“Slowly!” she cried. “Don’t you know healing is more painful for Mujar?”
“That’s why it’s better to get it over with.”
Chanter writhed as the water closed over his wounds, and his face twisted as he groaned through clenched teeth. Talsy and Kieran ducked a little when the air swelled and filled with the sound of beating wings, the Mujar’s power running wild with his pain. Kieran braved the manifestation with admirable aplomb as waves washed over the hole in Chanter’s chest and his convulsions increased. The manifestation of Ashmar winked out and the paroxysms ebbed, and the lines of pain smoothed from Chanter’s face. The healing had been swift in the sea’s powerful embrace.
The Mujar opened his eyes and smiled, then a flash of Shissar engulfed them and Kieran held a sleek, finned blue-grey creature. With a powerful lash of its flukes, the dolphin slipped from his grasp and powered away into the sea, vanishing beneath the waves. Talsy stared after him, while Kieran waded back to shore.
She followed, grumbling, “He’s never done that before.”
“He needs to be free for a while.”
Talsy paused in the shallows to gaze out to sea. The dolphin leapt high, somersaulted and crashed back into the water with a mighty splash. She smiled and plodded up the beach, searched for the ship and groaned when she found it. The Black Riders had reduced it to firewood. Even the original burnt hull and copper-bound keel were smashed. The mast lay snapped in two amid tangled rigging and torn sails.
Talsy sat in the soft sand as a wave of despair washed over her. “What are we going to do now?”
Kieran kicked the broken wood. “Build another.”
“How? There aren’t any people to help with the work. The three of us can’t build a ship. Even if there are other survivors, we don’t have the time.”
“The Mujar can do it alone.”
“He can’t command wood like he can ice or stone; he told us.”
The warrior picked up a twisted piece of copper. “Then let him build it out of ice or stone.”
“Ice perhaps, but a stone ship would never float.”
“It would if the hull was thin enough.”
She considered this. “But stone would be too brittle. It would crack.”
“If he can command stone to form a ship, he can prevent it from cracking.”
Talsy stared out to sea, where Chanter frolicked in the waves. Why had he not thought of this before? Then again, Mujar were not inclined towards things mechanical or constructing Truemen objects. She remembered how even erecting a simple tent had baffled him. Chanter was a creature of the wild world, with no need to create devices of Truemen design. Only when burdened with helpless Truemen was he forced to turn his hand to building. Perhaps this was the reason Truemen compared Mujar to animals, for they had no use for the trappings of so-called civilisation.
The dolphin powered to shore and beached in the breakers. The faint mist of Shissar engulfed him as he transformed, and then he stood up and walked up the beach towards them. By the time he reached Talsy, he was dry. His hair glittered and his skin glowed with health. He flopped down in the sand beside her, shooting her a smile before gazing at the dejected warrior who stood amid the ship’s wreckage. Chanter brushed hair from his face and frowned at the debris.
“What do we do now?” Talsy asked, curious to compare his ideas with Kieran’s.
He pursed his lips. “I could build a ship of ice, and lay the wood on it to keep the cold from you.”
“What if there are more survivors?” Kieran asked.
“Then I’ll make a ship big enough for all of us.”
Kieran approached and knelt before the Mujar, and his wariness struck Talsy afresh. “What about a ship of stone? Could you build it?”
Chanter smiled. “Certainly, but would it float?”
Kieran explained his theory, and the Mujar studied the drawings the warrior sketched in the sand. When he finished, Chanter nodded.
“I can build it, but first we must find out how many of the chosen survived.”
Kieran rose, a hand on his sword hilt. “I’ll start looking.”
As he turned away, Chanter also stood up. “Kieran.” The warrior swung back, and the Mujar bowed his head. “Gratitude.”
Kieran made a vague gesture, clearly uncertain of what to do. Chanter smiled and raised a hand in the palm-up Mujar sign that indicated surrender, or friendship, in this case, Talsy guessed. Certainly it was a gesture that meant no harm.
“Wish.”
The warrior frowned, glancing at Talsy, then at the Mujar. “You healed me when I had no Wish. You don’t owe me now.”
Chanter shook his head. “Wish.”
Kieran pondered for a moment. “I have some questions.”
“Ask. Three only.”
Kieran indicated Talsy. “Why is she Mujar marked?”
“She is the First Chosen, worthy of the mark.”
Kieran’s expression was unreadable, his dark eyes intent under lowered brows. “Why must we go west?”
“For the gathering.”
“What’s the gathering?”
“All the chosen and free Mujar must come together at a place appointed by the gods for the final confrontation.”
“What confrontation? With whom?”
“You have asked three questions.”
“I suppose I’ll find out,” Kieran muttered. “If I live to see it.”
He marched off, and, as soon as he was out of earshot, Talsy turned to Chanter, but he wagged a finger at her when she opened her mouth.
“Don’t you start.”
“You said you’d answer me!” She scrambled to her feet and trotted after him when he headed down the beach in the opposite direction to Kieran.
“I said you could ask, not that I’d answer,” he called over his shoulder, sprinting away.
Talsy made a futile attempt to catch him, but was soon left panting far behind. As she stopped, Chanter sprang into the air and turned into gull that sailed high on the breeze. She watched him, thwarted yet uplifted by his freedom.
After regaining her breath, she slogged through the soft sand in search of survivors, staying close to the camp while Chanter and Kieran searched further afield. When the three returned to the ship’s wreckage, they had found twenty-two chosen. Most were youngsters who had run fast and hidden in small places, but a few adults had survived, amongst them Sheera, to Talsy’s delight. The old woman had crawled into a hole in the rocks by the camp and gone unnoticed.
As they sat around a fire and ate a meaty stew Sheera had prepared from her scattered supplies, Chanter considered the chosen.
“So, twenty-two it is. Pitifully few, but better than none.”
“There may be more wandering around in the wilderness,” Talsy said.
“No, the Hashon Jahar will leave no one alive, including these if we don’t flee now. The only reason these few remain is because the Riders were not so thorough in their search. They know many more Hashon Jahar will pass this way, and they will kill any they find. Tomorrow, I’ll make a stone ship. We have no time for anything else. The chosen must gather provisions for the journey.”
Talsy nodded, saddened by the thought of those who would be left behind to die.
In the morning, Chanter helped to bury the dead by opening a great pit and closing it over the bodies. There was no time to mourn them, and, while the people picked through the debris for useful items like pots and pans, blankets, clothes and utensils, Chanter went back to the beach with Talsy and Kieran. After pondering for several minutes, Chanter turned to Kieran.
“Draw the ship again.”
Kieran obliged, and the Mujar watched as he drew it from every angle. Chanter thought for a moment longer, then walked down to the shoreline. He placed his palms on the wet sand and invoked Dolana. The freezing solidity lasted longer than usual, then the Mujar straightened, his hands outstretched as if holding invisible ropes. His stance was relaxed, but a deep frown furrowed his brow. A low grin
ding started deep within the earth, sent vibrations under their feet and rippled the calm sea beyond the breakers.
The sand bulged as the soil had done before, swelling into a pregnant hummock that broke open and birthed a wall of grey rock. It rose, shimmering as it formed a broad rampart some fifty feet long and ten feet wide. The Mujar studied it, tilting his head this way and that like a bird appraising a juicy worm. The stone flowed and warped as if unseen hands moulded it. It stretched, becoming vaguely boat-shaped, and pulled apart to form a concave surface within. The sides rose higher as he thinned the rock, then he broadened it, and it rose on a short keel.
Chanter walked around the crude boat-shaped rock, running his hands along the hull. Again the ship changed, the hull swelling to form a broad base and higher freeboard. The stone rippled as he caressed it, and imperfections disappeared. He raised his head, and a mast shot skyward, straight and round, two booms sprouting from it like branches. Like oil spreading across still water, the stone closed over the gaping hull to form a deck, and a hatchway appeared, steps leading below.
The Mujar stepped back and looked at Kieran, who approached, raising a hand to touch the glistening hull.
“Don’t touch it!” Chanter’s sharp command made Kieran jump back. The Mujar smiled, adding, “It’s dangerous in its present state.”
Kieran looked annoyed and embarrassed. “How thick is the stone?”
Chanter held up three fingers.
“Too thick,” Kieran said. “It’ll sink. Make it this thick.” He held up two fingers. “And make the mast and booms hollow if you can.”
The Mujar scowled at his creation, and the ship’s surface sloughed off, sliding down to the keel in layers. The mast and booms thinned like wax melting in the sun, the outer layers running down to join the rest of the excess in the keel. Chanter looked at Kieran again, and he gave a somewhat dubious nod. The Mujar leant forward and kissed the hull. Where his lips touched, the cross and circle of the Mujar mark formed, sealing the stone. The shimmer vanished, leaving dull bedrock sprinkled with the glitter of embedded crystals and seamed with occasional streaks of brown.
Commanding the Earthpower again, he caused the ship to move down the beach with a grating of stone and sand, sliding into the sea. The tie with the bedrock that had birthed it broke, and the vessel floated free, bobbing sluggishly. It sat too low in the water, however, and rolled even in the calm sea. The first hint of a storm or a large wave would capsize it, but, with the Mujar to control the weather, there was little chance of that. Chanter beamed at Talsy, obviously proud of his first attempt at creating such a complicated artefact, and its flaws could not detract from his achievement. It took years of training to learn the skills of a shipwright, and, considering his lack of education and mechanical aptitude, it was a miracle the ship floated at all.
She returned his smile, deciding that her reservations were best left unsaid. “It’s beautiful.”
He cast a critical eye over it. “I wouldn’t call it that, but it will do.”
“What would have happened if Kieran had touched it?”
“I’m not sure. No one’s ever done it. He might have been frozen by the cold, or maybe lost his hand in the stone.”
Talsy shivered.
Kieran studied the ungainly vessel with a jaundiced eye. “It’s a real tub, I’m afraid, but I’m no shipwright,” he said, taking responsibility for its design, which was fair enough, since he had drawn the pictures Chanter had used as a guideline. “I think it’ll handle like a sick mule and roll like a pig, so I hope you don’t get seasick.”
“Perhaps we should name it Mulish Swine, after you,” she suggested, earning a glare from Kieran and a stern look from Chanter.
They set sail late that afternoon, their meagre supplies stored aboard and lashed in place. Below decks, the ship boasted crude stone bunks and tables with benches, even rude partitions that separated the men and women. Washing facilities consisted of a bath that could be filled with sea water and drained out of the side of the ship, and a simple drop toilet. The attention to detail was surprising and welcome, something no one had expected of the Mujar.
As the ship turned away from the land, the sea before it calmed and a brisk wind sprang up to fill the square ice sail that formed between the two long booms at Chanter’s command. Fortunately, the wind came from astern, for the ungainly vessel would not have survived the slightest list. Despite her shortcomings, the water foamed at her bow as the ship headed out to sea at a creditable speed, driven by wind and currents. Ahead lay the distant, unknown western continent, where they must travel to the Plains of Redemption and be tested by the gods.
***
The tale continues in Book II, Starsword, followed by Book III, A Land without Law, and Book IV, The Staff of Law.
About the author
T. C. Southwell was born in Sri Lanka and moved to the Seychelles with her family when she was a baby. She spent her formative years exploring the islands – mostly alone. Naturally, her imagination flourished and she developed a keen love of other worlds. The family travelled through Europe and Africa and, after the death of her father, settled in South Africa. T. C. Southwell has written over thirty novels and five screenplays. Her hobbies include motorcycling, horse riding and art, and she is now a full-time writer.
All illustrations and cover designs by the author.
Contact the author at [email protected]
Acknowledgements
Mike Baum and Janet Longman, former employers, for their support, encouragement, and help. My mother, without whose financial support I could not have dedicated myself to writing for ten years. Isabel Cooke, former agent, whose encouragement and enthusiasm led to many more books being written, including this one. Suzanne Stephan, former agent, who helped me so much, and Vanessa Finaughty, best friend and former business partner, for her support, encouragement and editing skills.
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