Lord of Lies

Chapter 17

I had hoped that all the wounded would be able to ride when we set out two days later. But despite Master Juwain's best efforts, the four Guardians who bore the worst wounds would have to remain here at least a few days while they recuperated. I saw to it that they were well-provisioned, and I appointed four others to nurse them and guard them against wolves and lions — or the return of vengeful Adirii. They were to follow us to the lake, if they could. But if we failed to rendezvous there, they were to return to their respective kingdoms in the Morning Mountains. It would not do for wounded knights to go trotting off after us across the endless miles of the Wendrush.

Thus our company was reduced to 165 Guardians. With the sun caught like a knot of fire in a notch in the mountains behind us, we formed up as we had before. I rode at the head of our center column, with Maram and Lord Raasharu to either side, and Estrella right behind me. It pained me that she had to endure the dangers of our journey. But during the battle, she had evidenced no sign of terror or panic. I attributed this to an inner strength that I was only beginning to understand. To see her sitting on her horse so peacefully in the morning's quiet, with the long grass swaying in the breeze and sparkling with dew, one might have thought that she was hardened to suffering and death. I knew she wasn't. As we passed the graves of the fallen Guardians, a dew of tears filled her eyes, and she wept in silence.

The ninety Manslayers, on their rugged steppe ponies, rode a hundred yards ahead of us as a vanguard. That morning, Atara did not lead them. Indeed, it was Karimah who led her, for Atara's blindness did not evaporate with the rising of the sun. Karimah held a string tied to Fire's bridle, and this fine mare seemed to understand that she must trail after Karimah and bear Atara patiently. Atara, 1 sensed, had little patience with the darkness embracing her. 1 dreaded that the Adirii might return and catch her in such a helpless state. But neither Atara nor the other Manslayers seemed to fear this. As Atara had told me the day before, 'The Adirii took a great enough risk in hunting you. But to seek battle against Valari and Sarni — well, that would be madness.'

In truth, although the battle had cost us dearly, I had learned in my bones a great and agonizing lesson: that the only way the Valari could defeat the Sarni on the steppe was with the help of other Sarni.

Later that morning, when we took a break by the river to water the horses, I rode up to Atara and spoke of this. We found a place of privacy beneath a gnarly old cottonwood, and I remarked the wonder of our two peoples riding as one, I asked her if it was possible that her grandfather, Sajagax, might be persuaded to attend the conclave in Tria. For if Morjin could behold the greatest Sarni chieftain sitting peacefully at table with the sovereigns of the Free Kingdoms, then he might truly fear an alliance.

'Sajagax detests cities,' she said to me, 'but it is possible.'

'Is it likely?' I asked her. 'Have you seen this, then?'

'I mustn't speak to you any more about what I have or haven't seen.'

'But there's so much that I must know,' I said to her. 'This prophecy of Kasandra's. What did she mean that a man with no face would show me my own? And that Estrella would show me the Maitreya?'

Atara fell silent as she leaned back against the deep creases of silver bark. Then she said, 'A scryer shouldn't speak of another scryer's visions.'

'Please, Atara. For Estrella's sake, if not mine. It torments me to have to take her into danger.'

'It can't be helped,' she told me. 'What will be will be. The girl will be with you to the end.'

'To the end of what?' My life? Until I claimed the Lightstone or reached the darkest of places, wherever and whatever that was?

But Atara would say no more; indeed she had told me too much already. For a few minutes, as our hundreds of horses up and down the stony banks of the river lowered their heads and drank up belly-fuls of sweet, clear water, we spoke of other things. She gave me news of our companions on the Quest. Liljana continued to reside in Tria and plot the downfall of Morjin. As head of the Maitriche Telu, she was gathering Sisters from all across Ea to their secret sanctuary there. And against thousands of years of tradition, she had begun to instruct Daj in their witches' ways. The little boy that we had rescued out of Argattha had flourished under Liljana's care. His starved body had filled out from the nourishing foods that Liljana cooked him; and his starved mind had filled up with knowledge that the Maitriche Telu had preserved and kept secret ever since the Age of the Mother.

'And what of Kane?' I asked.

'Kane left Tria in great urgency five months ago.'

'Business with this Black Brotherhood of his?'

'I don't know — he wouldn't say.'

'Did he say when he might return?'

'I don't know that either. I hope in time for the conclave.'

I hoped this, too. There were many questions I wished to ask this strange, immortal man. He might have answers for me that not even the akashic crystal could tell me. It was with the thought of this fantastical gelstei, and him, that I ended our little sojourn by the river and climbed onto my horse. We still had many miles to go.

We reached the lake early that afternoon, cresting a rise to behold an expanse of glittering blue beneath a perfectly clear and deep blue sky. The lake seemed to be many miles wide, but we could not see very far out into it, for a wall of mist rose up from its surface in a thick swathe of gray.

'The Lake of Mists,' Baltasar called out from behind me. 'Surely this must be it.'

Surely it was. At least, that is what the men and women who lived near the lake called it. They were short and thick set with curly black hair and skins nearly as dark as burnt grass. They made their village of little huts hewn of cottonwood; they used the lake's water to irrigate fields won in bitter battle with their hoes against the steppe. It seemed that they grew only one crop: a yellow grain called rushk. Atara called them the Dirt Scrapers; she said that they had come up from the south, perhaps from Uskudar, two thousand years before at the time of the Great Death. The Kurmak allowed them to live here in exchange for a tribute paid in sacks of rushk, which was said to be nearly as sustaining as meat. The Kurmak also protected them from the Adirii and other enemies.

'Ah, they don't seem very grateful of their protectors,' Maram said to me as we rode across the narrow band of their fields. Several of the lake men, stripped to the waist and sweating in the sun, paused in their labor to watch the Manslayers ride past them. They glared at these warrior women with their dark eyes and gripped their hoes as if wishing they might put their blades into the Manslayers instead of hacking at weeds in their fields.

Some of these people, to our good fortune, did not scrape dirt at all, but were fishermen. Following the Manslayers, we rode straight down to lake's shore where an old man bent over caulking his beached boat. The joints of his hands were swollen with a lifetime of grinding work, and were much-scarred — probably from the many fishhooks that had caught in them. Karimah, quirt in hand, demanded his name and he said that he was called Tembom.

'Well, Tembom,' she told him, 'we have need to borrow your boat for the day, and perhaps more.'

Tembom straightened up his creaky body and stared at me — and the men that I led — as if he had never seen Valari knights before, which he undoubtedly hadn't.

'But why would you need my boat, Mistress?' he asked her.

'Why would you ask me why?' Karimah said, snapping the quirt against her hand.

While the Manslayers edged the shore and sat haughtily on their horses and my knights waited behind me to see what would transpire, Tembom looked out at the lake's quiet blue waters and the mist that rose up from it perhaps a mile away. He said, 'If it's fish you want, we have a good catch of carp, Mistress.'

Karimah's blue eyes flashed at him and she snapped, 'My lady and her friends are going fishing after more than carp. Now we'll need your boat.'

I, of course, had told Karimah nothing of my purpose in seeking a boat, and neither had Atara. But Karimah must have guessed much, for her eyes were like glittering gelstei as she stared out into the lake.

Maram liked boats even less than I did, and he dismounted to come up close and take a better look at this one. 'Well, she seems sturdy enough to hold up even if we're lost in that mist for a few hours.'

Tembom's old eyes widened with alarm. 'But my lord, we never sail out that far. The mist is cursed.'

'How so?'

'It's said that any who sail into it do not return.'

'Cursed, you say? But when was the last time anyone fished there?'

'I don't know. Not in my lifetime or that of my father.'

Tembom stared out toward the center of the lake and shuddered. 'When I was a boy, my uncle, Jarom, said that he didn't care about curses. On a day as peaceful as this, he rowed into the mist gland it ate him alive, along with his boat.'

He rested his hand on the boat's rails as he might the head of a child. I fished a few gold coins from my purse and handed them to him, saying, 'If we don't return, use these to buy another boat.'

Karimah edged her horse right up to the boat, and whipped her leather quirt against it with a quick crack. She said to me, This man should not receive gold for rendering a rightful service.'

'He owes me no service,' I said to her. 'In any case, he must be indemnified against the chance that his boat will be lost.'

'But what of the chances we Kurmak take in protecting him? Hai — pay your gold coins to us, I say.'

But I had already given gold to Trahadak the Elder for safe passage across the Kurmak's country, and I wasn't ready to surrender up any more. Then Atara took Karimah aside to confer with her for a few moments. And Karimah said to me, 'Very well, then, we'll wait here with your Valari until you return. But please see that you do return. Atara is more precious to me than any gold.'

And with that she smiled as she stroked Atara's long hair. It seemed that she could tender little kindnesses to those she loved as happily as she could put her knife or her arrows into her enemies.

I lost no time in seeing to it that the boat was emptied of its nets, gaffs and other fishing gear. We stowed beneath its weathered seats enough supplies for several days. Then I took the Lightstone from Sar Ianashu and stood on the sandy beach with Lord Raasharu, Baltasar, Lord Harsha and others who were close to my heart.

'You will be in command,' I said to Baltasar. 'Take care that none of the Guardians speaks with Karimah's women.'

'Guardians', Baltasar huffed out. 'What are we to guard then, if you take the Lightstone out into that accursed mist?'

'Guard the shore against our return,' I said, dapping him on his shoulder. I glanced at the Manslayers sitting on their ponies, at their golden hair and long, tanned arms bound in shining gold. I smiled as I added, 'And guard yourselves against yourselves'.

I was loathe to leave Altaru behind, for I well-remembered how this noble animal had led us to the first Vild through the trackless tangle of Alonian forest But there was no way my great stallion could stand inside 1 little fishing boat. As it was, there was barely room for Master Juwain, Maram, Atara and me — and for Estrella, too, for at the last moment, as I stood in the shallows pushing the boat out into the lake, she broke away from Behira and splashed through the water up to my side.

'All right, all right,' I laughed out as Estrella jumped into my arms. I remembered for the thousandth time Kasandra's prophecy — and now Atara's. 'We won't leave you here.'

I lifted her into the boat, and then climbed in myself. I sat with her near the stern. Maram, to my surprise, volunteered to pull the oars, and he settled into the deep seat in the middle of the boat. Atara and Master Juwain, up near the bow, faced outward toward the center of the lake and the omnipresent gray mist that covered it.

To the sound of little waves lapping against the boats sideboards and the long, wooden oars dipping into water with steady rhythm, Maram rowed us out into the lake. It was a calm day, and a clear one; except for our uncertainty as to what we would find in this lake, it seemed that we had little to fear except the radiance of the sun, which in the middle of Marud was hot, constant and fierce.

My diamond armor threw back much of its light in a splendid display, and I could be thankful that I was wearing it instead of my much hotter steel mail. But I was quite hot enough. I sweated in saltwater streams that stung my neck and trickled down my back and sides. The sun burned my face. It seemed to suck the moisture straight out of my boots and leggings, which had soaked through when I had pushed off the boat. The still air was like a blast from an oven searing my eyes.

And then Maram rowed us straight into the wall of mist, and it immediately fell cold. It was like being wrapped in a blanket soaked with ice water. I began shivering, and so did Estrella. I covered her with my wool cloak, but it didn't seem to help very much. The mist dewed our hair and clung to our garments in a slick of moisture. It filled our nostrils and mouths with every breath we drew. There was no escaping it. 1 turned my head right and left, but this cold, gray cloud seemed equally dense in all directions. It lay so thickly about the lake that 1 could barely see Atara and Master Juwain near the prow as they drew on their cloaks and shivered, too.

'I can't see a damn thing!' Maram complained as he paused and pulled up the oars. 'I can't see where to row!'

'You can see me', I said to him from only a few feet away. Even so close, there was a moist, smothering grayness between us that seemed to steal the clarity and substance from Maram's considerable form. 'Keep rowing, straight ahead, and we'll be all right.'

'But what is straight, then?'

In answer, I placed my fingertips together like the roof of a chalet and pushed my arms out straight toward the prow of the boat.

'Are you sure, Val? Do you remember how your sense of direction failed you in the Black Bog?'

'This isn't the Black Bog,' I said. 'We set out from the north side of the lake. If Master Juwain's verse tells true, the island must be at the lake's center, toward the south.'

Maram turned to look behind him into the swirling mist, and he said, 'And you're sure that way is south?'

'As sure as a swan flying toward Mesh at the fall of winter.'

'Well, you've always had this uncanny sense. Of course, it did fail again when we approached the first Vild, didn't it?'

'Just row, my friend,' I said to him, 'and we'll be all right.'

With a grunt of doubt, Maram went back to working his oars. The sleek wooden blades dipped into the water again and again. Other than this soft sound, it was almost deathly quiet. The whoosh of Maram's breath bubbling out into the air seemed almost as loud as a storm wind.

'It's colder here,' he said suddenly, 'Do you feel it Val?' Out of nowhere, the mist grew suddenly thicker, as if it were a wall of cold water pushing against us. It chilled my bones. Something in the air and in the gray lake beneath us — some strange, unsettling and powerful thing — seemed to warn us away in a shiver of dread that tore through the deepest parts of our bodies.

'Accursed mist!' Maram muttered. 'This can't be natural.'

'You know it's not,' Master juwain said to him from the front of the boat. His voice sounded thin and distant. 'We know the Lokilani protect their Vilds with barriers beyond mists or walls of trees.'

'Invisible barriers,' Maram muttered. 'But felt keenly enough by the heart and soul. Atara! Can you see anything?'

'Less than you,' she said pulling at the blindfold across her face.

Estrella, sitting next to me on the moist wood of our seat, pushed herself against the hardness of my armor as I pulled my cloak more tightly about us. I brought forth the Lightstone in the hope that its radiance might show our way through the ever-thickening mist. In my cold hands, the little cup poured forth a glossy, golden light. But the tiny particles of mist threw it back into my face and scattered it so that the air surrounding the boat scintillated and dazzled the eye, making it even harder to see.

'Put it away!' Maram cried out, letting go his oar to cover his face. 'It's no help here!'

I did as he asked, and sat in the darkening grayness as the swells of water beneath us moved the boat gently up and down. The reek of rotten old fish emanated from the boat's creaking boards; the mist seemed to grab this stench, smothering us with it and nauseating us.

'Row, then,' I said to Maram. 'What else is there to do?'

For a while, Maram rowed with as much effort and as steadily as he dared. His fat cheeks puffed out with every stroke, and his beard headed up with moisture, whether from sweat or the mist, it was hard to tell. After a while, he stopped and asked me, 'How long do you think I've been rowing?'

Water lapped against the boat's sideboards, and I said, 'Not long enough.'

'At least an hour, I should say. If I've pulled true, why haven't we reached this damn island yet?'

'We will, soon, just keep rowing.'

With a soft curse, Maram began working the oars again. And each time he heaved his massive body backward in completion of a stroke, he muttered something under his breath.

Time passed. In this neverland of icy mist that devoured the sun, it was hard for me to tell exactly how much time. It might have be minutes; it might have been days. And then I listened more closely to the words Maram forced out with his heavy breath, and I heard him say, 'Five hundred eighty-one, five hundred eighty-two. .'

'What are you doing?' I asked him.

He shook his head against the brown curls plastered to his face and told me, 'Counting strokes. If each stroke requires three seconds, then after twelve hundred strokes, well, that's an hour.'

'Yes, very good,' Master Juwain called out from behind him. 'But supposing each stroke requires two seconds or four. Then — '

'It doesn't matter,' Maram said. 'I'm just trying to get an idea of how long I've been at this. There's something strange about time here. Can you feel it? It seems like I've been rowing for five days.'

He went back to work with the oars and back to his count. After an even longer time — he didn't say what number he had reached — he shipped oars and slumped forward, resting his head on his hand.

'I'm tired,' he said. 'I'm cold. Val, how about a bit of brandy?'

I brought out a bottle of brandy and poured some into a cup. I handed it to him; he drank it in three quick swallows, then returned the cup to me for another round.

'There's something very wrong here,' he announced. 'I'm sure we're caught in a current. Doesn't anyone feel the boat moving?'

We all kept a silence as we felt for motion of wood over water. It seemed to me that we were moving, backward toward the north.

'Yes, yes, a current, of course,' Master Juwain said. 'In the Vilds, the telluric currents are very strong.'

I tried to imagine these invisible, firelike flows that knotted and gathered in certain places in the earth. Like the wheels of light that concentrated at certain points along the body's spine, Master Juwain called them chakras. The great earth chakras, as he now explained to us, could not only open doors to other worlds but work wonders on the forms and substance of this one.

'How else are mountains raised up?' he asked us. 'Why does the ground shake and split apart in some places on earth but not others? And so with the currents of the sea — or even a lake.'

'Very well,' Maram said to him, 'but I had never heard that anyone could wield these earth currents to move wind and water.'

'Neither have I,' Master Juwain said. 'I should very much like to meet these Lokilani and learn their arts.'

'We'll meet them soon enough,' I said. 'If there's a current here we can row out of it.'

So thick was the mist blinding us that we could not test the water's movement by casting slivers of wood out into the lake. There was a slight wind, but this shifted about strangely, and it was difficult to tell lithe current caused it by pushing us through the air. It was enough I hoped, to sense the current's flow: away from the island and toward the north. All we had to do was to row hard against it.

This we now did. I gave Maram a rest and exchanged places with him. I began working the oars as quickly as I could, lifting them out of the water and dipping down as I pushed forward, only to lower them into the lake a moment later and pull backward against its dark, dense grayness with all the power in my legs, arms and back. Again and again, I heaved against the current; I gasped in cold, wet air through my mouth and gave it back in hot bursts of breath. The boat seemed to sail through the water. And yet it seemed that we moved nowhere.

After a long time, I gave up. I shipped oars and rested my arms on my legs as I fought to breathe against the mist that was choking me.

'It's not so easy, is it?' Maram grumbled at me. 'Row out of the current, you say. Row out of this damned mist, I say. Let's return to shore while we still can.'

I sat up straight and looked off into the mist past the boat's stern, in the direction from which we had come if we had rowed straight. That way must be north, I told myself. Therefore the boat's prow should still be pointed south.

'For pity's sake, take us out of this!' Maram said to me. 'Turn the boat around, Val.'

As my heart thumped inside my chest and pushed pulsing currents of blood up into my throbbing head, it seemed that water beneath us was slowly turning the boat around — and around and around. Or perhaps it was the turning of the world itself that I felt or some fiery current swirling deep Side it. Whatever it was, some strange and irresistible force seemed to take hold of me deep inside, spinning me about and obliterating my sense of direction.

'We're lost, aren't we?' Maram said.

I looked past his great shoulders at the wall of gray behind him. I looked to the right and left, and the grayness swirled no less densely in those directions. Which way was south? There was mist in my mind, and I could not see it.

'Take heart, my friend,' I said to Maram. 'At least this isn t as bad the Black bog.'

Take heart, you say,' Maram sputtered. 'Every time we get in a fix, you remind me that it's not as bad as that filthy, evil place, as if that's supposed to encourage me. Well, so what if this isn't as bad? What's bad enough for you? We could still starve here, couldn't we? We could sink in a storm. And if there are currents protecting the island, then why couldn't there be whirlpools, too? To be sucked down into this damn cold water. . no, no, that's not quite as bad as wandering around that stinking Bog until we rotted, but it's bad enough for me.'

I had nothing to say against this rant. For a while, we all fell quiet. Then Master Juwain said, 'The current might not flow back toward the shore. It seems to me that the Lokilani could better protect their island by a current that flowed around it, like a ring.'

'Oh, that certainly encourages me,' Maram said. 'To think we're caught in some whirl of water that turns around and around their island forever.'

'Take heart,' Master Juwain said to Maram. 'If only we could determine the direction of this flow, we could row crosswise, and so escape it — to go back to shore or continue on to the island, however things fell out.'

But here, caught in this cloud of gray that smothered our senses, moving in our wooden tub as the water moved, there was no way we could think of to feel out the currents of this lake. Can one feel the turning of the earth beneath one's feet?

We were all hungry, and so we paused to eat a meal of cheese and bread. The mist dampened the little yellow loaves that Tembom's wife had given us and caused them to taste like old fish. Not even the brandy that I poured into our cups sufficed to take this rancid taste away.

After that, for many hours, Maram, Master Juwain and I took turns in rowing crosswise against the current — or rather, against the direction we supposed the current to flow. We got nowhere. The mist seemed to grow only darker and thicker about us. I blinked my eyes against its blurring moisture as I tried to make out Atara sitting straight and quiet at the front of the boat. Was her world, when it fell dark, one of perpetual mist? How did she bear it?

'Ah, maybe we shouldn't have cast out those hooks and nets,' Maram said to me. He took a moment to rest from his labor at the oars. 'We could survive a long time here on the fish we could catch.'

'You'll like the Lokilani's food better, when we reach the island,' I told him.

'Yes, if there is an island somewhere in the middle of this damn fog. But I'm beginning to think it was all a myth.'

I felt his fear gnawing at his insides like a rat. Master Juwain, sitting again at the front of the boat, fought his growing doubt by keeping his mind whirling like a wheel. Even Atara was perturbed by the uncertainty of our situation. Her being felt steeped in a cold foreboding that made me shiver. Of all of us, only Estrella betrayed no apprehension. Every time I looked at her, she smiled at me in utter confidence that I would lead us aright. Her deep, trusting eyes seemed to show me a bright flame inside myself that not even the mist's smothering dampness could put out.

'The island can't be a myth,' I said to Maram. 'And there must be way to find it.'

Master Juwain, to occupy himself, began reciting the verses that had led us here:

There is a place tween earth and time,

In some secluded misty clime

Of woods and brooks and vernal glades,

Whose healing magic never fades.

An island in a grass-girt sea,

Unseen its lasting greenery

Where giant trees and emeralds grow,

Where leaves and grass and flowers glow.

For no good reason, I drew my sword and pointed it toward the boat's bow and stern, and then port and starboard. Once, its gleaming silver blade had pointed the way toward the Lightstone. But now that I kept the golden cup so close, Alkaladur shone brightly at all times, no matter in which direction I swept it.

And there the memory crystal dwells Sustained by forest sentinels Of fiery form and splendid mien: The children of the Galadin.

My sword's bright blade now showed only mist: millions of silvery droplets spinning through space like a spray of stars. The swirling pattern recalled a fiery form that was dear to me. I gripped my sword as I interrupted Master Juwain, calling out: 'Has anyone seen Flick.

'Not for the last hour,' Maram said. 'Or maybe it's been a day.'

As always, Flick flamed into being or unbeing according to no rule or logic that any of us had ever been able to determine. Whether whimsy or will moved his swirls of little lights, perhaps not even me angels knew. 'Flick!' I suddenly called out. 'Do you know the way to the island? Can you take us there?'

It was a wild hope, but I wondered if Flick might be able to sense his brethren Tirnpum on the island that must lie somewhere beyond this mist.

'He can't hear you,' Maram said to me. 'And he certainly can't answer you, any more than Estrella can.'

'Flick!' I called out again. 'Flick! Flick!'

Maram, gripping the oars in his big fists, looked at me as if I had fallen mad.

'Don't you remember Alphanderry's little farce on the way to the Tur-Solonu?' I said to Maram. 'Flick seemed to understand much of what Alphanderry said.'

'Ah, he seemed to.'

'And many times since, he's had an uncanny knack of appearing just when we need him the most'

'Well, we certainly need him now — where is he?'

'Flick!' I said again. 'Flick!'

'He's never come just because anyone called his name, Val.'

As Maram said this, my sword flared brighter. A memory flashed in my mind. At the pass of Kul Moroth, as Alphanderry had sung back an entire army with a voice of unearthly beauty, he had finally beheld Flick's sparkling lights. And just before Alphanderry had died, he had recreated the language of the Star People and had sung out Flick's true name.

And they forever long to wake,

To praise, exalt and music make,

Breathe life through sacred memories,

Recall the ancient harmonies.

Beneath the trees they rise and ring,

And whirl and play and soar and sing

Of under woods beyond the sea

Where they shall dwell eternally.

'Ahura!' I suddenly sang out. 'Ahura Alarama!'

Out of the heart of the mist above the boat, a shimmer of lights burst into brilliance. Flickers of scarlet and silver swirled about like a top turning through space.

'Ahura Alarama!' I said again as I looked at Flick. 'Can you show us the way to the island, where the children of the Galadin sing?'

Flick hung suspended in the air only two feet from my face; at the center of his being sparkled a lovely blueness that reminded me of an eye. I looked into it, and it seemed to look into me And then, without warning. Flick shot off into the mist, toward starboard, like a flock of tiny, twinkling birds suddenly taking flight.

'Turn the boat!' I cried out to Maram. 'Turn the boat and row!'

Maram needed no encouragement from me to begin pulling the oars. Within seconds, he was huffing and sweating and straining with every fiber of his huge body to keep up with Flick. Never had I seen him work so hard, not even in pursuit of wine or women.

'A little more to starboard!' I called out to him as I pointed my sword past his shoulder. 'That's good — now row!'

And row he did. He pulled at the oars with such speed and ferocity that I feared they would break. I feared that he might break. But he set his jaw and furrowed his forehead as he called upon reserves inside himself that seemed as vast as the sea. It always astounded me how he could transform himself from a wastrel into an angel of purpose at need. And now the need for furious and directed motion was very great, or so he must have deemed. I could feel his urgency not to lose Flick in the wet grayness, as well as his will to pull free from the onstreaming current. And so he heaved backward against the unseen waters of the lake, again and again, many times as I called for him to turn the boat, right or left, according to the direction of the little light that burned through the mist like the brightest of stars.

Somehow Flick seemed to know not to venture too far beyond us. He remained always a few feet beyond the prow of the boat, whirling in a silver ring of radiance. How long we followed him thusly 1 couldn't say. Maram couldn't count his strokes, and I was afraid to — afraid that his heart might burst or that he would fall to a stroke of sudden death. And then, with a mighty pull and a grunt from Maram as loud as a bear's, we broke free from the mist into the light of the setting sun. And in its blindingly brilliant rays, straight ahead of us, we sighted land. It was an island covered with giant trees that reached their shimmering green canopies two hundred feet upward toward the clear blue sky.