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Callinde would sail at dawn.
That night, wrapped in the damp shelter of the mainsail, he dreamed of black
ships, a fleet so vast that the ocean was sheared into foam by the streaming
lines of wake. Wind moaned through a cabled forest of rigging, and through its
dissonance, Taen's voice cried warning: Maelgrim Dark-dreamer sailed with
these
Thienz. If Jaric was overtaken by the brother enslaved to Shadowfane,
Keithland's future would be irrevocably lost. Then the voice of Taen was
joined by the wails of the hilltribes' dead. And always, relentlessly, the
demon ships converged upon the southwest reaches.
In the dream, Jaric hardened lines until his hands bled. He guided
Callinde's steering oar with hairsbreadth precision, and coaxed maximum
advantage from each gust. Yet old Mathieson's boat was too clumsy. The demon
fleet gained effortlessly. Enemy sails swelled and eclipsed the sky,
blanketing Jaric in shadow. Somewhere he heard Taen shouting frantic
instructions; but the dark smothered her words beyond all understanding.
That moment, someone kicked his ankle. Jaric started, roused, and shot upright
amid a clatter of sail hanks. He blinked sweat from his eyes, breathing hard,
and by the canvas that slid loose around his shoulders recalled that
Callinde lay beached on the shore of south Elrinfaer. The seeress of Gael's
Falls stood over him. Her scarred eyes were tied with a veil that streamed in
the breeze like smoke; stars shim-
mered faintly through gauzy folds, jewels for the unseen face beneath.
"Ciengarde, you are leaving at sunrise."
Startled afresh by her prescience, and wrung with the horrors left by dreams,
Jaric nodded. He dragged himself warily upright and braced his weight against
the back-canted shaft of the steering oar. "I must, Lady."
But the seeress had not come to deter him. "You seek the Vaere, Ciengarde."
Away from the echoing grotto, her voice seemed unfamiliarly thin. Yet with
none of the uncertainty of the young, she raised her blowing veils and
regarded him with eyes that saw no living boy but a spirit-world of mysteries.
Jaric shivered.
The seeress ignored his discomfort. As if speaking to air, she repeated a
directive given her by the
Presence within the shrine of Gael's Falls. Then her dispassionate recitation
ceased. With the faintest rustle of gauze she lowered her veils and departed.
Jaric watched her go, a shadow against the scrolled curl of waves breaking
upon the sands. In time her form merged with the black circle of ash, and she
seemed to vanish from the face of the earth.
Her presence might have been a vision; Jaric regarded the lift and surge of
the breakers, and the sliding, silvery rush as the backwash slid seaward to
mesh with the foam of incoming waves. He wept then, not for the dead, but for
the aching rebirth of hope. Without doubt the black ships and Taen's warning
had been true
dreaming; the Lord of the Demons had sent Maelgrim Dark-dreamer forth from
Shadowfane to hunt him.
But the most powerful priestess to serve the Presence had spoken from her
shrine for the second time in the long memory of the clans, to grant a
city-born the most significant guidance so far received from any source.
It might, perhaps, be enough to thwart the Dark-dreamer and the designs of his
demon masters. In terms a sailor could understand, the Lady of Gael's Falls
had given Ivainson Jaric the location of the Isle of the Vaere. She had not
done so for the sake of dead clansmen, nor even for the continued security of
humankind. She had gifted the Firelord's heir because he had learned to
embrace his destiny} fully and finally, for his own sake.
Jaric surged to his feet. He banged open the chart locker and rummaged within
for a map of the seas south and to the west of the Free Isles. There and then
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in the starlight he made a calculation, and estimated a crossing of three
weeks, provided the winds held fair. Too restless to sleep, he arose and
checked
Callinde's stores; then, grateful for the water and provisions already laid in
by the generous hands of the clansmen, he stamped on his boots. West winds
tumbled the feathers on his warrior's wristband as he rigged blocks to drag
Callinde toward the sea. Jaric set his teeth against the lingering weakness of
the Thienz venom. Determined, pressured by hope and the bitterest of goals, he
labored through the effort of launching.
At last, sweat-drenched and panting and ready to board, he stood in the
shallows and looked back. The beach spread pale by starlight, blighted by the
fire scar that had honored the bravery of thirty-eight dead.
Jaric repeated their names one by one, then hauled his tired frame over
Callinde's high thwart. His hands trembled as he shook out canvas, and his
head swam with dizziness. Slowly, painstakingly, Callinde's bow swung. Her
sails slapped taut to the wind. With apparent reluctance, Mathieson's ungainly
craft responded to the shove of the breeze and gathered way, her wake a faint
lisp over the deeper boom of surf.
Jaric turned his face to the sea. No longer did he sail for Taen alone, nor
for the civilization so precariously preserved within the painted towers at
Landfast. The wild tribes of Keithland had sacrificed loved ones for a future. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]