Smith shuddered. But, "So what?" he said. "There isn't actually any real literal Key."
"We'll see, won't we?" Lord Ermenwyr said. "If you don't think there's any real danger, Smith, why should we greenies worry?"
He leaned back in his chair and gazed out at the bright sea sparkling.
"I'm getting a headache from all this glare," he said after a moment. "Willowspear, fetch me a parasol. And perhaps my spectacles with the black emerald lenses."
The third day out dawned clear and bright, but far to the south was a glacier wall of fog, purple in the morning sun, blinding white at noon. By afternoon they had come close, and it loomed across half the world. Under it the blue sea faded to steel color and green, with a pattern like watered silk, and distance became confused. Rocks and islets swam into view, indistinct in the gloom.
Smith struck sails and proceeded with caution, relinquishing the helm to Willowspear every few minutes to take soundings from the chains. He sighed with relief when he spotted a marker buoy, a hollow ball of tin painted red and yellow, and ran aft to the wheel.
"We're at the mouth of the Rethestlin," he told the others. "And the tide's with us. This is where we go inland, right?"
"Yes! Turn left here," said Lord Ermenwyr. He shivered. "Chilly, all this damned mist, isn't it? Cutt, I want my black cloak with the fur collar."
"Yes, Master." Cutt went clumping down the companion-way.
"The water has changed color," observed Willowspear, looking over the side.
"That's the river meeting the sea," Smith told him, peering ahead. "Maybe we should anchor until this fog lifts... no! There's the next buoy. We're all right. You ought to thank Smallbrass Enterprises for that much, my lord; this would be a lot harder without the markers."
Willowspear scowled. "Surely they haven't begun their desecration!"
"No," said Smith, steering cautiously. "They can't have got enough investors yet. These were probably put down for the surveying party. So much the better for us. Weren't we supposed to be racing to rescue your sister, my lord?"
"She'll hold off the ravening hordes until we get there," Lord Ermenwyr said, allowing Cutt to wrap him in the black cloak. "She's a stalwart girl. Once, when Eyrdway was tormenting me, she knocked him down with a good right cross. Bloodied his nose and made him cry, too. Happy childhood days!"
The tide swung them round the buoy, and another appeared. A smudge on the near horizon resolved into a bank of reeds; and the thump and wash of surf, muffled, fell behind them, and the cry of a water bird echoed. The roll and pitch of the sea had stopped. They seemed stationary, in a drifting world...
"We're on the river," said Smith.
The fog lifted, and they beheld Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.
It was a green place, a dark forest coming down to meadows along the water's edge, cypress and evergreen oak hung with moss that dripped and swayed in long festoons in the faint current of air moving upriver. Deeper into the forest, towering above the green trees, were bare silver boughs where purple herons nested.
Three tall stones had been set up in a meadow. Yendri signs were cut deep into them, spirals of eternity and old words. Around their bases white flowers had been planted, tall sea poppies and white rhododendrons, and the bramble of wild white roses. Willowspear, who had been praying quietly, pointed.
"The shrine to the Beloved Imperfect," he said. "That was where he stood, with the Child in his arms. There he saw the White Ship, that was to bear him over the sea, rise from the water.
This
water!" He looked around him in awe.
Lord Ermenwyr said nothing, watching the shore keenly. Smith thought it was a pretty enough place, but far too dark and wet for Children of the Sun to live there comfortably. He was just thinking there must have been a mistake when they saw the new stone landing, and the guardhouse on the bank at the end of it.
"Oh," said Willowspear, not loudly but in real pain.
It was a squat shelter of stacked stones, muddy and squalid-looking. Piled about it were more of the red-and-yellow buoys and a leaning confusion of tools: picks, shovels, axes, already rusted. There were empty crates standing about, and broken amphorae, and a mound of bricks. There was a single flagpole at the end of the pier. A red-and-yellow banner hung from it, limp in the wet air.
The shelter's door flew open, and a figure raced out along the bank.
"Ai!" shouted a man, his hopeful voice coming hollow across the water. "Ai-ai-ai! You! Are you the relief crew?"
"No, sorry," Smith shouted back.
"Aren't you putting in? Ai! Aren't you stopping?"
"No! We're headed upriver!"
"Please! Listen! We can't stay here! Will you pick us up?"
"What?"
"Will you pick us up?" The man had run out to the end of the pier, staring out at them as they glided by. "We've got to get out of here!"
"We're on a bit of a schedule, I'm afraid," said Lord Ermenwyr. "Can't do it."
"Oh, please! You don't--look, the wood's all wet. We can't cook anything Bolter and Drill are sick. And at night--" The man cast a furtive glance over his shoulder at the forest.
Smith groaned. "Can't we give them some oil, at least?" he muttered.
"Would some oil help you?"
"What? Oil? Yes! Just pull in for a minute, please, all right?"
"Bring up a keg," Lord Ermenwyr ordered Stabb. He raised his voice again to call out in a bantering tone, "So I take it you're not happy in Beautiful Smallbrass Estates?"
"I wouldn't live here if you paid me a thousand crowns!" the man screamed, panic in his eyes as he realized that the
Kingfisher's Nest
was truly not going to stop.
"Maybe we can pick you up on the return trip!" Smith cried.
"Damn you!" The man wept. Smith grimaced and turned away, watching the river. He heard the splash as Stabb hurled the keg of oil overboard. Turning back, he saw the man wading into the shallows, grabbing desperately at the keg as the eddy carried it close. To Smith's relief he caught it, and was wrestling it ashore when the tide carried them around a bend in the river, and dark trees closed off the view.
"There, now, he can get a nice fire started with the oil," said Lord Ermenwyr, watching Smith. "And there'll probably be a relief crew arriving any day now."
"What's in those woods?" asked Smith. "Demons?"
"No!" said Willowspear. "This is a holy place. They brought their terrors with them. This is what happens when men profane what is sacred. The land itself rejects them, you see?"
Smith shrugged. He kept his eyes on the river.
They made hours and many miles upriver before the tidal bore gave out, then moored for the night in a silent backwater. In the morning they lit the boiler again, and thereafter the
Kingfisher's Nest
progressed up the river in a clanking din that echoed off the banks, as the dipping ranks of oars worked the brown water. Birds flew up in alarm at the racket, and water serpents gave them a wide berth.
On the fifth day, they ran aground.
Smith had relinquished the helm to Cutt while he downed a stealthy postbreakfast filler of pickled eel. He swore through a full mouth as he felt the first grind under the keel, and then the full-on shuddering slam that meant they were stuck.
He scrambled to his feet and ran forward.
"The boat has stopped, Child of the Sun," said Cutt.
"That's because you ran it onto a sandbank!" Smith told him, fuming. "Didn't you see the damned thing?"
"No, Child of the Sun."
"What's this?" Lord Ermenwyr ran up on deck, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. "We're slightly tilty, aren't we? And why aren't we moving?"
"What's happened?" Willowspear came up the companionway after him.
"Stop the rowers!" Smith ran for the boiler stopcock and threw it open. Steam shrieked forth in a long gush, and the oars ceased their pointless thrashing.
"You have hyacinth jam in your beard, my lord," Willowspear informed Lord Ermenwyr.
"Do I?" The lordling flicked it away hastily. "Imagine that. Are we in trouble, Smith?"
"Could be worse," Smith admitted grumpily. He looked across at the opposite bank. "We can throw a cable around that tree trunk and warp ourselves off. She's got a shallow draft."
"Capital." Lord Ermenwyr clapped once, authoritatively. "Boys! Hop to it and warp yourselves."
After further explanation of colorful seafaring terms, Smith took the end of the hawser around his waist and swam, floundering, to the far shore with it, as Cutt paid it out and Strangel dove below the waterline to make certain there were no snags. After four or five minutes he walked to the surface and trudged ashore after Smith.
"There is nothing sharp under the boat, Child of the Sun," he announced.
"Fine," said Smith, throwing a loop of cable about the tree trunk. He looped it twice more and made it fast. Looking up, he waved at those on deck, who waved back.
"Bend to the bloody capstan!" he shouted. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb started, and collided with one another in their haste to get to the bars. Round they went, and the cable rose dripping from the river; round they went again, and the cable sprang taut, and water flew from it in all directions. Round once more and they halted, and the
Kingfisher's Nest
jerked abruptly, as one who has nodded off and been elbowed awake will leap up staring.
"Go, boys, go!" said Lord Ermenwyr happily, clinging to the mast. "Isn't there some sort of colorful rhythmic chant one does at moments like these?"
The demons strained slightly, and the
Kingfisher's Nest
groaned and began to slither sideways.
"That's it!" Smith yelled. "Keep going!"
The
Kingfisher's Nest
wobbled, creaked, and--
"Go! Go! Go!"
--lurched into deep water with a splash, and a wave rose and slopped along the riverbank.
"Stand to," said Smith. As he bent to loose the cable, he became aware of a sound like low thunder. Looking up over his shoulder, he pinpointed the source of the noise. Strangel was growling, glaring into the forest with eyes of flame, and it was not a metaphor.
Smith went on the defensive at once, groping for weapons he did not have. As he followed Strangel's line of sight, he saw them too: five green men in a green forest, cloaked in green, staring back coldly from the shadows, and each man wore a baldric studded with little points of green, and each man had in his hand a cane tube.
Strangel roared, and charged them.
Their arms moved in such perfect unison they might have been playing music, but instead of a perfect flute chord a flight of darts came forth, striking each one home into Strangel's wide chest.
He kept coming as though he felt nothing, and they fell back wide-eyed but readied a second barrage, with the same eerie synchronization. The darts struck home again. They couldn't have missed. Strangel seemed to lose a little of his momentum, but he was still advancing, and smashing aside branches as he came. Not until the third flight of darts had struck him did his roar die in his throat. He slowed. He stopped. His arms remained up, great taloned hands flexed for murder. Their forward weight toppled him and he fell, rigid, and rolled over like a log rolling.
His snarling features seemed cut from stone. The lights of his eyes had died.
The Yendri stared down at him in astonishment.
Smith turned and dove into the river.
He was scrambling over the rail of the
Kingfisher's Nest
when the first dart struck wood beside his hand. He felt Willowspear seize his collar and pull him over, to sprawl flat on the deck, and he thought he saw Lord Ermenwyr running forward. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb gave voice to a keening ululation, above which very little else could be heard; but Smith made out the
clang
that meant someone had closed the stopcock, followed by a tinkly noise like silver rain. He looked up dazedly and saw poisoned darts hitting the boiler domes, bouncing off harmlessly, and Lord Ermenwyr on his hands and knees behind the domes.
"Rope! Rope!" he was shouting, and Smith realized what he meant. The
Kingfisher's Nest
had been borne backward on the current, stopped only by the cable that he had not managed to loose in time. It swung now on the flood, its cable straight as a bar. Smith dragged himself forward to the tool chest by the boiler domes, and, groping frantically, there he found a kindling hatchet.
He rose to his knees, saw two Yendri directly opposite him on the bank in the act of loading their cane tubes, and took a half dozen frenzied whacks at the cable before diving flat again. The darts flew without noise. But he heard them strike the domes again, and one dart bounced and landed point down on his hand. He shook it off frantically, noting in horror the tarry smear on his skin where the dart had lain. Someone seized the hatchet out of his hand and he rolled to see Willowspear bringing it down on the cable, bang, and the cable parted and they shot away backward down the river, wheeling round in the current like a leaf.
The oars had begun to beat again by the time Smith could scramble to the helm and bring her around, thanking all the gods they hadn't grounded a second time.
"Was anybody hit?" he cried. The demons were still howling, hurling threats palpable as boulders back upriver. "Shut up!
Was anybody hit?"
"I wasn't," said Willowspear, picking himself up. "My lord? My lord!"
Smith spotted Lord Ermenwyr still crouched behind the boilers, his teeth bared, his eyes squeezed shut. Sweat was pouring from his face. Smith groaned and punched the wheel, and Willowspear was beside his liege lord at once, struggling to open his collar; but Lord Ermenwyr shook his head.
"I'm not hit," he said.
"But what's--"
"I
lost one of them,"
he said, opening sick eyes. "And Mother's right. It hurts worse than anything I've ever known. Damn, damn, damn."
"What can I do for you, my lord?" Willowspear lowered his voice.
"Help me up," Lord Ermenwyr replied. "They need me to do something."