"It's the Parcelius ensign," she told him. "Laws of the spaceways are like those of the sea. You always run up the ensign of your home world at the stern, or your home port if it has its own ensign. If you're being formal, you really should run up the flag of your destination at the bow or on the mainmast, but most people aren't too picky about that. If you do much traveling at all, your entire cargo capacity's going to be taken up with flags," she concluded with a chuckle.
The hammership turned slightly more to the northeast, out over the ocean now, and continued to descend. For the first time, Teldin could see whitecaps on the waves below. The ship was only a couple of hundred feet up, he guessed. Then the big vessel maneuvered again, pointing its bow into the westering sun. It decelerated gently and swept lower still.
Aelfred Silverhorn's head popped into view. He climbed the ladder from the bridge below and spared the two a broad smile before he took his place at the forward rail. "Raise port and starboard fins!" he bellowed.
On the main deck, crewmen threw their weight on lines that led out to the four triangular sails extending out and slightly down from the hammership's hull like the fins of a shark. As they pulled, the sails folded upward until they stood vertically against the gunwales.
"Dead slow," Aelfred called. "Prepare for landing."
The Probe slowed still more and dropped lower. They were now no more than fifty feet above the wave caps, Teldin saw. Forty feet, thirty… Aelfred had ordered "dead slow"-and, compared to the hammership's top speed, that's how fast they were going-but watching the waves whip by underneath, Teldin realized the Probe was still moving about as fast as a running man. The sensation of riding something as big as the hammership this fast, this low, was exhilarating… and terrifying. He could easily imagine the vessel slamming into the water hard enough to snap its keel, breaking it apart into quickly sinking fragments.
Ten feet, five… The first crest slapped against the bottom of the hull. "Brace for landing," Aelfred called back. He was grinning from ear to ear. Teldin took a solid grip on the rail and noticed that Rianna had already done so and was braced in a wide-legged stance.
The ship touched down with a roar of water pounding against the hull. The deck surged hard beneath Teldin's feet, almost breaking his grip on the rail. Curtains of spray, catching the light like countless diamonds, arched high on both sides of the vessel, then fell back with a hiss. A fine mist of chill water washed back over the forecastle. The Probe was down.
"Helm down," ordered the first mate.
The hammership slowed quickly. Looking aft, Teldin could see the broad white wake that the ship had left. He walked forward to join Aelfred and looked over the bow rail.
The hammership rode low in the water. The waterline appeared to be about level with the main deck itself, which gave the vessel very little freeboard, particularly in the bow itself. Teldin remembered Rianna's comment: spelljamming ships are built for space. Even with his minimal knowledge of things nautical, he recognized that the slightest storm would swamp the hammership and send it to the bottom.
Aelfred, still grinning, pounded him on the shoulder. "Exciting, eh?" he enthused. "I live for that."
Teldin nodded halfheartedly. "Fun," he said without conviction.
The motion of the ship had changed, Teldin noticed. To be precise, now the ship had motion. Except during the most drastic maneuvers, or when the ship struck something, the Probe in space had felt as solid and motionless as Krynn itself. Now, however, the big ship was rolling slightly with the waves, which were striking it abeam. This was another problem with spelljamming vessels when they were out of their true element, he realized. Their stability was dreadful.
Something else had changed, too. For the first time, he could feel a cool, salt breeze on his face. As the Probe had soared in for its landing, the air on deck had been totally still. Now that the ship was virtually at rest, a steady wind blew across its bow from out of the west. He mentioned it to Rianna.
"Of course," she answered. "When the helm goes down, so does the atmosphere envelope." His face must have shown his confusion, because she grinned. "Atmosphere envelope, that's the bubble of air the ship takes with it into space. When the helm's operating, the ship keeps a bubble of relatively still air around it even when it's in the atmosphere of a world… generally speaking, of course."
Teldin nodded intelligently, trying to pretend that he understood even half of what Rianna was saying. Suddenly, without warning, his stomach twisted uncomfortably. What? Oh, no… He couldn't be seasick, could he? He took a deep breath of the sharp sea air, stretching his lungs to the limit. The nausea lessened a little. He breathed again, trying to ignore the motion of the deck beneath his feet.
Aelfred must have recognized his plight, because the big warrior remarked, "It's worst when we're at rest. She's much more stable when we're underway." He turned aft and bellowed, "Sea sail up."
Crewmen swung into the rigging and started hauling up the large sail reserved for ocean maneuvering. The big ship heeled slightly as the west wind filled the canvas. Ropes complained as the rigging took the strain and the boom swung to expose the maximum sail area. Waves slapped against the hull.
"Hard a-port," Aelfred ordered. "Bring us in."
The Probe turned its blunt bow southward, toward the port of Rauthaven.
It was evening, and the sun had set perhaps half an hour before. The Probe swung gently at anchor-under the star now, rather than among them-in the crowded inner harbor of Rauthaven's port. Lanterns burned at bow and stern and atop the tall mainmast. Around the ship was a swarm of other such lanterns. It was too dark to discern the shapes of the ships that bore them; all that could be seen were the points of yellow light. It was as though some god had taken a constellation from the sky and brought it down to earth, Teldin found himself thinking. He stood on the main deck, leaning on the port rail, gazing toward shore.
Rauthaven itself was another constellation of lights: braziers to keep the city watch warm through the chill nights; open windows of cozy homes and snug taverns, spilling their welcoming light into the streets; and here and there a moving spark that had to be a lantern mounted on a carriage. From this angle, down in the harbor surrounded by the hills of the city, Teldin could make out no definite horizon, no demarcation between city and sky. The scattered lights of the city seemed to blend imperceptibly with the scattered stars. If he ignored the motion of the ship, the night wind on his face, and the smell of the sea, Teldin could almost make himself believe that he were back in space.
In fact, part of him wished that were true. Where had that thought come from? he wondered. At first space had been a dangerous unknown, and his greatest desire had been to get back to the safe, planet-bound life that he knew. Now, however, part of his mind equated space with safety, while Rauthaven-and Toril as a whole-was the dangerous unknown. Why? After all, wasn't he now near the end of his quest? If he could find an arcane and discharge his obligation to the dead owner of the cloak, he'd be free to live his own life again, as he saw fit. Why wasn't he welcoming landfall on Toril as the penultimate step in freeing himself from his burden?
When he phrased the question that way, the answer was obvious. What if he found out that the arcane weren't the creators of the cloak and were as helpless as the gnomes of Mount Nevermind when it came to removing it? This entire trip would have been a wild-goose chase. Worse, where would he go from here? Instead of the end of his journey, Rauthaven could turn out to be just the first step in a much greater one. It just didn't bear thinking about.