Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Merc is muttering as he ropes his own waist, straps his broadsword onto his back, and slaps at various places on his body, all of which have some kind of weapon secured by some kind of belt or holster. Then he nods as if he’s both his own master and protégé, and this is part of his training.
“Well, come on. Let’s get this over with.”
As he turns away, I grab his forearm. His head snaps toward me, and I open my mouth. Except what is there to say?
“I don’t know,” he drawls with a shrug. “Maybe we make it, maybe we don’t. But I’d rather die trying, wouldn’t you.”
“I’d rather not have to do this at all.”
“Talk to the crescent moon, then. Destiny and its exigencies are far, far above anything that has to do with me.”
Merc wades into the pool, bending his prodigious height until he can proceed no farther without going under the surface. As I measure the taut rope that connects us, my lungs start to pump and then I shift my eyes to the black water. I look back at the torch. It’s almost out of reed to consume. Soon, there’ll be nothing but darkness, rats, and the moon knows what else in here.
“I’m not waiting for you much longer,” he says impatiently.
One foot in and I feel as if I’m being consumed already, the cold wetness chewing through my soft-soled slippers and going right for my flesh. Something about the way the fetid, viscous tide rises up my calves without my going a step farther makes me want to scream.
“I can’t do this—”
“No choice, remember.” Merc holds out his hand. “And I’ll be with you all the way. I’m not going to leave you in there.”
As if to prove the point, he tugs on the rope that links us. “No more wasting time, though. This is not getting any easier, the longer we stay here. You’re just going to get more and more afraid.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I mumble.
When I still don’t move, he pulls me forward, and the tunnel floor takes a sharp decline that makes me wobble and splash. No doubt it’s dropping under the moat.
When the water is up to my thighs, I’m by his side. I don’t have to bend as he does, and I’m grabbing at the air in jerks of my rib cage, like a fish in the bottom of a boat.
“We’re going to take three deep breaths together.”
His voice is so calm, I feel like the only one who’s stuck in a tunnel and having to swim through balas to safety is me—
“One.”
My nose burns as I inhale. And when he exhales, I do the same, focusing on that wide chest of his as it deflates.
“Two.”
I repeat the draw again, until my lungs sting from the stretching, and my sternum feels as if it’ll break open. I glance back at the carcass and remember the fight.
Countless more of them are waiting for us.
“Three—”
At the height of the final inhale, things happen fast. Merc sinks beneath the water level on a lithe dive, and before I can even approximate what he’s done, I’m yanked under by the waist. The shock of the cold water swallowing me whole causes all the air in my lungs to explode out of my nose and lips.
I lose every bit of it. And then I gasp—
The moat enters my mouth in an icy fist. Flailing around, I try to cough out the water while I fight the rope, my brain telling me we have to go back and try again after a resurface. Merc is going incredibly fast, though, and I grab on to the tether that binds us and attempt to pull on it, in hopes of signaling that drowning is already happening.
He just keeps swimming, his powerful strokes dragging me along.
My eyes bulge in the watery darkness, and I close my mouth so at least I don’t get more down my throat. As my arms and legs become useless, my mind tangles and spins, my thoughts like the rushing in my ears, all noise, no meaning. I bump along the sharply descending angle of the tunnel’s ceiling, well aware I’m going to lose consciousness yet again, the wholly unfamiliar buoyancy terrifying me—
Suddenly, my head stings with that familiar, sharp pain, and a vision bursts through the cold, midnight void:
The ocean.
The beautiful ocean at sunrise.
And I’m spearing into the salty, warm waves. Under I go, but there is no fear. There’s only joy and surety, my arms cleaving out and pulling back, my legs frogging at the heels and kicking in propulsion, my coordination as natural and comfortable as drawing a breath. Again and again, I stroke through the sea’s sweet, surging body, my heart singing.
I swim without needing air, for I am one with Anathos’s best natural barrier, that which has protected us from sieges and helped us to thrive for millennia, not isolated, but safe, from whatever is past the horizon.