Page 26 of I Summon the Sea

Why is Tru treating him so kindly? Is he happy with the way Athdara behaves toward people? Then again, why wouldn’t he? They are both on the same side, both of them fae, violent, warmongering brutes.

I glare at them both as Tru grabs Athdara’s arm and hauls him away. As Athdara lets him. It’s no big wonder only Tru can stand him, that everyone else talks shit behind his back. He does sound a little bit mad and a whole lot heinous.

Arkin was right. Athdara is crazy. Crazy and just as awful as I’d expected.

He saved you. Told the guards to let you stay on the barge. He’s the reason you’re still alive.

He seems to be regretting that decision now, though, and I can’t afford to be thrown off the barge, not when I’m so close to my goal. I watch Tru drag the man away, anger finally blooming and warming my chest, giving me a respite from the ever-gnawing doubt living in my stomach.

Athdara thinks I should cower. He thinks I shouldn’t be here. These are his real thoughts, revealed. He would rather I’d stayed far away, not to get in his way.

Well, tough. This little lady is here to stay.

The wind keeps buffeting us as we rise and fall on the waves radiating out from the Pillar and toward the shore. Our flat barge isn’t made for the open sea, even if the Central Sea tends to be calm most of the time.

Not this time of the year, though.

I turn my glare toward the Pillar, the culprit for the heaving water.You, too, I think, hoping I’m not actually insulting a god or goddess.Like Athdara, being a nasty piece of work.

“Did you see how he rode the drak into the sea?” a guard asks somewhere at my back. “That was cracking mad.”

“I heard say his shadows don’t work in the water,” another says, “which makes it doubly insane. He must have dived into the maelstrom and threw the spears like this… and like that…”

I glance at them over my shoulder as they re-enact the fight with the charybdis. They are young, their normally unlined faces scrunched up in concentration.

“And then he swerved up,” the first one says, twisting from the waist to show the motion, “as the monster stopped sucking, releasing the eddy, chased by the water?—”

“—up into the air, urging the drak on, until he was clear,” the second finishes. “Whew. Mad drak riding skills. One day I want to become a drak rider.”

“Not everyone can become one, you idiot. The number of spots in the squadrons is limited. Besides, it’s a dangerous job.”

“I bet I can make it.”

“I’ll write your obituary. Here lies the shadow of a stupid fae who thought drak riding was all fun and games.”

“You are no fun. And speaking of shadows… Why can’t Athdara use his shadow magic in the water?”

Good question, I think, invested in the conversation despite myself.

“Water is eating at the foundations of our kingdom, rotting, filthy, and corrupt,” the young guard says.

“And?”

“And most importantly, the essence of his magic is fire, idiot. Fire and water don’t mix.”

The barge lurches over a wave, and I turn back to my contemplation of the Pillar and the Sea Palace. Dragons belong to the element of fire, that’s true, at least the winged kind of dragons, but what about those shadows?

The tall boats by our sides blare horns and trumpets to signal our arrival at the islands. The Sea Palace Island rises much higher than the islets forming the semi-circular arena, a long terrace leading right over the sea, and a square balcony extending on top of it, jutting right out of the palace.

It has to be where the king sits during the games.

I make out trees on either side of the palace, twisted by the magic of the Pillar, dark and jagged shapes, a forest of them covering the rocks of the island down to the waterline.

Banners are fluttering at the top of the white turrets, and cannons and catapults are visible on the terraces, set to prevent any monster from climbing out of the sea.

The other island, connected with the bridge to the palace, has to be the Temple Island. The buildings rising on it have to be the lodgings for the guests—High Fae families, perhaps a few human allies, as well as the priests and the personnel necessary to run the palace, the ceremonies, and, of course, the games.

But we aren’t about to anchor at either island. A third, lone isle looms before the palatial area. This one is lined with numerous rock wharfs extending out into the sea, and I wonder if all these boats and barges, a great multitude more following us, will fit. Other boats are already moored there, having preceded us, and the convoy alone will take an entire wharf to dock.

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