When they dared look again, the waterspout had grown fantastically as it swept in from the sea. Sucking more and more water into its cyclone, it wavered like a long, wicked finger tracing a course of death toward the small boat.
Blindly, the party fought the waves that threatened to swamp them at every valley and overturn them at every peak. Somehow Theido managed to keep the boat heading to shore, and Trenn and Ronsard moved them ever so slightly ahead. Durwin, gripping the gunwales with white fingers, lifted his face to the sky and prayed, “God of all creation, spare us from the storm's great wrath. Deliver us safely to yonder shoreâfor without your help we surely will drown.”
No one aboard heard the prayer, but all knew what Durwin was doing and echoed his thoughts in their own.
A shout turned the others toward Theido, who stood waving his arms. They looked through the driving rain to where he waved and saw to their horror the waterspout looming up behind them, thrashing through the water like some agony-driven creature loosed in fury upon the sea.
Theido threw himself forward into the bottom of the boat, indicating for the others to follow his example. Water hurled from on high showered down upon them in sheets. The bawl of the storm filled their ears.
Then, suddenly, inexplicably, when the terrible spout should have been upon them, there was no sound. Nothing. The rain stopped. The water grew calm.
Durwin lifted his head and peered above. “Look! The spout has skipped over us.” It was true. The waterspout, which only moments before had towered above them, threatening to draw the tiny boat and its occupants up into its dreadful tempest, had lifted over them, dancing back up into the clouds. They could see its green tornado spinning directly above them, twirling like a burrowing worm and heading inland.
The calm lasted only brief seconds. Then the wind and water hit again with renewed force. The boat spun helplessly in the torrent; the rudder slammed into the stern and broke its hinges. Theido threw himself to the tiller, but it was too late. The handle flopped uselessly in his hands.
“The rocks!” Alinea screamed.
All turned to see the jagged roots of the island jutting crazily from the swell and disappearing again, only to rise once more as the water rushed around them.
The rocks formed a sharp row of teeth protecting the shallow bay beyond. In calmer weather the breakers beat upon them ineffectually, and even the most hopeless sailor could navigate them with ease. Now, however, the stony teeth gnashed furiously, driven to rage by the boiling sea.
The boat was lifted high and thrust forward with the waves. As the water crashed down, a rock rose beside them on the right. Ronsard, picking up his oar, shoved against the rock as it shot up; the boat spun aside, barely grazing her fragile hull against the unyielding mass of stone.
Again the boat was lifted high on the frothing waves and thrust forward. Trenn on his side wiped the flying spume out of his smarting eyes and held his oar ready to avert another rock. But before anyone could see the warning tip shooting up out of the foam, they heard the sickening crunch as the boat dropped square upon the crown of a huge rock they had just passed over.
The hull splintered and buckled. The boat teetered, now completely out of the water, stranded upon the rock as the wave drew away. For a second the small craft hung in the air, a fish speared upon a jagged tooth of stone. Then, with a sideways lurch the boat began to tear away from the rock as the hull gave way.
A wave pounding in upon them picked up the damaged boat again and split it in two, spilling its occupants into the rolling, angry sea.
N
imrood strode the high parapet of his castle, his black cloak streaming out behind him. His raven-black hairâshot through with streaks of white like the lightning flashing among the black storm clouds he watched and reveled inâflew in wild disarray. The booming cataclysms of thunder echoed in the valleys below his mountaintop perch, and the evil wizard cackled at each one.
“Blow, wind! Thunder, roar! Lightning, rend the heavens! I, Nimrood, command it! Ha, ha, ha!”
The sorcerer had no power over the storm; it was a pure thing of nature. Instead, he seemed to draw a strange vitality from its awesome force as he gazed out toward the bay, where Pyggin's ship lay at anchor. Nimrood could not see the ship; his castle was built upon the topmost peak of the highest of the rugged mountains that rose out of the sea to form his forsaken island. The bay was a league or more away as the gull flew.
The storm, spreading its anvil high into the atmosphere, flew on reckless wings in from the sea. Nimrood watched, his thin old body shaking in a paroxysm of demented glee; his sinister features lifted upward toward the storm, illuminated by the raking streaks of lightning. The wizard chanted, danced, and laughed, thrilling to the storm as it passed overhead.
At last the heavy drops of rain began plummeting to earth. Loath to leave, but hating this wetness more, Nimrood the Necromancer turned and darted back into his chamber.
“Euric?” he shouted, throwing off his black cape. “Light the incense. I feel like following the storm.” His henchman scuttled ahead of him as he descended the spiraling stone stairs to a vaulted room below. The room was bare stone except for a five-sided stone altar standing in the center.
Euric, with torch in hand, flitted around the altar, lighting the pots of incense that stood on low metal tripods, one at each corner of the altar. “Leave me!” shouted Nimrood when he had finished.
Nimrood stretched himself upon the altar and folded his hands over his breast. He let his breathing slow and become more shallow as the incense swirled around him. Soon he dropped into a deep trance, and the sorcerer's breathing seemed to stop altogether.
As Nimrood sank into the trance, his mind rose up as if through layers of colored smoke, ascending on the pungent vapors of incense. When the smoke cleared, he was flying above the earth in the face of the onrushing storm.
The wizard closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he had taken the form of a kestrel, soaring in the turbulent air. His body tingled with excitement as he played among the rolling clouds, diving steeply and rising again in the blink of an eye.
As he wheeled ecstatically through the rushing wind, he watched the land slide away beneath him. Directly below he saw his castle, dark upon its crown of mountain. To the west, falling sharply away to the bay, the thickly wooded hills hunched like the backs of tormented beasts. Beyond them, the glimmering crescent of the bay itself.
In a sudden blinding burst of lighting, his sharp kestrel's eyes spied something in the bay.
I wonder what that might be?
he thought to himself.
I will fly closer for a better look.
Nimrood dived into the wind, streaking to earth like a comet and heading for the bay.
“A ship!” he squawked when another stroke of lightning revealed the vessel's outline. Then he sailed out over the bay. “Could it be Pyggin's ship? I did not expect them so soon.”
Then, hovering in the air above the bay, the wind whipping through his feathers, Nimrood saw far below a small boat break away from the side of the ship. “Ach!” he screeched. “My guests have arrived!”
With that, he flew back to the castle on the speed of the racing wind and swept into the vaulted chamber through an arrow loop in the wall. He alighted on the edge of the altar and became a wisp of gray smoke lingering in the air before dissolving above his own entranced form beneath.
As soon as the smoke vanished, the wizard's eyes snapped open and he sat upright with a jolt. “Euric!” he shouted. “Come here at once!
“Where is that fool servant?” he muttered, swinging down from the altar. “Euric!” he shouted again; then he heard his servant's quick steps in the corridor beyond as Euric came running to his master's call. Nimrood met him at the door.
“You called, wise one?” The pitiful Euric bowed and scrabbled before the sorcerer.
“Yes, toad. We have work to do. Our long-awaited guests are even now arriving. We must prepare to meet them. Call the guards. Assemble them before my throne; I will give them their instructions. Hurry now! No time to lose!”
It was the third inn they had tried that morning, and this one sat down on the wharf at the water's edge. Toli and Quentin stood looking at the squeaking, weather-beaten shingle that swung to and fro on the brisk wind. It read FLYING FISH in bold blue letters hand-painted with some care by the owner, whose name, Baskin, was also painted beneath the legend.
“This is the last public house in Bestou, I think,” remarked Quentin. “This must be where they stayed. Come on.” He jerked his head for Toli to follow him inside. Toli, stricken with the jittery bafflement that most Jher held for all cities of any size, followed woodenly as he gazed along the waterfront.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you Baskin?” Quentin inquired politely of the first man they encountered within.
The man looked up at him over a stack of coins he was counting, his eyes blinking in the light of the open door. “My good fellow!” he shouted, somewhat surprised.
“Are you Baskin, sir?” asked Quentin again, startled by the man's unusual manner.
“At your service. Indeed, yes! If it is Baskin you want, Baskin you have found. What can I do for you”âhe cast a sharp and not altogether approving glance toward Toliâ“for you two young sirs?”
“We are looking for a party traveling through hereâthrough Bestou some time ago.”
The man scratched his head with a quizzical look on his face. “That could describe a fair number, I'll warrant.”
“There were four of them altogether . . .”
“That helps, but not much. Many merchants travel in numbers.”
“One was a lady. Very beautiful.”
“That's better . . . but no, I cannot think of anyone like that. Who did they sail with?”
“I . . . I do not know, sir.”
“They stayed here, you say?”
“They may have . . . That is, I cannot say for certain that they did. This is the last place in Bestou they could have stayed . . . if they did.”
“Let me see,” said Baskin, pulling his chin. “You are looking for a party who came you don't know when, and stayed you don't know where, and sailed with you don't know who. Is that right?”
Quentin's face flushed scarlet. His gaze fell to his feet.
“Oh, don't mind me, lad. I only wanted to get the facts . . .”
“I am sorry to have troubled you,” said Quentin, turning to leave.
“Are you sure there is nothing else you can think of ?” Baskin inquired after them.
Quentin stopped and considered this for a moment, then said, “They were bound for Karsh.”
At that word the innkeeper jumped down from his stool and came around the table to where Quentin and Toli stood. “Shh! Do not say that name in here. Bad luck! But, hmm . . .” He rubbed a long hand over his high forehead. “I seem to remember them now. Yes.
“There were three and the lady. One tall, fidgety. Looked to be a man of quick temper. The other big, stout. Dressed like a priest somewhat, though no priest I ever saw. They had a servant of sorts with them. A sturdy man. Didn't see much of him. And the ladyâbeautiful she may have been, though you couldn't prove it by me. She wore men's clothing all the while. Disguised, perhaps?”
“Yes, that's them!” cried Quentin.
“So I gather. They wanted to go to . . . that place. Had difficultyâand who would notâfinding any honest captain to take them.”
“Did they find someone?”
“Yes, I think so. They must have. They left early the first sailing day. Paid the bill the night before and were gone, along with everyone else, at dawn.”
“What day was it?” Quentin was almost breathless with relief at having found word of his friends.
“Oh, it must be ten, perhaps twelve days ago now. Yes, at least that long. Perhaps longerâlet me see . . .” The innkeeper turned and went back to his table. A hutch stood nearby, and he fished in one of the cubbyholes for a parchment, which he at length brought out. “Yes.
Here it is. I remember now. They left their horses with the smith up the way. I have the record now.” He pushed the paper under Quentin's nose.
“Did they say whose ship would carry them toâ”
“No, I never did hear. But there would be those who would risk such a trip for enough gold, I would think. Though many would not, as I say.”
Baskin looked confidentially at Quentin and asked, “You are not thinking of following them, are you?” He read the answer in Quentin's eyes before Quentin could speak. “Forget it. No good can come from it. I will tell you what I told them: stay far away from that place. I told them, and I tell you. Go back to where you came from. Don't go anywhere near that evil land. Stay away!”
P
rince Jaspin swept through the ample corridors of Castle Erlott on his way to the great hall where the Council of Regents sat deadlocked for the third day. He was followed by two of his own bodyguards carrying halberds with royal pennons fluttering from the halberds' long staves. Jaspin had chosen this moment to remind the recalcitrant regents of his power and prestige.
Behind him also marched Ontescue, carrying a small ornamented casket. Next to Ontescue walked a man in the worn clothes of a soldier, hesitant of step, eyes darting everywhere as if seeking refuge for an uneasy conscience.
This parade arrived at the towering doors of the great hall, now locked and the way barred by three guards, one of whom was the marshal of the Council of Regents.
“Halt!” bellowed the marshal. “The council is in session.”
“The council is deadlocked,” said Prince Jaspin in his most unctuous manner. “I have with me the means they require to resolve their impasse. Let me through!”
The marshal puffed out his cheeks as if to protest when a knock on the door sounded from within. “Stand away,” he warned the prince and turned to open the door to the summons.