by Adrian Cole
'Yarnol,’ came the reply, almost a snarl. The man pointed. ‘Out there!’
'Have you seen it?’
'Aye!’ came a shout beside them. ‘I swear it. A prow! No mast. Tom away, likely. But she floats.’
'She'll never make shore,’ Brannog cried, and with the wind streaming like a torrent in spate off the land, the men all knew he spoke the truth. But they were fishers and could not help but search with their eyes for this doomed vessel, even though it would be sudden death to put out a ship to help. After a moment the distant prow rose up like a knife, slicing apart a rolling crest, black and glossy as a seal, and the men marvelled that it should be pointed towards the land. A freak gust must have sent the rudderless hull twisting around. Minutes later the prow rose up again, battering through the swells; still it faced the cove. The faces of the watchers were intent with disbelief. Brannog heard a voice within him, the calm voice of Sisipher as she spoke from her dreams. He's coming.
Brannog jolted, watching for the prow as a bird of prey watches the ground beneath it when sensing a kill. That prow could not sail into this wind, could not reach the cove. No man among them would have said otherwise, and when the black prow rose yet again, still aimed unerringly at them, they drew back in uniform amazement. Nothing was said now. Words were not necessary. Each man understood that something outside his knowledge approached. A deep fear stirred in them all. They were not superstitious, for they had no time for supernatural concepts and believed only in what was around them. As the prow drew on, heedless of the battering of wind and wave, the men craned their necks, searching for a sign of life within it. They saw none, yet willed the ship to survive.
With a final surge, the small ship rode through the jaws of the stone jetties and bobbed into the cove. Along the quayside there were now gathered some score of villagers, and storm lamps flickered. Brannog was one of the first to race along the jetty, all the time watching the dark boat as it was flung about by the waves. Even here it defied the wind, but as it reached the pebble shallows it dipped, disgorging two distinct figures like sacks of ballast. Brannog scrambled down a flight of slick steps, almost slithering into the harbour. He splashed through the shallows. The water was like ice, but he surged through it with other men close behind him.
Now upon the shingle, the two figures rolled as if drowned, half-floating as a wave dragged them back into its embrace. Like weed they eddied, floating outward.
'Hurry!’ yelled Brannog, even though he knew they must be corpses. No man could live through such a voyage. The rescue party, hampered by the water and furious wind, came to within twenty yards of the bodies. One of them was again discarded upon the shingle. Incredibly it stirred, then rose to its feet, groggy as a man fuddled with drink. Somehow it waded to its companion and dragged him laboriously ashore, Brannog and the fishers had jerked to a halt, watching this without moving, held back by the same irrational fear that had gripped them as the boat tumbled into the harbour. The first man hauled his heavy catch up the beach, until, far enough from the clutching foam, he collapsed.
Brannog's gaze was diverted by movement on the water. The black-prowed vessel had swung away, and now that it had brought its sinister cargo ashore, seemed prepared to let itself fall prey to the wind that had sought to destroy it for so long. How eagerly the storm leapt upon the offering! Within moments the waves had dashed the ship against the rocks beneath the far cliff wall, and the sound of the structure breaking up was completely lost in the mirth of the wind.
Another party of men had come around the shore from Sundhaven, also having witnessed the eerie drama. They stood off from the two fallen men, seeming to wait some word, some permission to go to them. Brannog urged his own party on through the swell. Biting back his fears, the big fisherman bent over the man who had so miraculously pulled his companion from the sea. He was alive. Brannog reached down and with remarkable ease lifted him, supporting him around the waist. He found himself looking into eyes that were lucid, aware, almost immune to the terrible cold that surrounded them all. Yet the man felt warm.
Others crowded in now, helping Brannog to get the man ashore, but in their anxiety for him they neglected the other man, who remained prone where he had fallen. No one gave a thought to his being alive. The man that Brannog held coughed violently and thick pelts were wrapped around him. They had to get him inside quickly or the cold would kill him, they felt certain.
Brannog turned abruptly. ‘See to the other,’ he began, but his voice trailed away. No one had seen the other man move, but he now stood as if completely recovered, as though, in fact, he had never been through the rigours of the voyage and the frigid immersion. He was not looking at the villagers, but studied instead the open sea. Its frenzy beyond the breakwater had not subsided. Frozen in a tableau of bafflement, the villagers stared at the back of this grim figure. The man was tall, taller even than Brannog (by a head) and had a thicker, more massive girth. Even with his clothes plastered to him by the sea, his frame was huge. His hair was pale gold, smeared down now like weed over the back of his neck, and the arms that hung at his side were thick, sheathed from elbow to fingers in long black gloves. No one had yet seen his face, so that his age remained a mystery.
The wind died suddenly. One moment it raged as vociferously as it had done for days, and then, like a great shout expiring, it had gone. Silence came down like an avalanche and the fishers gaped in awe at the sky. Hanging over them, seemingly listening, the mountains waited. The man that Brannog had tugged from the water watched the sky as if it were his enemy. ‘The lull,’ he said. ‘Afterwards the storm will be worse'.
Scarcely had he finished speaking when the tide sighed, drawing back, as it often did when on the turn, releasing itself in a last surge of spray. But it was not yet time for the ebb. Brannog knew this, as did all his companions. The sea was their life, and they felt it as they felt the beating of their hearts. Every eye was upon the water. Quickly it slipped away from the beach, too quickly. Brannog expected the land to lurch, to betray their footing, for how was it possible for the waters to race away like this? Within minutes the cove had emptied, leaving its bottom bare, its mud and pools gleaming in the first searching beams of dawn. Crabs scuttled indignantly for cover, and here and there a small fish wriggled in desperation. Beyond the jetties the water retreated still further. Never, not even at the lowest of the summer tides, had the sea drained itself so far from the shore before.
No one spoke. They remained locked by amazement, stupefied by the bizarre terrain that had been uncovered. The man with his back to them turned now, showing his face partially. There was no amazement there, only a glimmer of what could have been fear. His voice came up to them as crisply as ice, cold, insistent ‘Get inside your homes Quickly! There is no time to delay. Guile!’ Apparently he was addressing his companion ‘Go with them Hurry now! I may not be able to protect you from this.’
The man Guile nudged Brannog. ‘We had better do as we're told. He has the scent of something dire.’
There was no time for argument, not here, where so many impossible things had already happened. Brannog liked none of this, but the echoes of his daughter's nightmare still ran along his nerves. He's coming. This dark man, who sensed power? The fishers would call upon him to answer that. Brannog motioned his people away. They were glad to follow him. Guile went with them, seemingly recovered for the most part, though he could not control his shivering. Brannog glanced back once, and to his horror (he would not have described it otherwise) saw that the man beyond was again facing seawards, and now walking down the slope of the cove that led through the weed and cloying mud to the gap between the jetties. Brannog watched briefly, but then moved on, suddenly anxious to get inside and to attend to the roaring blaze of a fire. The fishers and the man called Guile reached the quay, where others held out more skins to the man from the broken ship. He was glad of them.
'Brannog!’ cried a voice in the stillness. The big man swiveled. For the second time that dawn he found
himself peering out to sea. A distant roaring announced the coming of yet another storm, no longer off the land, as if it had blown itself out to sea, turned, and now came back upon them. But it was not the storm that filled the fishers with terror. On the close horizon a wave was gathering itself like an army. Thundering like doom, it bore down upon the land voraciously, and by its sound the men gauged its height to be nigh on a hundred feet.
All around Brannog men were shouting, confused, racing this way and that, spilling into the houses, slamming doors and sealing the windows from within. Brannog did not move. He was transfixed. He was staring with the intuition born of certainty at his death. It bore down upon him just as surely as the death of his wife had come reaching for her. His eyes were hypnotised by the onrushing wave, but for a moment they caught sight of the remote figure out on the mud flats. From here it looked no more than a few inches high. What could the stranger possibly be doing there? He had chosen for himself an abrupt death, for the mountain of water would pound him to pulp as it fell.
Sundhaven will perish, Brannog thought, yet somehow the realisation did not leave him numb, and a strangely dispassionate mood took him. He watched the lonely figure that had chosen to sacrifice itself. Vaguely he saw it raise its black gloved hands, the fists balled. Brannog did not see the smile upon the face of the shivering man beside him, the man who had made no move to flee the impending destruction, though he had been warned to.
As the wave's long brow curled in under itself like an immense fist, the figure in the bay stood its ground. It should have been inundated, buried alive, but it was not. Brannog's deepest fears shot to the surface of his mind as he saw the wave split open, as though passing either side of an invisible rock. Before the two shimmering curtains of water could reform and break as one over the man and twin jetties behind him, both fronts veered aside, becoming two separate waves. The gap between them widened rapidly and they raced away from the cove. All that swirled into the cove was a light wash of surf, no higher than a man's knees. Already the figure was returning. The two huge waves boiled towards the cliffs on either side of the coast, hidden from view, exploding on contact with a concussion that made the rocks blur in Brannog's sight. He dropped to one knee. Even then he expected the spume of backwash to rush into the channel between the jetties, but it never came. Somehow it swirled past, sucked back out to seaward. Brannog knew as he saw it go that Sundhaven was safe. From the sea at least.
The man beside him nodded as though to confirm that no more had happened than he had been expecting. Brannog rose and clawed at his arm. ‘Your companion. He divided the wave! You cannot deny it.’
'Yes.’
'He will have to account for this. My people will be terrified.’
'And you are not?’
Brannog was watching the man in the cove. He was climbing the steps up the jetty. He looked from his movements to be spent, but he had turned his back upon the sea as if it were some once fierce animal that had been tamed and which no longer presented a threat.
'I have seen power,’ Brannog muttered softly, but as the wind had not returned, Guile heard him quite clearly. ‘I have seen the storm race to meet your ship, yet the vessel ignored it, as a living creature might have. And I have seen all the force of the sea scorned. Yet there is no power that can do this.’ But as he said this, he thought again of the village of Frostwalk, where the harvest had always been plentiful, and of the secrets that lurked there, power that had led its people to shut themselves away. And he thought of his daughter and the gift of telling, and of her prediction that the man now stumbling towards him across the quay would come. There was no doubt in his mind that it was this creature to which she had referred.
The man Guile sighed, waiting for his huge companion. ‘This world does not accept power, or high magic, or gods. They do not exist for you. But Korbillian is not a man of this world.’
2
GUILE'S TALE
By the time Brannog and Guile had helped Korbillian into the inn, the huge man had succumbed to his extraordinary ordeal with the sea and had collapsed, unconscious, in their arms. There was now a blazing fire: Eorna had seen to it at once, having observed Brannog on the quay almost from the moment he had gone out there. Now she busied herself bringing logs into the long room and keeping a stock of peat blocks in readiness. Korbillian was stretched across the pelts before the hearth and Guile began stripping the wet clothes from him at once. Eorna made to help, reaching for the long gloves, but Guile gestured her away. For a second his look scared her and she turned to Brannog for guidance, but he shook his head.
'Fetch something warm,’ he said ‘Soup.’
She obeyed at once. Brannog had already tossed fresh clothing and skins down at Guile's feet. ‘You'd be wise to remove your own sodden clothes. A man can die of a chill like that.’
Guile satisfied himself that his companion had been made comfortable, however, before he stripped. His body was pale, lean, hardly a muscle visible beneath that taut skin, and his joints stood out in the flickering firelight. Where had his amazing strength come from that he had withstood that terrible cold? No man of Sundhaven would have survived it. Brannog saw before him a gangling figure that looked as though a strong wind could either pick it up and fling it effortlessly aside, or at least snap those brittle-looking bones in a single gust. Yet the key to the man's obvious reserves was his face. The eyes were piercing, the features finely cut, as if wrought by a skilful artist bent on emphasising character. Intelligent, alert, even now, with exhaustion hovering at his elbow, Guile exuded a natural aura, which strangely served to put Brannog on his guard. And Guile somehow had about him a confidence bordering on the insolent, although Brannog had wit enough of his own to allow that this could be his own unfair judgement. Certainly he felt at a disadvantage, yet Guile could surely not match him for strength.
As Eorna returned, Guile finished wrapping himself up in Brannog's welcome furs. Guile eagerly began on the hot soup that the girl placed upon a table beside him. Korbillian remained unconscious, curled up like a huge hound asleep beside the blaze. While Guile ate, the door opened from time to time and the room half filled with fishers, invited by Brannog, their shapes materialising like phantoms from the storm. Outside it had returned, the wind redoubling its efforts to uproot the village and fling it into the sea, just as Guile had said. The air in the hall moved, trembling with draughts that found out each minute chink in the defenses of the building. Dawn had broken, but the men yet needed oil lamps to see by; their wavering flames threw elongated shadows around the room.
'Your name is Guile,’ said Brannog, so that everyone could hear. He had seen that all the men of the village were now here. He spoke the name in a way that emphasised its peculiarity.
'That is so. It is how I have been named by men who consider themselves to be amusing. Even so, I have adopted it, as it amuses me.’
'Are you comfortable enough to speak, or would you prefer to rest before you speak to us?’ No one would question Brannog's right to offer this, not in his own home. By bringing the two strangers here he had accepted responsibility for them and for their actions. There were those present, however, who wondered why he had done so.
'I will sleep later, if you will permit me. First, I feel that we owe you certain explanations.’ Guile said this with more than a hint of a smile on his lips. If it had been meant to set the gathering at ease, it had failed. Guile did not react to their evident suspicion.
Brannog saw no point in prolonging matters and replied bluntly. ‘Where are you and your companion from, and what is your purpose? When we have heard that, we will decide if we are prepared to act as hosts to you.’
'You will hear my companion's side of things when he is well enough to tell you. I give you my word that he will hide none of it from you. As for me—well, I will attempt to explain. My thanks for the broth. It has put back much of what the storm took away.’ He pushed the empty bowl aside, wiping at his mouth with a crooked finger. Leaning back, he eye
d the company before him. Other men would have flinched under their combined stares. They could quite easily have torn him limb from limb, these hardy northerners, Guile knew, and yet Brannog had said they would be terrified. They hid that well, Guile noted, but he could sense their fear. Like woodsmoke, it hung heavily on the air.
'You are men of the sea,’ he told them. ‘More at home upon it than upon the land, I would surmise. Some of you must have voyaged far out across that ocean outside.’
No one as much as intimated that his statements were accurate, but Guile was completely undeterred. He knew that his ease would work to his advantage. ‘Some of you may well have heard of the Chain of Goldenisle. It is a complex cluster of islands, some of them minute, others quite the reverse. Legends have it that the Chain was once one island, a vast continent, in fact, that the forces of nature saw fit to pull apart.’ The implication that the elements had acted with a will of their own was not lost on the fishers. Brannog wondered why Guile should couch his words in such a way as to arouse potential derision. He was, however, a stranger.
'I digress. The Chain of Goldenisle. Is it known to you?’
Brannog answered for them. ‘By word of mouth only. We have no need to fish so far afield. And we could not know if we would be welcome in so remote a place.’
Guile chuckled. ‘Ah, wise! You are probably quite right. To sail unannounced into any of the ports of the Chain (even the tiny southern isles) would probably reap you an unwanted reward. Strange days are upon the Chain. The Emperor, who has taken the liberty of bestowing that grand title upon himself (for he was born a king but could not rest content with that), is at war. Or so he believes. Quite with who he is at war, no one is sure. But it is considered imprudent to inquire of the Emperor. It is, indeed, less than wise to seek the Emperor's advice on anything. Quanar Remoon, you see, is quite mad. At least, I am convinced of it, as are more than a few of his highborn retainers. However, Quanar Remoon, Most High Descendant of the Bloodline, Emperor of the Chain, and so on, is also extremely powerful. There are those in his court who enjoy a large share in this power, and it well suits them to keep him happily raving atop his priceless throne.’
