Pathway - Chapter 227

“What’s happening?” Cerest demanded. He looked up at the wraiths. Chang Chang followed his gaze. Beyond the undead, another blue glow was forming on the bones of the leviathan. More of the creatures dived and chased the light around the bones. Like mad fireflies they soaked up the raw spell energy.

“It’s the bloodplague,” Chang Chang said. Her magic had released the long dormant energy. The wraiths were finally going to have their feast.

“Get off the raft,” Cerest cried. He grabbed her arm, trying to tow her toward the Ferryman. “If we can make it to some cover—”

Chang Chang stumbled and fell. On her knees, with one hand on the raft and the other caught in Cerest’s grip, she looked up and saw the blue light descending the magnificent bones, a waterfall coming down a mountainside.

“It’s too late,” she said. “Ju Feng!” she screamed, and turned to see the cultivator holding onto one of the rib bones for support. He clutched his chest with his other arm. The short man lay at his feet, a strip of blood leaking from his mouth. His eyes stared vacantly up at the doom working its way down to them.

Ju Feng jumped into the water. He surfaced five feet from the raft and started to swim to her.

“No!” Chang Chang waved him off. “Go down,” she cried. “Swim down, as far as you can. Get away from the light.” She could barely see him now. The light was so bright, she had to squint. “We’ll be behind you.”

Ju Feng hesitated. Chang Chang could almost see him calculating their odds. “I’ll try to find an air pocket around the ship,” he said. Then he was gone, diving beneath the surface. Chang Chang crawled to the edge of the raft to follow, when suddenly a heavy weight hit her from behind.

Her breath gone, Chang Chang fell flat to the raft. She could feel Cerest pressing his body against hers.

“Get off!” she cried, but her scream was lost in the cry of the wraiths. They dived and hovered around the raft, blocking her escape into the water.

“They still smell the magic,” Cerest shouted. His strength held her immobile. The blue light fell over them in a curtain.

The glare brightened to a painful intensity, and suddenly everything went black. Chang Chang thought she’d gone blind.

Blinking reflexively, she felt a warm breeze against her face. She looked up and saw a crescent of sunlight spilling over a pile of stone. It was the remains of a rooftop.

She was back in the tower. The heat continued to build, just as it had in her vision. Her two realities were merging, past and present bridged by the bloodplague.

But this time something was different. Chang Chang rolled onto her side and saw the body lying next to her. Cerest was staring, disoriented, up at the sunbeams and the tower roof.

He doesn’t know where he is, Chang Chang thought. His mind is joined to mine by the plague.

“What happened?” The elf sat up and swung toward her. His face paled visibly. Chang Chang turned to see the specters of her parents and Chang Wei searching the tower. They went about their exploration, smiling and laughing, oblivious to the two figures sitting on the ground.

Cerest’s lips formed the name of his old friend, but he couldn’t speak. His eyes welled with unshed tears. Chang Chang couldn’t believe the sight.

He’s in pain. This pains him. Does he know what’s coming? She looked up at the light. It fell in sunbeams and blue threads. Did Cerest know how few breaths stood between his friends and oblivion?

She reached out, against her will, and touched the elf on the shoulder. “Cerest,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

“What?” He turned to her, gripping her shoulders. “It’s them, can’t you see them? They’re alive!”

Chang Chang winced at the pressure he exerted. His hands trembled. Half-crazed joy shone in his liquid eyes.

“They aren’t real,” Chang Chang said. “This is memory. Everything’s going to burn, Cerest.” Maybe us too.

“No!” He shook his head. Sweat dripped from his hair. “Not this time. I’ll be able to warn them this time. I’ll get them out before anything happens.”

“They can’t hear you,” Chang Chang said. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch it a second time.

Cerest continued to hold her in a crushing grip as the heat built to a roar in her ears. She heard the screams. Cerest’s raw shriek pricked icy needles all over her flesh. She tipped her head forward, resting against his chest while he wept and screamed, over and over.

He was seeing everything as he had never seen it before—from the inside of the inferno. Chang Wei had long since carried her young self away, but the memory and Cerest’s imagination had taken over. She could hear her mother crying out for her husband and for Cerest. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

To distract herself, Chang Chang conjured an image of Ju Feng, swimming deep in the rotting harbor. She prayed he’d found safe haven from the plague’s reach. He’d already drowned in its grip once.

And what about Tau, Fa and Zu Ruo? Would they be safe inside the Ferryman, or would the plague consume the ship and crush them all? She held onto the screaming elf and hoped that one of Tau’s deities would take pity on all of them.

Chang Chang awoke staring into darkness. She flexed her fingers—grateful that she still possessed the appendages—and cast a spell using the least possible amount of energy.

A pinprick glow lit her fingertip and spread to her whole hand. By its light, her eyes adjusted to her surroundings.

She stared up at the sky. It took her a long time to realize that the Ferryman’s masts and rigging had been incinerated by the bloodplague blast. Small fires burned at various points along the Ferryman’s length.

The entire ship had listed far forward, but by some miracle the leviathan’s bones held it stable and prevented their being crushed under its weight. The small chamber created by the wreckage had been reduced to half its size, but Ju Feng’s raft was miraculously still intact. Gaps yawned in the planks like missing teeth. Water seeped freely across the ship’s surface, but for now it stayed afloat.

As her vision adjusted, Chang Chang became aware of the bodies. There was one on either side of her and another draped half on the raft and half in the water directly across from her. She could smell the burning, the singed flesh and hair. Her breath quickened.

The body on her right stirred. Chang Chang swung her spell light toward the movement. Her wrist stopped in midair, caught in an iron grip.

Chang Chang’s heart lifted. “Ju Feng,” she whispered. She removed his sodden hat from where it had fallen over his face. His skin was wet but unmarked by arcane fire. His eyes, when they opened, were the familiar rust red color. “Are you all right?”

He nodded and released her wrist. “Hat, please,” he said.

Chang Chang helped him sit up and put the hat back on his head. “How did you manage not to get that thing incinerated or lost in the harbor?” she asked.

Ju Feng looked at her, his expression grave. “Magic,” he said.

Chang Chang had the urge to laugh, but it died in her throat when she remembered the other bodies. She moved the light away from Ju Feng. Her spell illuminated a face she didn’t immediately recognize. The man was beautiful, his face smooth-skinned and symmetrical. His long golden hair fell across ears that were pointed like needles.

“Merciful gods,” she said. “This is Cerest.”

Ju Feng looked over her shoulder. The elf’s face had been perfectly restored. His eyes were open and staring glassily at something invisible in the distance. The expression on his face was both peaceful and sad.

Chang Chang put her hand against the elf’s cheek. It was ice cold. “He’s dead,” she said.

“So is this one,” Ju Feng said, checking the man draped across the raft. He put his hand against the man’s chest to find a heartbeat, but they both saw the burns on the man’s face and torso. His skin was blackened, and his hair was gone. His clothes had been burned to brittle strips that turned to ash when Ju Feng touched them. His chain vest had melted into his skin.

Ju Feng met her gaze. Chang Chang knew they were both thinking the same thing.

“Maybe Tau’s magic protected them,” Ju Feng said.

Chang Chang shone her light around the wreckage. The entrance to Tau’s chamber was now underwater. The channel they’d used to get the raft into the wreckage was filled in with debris.

“We’ll have to swim out,” Chang Chang said. Her gaze strayed involuntarily back to Cerest’s face, perfect now in its death pose. “Why did it happen?” she asked. “Why were we spared?”

“I don’t know,” Ju Feng said. “We’re already scarred. Maybe we’re immune to the plague now.”

“Cerest was scarred,” Chang Chang said, “in body, if not magically. Why would the plague restore him and then kill him?”

Maybe it hadn’t been the plague. She remembered Cerest’s anguished screams inside the tower. “He saw my mind,” she said. “In that breath we were joined, he saw everything he’d done, for the first time. He was inside the tower with me, watching my parents die.”