Voyage of the Fox Rider (59 page)

Mid of night came, and with it an overlay of dark clouds driven before the wind, and lightning sheeted low across the western horizon. Two more hulks they passed, one to the starboard, the other larboard, yet they were too distant to see what manner of ships they had been. None of the Human sailors could see them, for not even the stars shone down, but Dwarf and Elf and Mage and Pysk could yet just make out the silhouettes, though details were beyond even their extraordinary .

On fared the
¡th!rix
through the thickening weed, its rate continuing to diminish, while behind the storm drew ever closer, driven on a hard wind, large swells running under the weed. And Jinnarin looked at the boiling clouds above and shivered, for it was as if the nightmare itself had entered her waking life.

“’Ware!” came a cry from the fore, and Jinnarin
leaned over the wale and peered ahead and gasped in fear, for in the distance she could see another hulk, one directly in their path, its rigging burning with green witchfire.

And in that moment, a great flaring bolt of lightning shattered into the sea, blanching all with a blinding glare, a deafening thunderclap whelming after.

And drenching rain hard-driven by the wind lashed down from the ebony sky.

And Jinnarin looked about in terror, expecting now to see a black ship, its masts stroked by lightning, plunging toward them across the pale green sea.

It rained without letup through the rest of the night, the occupants of the boats in chill misery. And in each dinghy they wrapped themselves in their all-weather cloaks and draped the sail over as much as they could and huddled beneath for comfort and warmth and to escape the rain. Even so, water steadily ran into the boats and sloshed about their feet, and all but Jinnarin and Rux took turns at bailing.

Drawn and weary and lacking sleep, dismal daylight found them yet faring inward, a thin drizzle coming down through a fog on the sea. And Jinnarin fretted about the state of Alamar’s health, for the elder lacked the resilience of youth, and surely he would suffer more than any of the others. Yet there was nothing she could do about it, and so she turned to Rux and did what she could to make the fox more at ease, Rux grumbling in cold discomfort, while the Pysk worried about her friend.

Throughout the day the fog lingered, the cloud cover preventing the Sun from dispersing the mist. And every now and again they would pass another trapped hulk, the ship looming dimly on the edge of vision there in the swirling fog. Some of these wrecks caused the stone amulet at Aravan’s throat to turn chill, warning him of danger. Always it seemed the turtle knew of the peril as well, for the beast swung wide to pass beyond the hazard. And they did not pause to investigate the source of a given jeopardy, for they were on a different mission altogether.

Rania, Nalin, and Imro became more subdued the farther inward they progressed, and even the trailing pod
of dolphin now seemed restrained. But there was no change in the manner of the
¡th!rix
, the great creature ponderously moving forward through the weed.

In mid afternoon the day brightened, and Jinnarin guessed that the skies above the fog had cleared, and by sunset the mist had burned away and weary spirits took heart. When night fell, they set the watch, and all others bedded down, Jinnarin curling up against Rux and immediately falling asleep.

And the
¡th!rix
swam on.

Jinnarin awoke to another grey sky, and once more a chill wind blew. It was the beginning of the third day of travel, and still the great turtle fared through the weed, towing behind seven dinghies. Bokar, Aravan, Alamar, Aylis, Jinnarin with Rux, and Jatu rode in separate boats, roped together in that order. As before, each dinghy also carried an experienced small-craft sailor, and each of the first six boats bore six Dwarven warriors as well. The seventh dinghy carried three Dwarves and three sailors. All supplies were evenly distributed again, so that if a boat sank, it would not carry all of a given stock down with it.

Behind the boats came the pod of five dolphin. And on the turtle rode the three Children of the Sea. How the dolphin or tortoise or Merfolk had slept, or whether they even needed sleep, Jinnarin did not know.

And as Jinnarin awoke, she looked up to find Jamie peering white-faced and grim-lipped at the sea about. The Dwarven warriors, too, glanced around with flinty eyes, and they hefted their warhammers or thumbed the edges of their axes. Jinnarin climbed up to see what was amiss, and as she looked over the wale she gasped, for no matter in which direction she turned, it seemed that her eye fell upon the trapped hulk of a ship, its rigging draped with long ropy strands of greyish-green growth dangling down, like snares set to strangle the unwary, while weed and slime reached up to clutch at the hull as if to drag it under.

“It is like a great web, Lady Jinnarin,” muttered Jamie, “just as I heard Tivir say, a lair of a monstrous spider, trapping all that sails in to her, this Sea of Lost
Ships. I had always known about it but never thought I’d see it. But now here I am, I am.”

These ships were weatherworn beyond endurance, devoid of color where the slime grew not, bereft of original paint, assuming that they had been painted to begin with.

Grey and lifeless they were, or so Jinnarin assumed, though Aravan passed word back that his blue stone ran chill, and the Dwarves cocked their crossbows and loaded them with quarrels.

Decayed were these vessels and strange their designs, the like of which Jinnarin had never seen before, though her experience was limited. But Jamie, too, commented upon their shapes and the manner of their construction, for he had not seen such either.

One relic seemed made entirely of reeds, its stern and prow high and bundled, a roofed-over canopy amidships, now fallen into ruin, sharp-pointed oars hanging awry.

Another ship was made of heavy timbers, its hull round-bellied and blunt on both ends. Perhaps it once had a deck cabin, yet none stood there now. Instead, it seemed scarred by fire, as if long past it had been aflame.

One trapped hulk looked like nothing more than a huge hollowed-out log—though it was so weed-covered that it was difficult to tell—and no mast could be seen. What appeared to be two large poles jutted out to the side, but as to their purpose, Jinnarin could not guess, though Jamie told her that another, smaller log had once been affixed across the outer ends, lending the craft stability.

“Look!” gritted one of the Dwarves, Tolar by name.

Jinnarin’s gaze followed his outstretched arm and her heart leapt into her throat, for though she had never before seen such a ship, she knew without question exactly what it was—there where he pointed was the rotted, weed-covered hulk of a three-tiered galley, splintered oars hanging out through openings in the hull. “Durlok!” she hissed, a mutter of confirmation rising up about her.

“Aye, Lady,” agreed Jamie. “His ship’ll most likely be somewhat the same, though more seaworthy, I ween.”

Word filtered back from Aravan that they must be
close to the heart of the Swirl, for these relics were from elder days, their designs long since abandoned.

And through this ancient graveyard passed the turtle, towing seven dinghies behind.

The chill wind blew and the day grew darker, even though it was not yet noon. Of a sudden there came a shrill cry from the fore. The
¡th!rix
stopped swimming. The boats drifted aimlessly on the ends of their tethers. Jinnarin stood and looked, and in the distance ahead she could see the crests of rocky crags.

It was an island.

They had come to the center of the web.

Now the dinghies were untied from the turtle and from one another as well. Alamar’s boat, third in file, was rowed to the fore. Coiling Bokar’s line, Rania and Nalin and Imro strode across the back of the great turtle and cast it to the Dwarf, then turned and spoke with the Mage. What they said, Jinnarin did not hear, nor would she have understood it regardless. Even so, she knew that the Merfolk had fulfilled their part of the bargain, for the island stood at hand. Now it was up to those in the boats to fulfill their promise and clear the island of evil, though just what that evil might be, none knew.

Rania dived into the water and came swimming back alongside the dinghies, and she stopped at Jinnarin’s boat. There she was joined by the pod of dolphin, and
lo!
she raised her pale jade elfin face from the water and spoke to
Rux!
—her words filled with clicks and tiks and pops and chirps—completely unintelligible to anyone at hand, though Aylis in the next boat laughed. The dolphin chattered, and Rux barked, and then like liquid silver Rania turned and swam to the
¡th!rix
, her long-finned feet appearing to be nothing more than the sweeping tail of a fish.

With the Children of the Sea atop, ponderously the tortoise swam in an arc, turning back toward the channel it had left behind. When it reached the open slot, the silver-haired Merfolk turned and called a singing farewell. Aylis answering in kind, her own voice soaring. And in the clear water of the channel, the pod of dolphin
leapt with abandon, speeding away in the distance toward the far-removed open sea.

Jinnarin watched for a long while, as the Dwarves stroked easterly, the flat-bottomed rowboats gliding over the weed. At last she turned toward Aylis’s boat and called out, “What did she say, this Rania? What did she speak to my Rux?”

Aylis smiled. “She told your little fox, Jinnarin, that if he was ever of a mind to leave the land behind and join them, the dolphin would like nothing better.”

Jinnarin laughed and turned to Rux and ruffled his ears, and glanced back toward the receding
¡th!rix
. But the Children of the Sea had long since dived into the water and could no longer be seen. The destroyers had been left behind at the lair of the spider to confront the peril on their own.

Island of Stone

Spring, 1E9575

[The Present]

S
hip oars and raise sail!” called out Aravan, and the Men aboard the dinghies affixed the sheets to the silks and ran the cloth up the masts, trimming sail to make the most of the chill southern wind.