Jarka Ruus

TWENTY–THREE

Darkness had fallen, stealing away the last of the daylight. Heavy fog closed on the airship, enfolding it in a swirling gray haze. There was no difference now between up or down or even sideways to those who sailed aboard the Skatelow. Everything looked the same. The day had been dreary to begin with, washed of color and empty of sunshine, but the night was worse. The clouds were so thickly massed overhead that there was not even the smallest hint of stars or moon. Below, the waters of the Lazareen had vanished as if drained from an unplugged basin. The lights of Anatcherae had vanished minutes after their departure. The world had disappeared.

Pen brought Cinnaminson to her father. She squeezed Pen's hand as he led her along the corridor from her cabin and up the stairway to the deck, but neither of them spoke. There was too much to say and no time to say it. In the pilot box, she moved obediently to her father's side, saying as she did so, «I'm here, Papa.» Pen was dismissed, told to go below, and he moved away. But he lingered at the hatchway with Khyber and Ahren, staring out into the impenetrable fog, into the depthless night. If Cinnaminson wasn't able to navigate blind, he was thinking, they would be in trouble. There wasn't even the smallest landmark on which they could fix, no sky to read, no point of reference to track. There was nothing out there at all.

«She's her father's compass, isn't she?» Ahren asked him quietly. «His eyes in the darkness?»

He nodded, looking at the Druid in surprise. «How did you know?»

«It was nosed about at the docks in Syioned. Some say she's his good–luck charm. Some say she can see in darkness, even though she's blind in daylight. None of them have it right. I saw the way she moved the first few days we were aboard. She can sense the position of things in her mind, their location, their look and feel.»

«She said she sees the stars in her mind, even in mist and rain like this. That's how she navigates.»

«A gift," Ahren Elessedil murmured. «But her father thinks it belongs to him because she is his child.»

Pen nodded. «He thinks she belongs to him.»

They could hear her speaking softly to her father, giving him instructions, a heading to take, a course to follow. His hands moved smoothly over the controls in response, turning the airship slightly to starboard, bringing up her bow as he did so, easing ahead through the gloom. In a less stressful situation, he might have noticed them watching and immediately ordered them below, worried that they would discover his secret. He might have refused to proceed while they remained on deck. But that night he was so preoccupied that he didn't even know they were there.

The mist thickened the farther away from land they flew, swirling like witch's brew around the airship, alive with strange shadows and unexpected movement. There was no wind, and yet the haze roiled as if there were. Pen felt uneasy at the phenomenon, not understanding how it could occur. He glanced again at Ahren Elessedil, but the Druid was staring straight ahead, his concentration focused on something else.

He was listening.

Pen listened, as well, but he couldn't hear a thing beyond the creaking of the ship's rigging. He looked to Khyber, but she shook her head to indicate that she didn't hear anything, either.

Then Pen froze. There was something after all. At first, he wasn't sure what it was. It sounded a little like breathing, deep and low, like a sleeping man exhaling, only not that, either. He furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to place it. It must be the wind, he thought. The wind, sweeping over the hull or through the rigging or along the decks. But he knew it wasn't.

The sound grew louder, crept closer, as if a sleeping giant had woken and was coming over for a look. Pen glanced quickly at Ahren, but the Druid's gaze was intense and fixed, directed outward into the mist, searching.

«Uncle?» Khyber whispered, and there was an unmistakable hint of fear in her voice.

He nodded without looking at her. «It is the lake," he said. «It is alive.»

Pen had no idea what that meant, but he didn't like the sound of it. Lakes weren't alive in the sense that they could breathe, so why did it sound as if this one was? He tried to pick up a rhythm to the sound, but it was unsteady and sporadic, harsh and labored. The ship sailed into the teeth of it, sliding smoothly through the fog, down the giant's throat and into its belly. Pen could see it in his mind. He tried to change the picture to something less threatening, but could not.

Then abruptly, ethereal forms appeared, incomplete and hazy, riding the windless mist. They brought the sound with them, carried it in their shadowy, insubstantial bodies, bits and pieces echoing all about them as they moved. Pen shrank back as several approached, sliding over the railing and across the airship's rain–slick deck. Cinnaminson gasped and her father swore angrily, swatting ineffectually at the wraith forms.

«The dead come to visit us," Ahren Elessedil said quietly. «This is the Lazareen, the prison of the dead who have not found their way to the netherworld and still wander the Four Lands.»

«What do they want?» Khyber whispered.

Ahren shook his head. «I don't know.»

The shades were all around the Skatelow, sweeping through her rigging like birds. The breathing grew louder, filling their ears, a windstorm of trouble building to something terrible. Slowly, steadily, vibrations began to shake the airship, causing the rigging to hum and the spars to rattle. Pen felt them all the way down to his bones. Seconds later, its pitch shifted to a frightening howl, a wail that engulfed them in an avalanche of sound. Pen went to his knees, racked with pain. The wail tightened like a vise around his head, crushing his ineffectual defenses. In the pilot box, in a futile effort to keep the sound at bay, Cinnaminson doubled over, her hands clapped over her ears. Gar Hatch was howling in fury, fighting to remain in control of the airship but losing the battle.

«Do something!» Khyber screamed at everyone and no one in particular, her eyes squeezed shut, her face twisted.

Like the legendary Sirens, the shades were driving the humans aboard the Skatelow mad. Their voices would paralyze the sailors, strip them of their sanity, and leave them catatonic. Already, Pen could feel himself losing control, his efforts at protecting his hearing and his mind failing. If he had the wishsong, he thought, he might have a way to fight back. But he had no defense against this, no magic to combat it. Nor did any of them, except perhaps …

He glanced quickly at Ahren Elessedil. The Druid was standing rigid and white–faced against the onslaught, hands weaving, lips moving, calling on his magic to save them. It was a terrible choice he was making, Pen knew. Using magic would give them away to the Galaphile in an instant. It would lead Terek Molt and his Gnome Hunters right to them. But what other choice did they have? The boy dropped to his knees, fighting to keep from screaming, the wailing so frenzied and wild that the deck planking was vibrating.

Then abruptly, everything went perfectly still, and they were enfolded in a silence so deep and vast that it felt as if they were packed in cotton wadding and buried in the ground. Around them, the mist continued to swirl and the shades to fly, but the wailing was no longer heard.

Pen got to his feet hesitantly, watching as the others did the same.

«We're safe, but we've given ourselves away," Ahren said quietly. He looked drained of strength, his face drawn and worn.

«Maybe they didn't come after us," Khyber offered.

Her uncle did not respond. Instead, he moved away from them, crossing the deck to the pilot box. After a moment's hesitation, Pen and Khyber followed. Gar Hatch turned at their approach, his hard face twisting with anger. «This is your doing, Druid!» he snapped. «Get below and stay there!»

«Cinnaminson," Ahren Elessedil said to the girl, ignoring her father. She swung toward the sound of his voice, her pale face damp with mist, her blind eyes wide. «We have to hide. Can you find a place for us to do so?»

«Don't answer him!» Gar Hatch roared. He swung down out of the pilot box and advanced on the Druid. «Let her be! She's blind, in case you hadn't noticed! How do you expect her to help?»

Ahren stopped, one hand coming up in a warding gesture. «Don't come any closer, Captain," he said. Gar Hatch stopped, shaking with rage. «Let's not pretend we don't both know what she can and can't do. She's your eyes in this muck. She can see better than either of us. If she can't, then send her below and steer this ship yourself! Because a Druid warship tracks us, and if you don't find a way off this lake, and find it quickly, it will be on top of us!»

Gar Hatch came forward another step, his fists knotted. «I should never have brought you aboard! I should never have agreed to help you! I do, and look what it costs me! You take my daughter, you take my ship, and you will probably cost me my life!»

Ahren stood his ground. «Don't be stupid. I take nothing from you but your services, and I paid for those. Among them, like it or not, is your daughter's talent. Now give her your permission to find a place for us to hide before it is too late!»

Hatch started to say something, then his eyes widened in shock as the huge, ironclad rams of the Galaphile surged out of the fog bank.

«Cinnaminson!» he shouted, leaping into the pilot box and seizing the controls.

He dropped the nose of the Skatelow so hard and so fast that Pen and his companions slid forward into the side of the pilot box, grabbing onto railings and ropes and anything else that would catch them. The airship plummeted, then leveled out and shot forward into the haze, all in seconds. As quick as that, they were alone again, the Galaphile vanished back into the fog.

«Which way?» Gar Hatch demanded of his daughter.

Her voice steady, Cinnaminson centered herself on the console, both hands gripping the railing, and began to give her father instructions, calling out headings. Pen, Khyber, and Ahren Elessedil righted themselves and snapped their safety harnesses in place, keeping close to the pilot box to watch what was happening. Gar Hatch ignored them, speaking only to his daughter, listening to her replies and making the necessary adjustments in the setting of the Skatelow's course.

Pen looked over his shoulder, then skyward, searching the mist for the Galaphile. She was nowhere to be seen. But she was close at hand. He sensed her, massive and deadly, an implacable hunter in search of her prey. He felt her bulk pressing down through the haze, looking to crush him over the Lazareen the way she would have crushed him over the Rainbow Lake almost three weeks ago.

He was aware suddenly that the shades had vanished, gone back into the shroud of mist and gloom they had swum through moments earlier, sunk down into the waters of the Lazareen.

«Why didn't the dead go after Terek Molt?» he asked Ahren suddenly. «Why didn't they attack the Galaphile, too?»

The Druid glanced over. «Because Molt protects his vessel with Druid magic, something he can afford to do and we cannot.» He paused, hands knuckle–white about the pilot box railing, droplets of water beaded on his narrow Elven features. «Besides, Penderrin, he may have summoned the dead in the first place. He has that power.»

«Shades," the boy whispered, and the word was like a prayer.

They sailed ahead in silence, an island once more in the mist and fog, a rabbit in flight from a fox. All eyes searched the gloom for the Galaphile, while Cinnaminson called out course headings and Gar Hatch made the airship respond. The wind picked up again, set loose as they reached the Lazareen's center, and the haze began to dissipate. Below, the lake waters were choppy and dark, the sound of their waves clear in the fog's silence.

Ahren Elessedil leaned over the pilot box railing. «Where do we sail?» he asked Gar Hatch.

«The Slags," the big man answered dully. «There's plenty of places to hide in there, places we will never be found. We just need to clear the lake.»

Pen touched the Druid's arm and looked at him questioningly.

«Wetlands," the Druid said. «Miles and miles of them, stretching all along the northeastern shoreline. Swamp and flood plain, cypress and cedar. A tangle of old growth and grasses blanketed with mist and filled with quicksand that can swallow whole ships. Dangerous, even if you know what you're doing.» He nodded toward Hatch. «He's made the right choice.»

She has, Pen corrected silently. For it was Cinnaminson who set their course, through whose mind's eye they sought their way and in whose hands they placed their trust.

The mist continued to thin, the sky above opening to a canopy of stars, the lake below silver–tipped and shimmering. Their cover would be gone in a few minutes, and Pen saw no sign of the shore. The mist still hung in thick curtains in the distance, so he assumed the shore was there. But it was a long way off, and the wind was in their face, slowing their passage.

Rain began to fall, sweeping across the decking in a cold, black wash, and quickly they were soaked through. It poured for a time, thunder booming in the distance, and then just as suddenly it stopped again. At the same moment, the wind died to nothing.

«Twenty degrees starboard," Cinnaminson told her father. «We'll find better speed on that heading. Oh," she gasped suddenly, «behind us, Papa!»

They all swung about in response and found the Galaphile emerging from the remnants of the fog bank, dark and menacing in the moonlight, sails furled and lashed, the warship flying on the power of her diapson crystals. She was moving fast, surging through the night, bearing down on them like a tidal wave.

Gar Hatch threw the thruster levers all the way forward and yelled to his Rover crewmen to drop the mainsail. Pen saw the reason for it at once; the mainsail was a drag on the ship in that windless air and would be of less help if the wind resumed from the east. The Skatelow was better off flying on stored power, as well, though she could not begin to match the speed of the Galaphile. Still, she was the smaller, lighter craft and, if she was lucky, might be able to outmaneuver her pursuer.

The chase was under way in earnest; the fog that had offered concealment only moments earlier all but vanished. Pen did not care for what he saw as he watched the Galaphile draw closer. As fast as she was coming, the Skatelow could not outrun her. The Lazareen stretched away in all directions, vast and unchanging, and there was no sign of the shoreline they so desperately needed to reach. Clever maneuvers would get them only so far. Cinnaminson was still calling out tacks and headings, and Gar Hatch worked the controls frantically in response, trying to catch a bit of stray wind here, to skip off a gust of sudden air there. But neither could do anything to change their situation. The Galaphile continued to close steadily.

Then a fresh rainsquall washed over them, and Ahren Elessedil, seeing his chance, stepped away from the railing, arms raised skyward, and called on his magic to change the squall's direction, sending it whipping toward the Druid warship. It caught the Galaphile head–on, but by then it had changed into sleet so thick and heavy that it enveloped the bigger ship and swallowed it whole. Clinging to the Galaphile in a white swirling mass, it coated the decking and masts with ice, turning the airship to a bone–bleached corpse.

Now the Skatelow began to pull away. Burdened by the weight of the ice that had formed, the Galaphile was foundering. Pen saw flashes of red fire sweeping her masts and spars, Druid magic attempting to burn away the frigid coating. The fire had an eerie look to it, flaring from within the storm cloud like dragon eyes, like embers in a forge.

Ahead, the fog bank drew nearer.

Ahren collapsed next to Pen and Khyber, his lean face drawn and pale, his eyes haunted. He was close to exhaustion. «Find us a place to hide, Cinnaminson," he breathed softly.

«Find it quickly.»

Pressed against the pilot box wall, rain–soaked and cold, Pen peered in at the girl. She stood rigid and unmoving at the forward railing, her face lifted. She was speaking so low that Pen could not make out the words, but Gar Hatch was listening intently, bent close to her, his burly form hunched down within his cloak. He had dropped the Skatelow so close to the Lazareen that she was almost skimming the surface. Pen heard the chop of the lake waters, steady and rough. The wind was back, whipping about them from first one direction and then the other, sweeping down out of the Charnals, cold and bleak.

Then they were sliding into the mist again, its gray shroud wrapping about and closing them away. Everything disappeared, vanished in an instant.

«Starboard five degrees, Papa," Cinnaminson called out sharply. «Altitude, quickly!»

Blinded by the murky haze, Pen could only hear tree branches scrape the underside of the hull as the Skatelow nosed upward again—a shrieking, a rending of wood, then silence once more. The airship leveled off. Pen was gripping the pilot box railing so hard his hands hurt. Khyber was crouched right beside him, her eyes tightly closed, her breathing quick and hurried.

«There, Papa!» Cinnaminson cried out suddenly. «Ahead of us, an inlet! Bring her down quickly!»

The Skatelow dipped abruptly, and Pen experienced a momentary sensation of falling, then the airship steadied and settled. Again there was contact, but softer, a rustling of damp grasses and reeds rather than a scraping of tree limbs. He smelled the fetid wetland waters and the stink of swamp gas rising to meet them; he heard a quick scattering of wings.

Then the Skatelow settled with a small splash and a lurch, sliding through water and mist and darkness, and everything went still.

* * *

«I was so frightened," she whispered to him, her blind gaze settling on his face, her head held just so, as if she were seeing him with her milky eyes instead of her mind.

«You didn't look frightened," he whispered back. He squeezed her hands. «You looked calmer than any of us.»

«I don't know how I looked. I only know how I felt. I kept thinking that all it would take was one mistake for us to be caught. Especially when that warship appeared and was chasing us.»

Pen glanced skyward, finding only mist and gloom, no sign of the Galaphile or anything else. Around them, the waters of the wetlands lapped softly against the hull of the Skatelow. Even though he couldn't see them, he heard the rustle of the limbs from the big trees that Cinnaminson told him were all about them. For anyone to find the Skatelow there, they would have to land right on top of it. From above, even if the air were clear instead of like soup, they were invisible. Their concealment was perfect and complete.

Two hours had passed since their landing, and in that time the others had gone to sleep, save for the Rover who kept watch from the bow. Pen stood with Cinnaminson in the pilot box, looking out into the haze, barely able to see the man who stood only twenty yards away. Before that night, the boy would not have been allowed on deck at all. But maybe the rules were no longer so important to Gar Hatch since he and Ahren Elessedil knew each other's secrets and neither was fooling the other about how things stood. Pen didn't think the Rover Captain's opinion of him had changed; he didn't think Hatch wanted him around his daughter. But maybe he had decided to put up with it for the time being, since their time together was growing short. Whatever the case, Pen would take what he could get.

«What are you thinking?» she asked him, brushing damp strands of her sandy blond hair away from her face.

«That your father is generous to allow us to be on deck alone like this. Perhaps he thinks better of me now.»

«Now that he knows who you are and who's hunting you? Oh, yes. I expect he would like to be best friends. I expect he wants to invite you home to live with him.» She gave him a smirk.

Pen sighed. «I deserved that.»

She leaned close. «Listen to me, Penderrin.» She put her lips right up against his ear, her words a whisper. «He may have given you away in Anatcherae. I don't know that he did, but he may have. He is a good man, but he panics when he's frightened. I've seen it before. He loses his perspective. He misplaces his common sense.»

«If he betrayed us to Terek Molt …»

«He did so because he was afraid," she finished for him. «If he is backed into a corner, he will not always do the sensible thing. That might have happened here. I wasn't with him on the waterfront, and I didn't see whom he talked to. That Druid might have found him and forced him to talk. You know they can. They can tell if you are lying. My father might have given you up to save his family and his ship.»

«And for the money they are offering.»

She backed away a few inches so that he could see her face again. «What matters now is that if he has done it once, he might try to do it again. Even out here. I don't want that to happen. I want you to stay safe.»

He closed his eyes. «And I want you to come with me," he whispered, still feeling the softness of her mouth against his face.

«I want you to come now, not later. Tell me you will, Cinnaminson. I don't want to leave you behind.»

She lowered her head and let it rest on his shoulder. «Do you love me, Penderrin?»

«Yes," he said. He hadn't used the word before, even to himself, even in the silence of his mind. Love. He hadn't allowed himself to define what he was feeling. But as much as it was possible for him to do so, still young and inexperienced, he was willing to try. «I do love you," he said.

She burrowed her face in his neck. «I wanted to hear you say it. I wanted you to speak the words.»

«You have to come with me," he insisted again. «I won't leave you behind.»

She shook her head. «We're children, Pen.»

«No," he said. «Not anymore.»

He could sense her weighing her response. A dark certainty swept through him, and he closed his eyes against what he knew was coming. He was such a fool. He was asking her to leave her father, the man who had raised and cared for her, the strongest presence in her life. Why would she do that? Worse, he was asking her to accompany him to a place where no one in her right mind would go. She didn't know that, but he did. He knew how dangerous it was going to be.

«I'm sorry, Cinnaminson," he said quickly. «I don't know what I was thinking. I don't have the right to ask you to come with me. I was being selfish. You have to stay with your father for now. What we decided before was right—that when it was time, I would come for you. But this isn't the time. This is too sudden.»

She lifted her head from his shoulder and faced him, her expression filled with wonder. In the dim light and with the mist damp and glistening against her skin, she looked so young. How old was she? He hadn't even thought to ask.

«You told me in Anatcherae that you would come for me and take me with you whenever I was ready to go," she said. «Is that still true. Do you love me enough to do that?»

«Yes," he said.

«Then I want you to take me with you when we get to where we are going. I want you to take me now.»

He stared at her in disbelief. «Now? But I thought—"

«It's time, Pen. My father will understand. I will make him understand. I have served him long enough. I don't want to be his navigator anymore. I want a different life. I have been looking for that life for a long time. I think I have found it. I want to be with you.

She reached out and touched his face, tracing its ridges and planes. «You said you love me. I love you, too.»

She hugged him then, long and hard. He closed his eyes, feeling her warmth seep through him. He loved her desperately, and he did not think for a moment that his age or his inexperience had blinded him to what that meant. He had no idea how he could protect her when he could barely manage to protect himself, but he would find a way.

«It will be all right," he whispered to her.

But he knew that he spoke the words mostly to reassure himself.