Nightchild

Prologue

Jarrin had fished the waters north of Sunara's Teeth all of his long life. He knew the intricacies of the tides and the petulance of the wind. And he knew the beauty of solitude. His lines and pots were dropped in a sheltered deep-water cove and now was the wonderful wait. It was the time he loved. He lay back along the boards of his eighteen-foot coastal skimmer, its single sail furled against the boom, as it rocked gently in the slight swell.

Jarrin uncorked his water and wine, then chose a thick ham sandwich from his daysack, laying it all on the bench by him as he stared at the glorious, cloud-veined blue sky. On a day like today, no life was better.

He must have dozed off for a while because he awoke with a start, felt the boat shifting strangely beneath him and saw the sun had moved a little to his left. Something was upsetting the perfection of the day and a distant roaring noise irritated his ears.

Jarrin pushed himself up onto his elbows, bent his head and dug a finger into his left ear. He couldn't hear a single bird. Over the years he'd become so accustomed to the harsh calls of gulls circling overhead or following his boat after a good day that they'd become part of the background. Now their silence was unnerving. Animals could sense things.

And now he was fully awake, nothing was quite right. The sky above was beautiful but the air felt like rain was coming. The water below the boat dragged him out to sea though the tide was surely coming in. And that roaring sound seemed to echo off the peaks of Sunara's Teeth, filling the air with an unearthly sound that scared him deep in the pit of his stomach.

Frowning, he sat up above the gunwale, his gaze caught by movement out to sea. He froze.

Approaching impossibly fast was a wall of water, behind which a dark cloud-mass blew and thickened. It stretched out of his vision to either side of the cove, a towering blue-grey mountain, white-flecked and awesome.

Jarrin just carried on looking. He could have tried to haul up his anchor, raise the sail and run for the shore but it would have been a futile gesture. The wave had to be over one hundred feet high and left no hiding place, just death against the rocky coast.

Jarrin had always sworn he would stare into the face of his killer so he stood up, sang a prayer to the Spirit for his safe passage to the ancestral haven and drank in the magnificent power of nature before it dashed him to oblivion.