Passage to Dawn tlotd-4

by Robert Salvatore

The dwarf and halfling stood for a long time that night, in silence, listening to the endless wind that gave the dale its name and feeling as though they were among the stars.

  *****

  The gathering of supplies went well at Wyngate and the Sea Sprite, fully provisioned and fully repaired, put out and soon left the Moonshaes far behind.

  The winds diminished greatly, though, just a day off the western coast of the Moonshaes. They were out in the open ocean with no land in sight.

  The schooner could not be completely calmed, not with Robillard aboard. But still, the wizard's powers were limited; he could not keep the sails full of wind for very long, and settled for a continual fluttering that moved the ship along slowly.

  Thus the days passed, uneventful and hot, the Sea Sprite rolling in the ocean swells, creaking and swaying. Deudermont ordered strict rationing three days out of Wyngate, as much to slow the rising incidents of seasickness as to preserve the food stores. At least the crew wasn't worried about pirates. Few other ships came out this far, certainly no cargo or merchant vessels, nothing lucrative enough to keep a pirate happy.

  The only enemies were the seasickness, the sunburn, and the boredom of days and days of nothing but the flat water.

  They found some excitement on the fifth day out. Drizzt, on the forward beam, spotted a tail fin, the dorsal fin of a huge shark, running parallel to the schooner. The drow yelled up to Waillan, who was in the crow's nest at the time.

  "Twenty footer!" the young man called back down, for from his high vantage point, he could make out the shadow of the great fish.

  All of the crew came on deck, yelling excitedly, taking up harpoons. Any thoughts they might have had of spearing the fish dissolved into understandable fear, though, as Waillan continued to call down numbers, as they all came to realize that the shark was not alone. The counts varied-many of the dorsal fins were hard to spot amidst the suddenly churning water-but Waillan's estimate, undoubtedly the most accurate, put the school at several hundred.

  Several hundred! And many of them were nearly as large as the one Drizzt had spotted. Words of excitement were fast replaced by prayers.

  The shark school stayed with the Sea Sprite throughout the day and night. Deudermont figured that the sharks did not know what to make of the vessel, and though no one spoke the words, all were thinking along the same lines, hoping that the voracious fish didn't mistake the Sea Sprite for a running whale.

  The next morning, the sharks were gone, as suddenly and inexplicably as they had come. Drizzt spent the better part of the morning walking the rails of the ship, even climbing up the mainmast to the crow's nest a few times. The sharks were gone, just gone.

  "They're not answering to us," Catti-brie remarked late that morning, meeting Drizzt as he came down the mast from one of his skyward jaunts. "Never that. Suren they're moving in ways they know, but we cannot."

  It struck Drizzt as a simple truth, a plain reminder of how unknown the world about him really was, even to those, like Deudermont, who had spent the bulk of their lives on the sea. This watery world, and the great creatures that inhabited it, moved to rhythms that he could never truly understand. That realization, along with the fact that the horizon from every angle was nothing but flat water, reminded Drizzt of how small they really were, of how overwhelming nature could be.

  For all his training, for all his fine weapons, for all his warrior heart, the ranger was a tiny thing, a mere speck on a blue-green tapestry.

  Drizzt found that notion unsettling and comforting all at once. He was a small thing, an insignificant thing, a single swallow to the fish that had easily paced the Sea Sprite. And yet, he was a part of something much bigger, a single tile on a mosaic much huger than his imagination could even comprehend.

  He draped an arm comfortably across Catti-brie's shoulder, connected himself to the tile that complimented his own, and she leaned against him.

  *****

  The winds picked up the next day, and the schooner rushed on, to the applause of every crewman. Robillard's mirth disappeared soon after, though. The wizard had spells to tell of impending weather, and he informed Deudermont that the new winds were the forerunners of a substantial storm.

  What could they do? There were no ports nearby, no land at all, and so Deudermont ordered everything battened down as much as was possible.

  What followed was among the worst nights of Catti-brie's life. It was as bad as any storm anyone aboard the schooner had ever suffered. Deudermont and the forty crewmen huddled belowdecks as the Sea Sprite rode out the storm, the long and slender ship tossing about wildly, nearly going over more than once.

  Robillard and Harkle worked frantically. Robillard was on the deck for most of the storm, sometimes having to take cover below and view the deck through a magical, disembodied eye. All the while, he enacted spells to try and counter the fierce winds. Harkle, with Guenhwyvar and a handful of crewmen beside him, scrambled about on all fours in the lowest hold, dodging rats and shifting crates of foodstuff as they inspected the hull. The Harpell had a spell to keep the area well lit, and others that could enlarge wood to seal cracks. The crewmen carried tarred lengths of rope that they hammered in between any leaking boards.

  Catti-brie was too sick to move-so were many others. The tossing got so bad at one point that many of the crew had to tie themselves down to stop from bouncing off the walls or crushing each other. Poor Dunkin got the worst of it. In one particularly bad roll, the small man, reaching at the time for an offered length of rope, went flying head over heels and slammed into a beam so violently that he dislocated a shoulder and broke his wrist.

  There was no sleep that night aboard the Sea Sprite.

  The ship was listing badly to port the next morning, but she was still afloat and the storm had passed without a single loss of life. The crew, those who were able, worked through the morning, trying to get up a single sail.

  About midday, Catti-brie called down from the crow's nest, reporting that the air was alive with birds to the north and west. Deudermont breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had feared that the storm had blown them off course and that they would not be able to recover in time to put in at the Gull Rocks, the last charted islands on the way to Caerwich. As it was, they were well to the south of their intended course, and had to work frantically, particularly poor Robillard and Harkle. Both of the wizards had bluish bags under their eyes that showed their exhaustion from both the physical and magical strain.

  Somehow, the Sea Sprite managed to veer enough to get to the rocks. The place was aptly named. The Gull Rocks were no more than a series of barren stones, most smaller than the Sea Sprite, many large enough for only two or three men to stand upon. A couple of the rocks were substantial, one nearly a mile across, but even these large ones were more white than gray, thick with guano. As the Sea Sprite neared the cluster, thousands and thousands of seagulls, a veritable cloud of them, fluttered in the air all about her, squawking angrily at the intrusion to this, their private domain.

  Deudermont found a little inlet where the water was more calm, where repairs could be done in peace, and where each of the crew could take turns off of the ship, to calm their churning stomachs, if nothing else.

  Later on that day, at the highest point on the Gull Rocks, perhaps fifty feet above sea level, Deudermont stood with Drizzt and Catti-brie. The Captain was looking south using the spyglass, though he obviously expected to find nothing but flat water.

  It had taken them nearly two weeks to cover the five hundred miles from the westernmost spur of the Moonshaes to the Gull Rocks, nearly double the time Deudermont had expected. Still, the captain remained confident that the provisions would hold and they would find their way to Caerwich. Nothing much had been said about the island since the Sea Sprite had put out of Wyngate. Nothing openly, at least, for Drizzt had overheard the nervous whispers of many of the crew, talk of ghosts and the like.

  "Five hundred behind us and five hundred to go," Deudermont said, the spyglas
s to his eye and his gaze to the south and west. "There is an island not far south of here where we might gain more provisions."

  "Do we need them?" Drizzt asked.

  "Not if make good speed to Caerwich, and good speed on the return," Deudermont replied.

  "What're ye thinking then?" Catti-brie asked.

  "I grow weary of delays, and weary of the journey," Deudermont replied.

  "That's because yer fearin' what's at its end," Catti-brie reasoned bluntly. "Who's for knowin' what we'll find in Caerwich, if even there is a Caerwich?"

  "She's out there," the captain insisted.

  "We can always stop at this other island on our return," Drizzt offered. "Certainly we've enough provisions to get to Caerwich."

  Deudermont nodded. They would make straight for Caerwich then, the last leg of their journey out. The captain knew the stars-that was all he would have available to take him from the Gull Rocks to Caerwich. He hoped that the map Tarnheel had provided was accurate.

  He hoped that Caerwich truly existed.

  And still, a part of him hoped that it did not.

  Chapter 9 CAERWICH

  "How small is this island of Caerwich?" Catti-brie asked Deudermont. Another week of sailing had slipped past, this one uneventfully. Another week of emptiness, of solitude, though the schooner was fully crewed and there were few places where someone could be out of sight of everyone else. That was the thing about the open ocean, you were never physically alone, yet all the world seemed removed. Catti-brie and Drizzt had spent hours together, just standing and watching, each lost, drifting on the rolls of the azure blanket, together and yet so alone.

  "A few square miles," the captain answered absently, as though the response was an automatic reflex.

  "And ye're thinkin' to find it?" An unmistakable edge showed in the woman's voice, drawing a lazy stare from Drizzt, as well as from Deudermont.

  "We found the Gull Rocks," Drizzt reminded Catti-brie, trying to brighten her mood though he, too, was getting that unmistakable edge of irritation to his voice. "They are not much larger."

  "Bah, they're known to all," Catti-brie retorted. "A straight run west."

  "We know where we are, and where we must go," Deudermont insisted. "There is the matter of the map; we're not sailing blindly."

  Catti-brie glanced over her shoulder and cast a scowl at Dunkin, the provider of the map, who was hard at work scrubbing the poop deck. The woman's sour expression alone answered Deudermont's claim, told the captain how reliable she believed that map might be.

  "And the wizards have new eyes that see far," Deudermont said. True enough, Catti-brie realized, though she wondered how reliable the «eyes» in question might be. Harkle and Robillard had taken some birds from the Gull Rocks, and claimed that they could communicate with them through use of their magic. The gulls would help, the two wizards declared, and each day, they set them flying freely, ordering them to report back with their findings. Catti-brie hadn't thought much about the wizards and in truth, all but two of the ten birds they had taken had not returned to the Sea Sprite. Catti-brie figured the birds had more likely flown all the way back to the Gull Rocks, probably laughing at the bumbling wizards all the way.

  "The map is all we have had since we left Mintarn," Drizzt said softly, trying to erase the young woman's fears and the anger that was plain upon her fair, sunburned features. He sympathized with Catti-brie, because he was sharing those negative thoughts. They had all known the odds, and thus far, the journey had not been so bad-certainly not as bad as it might have been. They had been out for several weeks, most of that time on the open ocean, yet they had not lost a single crewman and their stores, though low, remained sufficient. Thank Guenhwyvar and Harkle for that, Drizzt thought with a smile, for the panther and the wizard had cleared the ship of the bulk of her pesky rats soon after they had departed from Wyngate.

  But still, despite the logical understanding that the journey was on course and going well, Drizzt could not help the swells of anger that rose up in him. It was something about the ocean, he realized, the boredom and the solitude. Truly the drow loved sailing, loved running the waves, but too long in the open ocean, too long in looking at emptiness as profound as could be found in all the world, grated on his nerves.

  Catti-brie walked away, muttering. Drizzt looked to Deudermont, and the experienced captain's smile relieved the drow of a good measure of his worry.

  "I have seen it before," Deudermont said quietly to him. "She will relax as soon as we sight Mintarn, or as soon as we make the decision to turn back to the east."

  "You would do that?" Drizzt asked. "You would forsake the words of the doppleganger?"

  Deudermont thought long and hard on that one. "I have come here because I believe it to be my fate," he answered. "Whatever the danger that is now pursuing me, I wish to meet it head-on and with my eyes wide open. But I'll not risk my crew more than is necessary. If our food stores become too diminished to safely continue, we will turn back."

  "And what of the doppleganger?" Drizzt asked.

  "My enemies found me once," Deudermont replied casually, and truly the man was a rock for Drizzt and for all the crew, something solid to hold onto in a sea of emptiness. "They will find me again."

  "And we will be waiting," Drizzt assured him.

  *****

  As it turned out, the wait, for Caerwich at least, was not a long one. Less than an hour after the conversation, Harkle Harpell bounded out of Deudermont's private quarters, clapping his hands excitedly.

  Deudermont was the first to him, followed closely by a dozen anxious crewmen. Drizzt, at his customary spot on the forward beam, came to the rail of the flying bridge to survey the gathering. He realized what was going on immediately, and he glanced upward, to Catti-brie, who was peering down intently from the crow's nest.

  "Oh, what a fine bird, my Reggie is!" Harkle beamed.

  "Reggie?" Deudermont, and several others nearby, asked.

  "Namesake of Regweld, so fine a wizard! He bred a frog with a horse-no easy feat that! Puddlejumper, he called her. Or was it Riverjumper? Or maybe …"

  "Harkle," Deudermont said dryly, his tone bringing the wizard from the rambling confusion.

  "Oh, of course," babbled Harkle. "Yes, yes, where was I? Oh, yes, I was telling you about Regweld. What a fine man. Fine man. He fought valiantly in Keeper's Dale, so say the tales. There was one time …"

  "Harkle!" Now there was no subtle coercion in Deudermont's tone, just open hostility.

  "What?" the wizard asked innocently.

  "The damned seagull," Deudermont growled. "What have you found?"

  "Oh, yes!" Harkle replied, clapping his hands. "The bird, the bird. Reggie. Yes, yes, fine bird. Fastest flyer of the lot."

  "Harkle!" a score of voices roared in unison.

  "We have found an island," came a reply from behind the flustered Harpell. Robillard stepped onto the deck and appeared somewhat bored. "The bird returned this day chattering about an island. Ahead and to port, and not so far away."

  "How large?" Deudermont asked.

  Robillard shrugged and chuckled. "All islands are large when seen through the eyes of a seagull," he answered. "It could be a rock, or it could be a continent."

  "Or even a whale," Harkle piped in.

  It didn't matter. If the bird had indeed spotted an island out here, out where the map indicated that Caerwich should be, then Caerwich, it must be!

  "You and Dunkin," Deudermont said to Robillard, and he motioned to the wheel. "Get us there."

  "And Reggie," Harkle added happily, pointing to the seagull, which had perched on the very tip of the mainmast, right above Catti-brie's head.

  Drizzt saw a potential problem brewing, given the bird's position, the woman's sour mood and the fact that she had her bow with her. Fortunately, though, the bird flew off at Harkle's bidding without leaving any presents behind.

  Had it not been for that bird, the Sea Sprite would have sailed right past Caerwich,
within a half mile of the place without ever sighting it. The island was circular, resembling a low cone, and was just a few hundred yards in diameter. It was perpetually shrouded in a bluish mist that looked like just another swell in the sea from only a short distance away.

  As the schooner approached that mist, drifting quietly at half

  sail, the wind turned colder and the sun seemed somehow less substantial. Deudermont did a complete circle of the island, but found no particularly remarkable place, nor any area that promised an easy docking.

  Back in their original spot, Deudermont took the wheel from Dunkin and turned the Sea Sprite straight toward Caerwich, slowly slipping her into the mist.

  "Ghost wind," Dunkin remarked nervously, shuddering in the sudden chill. "She's a haunted place, I tell you." The small man tugged at his ear ferociously, suddenly wishing that he had gotten off the schooner at Wyngate. Dunkin's other ear got tugged as well, but not by his own hand. He turned about to look eye to eye with Drizzt Do'Urden. They were about the same height, with similar builds, though Drizzt's muscles were much more finely honed. But at that moment, Drizzt seemed much taller to poor Dunkin, and much more imposing.

  "Ghost wi-" Dunkin started to say, but Drizzt put a finger to his lips to silence him.

  Dunkin leaned heavily on the rail and went silent.

  Deudermont ordered the sails lower still and brought the schooner to a creeping drift. The mist grew thick about them and something about the way the ship was handling, something about the flow of the water beneath them, told the captain to be wary. He called up to Catti-brie, but she had no answers for him, more engulfed by blinding mist than he.

  Deudermont nodded to Drizzt, who rushed off to the forward beam and crouched low, marking their way. The drow spotted something a moment later, and his eyes widened.

  A pole was sticking out of the water, barely fifty yards ahead of them.

  Drizzt eyed it curiously for just an instant, then recognized it for what it was: the top of a ship's mast.

  "Stop us!" he yelled.