He shouted but held his grip, saving us as the boat lurched again, tipping backward this time as the wave hit the front of the barge.
“Much more of this, and we’ll sink,” Zeke shouted in my ear, struggling to be heard above the rush of the wind and the slap of the unnatural waves against the wood.
Gasping from the spray that kept hitting my face, I twisted within the circle of his arms, trying to see over his shoulder to check if Gia was safe. But at Zeke’s shout of pain, I spun back around.
“My arm!” he cried, and my eyes flew to the vine in time to see it turn to ash and blow away, leaving behind a red welt as if it had burned him in the process.
Still he held on, determination masking the pain on his face. “What sort of attack is this?” he asked.
The wood at the stern of the boat sprouted, green life appearing from the aged wood only to rip itself free and fall into the churning water below. It was as if the entire world had assumed the roiling, writhing wrongness that had turned my stomach.
Realization gripped me. This was what that tainted power looked like in action, throwing itself against the natural world without order or purpose. Was this sort of mindless, chaotic attack what the border villages had been enduring?
Reaching out with my awareness, I searched for the power, grateful for the protective casing that allowed me to do it without discomfort. I found it everywhere.
A vine made of tainted power lashed toward two figures on the opposite side of the stern. I called a warning to the twins, but my cry was lost in the explosion of water as the power hit the surface of the river just beside the boat. Both of them were thoroughly drenched, but when the water receded, they remained behind, grimly clinging to the rail.
Gia’s face was scrunched in concentration, roots of power sinking below her, through the hull of the boat and into the water as she fought to calm the stretch of river directly below us. But she had only been activated by Master Drake a matter of weeks ago, and her skill was little match for the fury of the attacking power. No sooner did she calm the water than it was hit with a fresh vine of twisted power. I could only imagine the same process was underway with elements mages up and down the river. Without their efforts, we would no doubt have flipped already.
“We should tie ourselves on,” Nikolas shouted over the wind.
Gia nodded but didn’t move, her attention on her battle with the river. His eyes latched on to a coil of rope looped over a hook near the stern. Letting go of the rail, he lurched toward it just as I sensed the tainted power that clung to it.
“Stop!” I screamed at full volume, but the howling wind tore my words away.
Nikolas reached for it, his fingers making contact. Immediately the tainted power leaped to him, and a cracking sound carried through a brief lull in the wind.
He screamed—a sound of pure pain—as one of his fingers visibly flattened, crushed by an invisible force. He snatched his hand back, but it was too late. The power clung to him.
He screamed again as the next finger was crushed, and Gia abandoned her efforts, rushing toward her brother instead. Now I was screaming as well, fighting against Zeke’s hold as I tried to get to them. If Gia touched Nikolas, the power might spread to her.
With the boat still throwing us this way and that, I couldn’t untangle myself from Zeke fast enough. Instead I reached out with my ability.
It fought me, repelled by the tainted power instead of drawn to it like it was to normal power. But my fear gave me strength, and I forced my ability to obey my direction. Seizing the tainted power, I was immediately hit by the full force of the nausea. It ripped through me as if my protective shell didn’t exist.
I gritted my teeth, letting Zeke support the majority of my weight as I concentrated all my energy on wrestling with the tainted power. We fought back and forth, as I tried to tame the wrongness. It bucked the restraint, and I felt my grip slipping.
The wind died for a moment between gusts, and I caught Nikolas’s pained groan. Fresh determination filled me as the boat rose up on yet another wave.
Fighting the strange power wasn’t working. Instead I gave up the struggle, restraining my instinctive urge to smooth the power back to normalcy. Embracing the wrongness, I let it wash over me, changing my own ability to match its turmoil instead of the other way around.
My knees gave out as my stomach rebelled, the nausea now racing through every part of me. My eyes watered, and I could barely see, bile rising in my throat. I was limp within Zeke’s arms as my physical body rejected the unnatural twisting of my ability.
But the tainted power no longer fought me or attempted to repel my ability. It had gone docile beneath my command, recognizing my authority in a way it hadn’t earlier.
I still didn’t know what I could safely do with it, however. I had no pattern to follow like the ones provided by Annora and Drake when the chasm opened beneath us. And even if I’d learned how to shape it myself, I didn’t know if the tainted power had the capacity to follow any normal pattern.
For now, the best I could do was get it away from the barges and the river. I looked toward the eastern bank. Forest started only a short distance from the water, the trees in this section clustered too thickly to allow for buildings among them. Further north, as well as downstream, towns had been built on patches of cleared land, but here there was nothing but trees.
Somewhere, from what seemed like far away, Zeke was calling my name. But I knew if I broke concentration for even a moment, the illness boiling inside me would become unbearable, and I would cease to function. Only the overwhelming focus on my task was keeping me sane.
I threw the tainted power I had gathered off the rope and Nikolas’s hand toward the forest, driving it far into the trees. In the distance, the screech of disturbed birds sounded, and I urged them onward. Hopefully whatever damage the power did to the trees would be enough to scare off any animals lingering in the area.
Once all the power had streamed away, my changed ability reached happily for the next closest vine of tainted power. Across the water a distant scream sounded, and I threw away my hesitation. Grabbing at the closest chunk of power, I hurled it toward the trees as well.
As soon as it was gone, I grabbed for the next vine, and then the next one. I kept going and going, reaching further and further away until I could reach no more. A distant jangle of tainted power upstream called to me, but I couldn’t reach far enough to grasp it. And since it was beyond reach of the people I could sense on the line of barges, it was safe to leave it be.
Although the final barge must carry people who felt familiar to me, it was hard to identify them. Their abilities now repelled me, as the tainted power had once done. For a moment I lingered, caught up in the curiosity of it, and then someone shook me roughly, returning my focus to my own body.
As soon as the mental distraction ended, I retched violently, my whole body spasming. I thought it was Zeke who held me, but I couldn’t be sure, couldn’t even care.
My body, no longer silenced, screamed its defiance of the change to my ability. I shuddered, feeling traces of the tainted power clinging to me, as it had done to Dara. What had she said? If she was stronger, she would have sent it back, pushed it away.
I mustered the faltering remnants of my strength and thrust the lingering power over the side of the rail. It dissipated into the water below, too weak to cause any harm against the might of a river.