The land rose through the hills and valleys up to an eroded, mossy, igneous peak barely breaking through the trees at the highest point of the island. From there it sloped back down in every direction to high, rocky coastlines overlooking the deadly sharp reefs which were unbroken around the island save for the harbor and the beach and a few dangerous inlets known only to the island’s most daring seamen.
There had once been a house there, about halfway down the mountain overlooking the sea to the west. Some time ago there had been a fire there. They said the owner of the house had died in the fire. His battered and charred body had been found there. He had a small grave there that was heaped with shells, corals, and other artifacts. As for the house, time and nature had overtaken it, and all that was left now was a tiny four foot by four foot outbuilding that had all but vanished into the vines and shrubs.
Inside this hut, Alik leaned over and doused a candle as another set of footsteps beat through the woods outside. He smiled toward the girl, Saria, sitting opposite him, to reassure her in the dark, for ever since they had arrived there she had been sunken in as though the candles were ghosts with torches marching back and forth before her eyes.
She met his eyes and smiled back warily. The footsteps and crunching underbrush faded away, and, still in darkness, Alik spoke: “Saria, kyi…where…you…to be from?”
“North,” she said, a little abruptly.
He did not answer immediately—perhaps he was trying to formulate another question, or perhaps he was waiting for her. She was suddenly moved by the fact that he had spoken in the common language.
“A little house, beneath a little hill, a little north of north of the Silver Hills,” she elaborated.
Again, he did not immediately respond, and she went on after a pause. “There is always snow there. I’ll bet you’ve never even seen snow.”
“Ce...wish for, to see,” he said. “I wish for to see...all...every....”
“The world,” she supplied, smiling genuinely at last.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’ve been to lots of places,” she said. “I’ve been to the Silver Hills, where they have silver dwarves; and to Cliffsfort on the Cold River; and to Torren on the Dragon’s Lake; and to the Western Tower, where Tollomere defeated the goblins twenty-three hundred years ago...and once, I even got to see the City of the Grasses at Rowain-time.” She suddenly fell silent again. Those names reminded her with a sudden and fresh pang of her mother and father. Even more vividly than before, she could see the riders with the torches circling the house, and the fire rising out of the snow, and the dark-cloaked man in silhouette, pacing in the snow. She got up abruptly and said to Alik, “I...I just.... I need a little air,” and stumbled through the door almost in tears.
“No!” said Alik...but he might have said it in his native language. He stood up hastily and went after her.
The night was dark and the rain beat down through the thick branches of the trees in sprinkles and mists. The air had turned very cool.
“Was that you?” someone shouted over the drumming of the rain, somewhere to the right.
“What?” came the response—now from far in front of them and to the left.
“No!” the respondent added.
Saria looked at Alik. “Keaeya,”Alik said in a whisper. He took her hand, closed the door behind him, and crept out into the clearing in front of the gutted house, keeping close to the brush line. She followed him.
Footsteps approached from the front and from the right. The search line had evidently grown ragged in the dark and in the dense brush, and that at least might save them. They just reached the edge of the clearing and ducked into the fronds of the woods when both groups of soldiers came into sight at once.
“I heard a kid’s voice from over here,” one of them said.
“We went over this before....”
“You missed him obviously. Did you check...is that a house there?”
“Yeah, but it hasn’t been lived in forever. Nothing in there but snakes.”
“Leeches. Search the bushes.”
“Let’s just wait for them to go and...,” whispered Saria.
Alik shook his head to the contrary and slowly, almost motionlessly, began to fade back into the forest.
“Why don’t we just wait till they’ve gone and go back?” whispered Saria.
“Do; keaeya,” whispered Alik.
One of the soldiers headed toward their hiding place.
Alik appeared to be moving so slowly that the forest fronds were swallowing him, but he held on to Saria. She began to follow. His nose disappeared, and all that was left was an arm holding hers. Her arm slid in. Water shimmered through the fronds onto her arm. A sleeping butterfly exploded from some place beneath the leaves and fluttered past her chin. She glanced backwards and the guards were closer. Her shoulders disappeared, and her body, and the side of her head. Last of all, her feet.
Alik steadied her and steadied the branches from snapping back. The guard brushed through the branches, missing them completely.
Alik and Saria sneaked quietly away through the forest, in the general direction Alik knew to lead toward the sea.
Eventually they were far enough away that they walked openly, without the same fear that had filled them so before. The forest was somewhat more open and the canopy more dense, so that it was still just as dark but now with no rain at all: only the sound of rain and the coolness.
Alik led the way, climbing over fallen trunks and moss-grown boulders and through the ferny forest halls. Saria followed, struggling and weak from hunger and from the fear she’d felt before but trying not to show up any weaker than her companion.
An arrow whizzed past her head. She stopped, as though not fully realizing what it was, watching it whir on through the air and disappear. Another arrow hissed and buried itself in Alik’s cloak. He tore it out and shouted, “Saria...run!”
She heard a muffled curse from where the arrow had come from and then hurried footsteps, and she ran.
She heard a shout from Alik but could not see him anymore. She ran toward where his voice had come from and stumbled in the dark, hitting her knee and tearing a piece of moss from the rock she was climbing over.
Her knee throbbed but she got back up. Then suddenly a giant, bear-like man enveloped her from out of nowhere and pushed her to the ground. A hand covered her entire face, muffling her cry and blanketing what dim light she had seen by before. She struggled but couldn’t budge.
The footsteps of the soldiers reached the rock above her, and all of a sudden she was let go of and the darkness swirled around her into shapes and sounds and there was a terrifying roar, a flash of steel and hair, and a helpless gasp. Something thudded on the mossy rock and rolled to the ground next to her, and she scrambled away from it in horror. Then there was a sound like an ax ripping through a slender branch and another gasped, voiceless cry, followed by another thud.
A silver-haired, spectacled man in a grey cloak appeared, and the bear-like man appeared again wiping clean a bloody sword. “Well enough,” the spectacled man said grimly. “Here is Alik, and here is the girl. Is anyone hurt?”
“Who are you?” asked Saria.
“Jevan. Are you all right?” She nodded. “That is good.” He turned toward the bear-like man. “Could you cover us? We will skirt the tree line looking for a boat. There must be something: they evacuated some of the boats, I know. We only need time.”
The bear-like man nodded and only said, “Take my son with you.” Then he bowed and ran off into the dark.
Saria became aware of another boy standing behind them, a little older than herself, although she couldn’t tell his features. Alik was sitting beneath Jevan’s feet, not looking up.
Jevan bent down. “Alik,” he said, “you are safe: it is I. We need to go now.”
Saria wasn’t sure Alik would get up at first, but he did. Jevan sighed and led the way. If the bear-like man was still anywhere near them, he was certainly
not near enough to see.
They reached the forest edge quickly, and looking out onto the beach, Saria realized that the sound she had thought before was the rain in the canopy was actually made up of both the rain and the surf breaking on the reefs.
“No good,” murmured Jevan, looking north along the rocks toward the beach. Up the beach, too close for comfort, a line of Tomerian soldiers was heading their way. And no boats. In the other direction, the coast was a shear drop of ten to twenty feet into a jumble of sharp rocks churning in the waves—and beyond that, the reef. “Come on, hurry, please,” he said to the children. He started to head in that direction—away from the soldiers—when the older boy who was with him, Heao, stopped him.
“Look, Guardian Delossan: there is a boat!”
Jevan looked again, and Alik and Saria looked as well. There was indeed a ship: a small fishing yacht tacking back and forth dangerously close to the reef.
“And a man,” Saria added, pointing. In fact, though it was hard to tell, the man was waving at them, a dark blotch against the whitish deck of the ship in the dark of the crashing waves and rain.
Jevan peered at the man. “I wonder if that’s Pylarus,” he murmured. “We would need to swim it,” he said out loud. “In this weather, in those rocks, it is impossible.”
“No, Sir, look,” exclaimed Heao. “They’re throwing a rope!”
“Sir!” Saria tugged on his cloak. He looked down the cliff to where she pointed. Alik was already crawling down the slippery rock face—in fact, he was already nearly down, and the safe path he had taken stood out clearly behind him. Saria followed the boy down; then Jevan and Heao behind her. By the time Jevan was down, wondering how he was going to get across the rocks, Alik was already across them and Saria was close behind him. He could see now that there was a thin strip of sand weaving through the rocks, almost invisible beneath a foot of waves. The line that had been thrown from the boat was floating halfway to the reef, snagged by a rock.
Alik dove into the stormy water. One thing Jevan knew about the boy: he could swim. The water seemed to part around him of its own accord. Saria dove in after him, swimming with all her strength, knowing in her heart she would die if she didn’t stay with Alik.
He heard a shout from the direction of the beach: the soldiers. He waved Heao to follow the two children, tied up his cloak, and secured his spectacles. He didn’t think he could make it to the rope. An arrow disappeared into the waves behind Heao. Then all of a sudden the bear-like man leapt out, tearing down two soldiers as he landed on the beach. Jevan nodded, took a breath, and jumped in.
Alik reached the rope and pulled hard. The rope went taut but did not budge. He pulled himself toward the reef, arm-length over arm-length. As he pulled himself up the wind lashed him viciously so that he almost staggered and fell onto the dagger rocks. He looked up toward the ship, very close by now—too close. He saw the pilot struggling at the helm along with another man clad in a blue sea slicker. A man in a dark cloak on the near side of the ship held up a second rope and hurled it toward them. Alik caught it, balanced, and hurled the free end back towards where he judged the man with the spectacles would be.
He felt a hand on his foot: Saria, gasping and coughing up seawater. He steadied himself and reached down to help her up. She bobbed up into his arms on the waves and he pulled her safely up.
At that moment the clawing wind ripped the sail of the little fishing boat free of the boom, and the ship spun broadside to the waves. The man in the dark cloak was tossed across the deck, still holding onto the rope. A mighty wave tipped the ship, nearly capsizing it, and it ground along the side of the reef with a tearing, rattling sound. For a terrible moment the boat seemed to hang in the balance: then it came to rest, lodged firmly on the reef.
Alik looked back for the others. There was some sort of battle going on at the end of the beach, but he couldn’t tell what was happening. The man with the spectacles was struggling in the water: he had hold of the second rope, but he looked as though he were drowning. “What will we do now? The boat!” exclaimed Saria over the roar of the wind.
He thought quickly. “Te gasa heos!” he shouted over the wind, pointing to the deck of the grounded boat. She nodded, comprehending his meaning, and started gingerly across the sharp rocks. Blood began to seep from her feet. Alik winced and tore two strips of cloth from his cloak to bind her feet. And two more to bind his own.
At the same time, Heao reached the top of the reef and called back down to Jevan, only to be rewarded by a volley of arrows from the shore that fortunately fell too short. “Hurry!” he shouted, taking the rope from Alik and pulling it in as best he could.
Alik eyed the boat as he bound up his bare feet. It was hard to see how bad the damage might be, but it didn’t much matter: the boat was their only hope. It would have to do.
The man with the spectacles washed up onto the reef behind him, coughing up water and groping for a handhold. “This way, this way!” Heao was shouting.
“Climb up or you will all die!” shouted a voice from the boat. A thin, dark face appeared at the railing: Deran, the man in the dark cloak.
“We have to free the ship!” Heao called back. A second volley of arrows fell around them.
“Te gasa heos,” Alik tugged on Jevan’s cloak. He paused, searching for the right words. “To be going…upways,” he pointed. Saria was just reaching the ship and reached up toward the railing.
“Do not leave that boy!” shouted Deran from above, pulling up Saria.
Alik placed his hands against the boat and focused on the waves below. The waters surged around him, stinging at the cuts in his feet and almost enveloping him, but the ship did not budge. Heao caught his balance as the wave dragged back out, rolling over Jevan.
“Go on, Master Heao,” Jevan spluttered. Heao hesitated. Jevan rose, sloshing water across the reef, stifling a cough. He could feel the salt all the way down to his stomach. He gestured to Heao that he was all right. Heao nodded and climbed quickly up onto the boat.
Jevan came up to Alik and put his hand on his shoulder. The boy was watery and cool, almost clammy. Alik gestured to him to climb up. The boy wrapped his hands in the rope. “Aev,” said Alik. “Now….” His eyes went to slits. An arrow flashed against the darkness and drowned in a splash of sea-foam. Jevan darted a glance around, then began to climb.
Alik heard arguing from that direction as though from far, far away. He felt himself disappearing into the thoughts of the waves, flowing and crashing between the deadly rocks and the unfriendly wind, the moon, the planets, the center of the earth. A gurgling came up from the depths and a swell of saltwater stung on his scrapes and cuts but felt so refreshing nonetheless. “Ahh,” he said to the waters, “Kev’ia,” that is, “Come.” The waves came. The ship lifted up and tugged on him. The wind grabbed onto the ship and spun it, dragging Alik across the reef. He went under the waves and reemerged. “Kev’ia,” he repeated, so quietly his lips barely moved. The ship lifted up on a mighty swell carrying Alik seemingly to the sky; then both ship and boy hit the water with a shudder—first the boy, then the ship, the stern smacking him in the face as it came spinning down. He blinked blindly and plunged downward into the frothing bubbles of the sea.
II.i. aris
T
he sun rose in the east, piercing a crystal blue sky with its bright beams as it marched across the dome of the aether and silhouetted the growing strand of shore that stretched out of the northeast, downward across the flat plain-lands of the Aris River Valley, and southward to the unchartered lands. Fishing boats already dotted the waters before them, and squadrons of gulls peppered the sky. There was not a cloud in sight save far behind them on the still-dark sea. Only the smoke of the cities rose ahead of them and a column of far-off smoke slightly more to port.
The cries of the gulls first brought the sea-boy Alik back to consciousness. The roll of the sea, the sound of the gulls, and the sense of dryness that he awoke with suggested to him that h
e had somehow been pulled aboard the ship before he drowned, that they were still on the ship, that they were safe—at least for the time—and that they had traveled far, far away from home.
The floor creaked to the left of him and someone approached and gently squeezed his hand. He tried to open his eyes but his head was throbbing. The girl...Saria...it was her.
“Is he awake?” a man’s voice came from a seat near the foot of his bed. It was not Jevan...it was not the other boy, Heao.... He did not recognize the voice. It had a wry, unrefined tone to it and an echoing sensation. Saria did not answer it. Alik tried to gather the word for “yes,” but could only manage the first part of it. He lifted his hand to wave instead, and groped for his head. He found that the pain was all over his head but especially in his eyes and right cheek and forehead. There was a small bandage applied there but not much blood.
“Alik?” a new voice said, entering the cabin. This was Jevan. “We are almost there,” Jevan said to the others present. “As soon as we are ashore we will need to find a temporary lodging and then I will send Heao after a physician. I hope you will not mind the expense of putting us up for a night, Master Deran?”
“It is the least I can do, I’m sure,” said Deran—the man with the echoing voice.
“I thank you for us all. How is Alik?” Jevan said.
“Yes,” groaned Alik.
“You had a bad knock on the head,” said Jevan. “You might have been crushed by it. You were very lucky not to have been drowned or killed.”
“Ce do-caramav dehydaren,” murmured Alik. “Of death by water...not fearing.”
“You were lucky,” Jevan repeated. “Though perhaps the danger is not yet past for you. If it wasn’t for this boy, and the way the waves came up to help us, Master Deran, you would have been broken up on the reef, and we would all be Tryphallian prisoners by now, if we had lived.” Jevan suddenly thought to introduce Deran to Alik. “Alik, Master Deran is the man who pulled us aboard the ship.”
The Wizard's Heir Page 5
