way to the bow, and Sherufa staggered out to join him. Her thick Saedran robes were quickly drenched. He searched for any safe haven ahead, but could barely see through the downpour. Far away, an unexpected flash of light sliced through the sheeting rain and spray. The dazzling beacon brightened then faded, like the eye of a demon slowly opening and closing.
“Look there—a light!” The insistent light came again, and Saan made up his mind. “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t see much other chance out here.” He shouted into the gale, “Change course, two points to starboard! Head for the beacon!”
“Aye, Captain!” The helmsman wrestled with the rudder. The sailors staggering about on deck pulled on the ropes, trying to turn the sails, though the storm fought back.
Ystya came to him. The downpour had plastered her ivory hair to her head; even so, she looked achingly beautiful. Droplets streamed down her pale face, but she didn’t seem cold or frightened. “I’ve come to help you.”
Saan took her hand. Her fingers were cold, and he squeezed them, repeating his promise. “I’ll defend you against your mother if I can. She may well strike me dead within seconds, but I’ll do my best.”
Ystya gave a slight laugh that the wind snatched away. “No need for that—it’s time for me to teach her how much I’ve learned from being with you, how strong I’ve become. I’m no longer an infant she can tuck under her arm and carry away against my will.” As he gripped her, he felt Ystya’s skin tingle with static electricity. She released his hand and stepped to one side as she began to exude a faint glow. “Remember, I’m the Key to Creation.”
As Ystya’s power shielded them, the winds died, the rain stopped, and an eerie calm descended over the Al-Orizin, yet her silken sails remained stretched, filled by an unfelt breeze. Ystya looked at Saan with an enigmatic gaze. “My mother isn’t the only one who can control storms.”
The young woman gathered energy and struck her own blow. A spiderweb of lightning danced in the clouds, then lanced back toward the spectral ship. The whitecap waves surged back toward the witch’s patchwork vessel. Ystya clenched her hands, and a roar of thunder boomed out, one powerful force challenging another.
With her feet firmly planted on the moss-smeared deck, hands grasping the barnacle-encrusted rail, Iyomelka hung on. She called upon the magic that suffused her and also borrowed from the ever-increasing reservoir of power that emanated from her husband’s crystal-encased body.
Though Ondun had drowned long ago after an unfortunate set of circumstances, even in death he had not entirely lost his power. As she sailed nearer to the magical shores of Terravitae, Iyomelka sensed the spark brightening in the crystal coffin. Though she spent his power calling storms in pursuit of their daughter, Ondun seemed to be growing stronger. It would be just like her husband to reawaken and bother her again, precisely when he was least needed.
Her ship sliced through the water, helped along by the streaming waves. Not far ahead, she could see the Al-Orizin’s colored sails and sense her daughter’s presence aboard. Close…so close.
But Iyomelka felt other powerful storms approaching—a knotted, self-contained hurricane that was not of her making. That other unnatural storm pressed against her spells, an independent force. Though she was about to collide with it, she refused to alter course, intent upon Saan’s ship and her kidnapped child.
Iyomelka was taken aback, and gasped aloud as a bright white beacon stabbed through the whipping rain. She knew instantly what it was: Mailes! A place in her heart opened again, exposing memories she had buried under centuries of dust. She reeled.
So long ago, at the end of an era, Ondun had forced her to stand at that isolated rocky outcropping—sad and contrite—while he exiled Mailes to the Lighthouse at the End of the World. In her shame at betraying her husband, Iyomelka had turned away from her lover, unable to bid him farewell, leaving Mailes abandoned for all time on that lonely speck of land.
Ondun hadn’t loved Iyomelka for some time, though his pride wouldn’t let him admit it. Everything was falling apart in Terravitae, their people weakening, their race dwindling away. His severe punishment of Mailes had more to do with refusing to accept failure than wanting to win his wife’s heart again. For a while afterward, she and Ondun had tried to rekindle their love, but even he couldn’t just command such a thing, no matter how great his powers might be. It hadn’t worked, even though she had conceived his child—an extreme rarity among their long-lived race. If timing and circumstances had been different, Ystya could have been the child of Mailes, a daughter born out of real love.
Now, as she spotted the lighthouse beacon, Iyomelka realized that her own journey had come full circle—fleeing Terravitae, hiding on her island for so many centuries, and then sailing in pursuit of her daughter. She wondered what Mailes would think to see omnipotent Ondun sealed in a transparent box, drowned and helpless.
Iyomelka looked down at the old man’s placid face beneath the sparkling water. “We’ve come back here after all, husband, even though you never wished to return. It must be our destiny.”
She longed to see Mailes, but rescuing her daughter was the most important thing. The Key to Creation. The girl was already at risk of learning too much about herself.
The opposing storm buffeted her ship and actually pushed the vessel backward. The petrified masts creaked, and the wind blew in Iyomelka’s face with enough force to make her stagger on the deck. Startled at the strength, she realized that Ystya was doing this!
Impressed, but not deterred, she summoned more storms of her own and pressed on toward the Al-Orizin and the Lighthouse at the End of the World.