Findel's Embrace

The Synod gathered in the Wellspring Grove. No matter the time of day, it was dim beneath the ancient canopy of trees, the air hot and damp from the bubbling waters. The members of the Synod did not stand together, but loosely ringed the Wellspring. They did not need to speak with their voices.

"They continue to seek Vah'tane. Hundreds have gone, mostly in the east. Some Trees from Miret survived, and the companies report they have gone into the Mingling as well." It was the High Liel of Yene thinking.

"It is the same with us," agreed the High Lielu of Lishni.

"Can we dispatch the remnants of the repulsed company to pursue them again?"

"We should consider this a boon. The afflicted go, and others whose minds are prone to foolishness. Let them, and the embrace grows stronger."

"With Aelor and Talanael restored to us, we are stronger than we have been since the Malady first came."

"The scions of Talanael and Aelor grow few in this generation. The minds of the last scions were broken when the cursed one returned. It could happen again."

"The aged resist the blessing. It is best not to let it pass to an older branch."

"Confidence is a mistake. We are still at risk, both from his return and the Malady."

"The scions are in isolation far in the west."

"We must see that all the scions of Aelor and Talanael mate and produce heirs."

"Mates will be selected from Piev for Talanael and Yene for Aelor."

"Forego the usual ceremonies. It should be done—"

The High Liele of Aelor and Talanael collapsed, ripped from the union of wills. Their screams erupted in the grove. They grasped their heads with hands, tearing their own skin.

"Send riders!"

"Findel's mercy!"

*************

Faro stood at the prow of the sleek Inevien sloop. Its sides were so low he could have trailed his fingers in the water, but the craft was fast—faster than the lumbering ships the humans used to raid the coasts. They had seen a human sail on the horizon two days before but had outrun it easily. Now they were beyond that danger; human crafts rarely braved the hazards of the Strait of Shoals to slip into the western sea. The drafts of their ships were too deep, and the way perilous. It was said that thousands of years ago, the channel islands were part of a land bridge that connected Findeluvié to the southern mainland, but the Synod had sunk it, creating the shoals and rocks that plagued the passage.

The last glow of the sunset cast a gold haze in the western sky beyond the rim of whatever strange land lay in the distance. It was a barren place. The Inevien merely call it "the west." The evening stars already shone bright in the east.

"We approach the mist-wall," Elshir said. He and his two sons formed the crew of the little sloop. "Are you sure you would brave the river? We could put you ashore further up the coast where sentinels are less likely."

They had gone over this argument before, and Faro knew that the shipmaster only brought it up out of fear for himself, his sons, and his vessel, and not for Faro's sake.

"I will see to the sentinels," Faro answered. He did not welcome the interruption. He needed to focus and prepare for what waited ahead. Already, he felt the growing strength of the Wellspring. Before long, he would be seen. If he grasped the Current, they would see him already, but he painstakingly avoided it.

"You are sure you can give us wind in the river?"

"I am sure."

Faro wasn't sure, but this was the course he had set himself. He thought of Vireel. She would have helped him. Maybe he could have done to her mind what she had tried to do to his. He hadn't realized his own capabilities. He still wasn't sure, and he had to be careful. Only his mother and Coir could ever truly be safe, unable to manipulate him with the Wellsprings, unable to even sense its horrid presence.

"There it is," Elshir said.

Faro had already seen the white wall ahead. The mist rose at the edge of the Nethec where the warm air and waters within met the cold outside. He turned to Elshir. The vien was nervous, clearly, fiddling with the hilt of his knife. It was not outside reason that they might try to rid themselves of Faro before seeing the promise through, and so he had watched them carefully throughout the voyage. Beyond the Currents of the Wellsprings, he was as helpless as any other.

Faro had seen the sloops in the guarded harbor of Chemil and had inquired about the various shipmasters. By reports, Elshir was a risk taker, defiant of both humans and the Nethec. Faro had found the vien and prodded his willingness to undertake a voyage out of the bounds of the Currents. Faro told the shipmaster that he came from an inland enclave where he had never seen the water, and he wished to go out onto the sea, for the desire to gaze upon the stars from atop the waves had captured his mind. He offered a dhar jewel as payment.

It wasn't until they were underway that Faro revealed his true proposal. Elshir had lost a brother to the war in the Mingling, as many in the border enclaves had. When Faro confided his identity and offered the rest of his dhar treasures, minus the spear, Elshir accepted the chance to strike a blow against the Nethec. Faro had been prepared to contend with them should they refuse. So far, his concern for their trustworthiness was unfounded, but it was easier to accept such a venture far away in friendly waters than it was to sail up the river Veroi in the dark of night.

The prow pierced the wall of mist, and the towering bank of fog rose high above them, swirling in mixing winds above mixing currents. Their sail flapped and snapped and Elshir's sons let out the mainsheet to find the best trim to keep momentum. They would not know their exact position until they passed through the fog and drew close enough to shore to identify the hills.

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Within the mist, they heard no sound but the water streaming along their sides, and even that was muffled. The stars above had vanished. Their visibility was limited to the murky outlines of the ship itself. The sail fell lax. The ship moved only on dying momentum for a score of yards. A new breeze stirred against Faro's face, and the sail reacted, billowing out behind. They had reached the breeze of the Nethec, blowing from the northeast. The prow of the ship began to swing round.

"This is an ill breeze for our purpose," Elshir said. "Now would be a time for that wind you promised."

Now, Faro reached for the Current. There was no trace of Isecan's Wellspring there, but the Nethec Current flowed past, and Faro took it. All at once he knew them. They were together there at the Wellspring. He glimpsed Aelor and Talanael and felt the spasm of their forfeiture. The others reeled—not even Findel was prepared for Faro's arrival to the west. Their confusion gave him only moments.

The sails snapped outward, their billow reserved. Elshir's eldest nearly lost hold of the mainsheet.

"Not that much!" Elshir gasped.

Faro tried to ease the wind as the sloop strained and surged forward. He wanted to use the spear, for when he used the living steel, he felt an easing of the Change in his body, as if the steel itself bore much of the brunt yet remained unmarred. But he did not use it. The Synod might recognize it, he didn't know, and he would need surprise. In minutes, they burst through the fog. The long undulating line of the Nethec coast lay to the east, but Elshir turned their prow back northward to skirt the coast.

Findel slammed against Faro's mind. He buckled, grasping the rail and grinding his teeth. There was no Isecan to draw on. The pressure was immense as Findel tried to tear Faro's thoughts apart. Doubts welled up. This would be a disaster. Better to throw himself overboard than to attempt it. He struggled for breath.

"Are you well?" Elshir asked, raising a hand as if to steady him but hesitating, unwilling to touch.

"Just sail," Faro grunted. "You know the way."

Faro had given Elshir Coir's map, meticulously detailed by Coir's own hand in his younger years, when his lines were steady and strong. It was a compilation of the maps of the Nethec, which Coir had borrowed without permission from the House of Lira, showing landmarks along the Veroi coast. Most importantly, it showed the approach to the river Veroi.

Faro tried to focus his mind on memories of his mother and of Coir. He wasn't sure what Findel could perceive, but the thoughts steadied his purpose.

"It isn't a river," Coir had told him. "There is no spring at its head, and it only flows with the tides. It's a deep rift open to the sea, reaching far into Findeluvié, dividing Veroi from Tlorné. They say it teems with fish, not that your people would know what to do with a good fried fish."

Come and die.

Faro did not respond. He would give Findel no more of his mind than he could take by force. The thoughts of the Synod were jumbled, frightened and confused. Faro tried to pay them no heed. Minutes felt like hours as they beat their way up the coast. Faro could give them a following wind, but to change the waves would take too much.

"Can you move the wind to the beam reach?" Elshir asked.

"To where?"

"From that way." Elshir pointed southeast.

Faro nodded, seeking the air with his will. There was a creak of ropes as the breeze shifted. A gust struck them, threatening for a moment to tear the sail or turn them on their beam.

"Easy!" Elshir said.

"That wasn't me." Faro gritted his teeth. The Synod had struck, but they were far, reaching over many miles, and they did not clearly see what he was about. They must have realized he was on a ship, though. Faro struggled to steady the wind around the little craft; he only needed a narrow margin, while the Synod was tossing waves across miles, too far away to know better. Faro felt the pricks of pain in his fingers and the skin along his arms. Kneeling down, he braced his arms on the joining of the prow rails and laid his head atop them, closing his eyes. He had to hold as much as he could in reserve. This was still the easy part.

It was an hour before Elshir spoke again.

"I believe that is the cliff," he said. Faro lifted his throbbing head and squinted. A low cliff-face jutted out into the sea, or so it looked. According to Coir's map, it was the north face of the gap in the coast made by the so-called Veroi river.

"Go ahead," Faro mumbled.

"We will need the wind to veer into the south as we turn in," Elshir said.

"I will do it." Faro laid his head back down.

"What about the sentinels? They would be fools not to guard it."

Faro nodded.

"Mind our course," he said. It was time to draw on even more. He did not look up as he did it. He did not have to.

The approach to using the Current mattered. Vireel had taught him that. There was more than one way to achieve any of one's intents. He could warm the water below them far above the temperature of the air. It would take great effort. Or, he could cool the air far below the temperature of the water itself, driving the heat upwards as it wished and leaving the cold on the surface.

Just feet away from their ship, the winds of the Synod whipped, and the waves had risen in the tempest, tossing the boat and sending up a spray as it struggled on. The Synod helped him unwittingly, for they had brought cold winds and filled the air with moisture. Faro used their strength against them. Rather than releasing the heat upward, he forced it down, concentrating on the surface of the water ahead of the ship. As the waves of the Synod's storm came toward the little vessel, Faro turned that strength to heat as well, a mere transposition.

He lifted his head to check the results. Steam plumed up ahead, and he gathered it around them like a cloak, holding it in his little moving embrace.

"We still need to see!" Elshir shouted.

Though Faro controlled the wind that reached the ship, the tempest raged only yards away, and Faro had not bothered to dampen the sound. Elshir looked frightened, but his eldest son held their course at the tiller. Faro pulled the mist closer to the water, letting Elshir grasp a halyard to steady himself as he looked above.

"Prepare to close haul as we turn!" he shouted back to his sons. "We'll need the wind from the southwest!" he added to Faro.

Faro's toes were numb, and his fingers tingled as if he had slept on them. The strain was great, but his foes were far. At least for a few feet around the sloop, the world was his, a sail moving above a bank of fog. The visibility beyond was low, sea spray flying in the winds. Were it not for Faro, the little craft could have foundered, but there was an advantage; any sentinel staring into the elemental fray would see only a Vien craft desperately fighting to reach the safety of the river, and that only if they saw the sail above the patch of mist. They had no reason to suspect the ship came from an Inevien harbor. Elshir had gone to pains to make sure that nothing about the sloop gave it away as Inevien from a distance, and no Inevien would be mad enough to sail up the river Veroi on a sloop with only four souls.

Faro lay his head back on the prow. He was starting to feel nauseous, either from the movement of the craft or the shooting pains in his head. So long as he held the wind steady and the sloop could move under sail without rolling in the wave-troughs, they would make it.

He felt the change as they entered the mouth of the rift, the narrowing bay sheltered them from the worst of the waves. No whistles sounded from the cliffs as they drifted in, trailing wisps of fog. Faro let the steam drift away. Further in the river it would look more odd than a Vien ship seeking harbor on a stormy night. Storms were unusual above Findeluvié, and anyone with sense would seek shelter.

"Are you well?" Elshir asked. Faro looked up and winced, not from the flow of the Current but from the pressure of Findel weighing down on his spirit.

"I am able," Faro replied.

"We can handle a little more wind, now," Elshir said. "By the map, we can have you to the River Tir in three or four hours."

Faro nodded. They would be long hours. No doubt, riders from the High Tir tore the loam as they galloped westward, but they would not reach Veroi in time.