He tugged at his chin. “This is the most difficult weird to teach anyone, and not all who try to learn this succeed. It involves listening to silence, which believe me can be frightening. And even though our way is a discipline, the feel and the names of the moments are not the same for everyone. Sometimes you don’t discover the name until the moment is upon you. Strangely enough, practicing an art can help open this door.”
“An art? Like painting?”
“Yes. Or drama, or making paper flowers, or what have you. My master played the flute.”
“What do you do?”
Aiyan cleared his throat, looking out to sea. “I write poetry.”
Kyric couldn’t help but grin. “You do? Can I read some of it?”
“No.”
At midday, after Ellec had checked local noon against ship time, he put the helm over and had the mainsail raised to run on a broad reach to the south-southeast. He explained.
“This course will be a good test of the charts. If they’re accurate, and I am the navigator I think I am, we should sight The Turtle in about three weeks. From there we will steer due south until we cross the latitude of Mokkala, then we simply use the unnamed meridian stars to follow the parallel eastward.”
While the other three discussed navigation, Kyric slipped away to find Dorracan, the ship’s carpenter, who also doubled as blacksmith and leather worker. He had lost his quiver in the slave camp and needed a new one. Dorracan worked in the waist, where he had spent the morning setting up a foot-pump lathe, and now he stood turning a few belaying pins. While he was waiting for Dorracan to finish, Kyric noticed a small tool box among the larger ones. It contained several little knives, curved and twisted into odd shapes, with some pieces of cherry wood and mahogany not much bigger than his thumb.
After he explained to Dorracan the kind of quiver he wanted and they agreed on a price, Kyric asked him, “What are those funny little knives for?”
“I use them to carve figures in miniature,” he answered.
“Oh, I see. Do you have any of them on hand.”
With a wink, he ducked into the crew locker and came right back with a cigar box. Inside lay a menagerie in dark wood: a dolphin, a bear, a gnome with a pointed hat and many more — all quite tiny and finely done. The owl seemed to ripple with a coat of feathers.
“Beautiful,” said Kyric. “How long did it take you to carve all these?”
“Long enough. Carved at least a dozen before I got one I liked. The real trick was learning that there was already a figure in the raw wood, and all I had to do was let it out.”
After Kyric questioned him a while about carving techniques and finding the figure within, Dorracan finally said, “If you’re interested, you can borrow a couple of my knives and have a go at it. If you enjoy it and decide to get serious, I’ll make you a set like mine.”
Kyric had a good feeling about it. If Aiyan wanted him to do some kind of art, he would do this.
So that was how the long reach to The Turtle went — sword practice in the mornings, attempts to touch the weird in the afternoons, teaching Baskillian in-between, woodcarving whenever there came a quiet minute, and Lerica’s bed at night. The fair weather held, and each day was so much the same as the last that they blurred together. For the first time since he was nine years old, Kyric was happy. It felt like one long eternal moment away from the world, with nothing to do but grow stronger and more skilled, explore mysteries, and make love to the rhythmic creaking of the ship. He learned of mysteries there as well.
They sighted The Turtle, a mile-long hump of bare rock, on the 22nd day of their voyage, and Ellec smiled for the first time in weeks. “A day early, better winds than I had expected,” he said, giving Aiyan a significant nod. The rudders were dead on.
Everyone relaxed a little, and Kyric realized that the crew had been uneasy. But he was the one who became nervous when Lerica showed him the charts. The Turtle was the only land within a thousand miles.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “Tomorrow is Riankatta. It’s the one holy day that my people observe every month. So Uncle Ellec and I will be spending the night and most of the morning alone in our cabins — nothing serious, mostly prayers and meditation — but we are not to be disturbed.”
“Sure,” he said, but something about the timing bothered him. He had come to learn in the last few weeks that shipboard life revolved around time, and keeping it accurately. He thought about how the sky looked this morning.
“It’s the full moon tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s said in Aessia that some people go crazy when the moon is — wait a minute. That night in the camp, the moon was full that night.”
“And?”
“Well . . . is that why you were acting a little, uh, strange, because you couldn’t perform your rights?”
“Must have been.”
The moon had not yet risen, but Kyric and Aiyan dined alone on the evening of Riankatta.
“So what is it about those two?” Kyric said over a plate of garlic rice and black beans. The fresh food had run out weeks ago.
“I would have thought that Lerica told you.” Aiyan took another bite of rice. “Search your memory for the term, Ariaen’kahta.”
It took him a minute. “One of the five elder races in the years before the War of Mages. Said to be were-creatures.” He recited in the Essian Tongue:
“For they fell upon the foe in the night.
Sabre tooth biting shield, ravening,
Berserk, claws scaling wooden walls.
Lion’s roar, the moon had come.”
He looked at Aiyan. “Are you saying that my girl is in her cabin turning into a lion-woman?”
Aiyan shrugged. “I doubt it. A thousand years have passed and the nature of magic has changed. But I don’t think that our partners here are same style of human as you or I. Not completely.”
“She doesn’t have claws on her feet or anything. I can tell you that.”
Aiyan took another bite. “Do you love her?”
Kyric coughed on an errant bean. “I’m not sure. I’m so comfortable with her it scares me.”
Knowing he wouldn’t be with Lerica this night, he had decided turn in early and try to dream. He wanted to see Rolirra again. The further they sailed into the endless ocean, the less she felt real.
He lay still in the dark for a long time, much longer than he ever had on the island, and he began wonder if it had been something about Terrula, the pollen of one of those strange flowers for instance.
He awoke on a thin pallet in a stone cell, the kind a monk might live in. The window was shuttered but the door stood open. Sputtering torches lined the corridor outside, yet strangely, it remained crossed with deep shadows.
He heard a metallic echo, the clash of swords, far away, very faint, and went in that direction. He came to a long, wide hall where several more passageways converged. It lay silent; the echo had faded. A sunbeam fell from a skylight to rest on a set of heavy oak doors at the end of the hall. Kyric approached them. They swung open at his touch.
Beyond lay the council chamber of the old sages. In the brazier, as in the story, stood a magnificent sword alight with a glowing blue flame. It drew him in. He went to stand before it. He raised his hand, wanting to touch it, but he was afraid. The flame gave off no heat, but he knew that it would burn him.
The light of the sundered Pyxidium played on the walls of the chamber in an asymmetrical pattern. It still rested in its teardrop setting, and Kyric knelt in front of it, bringing it level with his eye. White light, shining through a thousand facets, the crystal glowed softy as he leaned forward to gaze into it.
It seemed to have limitless depths, and he looked as far into it as he could, into another world. Then suddenly he fell into the Pyxidium, and he looked out from it as if it were his own eye.
He was sitting in a huge wooden chair atop a platform, like a throne of old, in the courtyard of a great ca
stle. From the shape of the towers it had to be Esaiya. He sat facing the front gate, which stood open, and he could see far beyond. The bridge to the mainland was there, the stones clean and the mortar fresh. It had been recently rebuilt. A mass of people crowded the bridge, extending along a repaved road all the way to the horizon.
They shuffled slowly toward him, a company of guards narrowing them to a single-file line as they passed the gate. They seemed to come from every walk of life — farmers, merchants, porters, the well-to-do and the nondescript poor, and their children, all with their heads down or looking away. Each one in turn stopped at the foot of his throne and looked up at him, meeting his eye with a fearful expression that instantly changed to a benign, almost blank stare. Then they would turn and go without a word, back through the gate and over the bridge.
Kyric looked down at his own body. His tunic was blackened by dragon’s blood.
“Dreamer,” called an unearthly voice.
He whirled, coming to his feet. He was himself again, standing in the council chamber. In the doorway stood a Knight of the Flaming Blade, in the white tunic of a master. His face was neither young nor old, but within it twitched the diamond eyes of the dragon that Kyric had seen in so many of his dreams.
“I know who you are,” Kyric said, “you’re Master Zahaias. But are you real?”
“As real as you,” came the answer. His voice was like a whisper, and like the roar of a firestorm.
“I looked into the crystal, and looked out upon another dream. Is that possible, a dream within a dream?”
“Within a dream, within a dream, within a dream. Worlds without end.”
Kyric met those hard, terrible eyes, so at odds with the compassionate face where they rested. “I . . . I think I saw a time yet to come. Why do the Powers show me such visions? Why me?”
“What did you see?”
“Even more frightening than what I saw, was the way I saw it. I looked out of the second shard of the Pyxidium, out of his eye, into his future. But perhaps it wasn’t him. What if I was looking out of my own eye? The Powers have never shown me a future that I was not a part of.”
“Come with me,” said Zahaias.
He led Kyric through the long hall and down a passageway that ended in a smaller hall. A hundred medieval swords rested in delicate racks on the side walls of this chamber. Zahaias continued past them to where a great glittering shield hung at the far end.
“Behold,” he said, “Elistar’s shield.”
It shone like polished silver, like a mirror in sunlight. Kyric stepped in front of it and saw his reflection. It wasn’t him. The man that looked back at him from the shield had brown hair streaked with red, a sharp brow, and the dark rimmed eyes of one who slept little.
“Why do I look like someone else? Who is this?” he said, turning to Zahaias. But he wasn’t there.
All through breakfast, Kyric wrestled with whether to tell Aiyan of the dream. Aiyan had never said anything about what a student should tell his master. In fact, Aiyan had never actually said that he was his master, and as Kyric recalled, when he had asked Aiyan about dreaming the answer was, “That would be a question for Master Zahaias.” Well, he had already talked to him — unless Kyric’s dream had simply been a dream. Gods, it was so confusing.
Once Calico left The Turtle behind, they lost the steady breeze that had been coming over their aft quarter and entered a greener part of the ocean with light shifting winds. The mainsail remained furled most of the time, and the ship tacked a dozen times a day. It was still a month until winter solstice, but the days seemed to be getting longer rather than shorter.
Every so often, when he sat on the quarter deck, attempting to carve a figure in the yellow light of sunset, Kyric would look up to find Dorracan standing there. Sometimes he would offer advice or show him a trick of woodcarving. Sometimes he would just watch. Kyric’s first attempt had resulted in a lump with five sharp protuberances. Even so, he had found the process oddly calming — it was the one place where he felt no pressure to excel — so he had Dorracan make him a full set of knives.
Today Dorracan said, “I think you’ve hit it. I think you’ve found the hidden beastie in this one.”
Kyric was on his sixth try at fashioning a recognizable figure. “Do you really? Because I still don’t know what it is.”
“Oh, aye. ‘Tis clear you’re on to it.”
Eight days out from The Turtle, Ellec sat down to dinner with them and said, “I just took a sighting. The pole star is so close to the horizon I could barely see it. Our position is one degree of latitude. If the winds hold we will cross the equatorial line late tomorrow afternoon.”
He pulled at his moustache, which had grown longer since Ularra. “One of the water barrels sprung a leak this morning. We only lost two days of water before it got plugged, but it has put us across another line, so to speak. Even if we turned around right now, we no longer have enough water to make it back.”
The next night they all went on deck after dinner and looked to the north, Ellec using his spyglass. “It’s gone,” he said. “We have crossed the line.”
Aiyan pointed to two stars hanging low in the eastern sky. “That’s the meridian pair,” he said to Ellec. “Athor and Kallux. When they rise at the same time, we will be at the latitude of northern Mokkala.”
Mr. Pallan passed the word of the crossing, and it wasn’t long before a sailor with a fiddle struck up a lively tune, the crew breaking out little packets of nuts and candy, and a jug of rum they had been saving for winter solstice. They lighted extra lanterns. A party in earnest for those not on watch went into full swing, with the younger ones wearing stockings on their heads and dancing crazy jigs to the wail of the fiddle. They joked and laughed, but there was edge to it all.
“What the hell?” said Lerica. She took in a breath to bellow at them, but Ellec cut her off with a wave.
“Let them have this. Pallan will make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. They need a night of light and laughter to drive away the uncertainty. By definition, we are now lost.”
He watched his crew for a moment. Dice and ducats had already come out. “Perhaps we need a festive evening as well. I have a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry I was saving for our landfall.”
“Splendid idea,” said Aiyan.
“Sounds fun,” said Lerica
Kyric looked at her. Later that night they would banish uncertainty together.
Calico weaved southward in light warm airs and springtime rains, for it was nearly summer below the line. The crew began doffing their shirts after the forenoon watch on the sunny days, most of them having weathered skin that hardly burned. The water began to taste bad, and the food worse. The rice and bread ran thick with weevils. The salted meat got so foul that Ellec had what was left dumped overboard and detailed sailors to commence deep-sea fishing in hopes of a fresh meal. Kyric began to eye the two pigeons that Ellec seemed to be saving for a special occasion.
He finished carving his first figurine. It was crude, but at least it was recognizable. It was a seahorse. When he showed it to Dorracan, he got a smile and a nod, the man saying, “That’s a good start. My first was no better.” Dorracan showed him how to coat the figure with a protective sealant made by his people in Terrula. He told Kyric how they made it from the secretions of a jungle beetle, and how it was better than anything used in the West. Kyric shook his head in wonder once again. In Terrula, everything of nature was useful.
On the 12th night after crossing the equator, Athor and Kallux rose together along a perfect horizontal line, and Ellec set a course due east. The change in heading put the crew on their tiptoes. They leapt-to with a purpose, everything more shipshape, more spit-and-polish, and when Ellec sent a man aloft to serve as lookout, it was like an electrical charge coursed through the air.
The color of the ocean changed to a deep blue, and they caught a strong breeze from the southeast. They sailed close-hauled to the wind for days and shirts stayed on in the a
fternoons. Everyone was forever squinting windward. Pallan and Lerica passed the spyglass back and forth whenever Ellec wasn’t using it, and Ellec had two men posted as lookouts on every watch.
One week after turning eastward, as Kyric and Lerica readied themselves for bed, she said to him, “The sea smelled different today. Uncle Ellec thinks we could be as close as two days away. He’s going to release one of the pigeons tomorrow.”
Kyric swallowed. It was like he had awakened from one of his dreams. They were no longer alone on the wide sea. The ship was coming to land and the Spice Islands were real. What had Aiyan said to him that night in the jail? Wealth enough to make empires rise and fall.
He awoke at six bells. Lerica would be up in half an hour to get ready for her watch. The sea was quiet. The ship rocked gently.
Suddenly there came a knock at the cabin door. It was Ellec. “Lerica. Wake up. I smell land. Meet me on deck.”
Kyric heard boots on the companionway, and Ellec’s muffled shout, “Mister Pallan! Shorten sail at once and get the lead going — “
That was when they struck. On deck, a sound like the crack of a gunshot rang out, then a heavy thud. Lerica had already climbed out of bed, and was thrown against the bulkhead. Kyric slid off the end of the bunk. They were pelted by candles flying from their sconces. The great hoop fell off the wall. The storm lantern slipped from its peg and went out.
In the dark, Lerica shrieked, “Gods, no!”
“What happened?”
“We’re aground.”
It was true. The ship sat motionless.
By the time Kyric made it out on deck, the ship was more astir than a kicked-over anthill. The foremast had snapped, and now hung over the side in a tangle of rigging. Half the crew had gathered there.
“Do not cut the mast away,” Ellec called to them. “Sort it out and salvage as much as you can.”
Pallan’s head popped up through a hatch. “We’re not taking water.”
Ellec nodded. “Good. Get Borrell over the side. He’ll be able to tell something by feel.”
Kyric went to stand by Aiyan, who was well out of the way on the quarter deck looking out to sea.
The Hidden Fire (Book 2) Page 18
