Page 226 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Light returned. My sight returned.
The seer lay cold on the floor while footsteps shuffled above.
A stream of sunlight pierced the air, illuminating dust particles floating so peacefully through nothingness. But I couldn’t stop to admire the simple beauty of the elements.
I was already running back to the cave.
61
FREEDOM THE END OF THE WORLD
So fain I would come to thee!
And the water’s so bright in a still moonlight
As I look across the sea.
— WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, “ACROSS THE SEA”
My power still pulsed with the rhythm of a wave as I reentered the darkness. My palms were wet, though I knew that as soon as they dried, this surge, the power of the shape, would pass. For now, though, it felt as though the power of everything I touched passed through me courtesy of the drops still clinging to my palms and fingers.
I had minutes. Maybe less until Lynch recovered himself enough to check on his partner and discovered Senni’s body on the floor of the cell, strewn over ancient bloodstains of centuries of torture.
I hoped the bard rotted in the visions the cell had to offer. I hope they drowned him in their misery with nothing to spare.
“Jonathan!” I called across the water. He had moved from where the light shone through the door I’d only managed tofind on my fourth try. If this was indeed the remnants of an old passage grave, it was larger than any others I’d heard of—closer in scale to the hypogea in ancient Malta or the catacombs in Rome.
He was still here, though. Something else had led me through the dimly lit passages other than my skewed sense of direction. Something like a cord, a weaving of blue and amber that appeared to my mind’s eye. A bond, tenuous but real, visible now only because the water in my veins yearned for the fire in his.
“Cass?” Jonathan emerged, face drawn and cold, his starched white shirt stained and wrinkled. His glasses were gone.
“I’m here,” I said. “Your power?”
“Still gone.” He closed his eyes, as if in pain. “I can’t See anything. Could barely produce that light before, and I honestly think it was only because you were channeling yours somehow.”
Curious. I put that thought aside as I examined the water flowing between us. The underground river wasn’t particularly wide, but based on that impenetrable dark, I guessed it was at least as deep, and the current was moving quickly. It also explained why they would have put Jonathan on the other side of it. Water was the easiest way to keep a cat at bay—especially one with OCD and a known phobia.
“I’m coming.” Hurriedly, I kicked off my shoes and slid down the rock and into the water, hissing when the chill hit my bare legs. I had little more than my dress and the fisherman’s sweater, thinking to impress the Council, not about spelunking.
“No, don’t. It’s too dangerous. The water…” Jonathan shuddered. “There may be…things in there.”
I didn’t want to ask what kinds of creatures might reside in a river flowing through the bottom of an ancient gravesite. Even so, I wasn’t scared. The droplets on my hands buzzed, eager to join the power before us. Water would always be my safe place, asource of calm and control. The current would protect me if only I asked.
Shouts echoed from the corridor, and footsteps started down the stairs outside the cave’s entrance.
“No,” I said as I waded in further. “We have to gonow.”
Two feet in, the bottom fell out as the water took me under. It struck through my heart, undoubtedly sourced directly from a glacier’s bosom. But twenty-nine years of surfing the waves of the Pacific had hardened me to this kind of cold.
Welcome, daughter, the river said.I’ve been waiting for you.
Help me to him, I asked as I tugged mentally on the bond linking me to Jonathan.
To my surprise, the current shifted and followed the cord directly to my mate.
“Cass!” Jonathan grabbed my arm and pulled me out, though he didn’t have to work that hard. The river was still helping too.
Thank you, I told it just before I pulled my feet to the bank’s edge.
