Dargonesti

Chapter 2

It was impossible to measure the passage of time. Sailors collected in small groups and whispered fearfully to each other. They called out long and hard, but received no answering hails from any of the smaller craft that had dotted the waters of the gulf. Captain Esquelamar resolved to curb the growing terror. He assembled his mariners before the mainmast. On the quarterdeck, Vixa and her company stood listening.

“Now, lads, there’s no reason to fear,” the captain said firmly. “We’ve seen fogs before. And we’ve been in much worse situations than this. Why, remember that time off Sancrist Isle? We thought we were goners then, didn’t we, lads? And yet, here we are. Evenstar is a strong ship, the finest of her size in Qualinost, and she’ll come through this.”

“But this is an evil spell,” one sailor insisted.

“We don’t know that, Pellanis,” Esquelamar replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “Nothing so ill has befallen us yet, has it? In fact, this could be a good sign. Mayhap the gods called down this mist to protect us.”

“Do you believe that, lady?” Armantaro whispered.

Vixa shrugged. “I never studied sorcery,” she replied. “But Esquelamar is right about one thing: neither we nor the ship has been injured by the fog. I prefer to know where we’re going, and I don’t like being taken away from my proper duty.”

Captain Esquelamar dismissed his crew. The sailors went to their posts looking less fearful, though some still fingered lucky talismans. The captain climbed the steps to the quarterdeck.

“A good speech, Captain. Do you believe it yourself?” asked Vixa.

“I have to, lady. Those lads look to me for their safety.”

The crew and passengers of Evenstar settled into a state of uneasy watchfulness. Despite their initial dread, as time passed with no untoward occurrences, they gradually grew accustomed to the silent, impenetrable cloud that enveloped them. The captain kept his sailors busy with all the usual shipboard tasks: swabbing decks, mending sails, and polishing the brightwork. Vixa kept her contingent on the quarterdeck, where they would be out of the way. Time passed.

When their stomachs told them it was time to eat, the elves did so. Then Paladithel broke out his pipes. He wasn’t much of a player, knowing only one song, “When We’re Coming Home Again.” He played this mournful tune eight times in a row and would’ve launched a ninth, but his comrades protested. Suddenly there was a shout from the bow.

“Ahoy, Captain!”

“What is it, lad?” called Esquelamar, emerging from his cabin. A napkin was tucked under his pointed chin.

“Dead ahead, sir! A break! A hole in the fog!”

A cheer went up from every throat. “Two points to starboard, Manneto!” the captain barked.

The helmsman tried to comply, but the whipstaff refused to budge an inch. With both hands and a shoulder braced against the tall lever, Manneto struggled to turn the ship. Esquelamar joined him, grunting and groaning as they hauled on the whipstaff.

The dark spot ahead was a welcome change from the monotony of cold, white cloud. It was featureless and black, like a doorway into night, and grew larger all the while. Either they were drawing nearer to it, or it was approaching them.

The two elves continued to struggle with the whipstaff. At last, Esquelamar and Manneto stepped back from the helm in defeat. The helmsman cursed eloquently in three languages, then remembered who was listening.

“Begging your pardon, lady,” he said.

“I thought my mother could curse, but helmsman, you are a master.”

In any event, they were heading straight for the opening in the cloud. The mist thinned to gently billowing streams. Warmer air washed over the ship, filling the sails and offering a respite from the biting cold. In spite of the head wind and the straining sails, Evenstar ploughed onward, against the wind. The hole grew taller and wider.

“Stars! I see stars!” cried the sailor in the bow.

Remnants of the fog peeled away from the ship like petals dropping from a flower. The dark spot was simply the night sky, clear and star-spangled. Once Evenstar was free of the last tendrils of mist, her sails rippled and caught a cross breeze. The ship heeled under a sudden gust as the sails bellied full. Without having to be ordered, sailors scaled the masts and trimmed the sails. Manneto saw the whipstaff lever flopping from side to side. He grabbed it and turned Evenstar against the wind. The ship came about smartly, turning a half circle in the open sea.

“It’s gone!” Armantaro cried, pointing. The odd cloud had vanished behind them. As soon as the ship was free of it, the fog had disappeared without a trace.

Esquelamar called for his sextant. The princess and Armantaro stood at the captain’s elbow as he aligned his instrument with the stars. Within minutes he had their position.

“Charts-fetch my charts!” he ordered. A nimble sailor scampered into the captain’s cabin and returned with an armful of rolled maps. Esquelamar scrutinized the writing on the sleeve of each, handing back those he didn’t want. The fifth chart he unrolled. Squinting in the flickering light of a lantern, he found their position according to Krynn’s stars.

“By the Blue Phoenix!” he exclaimed.

“Where are we?” Vixa demanded. She peered over his shoulder, her mouth falling open in astonishment. Esquelamar’s long finger rested on a spot at least a hundred leagues east of Cape Kharolis-some three hundred leagues east of their original position at the mouth of the Greenthorn River!

“It can’t be,” said Armantaro, dazed. As word filtered back to the soldiers and sailors, they echoed his sentiments.

“Hard about!” Esquelamar shouted. “Bring us to a new course: due west!”

Lanterns were lit, hung from the bow and stern. Corporal Harmanutis pointed out that as far as elven eyes could see, they were alone on the sea. Vixa ordered her warriors to serve as extra lookouts.

To Armantaro, she confided, “I fear for Ambassador Quenavalen. Our absence may cost him and his party their lives. How long do you think it will take us to get back to the Greenthorn?”

The colonel put this question to the captain, who replied, “With fair wind and no ill magic, we should enter the Gulf of Ergoth in eleven days.”

“By Astra! That long?” Vixa exclaimed.

“Lady, three hundred leagues is nine hundred land miles,” Esquelamar explained. “Evenstar cannot cover such a stretch overnight.”

“And yet she just did,” Armantaro observed dryly.

Solinari, the white moon, rose from the sea and shone brightly on the lonely ship. The brisk westward wind continued.

Vixa, Armantaro, and Captain Esquelamar were alone on the quarterdeck. The old colonel, his white hair shining in the moonlight, was swapping stories with the captain, nearest of all aboard to his own age. Vixa listened with interest for a time, but the gentle rocking of the ship and the rushing of water by the hull soon conspired to make her eyelids heavy. She sat down on deck, leaning against the starboard rail. Once the drawstrings at the throat of her mail shirt were untied, she luxuriated in the feel of the warm breeze washing over her. She slept, her sheathed sword lying across her knees.

Perhaps it was the sound of the rushing water or the motion of the ship, but in her dreams, Vixa found herself swimming in a black ocean. Silver shapes darted around her. They were fish. Enchanted, Vixa tried to reach out and touch them, but they managed to elude her and were swallowed by the darkness. Then she heard the faraway skirling of pipes. It was strange, remote music, tuneless yet lyrical. The black water coursed by her face, as if she were hurtling at great speed through the dark sea. A roar of crashing waves filled her ears.

“Your Highness! Lady Vixa!” Armantaro was calling. Vixa’s eyes opened, and she sat up, blinking in confusion.

“What?” she said. “What is it, Colonel?”

“Look at the sea, lady!”

Unsteadily, she hoisted herself to her feet. The strong wind of the night before had diminished. Though the sun had not yet risen, the predawn light was sufficient to show a marvelous sight. The sea surrounding Evenstar was alive with fish. Fingerlings, cod, perch, mackerel, and hundreds Vixa could not name leapt and swam across the ocean’s surface, heading away from the Qualinesti ship. They scrambled up from the depths and kept going, swimming over each other. Fish that normally would have feasted on each other ignored each other in their mad haste.

Now dolphins appeared, arcing in and out of the water. They raced ahead of the sailing ship, zigzagging across Evenstar’s bow. Vixa was amazed at their speed and grace. She ran forward along the railing, trying to keep the dolphins in sight. After them came pilot whales and black-fish-dark-skinned animals twice the size of the dolphins. Then, most astonishing of all, several whales breached. Huge gray backs broke the surface, water and other fish cascading over the smooth hides. The whales were mottled with barnacles. Flukes as wide as the ship’s waist waved in the air and plunged down again, sending surges of water against the hull. Vixa braced herself as Evenstar rolled in the whales’ wake.

The tumult brought all the sailors up from their hammocks. Some of them seized the opportunity to drop nets over the side. Laughing, they hauled nets full of bluegill and sea trout aboard, spilling the flopping fish over the deck. The noise also roused the Qualinesti soldiers. Rubbing their eyes, the warriors joined the others on deck.

“Have you ever seen the like, Captain?” Vixa shouted over the splash of fish.

“No, lady, and I wish I weren’t seeing it now!”

“How so? It’s a splendid sight.”

“ ’Tis not natural. All those creatures do not commune together. Something has disturbed them-frightened them into flight.”

“What can frighten a whale?” she wondered, watching a massive gray head break the surface.

Esquelamar’s worried eyes scanned the teeming ocean. “I don’t know, my lady,” he replied, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

The furious activity lessened. The dolphins wheeled about the ship like cavalry and departed. Whales submerged and did not return. Within half an hour of Vixa’s awakening, all the commotion had ceased. On the main deck, sailors busied themselves with cleaning and salting their bounty.

Esquelamar leaned over the rail, staring at the empty waves. His high brow creased in a frown. “Bosun! Where’s that laggard of a bosun?”

A lean, barefoot elf with carroty hair ran to the captain’s side. “Aye, sir?” he said.

“There’s mud in the water. It could’ve been stirred up by the fish, or we could be in uncharted shallows. Take the lead line forward and sound. Be quick!”

The lead line was a length of twine with a lead weight tied to one end. At certain points along the line knots were made, indicating various depths. The bosun took the lead line and climbed out on the ship’s beak. He let the weight drop into the water, paying out line as it sank. When the weight hit bottom, his sharp eyes read the mark at the ocean’s surface below.

“Three fathoms and a half!” he sang out.

“Twenty-one feet,” Armantaro advised his princess.

“In the open sea? Sound again,” ordered the captain.

The bosun hauled in his lead and dropped it overboard again. “Two fathoms, even!”

“What! There should be more than forty fathoms under us,” Esquelamar insisted. “Reef in all sails!”

Sailors clambered aloft and gathered in the sails. The captain mounted the rigging. “Damn it,” he mumbled. “There’s mud everywhere. Sound again, bosun!”

In seconds the reply came back: “Ten fathoms and a quarter!”

“What?” roared the captain. He swung around to the elves at the capstan, who were preparing to heave the anchor overboard. “Belay the anchor, lads.”

“Captain!” The young bosun’s voice was full of astonishment. “Full forty fathoms!”

“This is madness,” Esquelamar said, shaking his head.

“Not so, good Captain,” Vixa called. She descended the steps from the quarterdeck and made her way to where the captain clung to the rigging.

“There are accounts of such upheavals happening all over Ansalon,” she continued. “The sages taught me that the skin of the world is not unyielding. It flexes every day, rising in some places and falling in others. Such are the circumstances of earthquakes.”

“I never heard this,” he said gruffly.

“Her Highness is correct.” Armantaro stated. “I myself have read of these earthquakes and volcanoes, where the gods shake the ground, great buildings topple, and people are swallowed by new fissures in the land.”

“Have the gods cursed us?” cried a sailor overhearing this exchange.

“Belay that! If the learned lady and the colonel say these things happen naturally, then we’re not the object of the gods’ disfavor,” declared the captain loudly. The light of the rising sun showed his lean face shiny with sweat, but he managed a smile. “Raise sail, lads! Let us begone from these strange waters!”

Evenstar wallowed westward under renewed sail.

Vixa shed the last of her armor and dressed herself in a plain leather jerkin, baggy cavalry pants, and boots. Despite her highborn status, she had little use for fine clothes, expensive jewelry, and courtly manners. Her father, Lord Kemian Ambrodel, despaired of her ever becoming a refined princess. He had to content himself with the fact that at least his youngest daughter had inherited his love of learning. In her rooms in the palace, books and scrolls vied for space with swords, armor, maces, and bows. Vixa’s mother, Lady Verhanna, commander of the armies of Qualinost, wholeheartedly endorsed Vixa’s military bent. “There are thousands of delicate elfmaidens,” she was fond of saying, “but shockingly few good warriors.”

Verhanna had nicknamed her youngest child “the scholar.” She believed bookishness to be a waste of time for a warrior. However, as it didn’t diminish Vixa’s fighting skills or detract from her duties as a royal princess, Verhanna kept her views to herself. Most of the time. After all, she reasoned, the child’s father was also bookish and it hadn’t kept him from proving to be a fine general.

Vixa made her way forward between decks to the galley to collect her breakfast. The only open fire allowed on the wooden ship was kept in the brick oven abaft the mainmast. Evenstar’s cook was also her healer, a Kagonesti named Barbalthin. He greeted the princess cheerfully and gave her a trencher laden with griddlecakes and a cup of mulled nectar. She bit into the crispy cake. Ah! There were no bakers in the royal household who could match Barbalthin’s griddlecakes. Vixa raised the pewter cup of nectar to her lips-

— and suddenly the entire contents splashed in her face as the ship lurched sharply. The nectar stung her eyes as the deck canted beneath her feet. She and Barbalthin collided with the brick hearth, fell, and rolled to the starboard wall. Glowing coals spilled from the firebox onto the wooden deck. Barbalthin scrambled against the tilt, dousing the embers.

Evenstar held its starboard list. The stout hull groaned, and a distinct grinding sound filled the ship.

“Now what?” groaned Vixa.

A chorus of shouts and the sound of tramping feet resounded overhead. Vixa made for the ladder and climbed up. Sailors scrambled fore and aft, cursing every god in the heavens. Vixa slid down the deck on her hips and heels until she collided with a red-faced Captain Esquelamar.

“We’re aground!” he said fiercely. “A hundred leagues from land, and we’re aground!”

“Are we wrecked?” she wanted to know.

“Never fear, lady. Evenstar will not sink.”

A sailor popped out of the same hatch Vixa had emerged from. “She’s tight below, Captain! No water in the hold!”

“Thank the gods for that,” Esquelamar breathed.

The world heaved again as the ship rolled back upright. Esquelamar bounced to his feet like an acrobat. Vixa got up more slowly and saw Armantaro trying to stand, hampered by his armor. Vixa found herself wondering if the old colonel slept in his armor, too.

“On your feet, Colonel,” she said genially.

“Now I know why I never served in the Speaker’s navy,” Armantaro muttered. “At least land doesn’t trip a soldier at every opportunity.”

The ship appeared to be surrounded by yellow mud-land where nothing had been seconds before. To the southwest, the low peak of an island was just visible in the early morning light. Esquelamar ordered a sailor over the side to see if the bar they were on was shifting. As his fellows held his legs, the elf stabbed a boat hook into the swirling, muddy water. It was only ten inches deep.

“We’re fast aground,” Esquelamar reported, his expression grim. “This shoal is not on any of my charts!”

“Can we lower a boat?” asked Armantaro. “Kedge off the bar?”

“Nay, the water’s too shallow, even for the longboat.”

The sun rose higher, and the island to the southwest stood out more clearly. It was a large, flat expanse of sand, with a single high dune in the center.

Knowing elves have to eat even in the direst of situations, Barbalthin came on deck with some food. He brought griddlecakes for the landlubbers, kippers for the sailors. Armantaro picked up a flat cake and was about to bite into it when an idea struck him.

“What about a raft, Captain?”

“Eh?” said Esquelamar.

“Why not build a raft? We could pole it ashore,” said the colonel.

“To what end, sir? There’s nothing out there but a hill of sand.”

Armantaro pointed. “It is the tallest spot around, is it not? From there we should be able to spot open water.”

“Aye. I see your meaning. Perhaps we can lighten the ship and float free of this bar.” Esquelamar cupped a hand to his lips. “Manneto! Heronimas! Collect all free hands and assemble on the foredeck. And break out the carpenter’s tools. We’re going to build a raft!”

Empty water casks were dragged up from the hold, sawn in half, and lashed together. A makeshift deck of planks was hammered in place across their cut sides. Oars and oarlocks from the ship’s longboats were attached, and the crude raft was hoisted over the side.

Vixa looked down at the newly made raft. “Who else is coming?”

“Lady, you would be safer on the ship,” Armantaro ventured to suggest.

Vixa frowned. The obvious concern in the old colonel’s face caused her to swallow her sharp retort. Clapping him on the shoulder instead, she said lightly, “Fear not, old friend. I doubt if the mosquitoes on that island are very dangerous.”

A party of eight was chosen to explore the island: Captain Esquelamar and three of his sailors, Vixa, Armantaro, Harmanutis, and Vanthanoris. Manneto was left in charge of the ship, and Paladithel put in command of the remaining warrior contingent.

Although Armantaro and the other two warriors in the landing party had donned full battle dress, Vixa demurred, saying, “I’m only going to climb a hill, not fight a battle. Why should I wear armor in this heat?” She did, however, take along her fine Qualinesti sword.

A section of the ship’s rail was removed, and supplies for the landing party lowered by rope to the raft. Vanthanoris and two sailors went down first, holding the raft steady by its mooring lines. The others followed. Below the waterline the hull was studded with razor-sharp barnacles. Deprived of water, the creatures made eerie clicking sounds as they gasped in the air.

From the deck, Manneto called down, “How long will you be, Captain?”

Esquelamar shaded his eyes, checking the position of the sun. It was perhaps two hours after dawn. “We’ll be back before sundown,” he called back.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

With the captain at the raft’s plank rudder and the sailors and warriors on the oars, they set off for the unknown island that had risen from the bottom of the sea. And Vixa said a silent prayer to the Blue Phoenix, lord of the sea.