A Monumental Task

Prologue

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. A few of us watched it happen from the Duke’s bow, but we were helpless to stop it. It came without warning, without even the beginnings of a whirlpool to alert us that there might be a problem, some kind of shift in the otherwise calm waters below. My body slammed against the prow while my mind was still registering the shock, saving me from the fate of so many, who went sprawling overboard with screams of surprise, and by the time I managed to get my feet under myself again, the ship had already begun to drift sideways. My stomach lurched along with it.

Assessing the situation as quickly as possible, I grabbed a coil of rope and threw it overboard, tying one end to a mast. Even as I did, the ship stopped moving, and I realized that someone must have moored the anchor. Good. Hopefully, the guys in the water would find my rope and rescue themselves. I couldn’t wait around to find out.

Garrel, one of my fellow soldiers, lay a few feet away – dead or alive, I couldn’t tell, but the spreading pool of blood beneath his head boded ill. I turned him on his side, checking the damage. A flap of skin was torn away, raw meat visible just above and behind his left ear, but otherwise, the wound looked superficial. Knocked out, certainly, but not dead. There were more important matters to attend. I left him where he lay and went to help others who had been injured.

The ship’s bosun, Cseck, wasn’t so lucky. He’d obviously fallen from the upper deck and broken his neck. He was still alive when I made it over to him though, so I placed my hands on either side of his neck and concentrated, hard, blocking out the shouts and trampling feet, the wind that had sprung up out of nowhere, the smell of fear that permeated everything, closed my eyes, and thought only of what needed to be done. Within seconds, I felt his neck adjust into a natural position between my hands as his bones moved back into their proper places. His breathing slowed and steadied, reassuring me that he was going to make it. I opened my eyes in time to see him grasp his neck with his own hands in amazement. Must have been his first time.

Words bubbled out of him as he tried to thank me, but I went on, continuing my search for the injured and dying. I could do nothing for the dead. Even if I had the skills to bring them back, I needed to preserve my energy to save as many as I could. When it was all over, fatigue overwhelmed me and I collapsed to the deck, my mind a haze. Someone carried me to a bunk, and I slept. Of all the soldiers on the ship, I was the only one who could heal. And it came at a heavy cost.

Sleep held me hostage for hours, and when finally my eyes glimpsed light once more, the world and the people in it had moved on. The fear and uncertainty that had permeated the ship was gone, replaced by a grim determination among my shipmates.

“Celric,” Captain Alaric said upon seeing my arrival back on the lower deck, “I’m glad you could join us. The Queen’s gone.” The rest of the crew surrounded him, filling that section of the deck to the brim. They must have been planning while I recovered.

“I know,” I replied with a nod. “I saw her vanish, at just the moment the Duke lurched.”

The captain was also nodding. He’d clearly heard this before. “And you know what it means,” he continued, confident that I did.

“Of course,” I said. “They’ve got the monument.”

“Yes,” Alaric agreed, his steely gray eyes cold and hard. “And it’s up to us to get it back.”