Rain Summoner Act 2

The sounds of the sea raged in Yanna’s ears. She lie on her back in the lifeboat, freezing and sore.

Lightning lit up the clouds. The one the sailors called Ghost-Hand threw a tarp over her to protect her from the elements, but the wind tore it back. Rain pelted her face.

Sailors surrounded her on creaking benches. In a fevered daze, she watched their arms strain at the oars as their boat lurched in the storm. Waves slapped the sides of the boat and knocked it closer to white spires of rock jutting from the ocean. The sailors flinched from the sting of the spray.

The sailors yelled at one another until their voices were as rough and raw as the storm. Ghost-Hand sat center on the bench opposite her, right fist tight on one oar, his blunt wrist fastened to the other.

He shouted over the roar of ocean and wind. “How far to the mine?”

One of the sailors squinted through sheets of rain. “Not too far,” she shouted back. “But the weather’s blown us off course. We’ll have to wait it out in the first cave we find.”

Cold, foaming water undulated beneath the benches. Yanna freed her hand from the sodden blanket and reached her fingers into the surge. Her mind grew clearer as she focused on the power writhing in the storm.

Sharp beads of rain softened as they hit her. She focused on the weight of them as they soaked into her skin, soothing scrapes and sunburns she had earned at sea.

Many days had she spent staring at the mosaics back home, wishing for the talent of her siblings and their ancestors. She had studied the ancient figures pushing and pulling the tide in the tiles, the gentle arc of their arms as they quelled a cyclone.

The fever left her too weak to calm the sea or soften the rain. But the blood rushing through her hand told her she could guide the boat to safety. If she could just sit up and reach her hand into the water, she could direct the waves to take them where she wanted. But then the sailors could take her where they wanted, likely to Giuliana, and she would be captive for who knew how long.

Panic knotted in her throat as thunder rolled overhead.

A cold shadow fell over the boat as they rowed into a cave. The waves jostled them against the rock floor even after they dropped anchor. Yanna closed her eyes and tried not to throw up what little remained in her stomach.

Her head pounded. Her throat stung with every breath. In the end, she was too afraid to remain unaware of what progress the sailors made, and she forced her eyes to stay open.

Ghost-Hand surveyed the cave entrance with quick, sweeping glances. “You’re familiar with these salt caverns,” he said to the sailor who answered him earlier. “Do all of them have more than one exit?”

The sailor twisted the ends of her tarp to wring out the water. It hit the flooded floor of the lifeboat with a splash. “Hardly none. This one looks like another abandoned mine. Sea must’ve damaged the back tunnels.”

Yanna’s plan expanded as she listened to them. She still had a chance to escape before they reached their destination.

She moved her hand back and forth in the floodwater. It rushed from one side of the boat to the other, slowly gathering momentum. She moved her hand faster. The sailors were too busy fighting to steady the boarding plank to notice.

Yanna urged the water to move faster still. The waves smashed the lifeboat against the cave floor. She clenched her jaw to hold her resolve. She felt like her head would burst as the lifeboat slammed back and forth on the water. The boards started to creak and split apart from the pressure.

A leak sprang at the side of the boat, and the water level rose to the sailors' knees. They jumped from the benches and raced to grab emergency supplies.

Ghost-Hand shouted a curse as the boat tipped backward. He looked at Yanna with a flash of realization.

The sailors hurled water out of the boat, but it was too late. The sailor Ghost-Hand had consulted earlier managed to leap from the benches onto the cave floor, but the ground was slick. She lost her footing and fell face-first, motionless on the rock. Another grabbed onto her ankle to help heave himself onto the treacherous slab, scrabbling to find purchase.

Rather than manipulate the surf to ensure he met a similar fate, a more pressing issue kept Yanna’s efforts elsewhere.

The force of the tide grappled with her as she struggled to throw off the heavy tarp. It floated beside her briefly before sinking below the swirling grey-and-green surface of the water. As she tried to swim around it to the ledge, her foot caught in the tangle of fabric.

Fear prickled in back of her mind. The tarp pulled her down, and she lost focus.

As soon as she did, the sea’s onslaught turned fiercer. She felt the terrible pull of the lifeboat as it sank at the center of a small whirlpool.

Panic engulfed her. Saltwater poured into her nose and through the gaps in her teeth. Saline overwhelmed her senses, filling her with despair and the certainty of death. Her strength left her as quickly as it had come.

Two sailors who’d made it to solid ground were still desperate for the reward they were promised for her capture. They worked as a team to drag the edges of the tarp toward them as if she were a fish caught in their net. Their tugs separated her from the thick wool at last.

Yanna floundered, still gasping for air. She paddled away from them, but she couldn’t swim far.

Ghost-Hand, who had early on thrown himself into water far from both the lifeboat and the shelf of rock, swam towards her. She thought he was going to save her, as he had once before, but his expression turned cloudy when he got close. He stopped and retracted his hand.

The shock spurred Yanna to fight again. She twisted in the water, pushed her soles against his chest, and kicked away from him. She swam for the mouth of the cave, but the pull of the whirlpool was too great.

She grabbed onto a flotsam board bobbing nearby.

Somebody’s hand clamped around her wrist and held fast. It was the sailors again. They had almost pulled her to the cave floor. Ghost-Hand maneuvered towards them and pulled Yanna out of their grip.

He didn’t want the sailors to have her, but neither did he seem to mind the thought of her drowning. Why?

Yanna held fast to her piece of driftwood and kicked away from him a second time. His grip was solid.

They were close to shore, they had to be. If she followed her instincts rather than fear, she could make it to the beach and leave this long nightmare behind. She closed her eyes and urged the sea to float her from the site.

One of the waves curled over her face and filled her nose with saltwater yet again. She resisted the urge to gasp for air until the wave rolled past and broke Ghost-Hand’s grip on her. Coughing and sputtering, she watched through bleary eyes as the current pushed him out of reach, towards the dwindling whirlpool.

He tumbled back in the surf, grasping at debris from the boat as it span around him. He caught an upended chest and whipped around, eyes searching, while the waves carried her out of the cave and into the rain. She caught a last glimpse of his face, as round and pale as the moon, watching her as he disappeared from view.

Yanna let the current push her through the maze of white, glistening rocks jutting from the seabed.

The sailors’ cries vanished under the waves. They couldn’t hope to reach her now.

Yanna heaved a shaky sigh and rested her cheek on the board. She floated along like that for a long time.

The rain stopped. Listlessness returned to Yanna, and when the water became shallow, her strength left altogether. She lie still and let the tide propel her the rest of the way to shore. Sandbars dragged beneath her feet, and sharp reefs cut at her ankles. It was all she could do to stay afloat.

The sea pushed her onto a pebble-strewn beach. She lie stiff and battered on the shore, feeling relief only when the tide washed over her legs. Drenched from the sea, every breeze riding on the dusk brought another bout of violent shivering that seized her to her core.

The raucous noise of city life carried in a steady thrum somewhere above her. She tried to crawl towards the noise, but her arms refused to carry her. Now that she was on land, illness stole back into her body. She could barely keep her eyes open.

“I’m not dying,” she said, hoping the words would fool her body. Her voice came out in a croak, no louder than a whisper. The effort seared her throat, but she whispered them over and over again, desperate and afraid of falling asleep. Tears stung her eyes.

The world faded into blurred shadows and muffled noises. She opened her eyes again when footsteps crunched in the pebbles nearby.

The sky was darker by then, and the clouds had receded.

The shadow of a stranger approached with a lantern swinging in hand. Upon spotting Yanna, they picked up their pace.

Fear lodged in her throat. What if this was one of the sailors’ accomplices?

Yanna concentrated her strength and gathered a fistful of pebbles. She launched them at the stranger when they were close enough, but her throw was feeble. The pebbles bounced off their shoes and clattered harmlessly onto the shore.

The stranger shielded his face. “Please,” he said. “No more rocks. I wish to help you.”

Yanna grabbed another fistful, but even that left her lungs tired.

He approached cautiously and raised his hands in a show of peace. “Do you understand?” he asked. He spoke in Mardesalian, but his accent was not of the region. Isulfrite, maybe. “Forgive me. I speak no Niloufarian.”

Yanna couldn’t bring herself to trust the stranger wholeheartedly, not after she and Sadira had been tricked. But her will to survive was stronger, and without help, she would die. The tremors racking her body made that perfectly clear.

She laid her hand at her side and let the pebbles slip from her fingers. The stranger helped her sit propped against a cart he had parked nearby. He seemed to be some sort of vendor.

“You traveled from over the sea?” he asked, hurrying to pull a folded blanket from the cart. He shook it out before handing it to her and gesturing for her to put it on.

She nodded as she drew the heavy wool over her shoulders. It blocked the wind churning from the sea, but at the same time made her that much more aware of the cold, sodden nature of her hair and clothes. Her teeth went on chattering, and she longed desperately for the hot, drying sunshine awaiting her back home.

“Quite a journey. There’s a house outside the city,” he told her. “You can remain there until you’re well.”

Returning to his cart, he went on in a ramble about the weather, but Yanna could barely comprehend what he was saying. Her thoughts swam in a fog now that she was disconnected from the sea.

Still, suspicion nagged at her.

Disguised as their guards, the sailors had told Sadira to follow them so she could sign her surrender to end the war. Instead, they led them to this dismal Mardesalian shore.

“Your health is worse than anticipated,” said the vendor, interrupting her line of thought. He lowered onto his knees and set a wooden box on the ground beside him. He looked at the burning rash on her arms that felt like sandpaper and then back to her face. “For how long have you been unwell?”

Yanna couldn’t answer that. Her concept of time had lapsed since the ship pulled away from Niloufar.

Through her headache, she strained to identify the man kneeling beside her, but she could only determine the baggy outline of his clothes. The lanternlight was strong, but a rain tarp cast over his hat obscured most of his features. She didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t seem in league with the sailors, whom he did not mention, but it troubled Yanna that he had expected her.

“Can you speak?” he asked.

Yanna touched a hand to her throat and made a thin rasping noise in answer.

The vendor uncorked a vial from the box. He poured a drink that punched the air with vinegar and rotting apples into a shallow bowl. “A tonic,” he explained, “to aid your recovery.” He poured a separate bowl for himself and downed the contents, perhaps to prove it wasn’t poison.

She hesitated before she took the bowl from his hand. There was one way to tell for sure if he was working with the sailors, but she couldn’t get a good look at his arms to check for the brand.

She reached for the bowl, but she was too weak to extend her hand very far. He held it closer to her, and his arm came away from the tarp. He didn’t wear the brand of the sailors, but a peculiar, denting scar not unlike Gohar’s old stab wound became visible on the side of his forearm.

She sipped at the medicine. It was bitter and deeply acidic. She gagged, and he lent her a flask of stale water and honey that washed a fraction of the foul taste out of her mouth. The sting in her throat eased, if only for a moment.

He lifted Yanna by the arm and helped her shuffle to the other side of his cart, a large wheeled contraption with a canopy to protect the wares. “You can ride in this,” he said. He pulled aside a door on the bottom half, revealing an empty compartment. “No one will see you.”

Yanna valued a good hiding spot more than anyone she knew, but she didn’t know where this strange vendor meant to take her. “I’m afraid,” she said, her voice still raw. “I don’t like small spaces.”

“You can open it from the inside,” he said. He showed her a handle on the back of the small door. “I made it like that so my children won’t become trapped when they play games.”

“I would rather walk,” she said, her knees shaking from cold and unease.

The vendor pushed his mouth to the side as if her request made things difficult. After a moment, he handed her another blanket from his cart. “Follow close. People look for you in the city.”

Half-formed questions swirled in Yanna’s head, but she didn’t have time to dwell on them. She needed all her energy to keep moving.

Yanna trudged through the capital on tired feet. She kept the scratchy blanket close to her face whenever they passed through a crowd. Strangers' faces went by in a blur. Their harsh voices pressed around her in a horrible, slurring cloud.

She stole hazy glimpses of the buildings around them as the vendor led her through a series of filthy streets near the docks. Oil lamps lit up houses of stone and old timber that leaned together in a long huddle on either side of the street. Gardens were few and far between, and the smell of mildew and sludge was inescapable even when she held a corner of the blanket over her nose.

A pair of strangers passed by the vendor as they wound through a market. They scanned all around them with a hawkish gaze, and the vendor angled his face away from them.

Yanna drew the blanket closer to her chin and glanced at the two strangers’ forearms as they passed through the light. One was covered down to her wrists, but the other wore their jacket sleeves rolled halfway to the elbow.

An unmistakable brand lurked under the edge of their sleeve.

Yanna stayed close to the cart with her pulse pounding in her temples. At least she knew now that the vendor was not in their employ.

They left the city at last through a massive gate with armored guards stationed on either side. The guards paid them no mind, but Yanna couldn’t help but go breathless in their presence.

The vendor glanced at her with apparent concern as they stepped onto a long stone bridge peppered with businesses built against its sides. “Are you well enough to continue?” He pointed somewhere far ahead of them, beyond the winding river and a tiny cluster of houses crouched along its bank. “From here, it is still an hour’s walk.”

Yanna craned her head to peer behind them as they crossed the bridge. Far in the distance, Giuliana’s castle stood atop a hill overlooking the city walls.

Yanna peeled her attention from the ominous keep. She frowned at the vendor as he rolled his cart onto a narrow dirt road. “I don’t understand,” she rasped. “You knew me at once, but you don’t work with the sailors?”

The vendor spared a cautious glance over his shoulder to check for eavesdroppers. The road was empty as far as the eye could see in either direction.

“My wife is enemy to the people who carried you across the sea,” he said, almost too quiet to hear. “Their schemes are guessable to her, and she has a great determination to obstruct them. Each day for a week, I have scanned the beach for their arrival.”

He didn’t explain what he meant to do had the sailors made it to land, but she supposed there was no point to wondering – not at the moment.

Yanna considered her options, but her weakened state didn’t leave her much choice. Her feet felt as though they might fall off at any moment. With some help, she crawled into the hidden compartment in the vendor’s cart and slid the trapdoor shut.

It was a cramped fit, and she had to cushion the crown of her head with a hand to offset the bumpiness of the road. Above her, the various goods in the vendor’s cart rattled in an endless, painful symphony. At the very least, she was out of the wind, and no longer walking.

Not of a mind to lose track of their path, Yanna peered through gaps in the boards, but all she saw were the black silhouettes of grassy fields and trees crowded together against the night sky.

She was overwhelmed by the wild of the place. Back home, she'd had the palace gardens to wander, but the plants were potted, manicured, and tame. This untended countryside looked like something out of the romantic ghost novels she used to read. It sent a shiver down her spine.

Sometime later, a deep voice called to the vendor from down the road. “Who goes there?”

A tall Mardesalian man, shaven, cleft-chinned and perhaps fifty years of age, approached them with a lantern squeaking in his fist. His attire was quite fine compared to everyone else Yanna had encountered that day. “You, again. What did you say your name was?”

The cart slowed to a stop. The vendor stepped in front of the planks hiding Yanna to block the new stranger’s view. “Zoff, you may call me.” He cleared his throat with some degree of displeasure, but lightened his tone to speak in a more service-like range. “Do you wish to make a purchase?"

The stranger all but ignored his reply. “Where are you headed with those wares at this hour?”

Zoff hesitated. “To your tenant; I have a small delivery.”

“Which one?” asked the new stranger - a landlord, apparently. He hummed as if something had jogged his memory. “Oh, yes. The Niloufarian woman. You’ve been doing a lot of business with her.”

“I trade with many people. You, yourself will find a deal you like, I’m certain, if you care to look through the wares.”

Even if it was a bluff, Yanna did not care for the suggestion. For several seconds, she didn’t dare to breathe.

The landlord ignored him again. “Do I take it that respectable folk conduct sales late at night wherever it is you hail from? Well, I’ve told that woman, and I’m going to tell you. You’ve got no right doing business while she’s living on my land. If you want to peddle your wares on this road, you’ll sell them to me or not at all.”

“Understood,” said Zoff. “Certainly, I’ll remind her you said that. Or do you suggest I should turn around?”

The landlord grunted thoughtfully with a wayward look beyond the cart. “Perhaps I can look the other way again, this once. Lord Dol's tax is likely to be a bit high this year. Let’s agree to a percentage of your sale, and I’ll let you through. Just this once,” he repeated.

“Long will I remember this generosity,” said Zoff, fishing through a lockbox and sounding minutely more irritated than grateful. He passed the landlord a coin. “If ever you do wish to make a purchase, I’ll be certain to arrange a most appropriate price for you.”

Yanna noted the slight emphasis he placed on the word, ‘appropriate.’

This pleased the landlord, who noticed no such hostility, and he turned to continue down the road. He called over his shoulder. “Be certain to let me know if you return.”

A few minutes later, the cart stopped behind a small stone house hidden in a group of overgrown shrubs and trees. Smoke climbed from a clumsy chimney.

Zoff patted the side of the cart. “Here we are.”