Voyage of the Fox Rider (52 page)

“But, Daughter,” interrupted Alamar, “you don’t know how to conjure flames.”

“I do in my dreams, Father. I merely said the word that I’ve heard you use a thousand times:
Incende
.”

“It cast?”

“Yes, Father. —How? I do not know. Yet had it not, then we would not have survived.”

“Hmph!” grunted Alamar, turning his bracelet ‘round his wrist.

Aravan took up his pen once again, signifying for Aylis to continue.

“There’s not that much more. The great black spider was upon us. Green tentacles clutching. Bridging out, the tentacles following. We slammed the holes to, which cut off the tentacles, which vanished in yellow-green smoke.”

“Ooo,”
breathed Frizian, peering around at the shadows in the salon. “They followed you right into the cabin?”

Jinnarin nodded.

Aravan fingered the amulet at his throat. “I deem the tentacles in the cabin is what caused this stone to run chill.”

Bokar cocked an eyebrow. “A dream creature?”

Aylis slowly nodded. “A dream creature it was. Bokar, yet forget not, it was no ordinary phantasm, but instead was one we brought from the dream shadowland and into the ship’s cabin…into the reality of the world.”

Frizian shuddered. “Rather frightening.”

“That’s spooky, all right,” said Tink, “but, Lor! even worse is thinking of a great big green web in the sea, trapping all wot sails into her.”

At Tink’s remark, Aravan’s eyes flew wide, and he glanced at Jatu, and by the look on the black Man’s face he saw that Jatu’s thoughts followed the same track as his own. He leapt up and pulled a map from the chart cabinet and spread it out, his finger stabbing to a shaded area in the south Sindhu Sea. “Here, my friends, here may lie the pale green sea.”

All looked, and Frizian said, “But, Captain, that’s the Great Swirl.”

“Aye Frizian, but Tink I ween is right; here is a great green web trapping all within.”

Jinnarin looked at Aravan. “What
is
this Great Swirl?”

It was Jatu who answered. “Ah, tiny one, it is a vast area of clinging weed, more than a thousand miles
across, slowly turning ‘round about with the surrounding currents. Many a ship has been storm driven into that monstrous clutching whirl to be caught forever, never to be seen nor heard from again.”

Jatu fell silent but Frizian added, “Ships trapped within are drawn to the center, or so they say, ever changing position in the slow churn.”

Bokar growled, “Is it true that salvage and treasure expeditions have been lost as well?”

Frizian nodded. “So it is said. It is told that something evil lies within.”

Bokar slammed his fist to the table. “If it is evil, then it might be the Black Mage! It could be a place where he gets his victims, eh? Sailors trapped by the weed?”

A ripple of conversation muttered around the table.

Aylis held up a hand for silence. When it came, she asked, “Can this be where we should search for Durlok? For the crystal castle? For the pale green sea? For Farrix? Have we facts to support this thesis—that the Great Swirl is the seat of the mystery—or is it but mere speculation?”

Alamar shrugged. “All we have to go on is the sending, Daughter, and dreams are deceiving and not what they seem.”

“Yet Tink may be right, Mage Alamar,” said Aravan. “The green web could symbolize the clutching weed of the Swirl.”

“Wot about its color, Cap’n?” asked Tink. “Is it pale green?”

Aravan nodded. “Aye, Tink, I have seen it up close, and pale green, grass green, they both apply.”

“And the tentacles of the dream,” asked Jinnarin, “what are they?”

Now Jatu spoke up. “Green tentacles? Perhaps they, too, are the clutching weed, Lady Jinnarin.”

Aylis slowly nodded. “Perhaps. But the spider, it is no weed in the water. What might it represent?”

Silence fell ‘round the table, each looking at one another in puzzlement. Suddenly Tink blurted out, “The galley! The Black Mage’s galley! The legs are—”

“—The oars!” exclaimed Jatu. “Ah, Tink, m’lad, you have the right of it!”

“Ha!” exclaimed Bokar. “It all fits. The green is the weed. The spider is the galley of the Black Mage!”

“Pah, Dwarf,” declared Alamar, “how many times do I have to repeat myself? Things in dreams are not necessarily what they seem. These things may be something else altogether. Take Tink’s conjecture—the spider doesn’t have to be a galley.”

Bokar glared at the Mage. “What else can it be?”

Before Alamar could reply, Aravan said, “Bokar has a point, Mage Alamar. Thou sayest thyself that dreams are not what they seem. A giant spider, especially one as large as a ship, seems unlikely. Instead, I think Tink’s posit is apt: the spider is but a symbol for the galley, legs representing oars.” Aravan glanced across the table at Aylis. “It began as one kind of ship and ended as perhaps another, the spider but a dream token—”

Jatu nodded vigorously and interjected, “Farrix—or whoever it is sending the dream—could have all along been trying to tell Lady Jinnarin that it is a galley, yet the dream became garbled somewhere along the way.”

Alamar threw up his hands. “I’m not saying it is and I’m not saying it isn’t…what I am saying is that we just don’t know.”

Frizian blew out his breath. “What about the lightning stroking the masts? And the island? I know of no island in the Swirl.”

All eyes turned to Aravan. The Elf shrugged. “Neither do I, Frizian, yet heed, the weed is more than a thousand miles across. It could hide many things within, and they would remain unknown. An island is the least of them.”

“Ships!” exclaimed Aylis.

“Eh?” grunted Alamar. “What are you going on about, Daughter?”

“Ships, Father. The other shapes in the sea. Small. Indistinct in the storm. They’re not islands, but ships instead. Trapped ships. Oh, Father, now even I am beginning to believe.”

Jatu looked at the shaded area. “Ah but, Captain, it is a circle a thousand miles across. How we will find a single island within…well, all I can say is that I think it will be a nearly impossible task.”

Jinnarin, sitting cross-legged on the table, asked, “Can
we sail through those waters? I mean, if other ships are trapped, won’t the
Eroean
get caught as well?”

Aravan nodded. “Even the starsilver bottom of the
Eroean
will not keep her free of the clutches of the weed should we sail therein. Oh, at the edges the weed is sparse, and the
Eroean
can easily fare through. But deeper within, the weed becomes thick, and there I would not take the ship. Nay, we will have to use flat-bottom boats of single sail to explore the central part, mayhap rowing as well.”

Alamar glared up at all those standing around the table. “You are bound and determined to go there?”

Each person looked at all the others, and one by one, each nodded, though Frizian added, “Jatu is right. A thousand-mile circle contains some seven hundred fifty
thousand
square miles to search. I think it will be by the good graces of Dame Fortune alone that we find an island in such.”

“Faugh!” snorted Alamar. “
Finding
the island is the trivial part. What will be difficult is
reaching
the island through mile after mile of that grasp.”

Bokar cocked an eye at the elder. “And just how do you expect to find the island, Mage? Have you some magic spell of location which will do so?”

“Magic spell?” sneered Alamar. “Oh no, Dwarf, no
magic
spell.”

Jinnarin leapt to her feet and stalked across the table and stood in front of Alamar, her fists on her hips. “You make me just want to scream, Alamar, clutching secrets to your bosom and sneering at others. Stop shilly-shallying about! Tell us, just
how
do you expect to find this tiny needle in its vast haycock?”

Disgruntled, Alamar’s jaw shot out stubbornly, as if he were about to refuse to answer, but Jinnarin stomped her foot. Alamar sighed, and said, “Oh all right, Pysk, it’s no great secret. You see, I plan to ask the Children of the Sea.”

Voyage Afar

Late Winter–Early Spring, 1E9575

[The Present]

T
he Children of the Sea!” blurted out Tink. “Bu-but they’re just shipboard fables, aren’t they?”

“Ha!” barked Alamar, “Fables? Oh no, boy, the Children of the Sea are anything but.”

Tink turned to Aravan, and the Elf smiled. “Mage Alamar is right, Tink. The Children of the Sea are as real as thou or I.”

“Exactly,” declared Alamar. “And this Great Swirl…if there is an island within, the Children of the Sea will know.”

“Hast thou had dealings with the Children before, Mage Alamar?”

“If I hadn’t, Elf, well I wouldn’t know how to call ’em to me, now would I?”

Aylis sighed. “Father once saved a Child of the Sea who had been blown ashore by a great cyclone. ‘Twas on the Isle of Faro, I believe…right, Father?”

Alamar nodded, his gaze lost in reflection. “Um, yes. Water and waves nearly carried us away, running as they did way up into the very forest itself. Never saw such a blow. Anyhow, I found the Child unconscious at the foot of a great oak—stumbled across her, really. At first I thought she was dead, but faint breath stirred her breast. I took her to Lady Katlaw’s tower—she’s a healer, you know. Fixed her up, did Lady Katlaw, though the Child was a long time in recovering. I learned her language—strange
as it was, filled with clicks and chirps and other such—works well underwater, she said. Sinthe was her name. When she went back to the sea, she gave me this.” Alamar slid back a sleeve revealing his golden bracelet set with a stone of red coral.

Aravan’s hand strayed to the blue stone amulet about his own neck. “Has it any…power, Alamar?”

Alamar glared at Aravan but then glanced at Jinnarin, the Pysk yet standing before him, her fists still on her hips. “It lets me call them,” he growled, adding, “though they won’t come if just any jackfool is standing about. Too, they need to be somewhere nearby, else they don’t, um, hear it.”

“Hear it?” asked Jinnarin. “Does it make a noise?”

“Of course not, Pysk.”

“Well, if it doesn’t make a noise then how—?”

“Feel it, then,” snapped Alamar. “Sense it. Whatever.” He peered closely at the red coral, as if trying to see something.

“What Father is saying,” murmured Aylis, “is that we don’t know how it calls them or how they know. It is a thing beyond our ken…somewhat like your stone, Aravan.”

Alamar looked up. “One of these days I’ll know how it does what it does…when I’ve had a chance to study it.”

“Father, you’ve been at it for two or three millennia and—”

“Not all the time, Daughter. Not steadily. When it becomes important to know, then I’ll delve out its secret.”

“Aha!” crowed Jinnarin. “So you would know another’s secrets, eh? Black pot, black kettle, or so someone said once apast.”

As Alamar puffed up to retort, Aravan intervened, stabbing his finger to the shaded area of the map. “It is settled then. Here is our goal. When we arrive, Mage Alamar will call upon the Children of the Sea. If there is an island in the weed, we will need flat-bottom boats to reach it, not the gigs we have”—Aravan glanced at Bokar—“and enough to take all of Bokar’s warband. Jatu, tell Finch to make…eight flat-bottomed, single-sail, six-oared, eight-person dinghies. Have him put a
sculling oarlock on the rear thwart.” Aravan looked up and around at the others. “Unless there are objections…” None said aught. Aravan turned to the second officer. “Frizian, ready the crew to unfurl the silks—we sail at dawn’s light.”

“Aye, Captain,” replied the Gelender. “And our course…?”

“Make for the Cape of Storms.”

“Aye, sir.”

As Frizian strode from the salon, “Coo,” breathed Tink, staring at the map, “that weed’s halfway ‘round the world, right?”

“Aye, Tink,” said Jatu. “Very nearly the opposite side from where we now lie at anchor.”

“How far is it ‘tween here and there?”

“Some fourteen thousand miles ‘round Old Stormy.”

Tink’s eyes narrowed. “Say, wouldn’t it be closer to go the other way—past the Silver Cape instead?”

Jatu smiled. “Closer in miles, Tink, but longer in time.” Jatu unrolled another map and his finger traced a route as he spoke. “You see, we could fare down alongside the western and southern continents and then angle for the Swirl. But we’d have to sail into the teeth of the polar winds, not only through the straits of the Silver Cape, but nearly all the way to the weed as well. Whereas, running ‘round the Cape of Storms the winds favor us on the journey from here to the Swirl—that is, if the winds blow normal; if they do, the air will be mainly on our beam or at our backs most of the way. And should Dame Fortune favor us, we’ll be there in eight to ten weeks.”

Tink gazed at the map and let out a low whistle. “Oy, all that way and in such quick time. She’s a wonder, she is, is the captain’s lady, um, er”—Tink spluttered and, red-faced, looked up at Aylis in embarrassment—“I mean the
Eroean
, Lady Aylis. —Oh, not that you’re not a wonder yourself”—he hastened to assure her—“I mean, you’re the captain’s lady too and all, and I, um, that is, I—”

Aylis tried to hold back her laughter, but Jatu’s guffaws broke her resistance and carried her along as well, Jinnarin’s trills providing counterpoint. Aravan threw a
hand over his own mouth and tried to look stern, failing miserably.

“Stuff and nonsense, boy,” cackled Alamar, “I think you put it very well, myself.”

Amid the laughter, Tink grinned and said, “It’s not every day someone like me gets to talk through his toes.”

Alamar frowned. “What are you nattering about, boy? What’s all this blather about ‘talking through toes’?”

“Well, sir,” replied Tink, “how else could a person like me speak but through my toes when my foot’s in my mouth, eh?” At this the lad broke out in braying laughter, with Jatu, Aylis, Jinnarin, Alamar, and Aravan gleefully joining in.

When a modicum of quiet returned, Aravan clapped the cabin boy on the shoulder and said, “Tink, thou didst well here tonight, for it was thy cleverness which pointed the way—first to the Great Swirl and then to the link ‘tween spider and galley. Well-done, Tink, well-done.”