The Lightstone

Chapter 26

There was a full moon that night, and it rose over a world that was nothing but water in all directions. Long past the time that I should have been sleeping with my companions back near the stern, I stood alone at the bow gripping the railing thire as I watched the ship splitting the waves of the moon-silvered sea. Sailing out of sight of the land terrified me. Merely looking out at the ocean threatened to drown me in its bright black vastness. To the south and west, east and north, I saw no bit of land upon which I could fix my gaze or hope of setting foot should a sudden storm take us under. My life, I realized, and those of my companions and everyone else aboard, was utterly tied to the fate of this rolling and pitching clump of wood that men had nailed together.

Captain Kharald had named his ship the Snowy Owl, and this gave me at least a little courage. Owls can see through the darkness, as could our red-bearded captain. He walked the deck for hours that first night of our voyage, now casting his eyes up at the wind-filled sails, now checking with the pilot who steered the ship to make sure that we held our course. This, I thought, he set by the stars. They were very bright that night. These millions of points of light streaked out of the black sky like diamond-tipped spears and almost outshone the moon itself. At no time in my life since I had climbed the mountains of my home had I felt so close to them.

I might have remained there all night gazing out into this unnerving splendor and smelling the salty spray of the sea. But then I heard steps behind me, and turned expecting to see Captain Kharald or one his crew of fifty sailors who worked the ship. Instead, a stranger stood limned in the moonlight. Or so I thought at first, for he wore neither the rough, wool shirt or pantaloons of Captain Kharald's men but rather a long traveling cloak with a deep hood that covered most of his face. And then he spoke, and I knew he was no stranger.

'Valashu Elahad,' he said, 'why are you trying to run from me?'

His voice was sweeter than Alphanderry's; when he threw back his hood, the moon's light fell across the most beautiful face I had ever seen His hair gleamed like gold, and his eyes were like twin suns pouring a golden tight into the darkness. Across the chest of his tunic, which was trimmed with black fur, there coiled a great, red dragon.

I tried not to look at him, but it seemed that my eyelids were pinned open as with nails. I tried not to listen to him, but his voice rose above the creaking of the ship's timbers and the howling wind: 'I know you murdered my son.'

I started to deny this, but then remembered that I mustn't speak to him at any cost, Morjin then reached out his finely-made hand and touched the scabbard where my broken sword was sheathed. He said, 'I told you that you would slay with this sword again, and so you have.'

'No,' I whispered, 'it was he who -'

'MY SON!' Morjin suddenly roared at me. So great was this shout that 1 thought the force of it might crack the ship's masts. And so terrible was the anguish in Morjin's voice that I was afraid it might crack me apart. 'My son,' Morjin said in softer tones that slid into me like silken knives. 'My only son.'

I threw my hands up over my ears to shut out his words. Finally, I managed to close my eyes and blind myself to the immense suffering I saw on his face.

But then Morjin touched my hands with his hands; he touched my forehead, pressing his finger against the scar there. And I heard his voice pealing out like silver chimes inside my mind; I saw his eyes seeking me out and looking where no man should look.

'The last time we met,' he said, 'we agreed that you must die. But now that you have murdered Meliadus, you must die a thousand times. Shall I show you these deaths?'

Without waiting for me to answer, his hand lashed out, catching me full in the chest.

The force of this blow was so great that it propelled me over the railing, and I fell through black space. And then 1 plunged into the even vaster blackness of the sea. I sank into the churning waves like a stone. I gasped for air, choked, breathed water.

The salt burned my lungs even as the cold took me deeper and crushed the life from me.

And then the darkness of the sea gave way to a stinging gliste, and I realized that I was not falling into its depths after all but rather caught in the cleft between two mountains as a blizzard raged all about me. Still I struggled to breathe as the liquid wind froze my limbs and needles of ice pierced my flesh. The pain of it grew so great so that I was sure that cold steel knives were tearing into me.

And then I was being torn open – with the shouts of fierce, blue-skinned warriors who had somehow surrounded me and forced me up against a mountain wall. Their gleaming axes beat aside my father's shield and chopped through my armor into my belly. I opened my mouth to scream at the incredible agony of it all but then another axe caught me in the face, and I had no mouth with which to utter any sound, not even the faintest whisper of how terrified I was of death.

And so it went. The Lord of Lies had promised me a thousand deaths. But as I stood there on the bow of the rolling ship with Morjin's hand touching my forehead, it seemed that I died a thousand times a thousand times.

'Do you see, Valashu?' he said to me. 'Do you see?'

For what seemed hours, as the moon dropped its chill radiance down upon us, I fought not to behold the terrible visions that Morjin gave me. But I didn't fight hard enough. Not even the fierce will to battle that I had learned from Kane was enough drive them or him away.

Finally, Morjin took his hand away from me. He stood beneath millions of stars hanging like knives above our heads. And in the saddest of voices, he said to me,

'Now you have seen your fate. But know that there is one, and only one, who can change it. And only one way that I will be persuaded to let you live.'

So saying, he looked down at my hands, which I saw were grasping a plain golden cup. Before I could blink at my astonishment, he took this cup from me and held it so that I could look inside.

And there, in its shimmering depths that were deeper than the sea, I saw myself standing on top of the world's highest mountain before a great, golden throne.

Morjin, sitting on top of this throne, came down off it and extended his hand toward me. Then he pointed east and west, north and south, at Delu and Surrapam, at Sunguru and Alonia and all the other kingdoms of the world. All these, he said, he would give me to rule. He would give me Atara as my queen, and I would reign for a thousand years as Ea's High King.

For a long time, I stared into the golden cup he held before me. I saw the Red Desert bloom with flowers and the Vardaloon changed into a paradise. I saw warriors in the thousands laying down their swords and peace brought to all lands.

When I finally looked up, I saw that Morjin had changed as well. If possible, he was even more beautiful than before. His golden eyes had softened with an immense compassion, and in place of his dragon-embroidered tunic, he seemed clothed in an unearthly radiance of many colors. Without him idling me so, I knew that he had been made from a man into one of the great Elijin themselves.

'For three ages,' he told me, 'in a hard and terrible world, I've had to do hard and terrible things. Many times I've slain men, even as you have, Valashu Elahad.'

The suffering I saw in his sad and beautiful eyes was real ft made my eyes burn and touched me more deeply than I could bear. Only the golden cup, which poured out a healing light like the coolest and sweetest of waters, kept me from falling down and weeping.

'But soon the Lightstone will be found,' he told me as he looked down into the cup.

'The old world will be destroyed and a new one created. And you and Atara ~ all your children and grandchildren – will live your lives in a world that knows only peace.'

Only Morjin knew how badly I wanted the things that he showed me. But it was all a lie. The most terrible of lies, I thought, is that which one desperately wants to be true.

'You're close, aren't you?' Morjin said to me.

I shut my eyes as I slowly shook my head back and forth.

'Yes, so very close now to finding it,' he said. 'Open your eyes to me that I might see where you are.'

I wanted with a terrible longing to open my eyes and see the world transformed into a place of beauty and light.

'Open your eyes, please – it's growing late and the morning will soon be upon us.'

I stood at the bow of the heaving ship, trying to listen to the wind instead of his golden voice. I knew that I couldn't fight him much longer.

'The stars, Valashu. Let me look at the same stars that you see.'

My hand closed about the hilt of my sword, but I remembered that it was broken.

And so, at last, I opened my eyes to look upon the stars rising in the east. Master Juwain had once told me that darkness couldn't be defeated in battle but only by shining a bright enough light. And there, just above the dark line of the horizon, blazed a white star that was brighter than any other. I fixed my eyes upon this single shimmering light that was called Valashu, the Morning Star. As I opened myself to its radiance, it suddenly filled the sky like the sun. It consumed me utterly. And I vanished into it like a silver swan soaring into that sacred fire that has no beginning or end.

'Damn you, Elahad!' I heard Morjin's voice cursing me as from far away. But when I turned to look at him, he was gone.

I gripped the railing along the topsides as I gasped and gave thanks for my narrow escape. I breathed in the smell of the sea and the pungency of pitch that sealed the seams of the creaking ship. Although the night's constellations still hung in the sky like twinkling signposts, there was a red sheen in the east that heralded the rising of the sun.

When I returned to my companions where we had spread out our sleeping furs along the deck, I found that Kane was awake. He was always awake, it seemed. Or perhaps it was more true to say that he seldom slept.

'What is it?' he murmured to me as I sat down on my fur. 'You look like you've seen a ghost.'

'Worse,' I whispered back to him. 'Morjin.'

Many times, Master Juwain had warned me not to say this accursed name; now the mere utterance of it seemed to rouse him from his sleep. Of course, he liked to rise early anyway, and the ship's open deck was now glowing in the day's first light.

I told them both what had happened while I had stood alone by the railing. And Master Juwain said, 'You did well, Val. The Morning Star, you say? Hmmm, an interesting variation of the light meditations I've taught you.'

Kane's eyes were black pools darker than the night-time sea. They searched along the deck and behind the towering masts as if looking for Morjin. And then he said, 'It disturbs me how much he knows of his son's death. He's growing stronger, I think.'

Both he and Master Juwain agreed that I must continue my medita-tions. As well, I must practice the art of guarding the doorway to my dreams.

'And we must practice swords,' Kane told me. 'Not all our battles against Morjin, I think, will be with his damned illusions and lies.'

When I pointed out that I had no sword to cross against his, he said, 'So, why don't you make one, then? I'm sure Captain Kharald can spare a bit of wood.'

As it happened, Captain Kharald was only too glad to provide me with a piece of a broken old spar that one of his men fetched from the hold – for a price. He said that good oak was valuable, broken or not and asked for a silver piece in payment. But silver we had none, only the gold coins in Atara's purse, any one of which would have bought a whole forest of oaks. And so we settled on shaving a coin's rim, and giving these gold splinters to Captain Kharald. Such debasement of royal coinage, of course, was a crime. Or would have been if the coin had been Alonian. But as it was stamped with the head of King Angand of Sunguru, who was Morjin's ally, no one on board seemed to mind.

I spent most of the morning whittling the hard oak spar. While the sails above me filled with a good following wind and the Snowy Owl fairly flew through the water, I shaved off long strips of wood with my dagger – the same blade that I had put into Raldu's heart. It wasn't the best tool for such work, but its Godhran steel cut well enough. By the time the fierce Marud sun was high above us and heating up the deck I had a wooden sword as long as a kalama. Wood being lighter than steel, I had made it much thicker than the blade I was used to in order to preserve its heft. But its balance was good and it handled quite well – indeed so well that I held my own against Kane for most of our first round of swordplay. Although he finally cut through my defenses, it seemed that he was having to work ever harder to do so.

We sailed all that day and next night into the west beneath fair skies. A hundred miles we made from sunset to sunset, Captain Kharald told us. By the second morning of our voyage, we had reached a point just south of Orun off Nedu. There some clouds came up upon a rising wind as the sea grew rougher. The ship rocked and heaved to the swelling of ten-foot waves, and so did our bellies. A strange malady called sea-sickness stole upon us like a fever that comes from eating rotten meat. It grabbed hold of Maram and me the most tightly, while Atara, Alphanderry and Liljana were less troubled. Master Juwain, who had grown up around boats, said that he hardly felt sick at all. As for Kane, the ship might have rolled over on its side and cast us all into the ocean before he complained of any distress.

'Ah, oh, ohhhh!' Maram gasped. We knelt side by side and hung our heads over the ship's stern as we gave up our dinners to the sea. 'Oh, this is too much! This is the worst yet – I'll never get on a ship again.'

All about us, the wind howled like a stricken beast and the water churned a blackish-green. The ship's masts, trimmed back of much sail, groaned even more loudly than did Maram.

'I want to go back, Val,' Maram said as a wave slapped the side of the ship. 'I don't care if we ever find the Lightstone.'

Even though I knew we were dose to laying our hands upon this long-sought cup, I pressed my fist into the pit of my belly and said 'All right then – we'll go back.'

Maram looked at me through the spray that the ship cast up. 'Do you really mean that, my friend?'

'Yes, why not? We'll return to Mesh as soon as we can. We're sure to have a warm homecoming, even if we fail in our quest.'

'All your family would turn out to greet us, wouldn't they?'

'Of course they would,' I said. 'Lord Harsha, too.'

At the mention of this name, Maram moaned even louder and cried out, 'Oh, Lord Harsha – I'd almost forgotten about him!'

His belly heaved as he leaned even farther over the side of the ship – so far in fact that I had to grasp hold of his belt for fear that he would fall into the sea. He might have been grateful that I had saved his life. But instead he groaned, 'Oh, just me let go and be done with it! Oh, I want to die, I want to die!'

It gave us little courage when Kane later told us that we would soon find our sea-legs, as with Captain Kharald and the others of his crew. After sipping some tea that Master Juwain brewed to ease our suffering I cast my wretched, empty body down upon my furs and lay as still as I could upon the ship's rolling deck. I fell asleep and had dark dreams, dreams of death. Whether these nightmares came from Morjin or my own misery was hard to say. But it seemed that the ally Master Juwain had bade me summon to watch over my sleep was a poor guard that night.

By the next morning, however, the sea had quieted somewhat and so had my belly. I found myself able to stand and fix my gaze upon the wavering blueness of the horizon. One of Captain Kharald's men, another redbeard named Jonald, pointed out a hazy bit of land to the starboard and said that it was one of the Windy Isles. This was a long chain of rocky outcroppings that ran for more than three hundred miles between Nedu and the coast of Eanna to the south. We had made good speed, he said, coming some two hundred and fifty miles since setting sail from King Vakurun's little city. Another hundred and fifty should find us pulling in to the great harbor at Ivalo.

We took this opportunity to hold a brief council and decide the best course for reaching the Island of the Swans. Kane spoke for us all when he said, 'This Captain Kharald is a greedy man, but he knows his business. He has a good ship and good crew, I think. Why not let them take us to the island?'

Atara brought out her purse and hefted it so that the coins jingled. She said, 'Greedy, hmmph, I suppose he is. Well, we have gold for him then. But will it be enough?'

That question seemed settled an hour later when we took Captain Kharald aside and put our proposal to him. When he learned of where we truly hoped to journey, he looked aghast and said, 'The Island of the Swans, you say? Why would you want to go there? It's cursed.'

'Cursed how?' I asked him.

'No one knows for certain. But it's said there are dragons there. No one ever sails to that place.'

I told him that we must reach this island, and soon. I told him about the vows we had made in King Kiritan's palace and our hopes of regaining the Lightstone.

'The Lightstone, the Lightstone,' Captain Kharald sighed out. 'I've heard talk of little else in all the ports from Ivalo to the Elyssu. But surely your golden cup no longer exists. It must have been melted down into coinage or jewelry long ago.'

'Melted, ha!' Kane called out. 'Can the sun itself be melted? The Lightstone is no ordinary gold.'

'Perhaps it's not,' Captain Kharald said reasonably. 'But I've only ever known gold of one kind.'

Here he smiled significantly at Atara as if he could see beneath her cloak.

Understanding only too well the meaning of this avaricious look, she brought out her purse and handed it to him.

'Aha, you do have gold, don't you?' he said. He took Atara's purse in one hand and weighed it carefully while he stroked his red beard with the other. Then he opened it, and his green eyes lit up like emeralds as he looked inside. 'Beautiful, beautiful – but where is the rest of it, then?'

Atara cast me a quick, sharp look, then said, 'That's all we have.'

'Well, if that's all you have, that's all you have,' he said as if consoling a poor widow who has to live on a meager inheritance. 'But the Island of the Swans lies more than three hundred miles from Ivalo. Across the Dragon Channel at that.'

'That's all the money we have,' Atara said again.

'I believe you,' he said. 'But gold's gold, and not all of it is pressed into coins.'

Here he pointed at the gold medallion that King Kiritan had slipped around Atara's neck. His eyes fixed on this brilliant sunburst and the golden cup standing out in relief at its center. Then he looked at Kane and Liljana and all the rest of us as well.

'Do you expect us to give you these?' she said, touching her medal-lion.

'My dear young woman, I expect nothing,' he said. 'But it is a very long way to this island you seek.'

Now Atara's fingers were twitching as if at any moment she might reach for her sword. I had never seen her so angry. 'The King gave us these with his blessing, that we might be known and honored in all lands.'

'A great man, is King Kiritan,' Captain Kharald said. 'And you are honored gready.

Who could bring more honor upon themselves than they who were willing to give the gold that all men desire for that finer metal of the Lightstone which so few have the courage to seek?'

His clever words shamed us, and we all looked at each other in silent understanding of what we would have to pay for our passage to the Island of the Swans.

'Very well,' I said, touching the words written around my medallion's rim. 'If that is what it takes.'

'Oh, I'm afraid it would take much more than that to cross the Dragon Channel,' he told us. 'That is a dangerous water. There are bad currents, many storms. And it's grown more dangerous of late, now that Hesperu has sent its ships to blockade Surra pa m's ports.'

He spoke sadly about the war that had riven his homeland; he gave us to understand that he had lost a great fortune in fleeing his warehouses and ships to re-establish himself in Ivalo.

'So you see, this is a time for prudence,' he said. 'And prudence demands that great risks be undertaken only at the prospect of great gain.'

1 nodded at the purse he still clutched in his hand. I said, 'The coins you may have.

Our medallions as well. What more do you ask of us?'

'My good Prince,' he said, 'I ask nothing. At least nothing more than fair compensation for such dreadful risks.'

Now his gaze fell upon the ring that my father had given me. Its two diamonds sparkled brilliantly in the morning light.

'You want me to give you this?' I said, holding up my knight's ring. Would I give up my hand to gain the Lightstone? Would I give up my arm?

'Well,' he told me, 'diamonds are dearer than gold.'

Now it was my turn to be angry. I shook my ring at him as I said, 'Am I a diamond-seller, then?'

'Excuse me if I insulted you,' Captain Kharald said as he held out his hands. 'I don't like to argue.'

I took ten deep breaths as I died to quiet the drumming of my heart. And then I said,

'All right, if it's diamonds you want then you may have these two. But not the ring itself, do you understand?'

'Very well,' he said in a voice as cool as the sea. 'But you must understand that I could never risk my ship for even two such splendid diamonds as these.'

'How many would it take then?' I asked, clenching my teeth. If I had been wearing the diamond armor of a Valari warrior, I might have given him a whole fistful of diamonds – across the face.

'How many do you have?' he asked me.

'Only these two,' I said, nodding at my ring.

'Two only?' he said, shaking his head. 'And you a prince of Mesh?'

'In Mesh,' I told him, 'we set our diamonds into armor and such rings as you see.

But we would never carry any outside our land.'

'Well, I've no liking to call any man a liar,' he said as he pulled on his red mustache.

'Neither do I like to haggle.'

I looked at Kane and the others, then told him, 'All that we have to give you for our passage, we have offered.'

Now Captain Kharald cocked his head as he looked at Atara's golden torque then turned to regard the rings that encircled each of Maram's fingers.

'You want my rings, too?' Maram said.

'Perhaps not,' Captain Kharald said, shaking his head again. 'Perhaps this journey of yours is just too dangerous. You must understand.'

At the coldness of his voice, Kane finally lost his patience. As quick as a flash, he whipped out his sword and held it refecting the sun.

'So, I don't like to haggle either,' Kane said. 'We've offered you more than fair. Do you understand.'

'Do you draw your sword,'Captain Kharald said in an icy voice, 'against a ship's captain?'

Just then, Jonald and ten other of Captain Kharald's men came running toward us with their cutlasses drawn. All of them, however, had seen Kane's sword work, and they held back forming a circle around us.

'No, not against you, Captain,' Kane said. 'I've no liking for mutiny, only exercise, eh?'

So saying, he slowly stretched his sword back behind him as if going through the first motion of the killing art that he had taught me. 'My men will never take you to the Island of the Swans without me,' Captain Kharald said. 'If you run me through, you gain nothing.'

'Nothing but satisfaction,' Kane growled at him,

'Kane!' I called out suddenly. I didn't like the look in his dark eyes just then.

Captain Kharald looked straight at Kane and said, 'You must do what you must. And I must do the same.'

Whatever Captain Kharaid's failings, I thought, lack of courage wasn't one of them. I stepped forward then, and bade Kane put away his sword. I watched with relief as Captain Kharaid's men sheathed theirs as well. To Captain Kharald, I said, 'You are certainly the captain of this ship -and the master of your own will as well. So long as the Red Dragon is kept at bay, you always will be.'

I went on to speak of the necessity of opposing Morjin so that he didn't make all men slaves. Recovering the Lightstone, I told him was the key to everything. I tried to find clever words to persuade him. Without consciously wielding the sword of valarda that Morjin had told of, I opened my heart to him. But it seemed that it wasn't enough.

'There are other ships in Ivalo.' he informed us coldly. 'Perhaps one of them will take you where you wish to go.' And with that he stormed off towards his cabin. After his men had gone back to their duties, Maram said, 'Well, he's right that we'll find other ships and captains in Ivalo, isn't he?'

'So, we will,' Kane muttered. 'Pirates and war galleys and other merchantmen less principled than he.'

'Principled?' I said, looking at Kane.

'Just, so,' he said. 'Captain Kharald has a keen sense of what he requires for our passage. He won't be swayed by any argument of threat.'

'Well,' Master Juwain observed, 'it's all very good to have principles, of course. But there are higher ones to live by.'

Maram nodded his head at thin. 'Perhaps we weren't prepared to give everything, then. Perhaps we should have offered him one of our gelstei.'

Kane nodded toward the inner pocket of Maram's red tunic where he usually secreted his firestone. And then he said, 'Ha, I suppose you're willing to be the first to give up yours?'

Beneath the heat of Kane's blistering gaze, Maram flushed with shame as he slowly shook his head.

'I can't believe,' Liljana said, 'that we gained the gelstei only to use them to buy passage on a ship.'

We all agreed. But none of us could think of a way to persuade Captain Kharald to take us to the Island of the Swans.

'What are we to do then?' Maram asked.

And Kane said, 'So, we'll wait. Tomorrow we'll reach Ivalo. And there we'll have to find another ship.'

But this prospect discouraged us all, for we had come to have a strange trust in Captain Kharald and the Snowy Owl. That night, after dinner, we sat on her deck looking out on the stars in a deep melancholy. The cool, groaning wind off the lapping waves carried murmurs of lamentation from distant comers of the world.

Even the waning moon seemed saddened to lose slivers of itself night after night.

Alphanderry, pulled by the great weight of this pale orb, took out his mandolet and began to sing. At first his words were of that impossible language it seemed no man could ever understand. There was a great pain in the sounds that poured from his throat but a great beauty, too. I had never heard him sing so well. Perhaps, I thought, his song had been made purer and clearer by listening to that of the whales. Even Flick seemed to apprehend this new quality of Alphanderry's music for he hovered just above him and flared up like a cluster of shooting stars with every note.

Captain Kharald's men gathered around us then to listen to Alphanderry play his mandolet. I knew that they had never heard anything like it before. Then Captain Kharald came out of his cabin and stood staring at Alphanderry as if seeing him for the first time.

After Alphandeny had finally finished his song, he looked up and realized that he had an audience. 'Hoy,' he said, 'I'm getting closer, I think. Maybe someday, maybe someday.'

'What was that song?' Jonald asked in a rough voice. 'I couldn't understand a word of it.'

'I'm not sure I could either,' Alphanderry said, laughing along with lonald and the other sailors.

'Well, do you know any songs we can understand?' Jonald asked.

'I don't know – what would you like to hear?'

It startled me when Captain Kharald suddenly stepped forward and said, 'What about The Pilot King? That's a good song for a night such as this.'

Alphanderry nodded his head agreeably and began tuning his mandolet. Then he smiled at Captain Kharald as he began to play:

A king there was in Thaluvale,

His name was Koru-Ki,

He built a silver ship to sail

The heavens' starry sea.

It was a sad song, full of wild longing and great deeds; it told of how King Koru-Ki, in the Age of Law, had sailed out from Thalu in search of the streaming lights of the Northern Passage, which was said to lead off the edge of the world up to the stars. It was a long song, too, and Alphanderry played for a long time. The moon was high in the sky by the time he finished.

'Thank you,' Captain Kharald told him politely. His men began drifting off, to their duties or beds. But he stood there a long while staring at Alphanderry strangely.

'Thank you, minstrel. If I had known you had such a voice, I wouldn't have let King Vakurun pay your passage.'

Then he, too, went off to bed and so did we.

We reached Ivalo late the next morning. We caught our first sight of it just as we rounded a hump of land along Eanna's northern coast. Like Varkall or Tria, it was a river city, built at the mouth of the Rune. But it had none of Tria's splendor and too much of Varkall's squalor. Too many of its houses and buildings were of wood and seemed jammed together in dirty, fetid districts that crowded the river. Unlike ancient Imatru a hundred miles farther up the Rune, it was a new city, scarcely a thousand years old. No great towers graced the muddy banks upon which it was sited. No gleaming bridges of living stone spanned the muddy Rune. Neither were there walls to catch the light of the midday sun. The Eannans, who were perhaps the greatest mariners in the world liked to say that they were better protected with wooden walls, and these were their ships.

Many of them were docked in the harbor into which we sailed. We saw luggers and whalers, barks and bilanders – and, of course, the galliots and warships of the Eannan fleet. These were all lined up along the docks jutting out from the Rune's western bank. The eastern bank was given over to ivalo's many warehouses and shipyards – and taverns and inns that served its sailors.

Here the Snowy Owl found berth along a wharf owned by one of Captain Kharald's friends. We tied up across the way from another bilander, commanded by a Surrapamer named Captain Toman, Both he and Captain Kharald were old friends.

Like Captain Kharald, he was a thickset man with a shock of fiery hair – though his beard had gone gray. When he saw the Snowy Owl strike her sails, he came on board and greeted Jonald and others whom he knew. Then Captain Kharald showed him into his cabin so that they might drink a bit of brandy and speak of their homeland.

'Well,' I said to Kane, 'we'd better get the horses off and find ourselves another ship.'

We went down into the hold to attend to this task. Altaru and the other horses had fleshed out nicely during the voyage. They seemed only too happy to remain in their stalls and continue feasting on oats. If any of them had suffered from sea-sickness, they gave no sign.

Just as I was leading Altaru onto the deck. Captain Kharald came out of his cabin and walked over to me. He waited until my companions and their horses had joined me, and then astonished us all, saying, 'If it's still your wish to sail to the Island of the Swans, I'll take you there.'

'It is still our wish,' I said, speaking for my friends. 'But why this change of heart?'

Captain Kharald's face fell angry and sad. He said, 'I've had bad news from Surrapam. The Hesperuks have broken the line of the Maron and are laying waste the countryside. There is much hunger in my homeland. I've decided to take on a cargo of grain and sail for Artram as soon as we're loaded. I'm willing to put in to the Island of the Swans along the way.'

'So, you're willing, and we're all glad for that,' Kane said. 'But willing at what price?'

'The Princess' purse will be enough,' Captain Kharald told us. He pointed at Atara's medallion and then looked at my ring. 'These other things are dear to you, and you should keep them.'

I could not quite believe what I was hearing. I thanked Captain Kharald and smiled as Atara hurried to hand him her purse before he changed his mind again.

'Now I must excuse myself,' Captain Kharald said as he tucked the clinking coins into his pocket. 'There's much to do before we sail.'

He walked off toward the stern and left us there with our nickering horses and our confusion.

'I don't understand,' Maram said, watching the sailors and wharf hands swarm the deck in preparation for unloading and loading cargo.

And then Master Juwain explained: 'Their whole lives, men fight battles inside themselves. And sometimes, in a moment, the battle is suddenly won.'

After that, we took the horses down to the wharf and led them through Ivalo's noisome streets to give them some exercise. We spent the day wandering about the waterfront districts, trying to keep out of the way of the throngs of people who crowded by us. The Eannans, I saw, were a mixed people: many showed hair as red as Captain Kharald's while many more were fair-skinned blonds who must have traced their ancestry to the Aryans who had conquered this kingdom so long ago.

There were women and men who had the brown hair and darker complexions of the Delians, even as did Maram, and more than a few bearing the lineaments of the Hesperuk race, with their mahogany skins and long, black curls. We tried to avoid them all. We kept our hoods close to our faces and kept to our business as well. For Eanna, as we had been told, was a land of assassins and spies, plots and usurpations. Here Morjin had great strength in the Kallimun priests who were said to have established themselves in secret citadels and even within the palace of old King Hanniban himself.

Late that afternoon, on a low hill about a mile from the shipyards, we found ourselves on a narrow lane called the Street of Swords. I visited the various smithies and shops there hoping to find a blade to replace the one I had broken. But the swords I saw were of poor quality, and I wouldn't consent to trade my medallion for any of them, even though 1 longed to fill up my scabbard with a length of good steel again. I resigned myself to practicing with the wooden sword I had whittled. It wouldn t do for battle, of course, but at least I could keep my skills sharp until I found something better.

We returned to the ship before dark, and there we waited for its bales of sealskins and barrels of whale oil to be unloaded and great canvas bags of wheat berries taken on. This took the wharf hands most of three days. When the holds were finally full again, Captain Kharald walked the decks inspecting the rigging and the balance of the ship And then, on the tide, we sailed for Surrapam by way of the Island of the Swans.

The first hundred miles of our voyage were easy enough, with fair skies and good wind. On the following day, however, as we rounded the Cape of Storms at the very northwest corner of the continent, the seas grew much rougher. The skies darkened, too, though strangely there was no rain. With the great island of Thalu ahead of us somewhere to the west we sailed south, into the Dragon Channel.

Here the wine-dark waters pitched the Snowy Owl up and down as if testing her timbers and the skills of those who sailed her. These, as 1 saw, were as great in their own way as any of my brothers' prowess with arms. Captain Kharald came alive with the rising of the wind and seas; often he stood near the bow grinning fiercely with his red hair blowing back behind him. At the sharp commands he barked out above the ocean's roar, Jonald and the other sailors turned the ship back and forth against the wind and made progress across the waves even so. The magic of this maneuver amazed me; Captain Kharald called it tacking. We spent most of the next three days tacking back and forth along a line leading mostly south toward Surrapam.

On our fifth day out from Ivalo, we came upon a sight that chagrined us all: this was the wreckage of a merchantman listing badly and dead in the water. As we drew closer to this stricken ship, however, we saw that it had not run aground on the numerous rocks and reefs off Thalu as Captain Kharald first supposed. Fire had taken her to her doom: the shreds of blackened sails still hanging from her spars and the charred wood there gave sign of this. There was also much sign of battle. Black arrows stuck from the masts like a porcupine's quills, and the hacked corpses of many sailors lay about the bloodstained deck The terrible stench issuing from this death ship told us that none had survived this devastation. Captain Kharald wanted to board her to make sure this was so, but the rough seas about us prevented any such maneuver.

'Who do you think did this?' Maram asked him as everyone gathered along the Snowy Owl's port side to look at this ship.

'Pirates, likely,' Captain Kharald said. 'There are many pirate enclaves on Thalu.'

Maram shuddered at this and muttered that nothing could be worse than such lawless, marauding men. And then the sea turned the black ship slowly about, and what we saw told of something much worse. For there, nailed to the main mast, hung the burned and tormented body of a man.

'So, 'I've heard the Thalunes are without mercy,' Kane said. 'But I've never heard that they are crucifiers.'

'No, they're not,' Captain Kharald admitted. 'This is certainly the work of a Hesperuk warship. It's said the Hesperuks have taken to crucifying in the Red Dragon's name.'

'They'll crucify us if they catch us carrying wheat to Surrapam,' one of Captain Kharald's men said. 'Or feed us to the sharks.'

After that, Captain Kharald gave orders for an extra sailor to go aloft and stand watch on the crow's nest high on the foremast. We all cast nervous looks about the gray ocean as the wind drove the Snowy Owl ever further south and we left the death ship behind us.

But it is one thing to sail away from such sights on a fleet ship built of stout oak; it is quite another to leave them behind in one's soul. That night, terrible dreams nailed me to the deck of the ship. For what seemed hours, I tried to shield myself from Morjin's fell, whispered words that burned me like the breath of a dragon. It took all my will finally to fight myself awake. I sat up trembling and sweating and peering through the darkness for any sign of land. And wordlessly, whisperlessly, Atara came over to touch a dry cloth to my face.

'Here,' she said after a while, wiping my forehead, 'you were dream-ing again.'

'Yes, dreaming,' I said.

The sea beneath us swelled and fell as the ship's wooden joints moaned like an old man. The wind off the cold water suddenly chilled me to the bone. It seemed that I could still smell the stench of the blackened ship we had passed.

'Of what were your dreams?' Atara asked me.

I looked at Maram snoring on top of his furs nearby and our other companions stretched out peacefully on the deck. And I said, 'Death. My dreams were of death.'

A terrible sadness fell over her then. She sat down facing me and wrapped her arms around my sweat-soaked back. She held me tightly against her warm body as she began weeping softly. And then, through her tears, she murmured, 'No, no, you can't die. You mustn't. You mustn't – don't you see?'

'See what, Atara?'

'That if you died, I'd want to die, too.' For a long time she sat there kissing the tears from my own eyes as she stroked my hair. And then, to further comfort me, she said, 'Surely the Lightstone can take away any such dreams.'

'The Lightstone,' I said. 'Have you seen it, then?'

'No, I think Mithuna was right,' she told me. 'No scryer can ever behold it. But I know we're, getting close to it, Val. We must be.'

I prayed that what she said must be true. As I held her against me, I looked over her shoulder, out into the darkness of the sea. And there, many miles to the south, beyond the black and rolling waves, I thought I saw a bit of golden light breaking through the clouds and drawing us on.

The next morning at sunrise, the lookout in the crow's nest called out that he had sighted the disjant rocks of the Island of the Swans.