Rasim gaped upward, heart hammering in his chest. The weight of witchery was everywhere, throbbing in his blood. Fog spun away from them in a tunnel, clear path reaching all the way to the stars. He felt the fog's swirl, felt each drop of water in the air, felt its lightness and its weight all at once. He blew a soft breath through pursed lips, and the fog eddied away from that breath, though it was much too far away to actually be affected by it. Magic. Witchery. Seawitchery. Rasim's own seawitchery. His head spun at the idea, dizzier than it had been even when he'd been drugged.
"I am not doing that." Kisia's voice remained low, even dangerous. "Now take that magic, Rasim al Ilialio, and turn it to the currents around this bowl so we can save ourselves."
He turned his gaze from the sky to Kisia, whose face was set in unforgiving lines. "You sound like Isidri."
"Then listen to me like I am Isidri," she snapped. "Push the fog behind us. Imagine pulling it into the sea and propelling us forward with it. Turn it into the current, Rasim, and get us out of here."
"I—"
"Don't you dare say you can't! I feel the magic in you, Rasim. It's enough to crush my breath. Now use it!"
Rasim caught his own breath, then swallowed his arguments and turned his face to the sky again. It was true, anyway. He felt the weight of witchery within himself, even though it was impossible. And the fog seemed willing to do his bidding, so he exhaled again, like he was pushing more of it away with the breath. Then, his hands clenched, he brought the fog down, back into the sea it had sprung from. Its droplets became one with the greater ocean, but he still felt them each individually, as if they'd built a friendly acquaintance. He encourage them to catch Kisia's water bowl and carry it forward under his guidance, as he navigated by the stars.
After a few minutes, wind caught his hair, a breeze strong enough to make him falter. He turned his attention back to the sea instead of the sky.
Whitecap water spun around the edges of Kisia's bowl. She held her lower lip in her teeth, concentrating on keeping the waves from falling into the bowl, but it wasn't rough seas creating them. It was speed, the strength of Rasim's current great enough to create a wake. He gasped and Milu's gaze flew from Kisia to Rasim. "Stop thinking," the Stonemaster journeyman ordered. "Just feel it, Seamaster. Become the water."
Every guild told their apprentices the same thing: become the water, become the stone, become the sun, become the sky. That, too, was part of the song Daka had sung to him while they were in the island cave. Rasim had never been able to become the water, though. Becoming the water sounded like somebody should actually turn in to water, and that sounded terrifying. He was afraid of the very idea, afraid of losing himself to the oceans.
But now for the first time, he felt it. The rush of blood in his body was the same as the water in the sea, carried by tides and turns. That was what they meant, when they said become the water. Rasim let go of thought and embraced the water's steady motion, a power that was the same the world over. At the bottom of his soul, it felt familiar: he had experienced it before, after all. The ocean had surged to life, responding to his will, because the fear of losing Kisia to the sea serpent had been greater than his fear of becoming the water. He had accepted Siliaria into himself in that moment, seizing everything the sea goddess offered and throwing it farther than he could imagine. He had saved Kisia, and then he had gone deep into the sea himself with the serpent and become reborn.
Rasim's eyes flew open, though he saw nothing. To become the water, to be reborn in the heart of the sea: that was to become a Seamaster. Not an apprentice, not a journeyman, but a master, beloved of Siliaria. That was every dream Rasim al Ilialio had ever had, and it awakened in his chest with a roar. Joy exploded within him, so profound that tears streamed down his face. He lifted his arms, shouting to the sky, to the sea and to the stars.
Starlight struck the sea, and from it rose a goddess.
She was everything and nothing Rasim had imagined. Seamasters swore by Siliaria's fins, and fins she had: a dolphin's tail, skin smooth and soft like a human's, not scaled like a fish. Her forearms were finned as well, sleek points that swept off her elbows and looked as dangerous as they did functional.
But she was a woman as well, half of what held up the world. Her watery torso seethed with power, wild hair rushing around a face too wild to be called beautiful. She carried a trident in one hand, favored tool of the Seamasters, and it, like she, changed size with each surge of the waves. Never smaller than inhumanly large, with one breath she took up all of the sky, a sea-silver face staring down at a watery boat full of journeymen, the next, foaming before them as a whale might, standing on its tail in the sea. She dove around them, disappearing and surging up time and again, though it seemed to Rasim he never lost sight of her, either. But then, how could he: she was the sea itself, and he was in the heart of her domain.
Once, in her enormity, she pressed her face deep into their fragile bowl, and came back with her lips peeled away from shockingly pointed teeth. Her mouth opened, sea spray expelling from her throat. She reminded Rasim of nothing so much as a cat encountering something appalling, and after a moment he realized that the Stonemaster journeymen disgusted the sea goddess.
"Your brother Coluth chose these two as his own, lady. They're gifted with his earth-shaping powers, and are needed beyond our borders. They only ask safe travels over your waters. Believe me, they're not trying to...invade." Rasim swallowed on the last word, overwhelmed and embarrassed to be trying to explain things to his goddess. She extended her tongue—long, thin, far too flexible—like she tasted the air, tasted his very words on it, and then opened her mouth further yet. Nothing human—nothing animal, even—could open their mouth that far, but she was a thing of water, constantly shaping and re-forming. Her distaste faded as she inhaled his explanation, and when she looked a second time at Milu and Telun, it was with more interest. Her tongue flickered out again, lashing first Telun, then Milu, on the foreheads.
Milu, sick and miserable as he'd been, shivered with rapture at the goddess's touch. But he ducked his head under her scrutiny, and Telun never opened his eyes at all. After an eternal moment, Siliaria withdrew, her expression pensive. She met Rasim's eyes with her own depthless silver gaze, and he thought he almost recognized the emotion in her wild, stunning features.
Not disappointment. Siliaria was far beyond anything that could feel disappointment, and humans much, much too small to be able to disappoint her. Something else. Humor, if the sea itself could laugh, and a sense of deep, unforgiving...pity, Rasim thought. Not a human kind of pity, not the feeling of sorrow for a wretched fellow creature, but pity that a challenge had not been met.
Kisia shoved Telun off her lap and staggered awkwardly to her feet, struggling to maintain the water bowl while she moved. Without a thought, Rasim strengthened the witchery holding the bowl's shape. The strain in Kisia's face lessened, blissful awe replacing it. "Siliaria. Goddess." She extended a hand toward Siliaria, not quite pleading. Trembling with hope, but not begging. She was, Rasim thought, absurdly brave.
That time Siliaria did laugh, a roaring rush of water that sprayed warmth—warmth!—over the four journeymen. Rasim tried to capture that warmth, to make a bubble of water around them that would hold the warmer air in, but Siliaria's presence was too vast and too changeable. She broke through his attempts without noticing they were there, and bent close to Kisia.
Goddess and girl stood nose to nose for the space of a heartbeat, Siliaria as small and contained as she could perhaps ever be. Water whispered, blowing into Kisia's hair and drenching her. Like it amused her, Siliaria lifted a webbed hand and touched Kisia's outstretched hand, fingertip to fingertip.
Water shocked over Kisia, ice-colored and sharp. She dropped into the bowl, wide-eyed, stunned, with her lips parted in wonder. Siliaria laughed again and finally turned her attention back to Rasim.
He had faced the serpent in its element. Its eyes had been black and cold, without emotion. Elemental Siliaria had emotion: Rasim had seen that already, though her fathomless gaze was no kinder than the serpent's. It was, she was, he was: there was little more to it than that, except perhaps that he had come into his power there, in the heart of her realm, and it was the only thing he had ever truly wanted. Helpless, Rasim whispered, "Thank you, goddess," and felt it was a silly thing to say.
She changed again, becoming enormous. Becoming the whole of the world, her changeable form splashing around them as falling rain. With only starlight to shine through it, the rain became rainbows, soft and silvery in the night. Beneath them, the sea surged, lifting the water bowl, and threw it forward on a wave that built endlessly as it traveled across the sea. Siliaria danced through the wave, breaking from it in shapes great and small, but through it all her gaze remained fixed on Rasim. His heart beat wildly, joy so great he thought he might go to pieces with it. The power was astounding, but it was the belonging, finally belonging, finally having a place, that took his breath away. Siliaria had taken him during the Great Fire and given him to the Seamasters, but not until tonight had he felt like one of them. Like one of Siliaria's children. Like not only had he found where he wanted to be, but where he was also wanted, there in Siliaria's embrace. There was nothing to ask of his goddess, when she had given him everything he could ever dream of.
The tidal wave crashed to a stop, water roaring over itself in endless splashes. The water boat's headlong rush stopped cold too, sea sloshing over it, filling it. Siliaria leaped from the sea in front of them, suddenly human in size. Suddenly beautiful as well, not just overwhelming but in her every aspect stunning. She came to Rasim as she had come to Kisia, but without the laughter. Her webbed fingers slipped into his hair, cold and soft as lapping water. Rasim's heart stopped, his breath a solid thing in his throat, unable to be drawn. Siliaria studied him, her lips so close to his could taste their salt.
She had asked something of Milu with her touch, and Milu had backed away from that question. It was in her eyes again, in the cool wet fingers in his hair and in the eternal breathlessness of a goddess waiting.
Rasim, dizzy with nervousness, lifted his own hands into Siliaria's endless flowing watery hair, and met her lips with his own. She tasted of sweet fresh water and drew his locked breath into herself, exchanging that breath for one of her own. His heart stuttered and started again, given life by a goddess.
Siliaria, goddess of the ocean, breathed, "Ssssea-massster," against Rasim's mouth, and then, in the space of an instant, was gone.