Chapter 226 - Time (1/2)

”You have to untangle yourself from this,” said a voice Chang Chang did not, at first, recognize.

She looked up, and for some reason was unsurprised to find Tau standing in the shadows of the tower. ”I didn't think you could weave yourself into memories,” Chang Chang said.

”Only yours, it would seem,” Tau replied. ”But I would rather not be here. This is a foul place, and you're needed elsewhere.”

”I don't know how to leave,” she said. ”What if the plague won't let me?”

Tau made a motion with his gnarled hand, and his staff appeared in the clawed grip, as if it had always been there, invisible.

”To weave magic requires discipline,” he said. ”At the best of times, anything can go wrong, because the Art runs unchecked. We are its only shepherds now.” He held out his staff to her. ”To be a weaver requires a focus,” he said, ”a tool to channel your energy. You should never rely on such a thing completely, but in the worst of times it can help you endure the wildness of the raw Art.”

Chang Chang touched the staff and felt a pulsing energy. The Art ran through the staff like blood in wooden veins. She could feel the contained power, frightening and pure.

”What if it gets away from me again?”

”It surely will,” Tau said. ”Such things are inevitable. The only thing you can do is focus on what is most important to you—what's worth saving.”

”Ju Feng.” She remembered his name as if he had been the dream, and this her only reality. She stood up, and her body was an a.d.u.l.t's, though weak and fragile.

The tower melted around her. The black stones faded, as if all the filth was being drained from her memory. She closed her eyes against the swirling, turbulent cleansing.

She smelled the harbor, but when she opened her eyes, the scene had changed. Her mind couldn't process it at first.

Ju Feng stood thirty feet away, fighting two men at once. A third man floated in the water, his right arm and c.h.e.s.t contorted at an odd angle in the water.

She was lying on Ju Feng's raft. Cerest crouched over her. His crumpled face showed concern, but Chang Chang noticed he held a dagger slackly in his right hand.

”Are you well?” he asked.

She licked her lips and tried to speak, but she'd been in her mind too long. The words came out as incoherent mumbles.

Cerest leaned closer. ”Say it again, Chang Chang. I didn't hear you.”

Chang Chang didn't repeat what she'd been trying to say. She brought her knee up and crushed it into Cerest's stomach.

He lurched back onto his right elbow, losing his balance when he tried to bring the knife to bear. He pitched over the side of the raft into the water.

Chang Chang sprang to her feet and immediately saw that Ju Feng was in trouble. He held off the two men at his right and left flank, but the man on the crow's nest was frantically cranking a crossbow into position. He propped it on the lip of the nest to steady his aim.

Cerest thrashed in the water. He grabbed for the raft. Chang Chang kicked him in the face. Blood exploded from his nose; her heel had knocked it out of position. The elf cursed and backstroked, putting a safe distance between them.

Lifting her arms, Chang Chang chanted a spell and brought her hands together, as if she were cupping them around the crow's nest. The basket of rotting wood burst into flames that rose up around the man with the crossbow.

The man shrieked and dropped the weapon. It landed in the water and sank. The man dived from the nest, fistfuls of flame eating at his clothing. He hit the water belly first.

The men fighting Ju Feng had their backs to the crow's nest. They tried to turn to see their companion's fate, but Ju Feng wouldn't give them a respite. He clipped the shorter of the two in the jaw, spinning him half toward the water and upsetting his balance on the bones of the leviathan.

It was all about balance. He kept them both at bay because they couldn't keep their feet. If they'd been on level ground, Ju Feng would have had several of his bones crushed by now.