As Teldin went deeper and deeper, the pressure built, squeezing his head and ears. His lungs began to hurt. Vision dimmed, whether from the depth or lack of oxygen, he had no idea. Then his hand brushed a supple skin of metal. Teldin groped frantically and caught a hem of Cwelanas’s chain mail, then pulled, trying to reverse his descent. He was horrified to realize that he, too, was being dragged down. He kicked harder, his oxygen-deprived lungs tearing in his chest. The chain mail wriggled and jerked in his grasp. They sank farther. Beneath him Cwelanas kicked one more time, then went limp. Darkness closed around his eyes and his ears throbbed with pressure, but Teldin gave one last try, knowing that if he couldn’t free Cwelanas this time, he would have to let go. With his last effort, he found them rising-ever so slowly.
Teldin fought to gain the surface. His eyes burned, and the cut across his chest felt on fire as the saltwater mingledwith blood. The searing pain kept him conscious, until finally the water broke over Teldin’s face. With a frantic gasp, the human gulped air and half-choked as saltwater splashed into his mouth. He paddled furiously, forcing Cwelanas’s head above the waves, and swam for the Silver Spray, barely visible through a pain-induced haze. The ship was the only thing he could focus on.
When he finally did reach the Silver Spray, the elves were already at the side, fishing out their fallen comrades. Teldin thumped against the hull and eager hands seized him and his load. The farmer’s body went limp as his spent mind could comprehend nothing further.
Chapter Sixteen
Teldin realized he was lying chest down and soaking wet on the deck as Gomja knelt over him, gently massaging the saltwater out of the farmer’s lungs. The giff gave a gentle push and Teldin coughed and choked. Somewhere he heard one of the elves say, “That is a good sign.” It certainly did not feel like one.
Gradually Teldin saw Cwelanas lying on the deck beside him, one of the elves firmly massaging her back. At first, nothing happened. The elf looked at his fellows with concern, then applied himself more furiously to the task. Finally there was a strangled cough, then another. A small, murmured prayer of thankfulness rose from the onlookers.
It was some time later that Teldin was finally able to sit up. He leaned against a mast, watching the elves work on Cwelanas. The risk of death had passed and she was slowly regaining a little strength and color. Finally able to comprehend what was going on around her, she choked out a question to her attendant. The elf listened, then pointed toward Teldin, causing a baffled look to pass over the elf maiden’s face. At last she croaked, barely loud enough for Teldin to hear, “I have you to thank for my life. I may have misjudged you.” She weakly stretched a hand to him.
Teldin gave a feeble shrug, triggering a coughing fit. “Maybe,” was all he could think to say. He leaned forward and took her hand in his. Neither had the strength to squeeze. “Humans sometimes do that, too,” he allowed with a sardonic smile. She gave a half-smile back, then they both collapsed into sleep.
Later, Teldin, wrapped in his mysterious cloak against the ocean’s salt spray, watched from the deck as the elves checked the last of the brails on the new mainsail. At a shouted command, the folds of canvas dropped, billowing out to catch the wind. The Silver Spray, battered and limping but once again under full sail, neared the headlands of Sancrist Isle two days after the nearly disastrous encounter with the minotaur pirates.
Thanks mainly to Luciar’s spell, the elves had won the battle. The sheet of flame raised by the old captain’s conjuring had ended the bloody assault. Those minotaurs who had been trapped on board were not offered any quarter, and instead were cut down by archers in the rigging. By the time Teldin and Cwelanas were rescued, the fight had been all but over. The surviving pirates had stayed to their own vessel, too busy battling the blaze aboard their raider to keep the Silver Spray from limping away. Since there had been no pursuit, it became apparent that the beasts had no desire to taste elven magic again.
Still, the victory had not been without cost; seven crew members were dead, eleven wounded. The elves had none of the healers, with their prayers and mystical cures, whom Teldin had seen during the war, but they did all they could with herbs and common sense. Awnings erected on the deck sheltered the dying from the sun, and there they lay, groaning in the midday heat.
Already, though, the attack seemed distant to Teldin. The memorial, repairs, and constant fear of more minotaurs were enough to keep his mind occupied. Still, even though the crew was short-handed, Cwelanas no longer sent him into the masts. She claimed that his cut would reopen with such hard work. The tasks she did assign him were light. Teldin figured her sudden solicitousness had nothing to do with his wounds, but he certainly was not about to complain about her treatment now.
Ever since the battle, the elf maid’s mood had changed with the suddenness of a wind shifting off the bow-an expression Teldin had learned since coming aboard. Cwelanas even addressed the human by name now, no longer using the pejorative “human’ or even the slighting “Bare Tree” every time she spoke. When their glances met, the elf maiden neither glared nor tore her gaze away. Without her smoldering hate, the hard edges of Cwelanas’s face softened and Teldin found her even more seductive than before. The farmer doubted that the elf mate had abandoned her general dislike of humans, but at least in his case she seemed to make an exception.
Teldin could only assume her feelings paralleled his own, which were confused and a little disturbing. He did not know exactly how to feel. Before the battle, Teldjn was still stung by Vandoorm‘s treachery and dared to trust the elves no more than they had trusted him. The possibility that they might betray him had always lurked at hand. Now he was not so sure. They had fought together, and that had provided a bond greater than any he had ever felt with Vandoorm or other humans. Elves, at least those of the Silver Spray, seemed to deserve his trust.
Teldin’s feelings toward Cwelanas were particularly unsettled. Her conversion from animosity to warmth was too abrupt for him, too flighty by his standards. He could not decide whether it was because she was female or because she was elven. Whichever it was, her moods left him pleased but confused.
Teldin sat in reflection, watching the rocky, brown mountains of Sancrist Isle slide slowly past, until Cwelanas, awkward and self-conscious, strode up and stood beside him. Her cutlass tapped against the top of the elf maiden’s boot, scraping in rhythm with the ocean swells. “The captain says tomorrow you will be set ashore in Thalan Bay. That is as close as we can come to Mount Nevermind. Tonight, dinner will be served in the captain’s cabin at evening tide,” she said in blunt, graceless tones, though there was no trace of anger in her voice.
Teldin, drowsy in the afternoon sun, languidly turned his head. “I’m invited?” he asked in bemusement at her manners, though in truth he felt a thrill at the summons. Cwelanas’s pale cheeks flushed pink so slightly that it seemed no more than the coloring of a wild rose. She was painfully conscious of her brash tone.
“I am sorry, Teldin Moore,” the flustered elf apologized. “Life at sea has left me unpracticed in these things.” The rough-edged elf maiden composed herself, then began again by taking a pose of excessive modesty, her almond eyes downcast, her hands folded demurely in front of her. In a blouse and sturdy trousers, even with a sword at her hip, she was a child awaiting a reprimand, not a confident ship’s officer. Cwelanas took a deep breath and spoke again in almost a whisper. “You and your large friend are requested by the captain-my father-and me to dine with us this evening, in honor of our voyage and the sorrow we will feel at your leave-taking.” She looked up with a pleasantly self-mocking gleam in her eye. “Was that better?”