This made Charkky and Hokki laugh and dive.
“You won’t see the ghost,” Mikk said. “No one does; he lives on the white cliffs in the cave.” They were opposite the opening now, and Teb could see that the cave was huge. A damp, cold breath blew out of it, smelling of bird droppings, and the jagged stone inside was covered with droppings heavy and white as snow.
“It is said he comes out to make the storms of the sea,” said Jukka, shaking water over Teb. “That his birds stir the wind into storm, and he himself roils the sea and makes it heave and churn.”
The birds returned, wheeling over them, and when the raft was past the cave, the flock swept back in and vanished. And suddenly a song filled Teb’s mind with words crying in his head, and he sat wondering at it and examining it as the tall cliffs passed, for it was not just a song about the ghost and the things he was seeing, but stretched far back in time, a song alive with wrecked ships and drowned cities and things he had never known.
Or, things he thought he had never known—but how could he tell?
He watched Charkky dive down to retrieve oysters from the undersea caves, then lie on his back shucking and eating them. He could not see the land above the cliffs—they were far too tall—but green grass hung over where some of the cliff had crumbled out from beneath the turf. And once, just beyond the cave of the ghost, he saw horses silhouetted against the sky, and that, too, made a yearning in him, so he could almost smell their sweet scent and feel them warm and silky beneath his hands.
Why did it all stay hidden? And what was the song that had come, so different from the others? Why did it make him lonely?
The sun was just overhead when they came to the Bay of Ottra and were surrounded at once by a mob of splashing, diving, huffing otters. He remembered the sea alive with them when he had come this way before, shaken with fever and pain, his leg like a shattered stone hung to his body, heavy and useless and hurting. He remembered being taken to the marsh and fed there among the tall, bright green grass in a bright green otter holt. He had not remembered all this before. But of course, Charkky and Mikk had told him how it was; he was only remembering their tale. He looked at the crowd of curious otters splashing and pushing close to the raft and listened to Mikk tell why they had come, and he felt very silly when they rolled over in the water laughing and barking because the little band was going to steal fire.
“Not steal fire,” said Mikk. “Steal the thing that makes fire.”
“But who would want fire? What’s it good for? Oh, humans use it in Ratnisbon, all right, but it makes such a smell.”
“It’s to cook food,” Teb said. “I want. . .”
“He wants to cook his food,” said Charkky. “He’s human; his habits aren’t the same as ours.”
The otters went silent, staring up at Teb, thinking about this strange new idea.
“Well,” said one at last, “yes, they do cook food in Ratnisbon. On the boats, too, in the harbor. You can smell it.”
“But what is it that makes fire?” cried someone.
“A small flint, a little piece of metal that can strike a spark,” Teb said. “Like a tiny bit of lightning. That will light the kindling, and the kindling will make the wood burn. Every soldier carries a flint,” he said, puzzling that he should know this.
“You won’t find much on that battlefield,” said old Flokk, who was a friend of Ekkthurian’s. “A band of soldiers went back and carried a wagonload away. And then the buzzards came and stayed for weeks.”
“Ebis’s soldiers took it all into Ratnisbon,” said a pale old female with a torn ear, who was floating near the raft. “Saddles, cooking gear, blankets. They buried the dead soldiers.” The Rushmarsh otters were more sophisticated than the Nightpool clan, living as they did so close to Ratnisbon. They made a hobby of watching humans, though they kept themselves hidden and secret.
Teb sighed. “It sounds as if there won’t be anything left.”
“Maybe,” said Mikk. “Who knows what a band of soldiers might overlook?”
“There’s a great cage there,” said a broad-faced otter. “Big enough for ten hydruses. You wouldn’t believe that men could build a cage that big, or that they would want to. Made out of whole trees, it is. We don’t know what it’s for, but the door to it stands wide open.”
Teb frowned, puzzled. But the fleeting twinge of memory vanished into shadow and left only fear behind it. He saw Mikk watching him, and he thought Mikk guessed what he was feeling.
“There are a great many boats anchored at Cape Bay,” said the Rushmarsh leader. Feskken had surfaced moments before, his pale tan coat bright amid the darker crowd. His dark muzzle made him look as if he’d had his nose in the mud. He looked Teb over. “You look much better now, boy, than last time I saw you with your leg all swollen. I expect you had all better come into Rushmarsh and wait until it grows dark to cross the bays, with all the boats about. A raft can’t dive and swim underwater. Come, and take a meal with us.”
So the raft was pulled into Rushmarsh along a small stream and wedged deep into the tall eelgrass. Then the otters led Teb across the marsh to their green grass holts, nearly invisible until one was right on them. Inside the largest holt, they feasted on raw oysters and shrimps and on the nutty roots of marsh lilies, which Teb found delicious.
“We have none of that at Nightpool,” Mikk said. “It’s one of the reasons we like to come to Rushmarsh. “
“Couldn’t you plant it?” Teb said. “Wouldn’t it grow in the valley at Nightpool?”
The otters had never thought of such a thing.
“Why not?” said Feskken. “Great fishes, why didn’t anyone think of that? I’ll send some youngsters at once to dig the plants up. They multiply well, we know that, for the whole south stream bed is alive with them.”‘
“It would be better,” Teb said, “to get them on our way back so they’d be fresher.” He didn’t know how he knew about gardening, but he did know. “They start to die the minute you pull them, and they need to have life to take root.”
“I’m glad we didn’t try to cross the harbors in the daytime,” Mikk said. “I’ve never seen so many boats.” The otters had a clear view of the ocean down the stream channel, though to the humans out there, looking toward the marsh, nothing was visible but a mass of green eelgrass.
“Word is,” Feskken said, “that fighting in the north has driven those folk out, that the dark raiders are defeating the lands east of Chagrel. Ebis the Black has given the refugees sanctuary. They have made a large camp at the edge of the city just at the skirts of the castle.”
Teb sat very still when he heard the name Ebis the Black. And when Feskken spoke of Sivich, he went chilled and thought he was really on the edge of remembering. And yet he could not remember. Mikk was watching him again, with that worried little cock of his head. Teb felt sure that when he got to the place of battle where he had been hurt, he would remember.
It was well after dark when they started out again on the sea, and Teb found the heaving ocean frightening in darkness. The raft seemed small and frail now, and where starlight touched the water, he kept watching for sharks, though the otters all said they could feel the vibrations of such creatures long before they were close.
They passed the harbors at Cape Bay and the Bay of Fear, and in both bays they could see in the starlight rows and rows of boats of all kinds and sizes anchored and tied one to another. On some, lamps burned, though most were dark and quiet. They could smell meat cooking, which made Teb wild with desire, and the scent of frying onions was nearly more than he could stand.
Beyond the Bay of Fear the coast belonged to Baylentha, and they reached the scene of battle near to midnight. There they came ashore and curled down among the heavy marsh grasses to sleep. A smell of death clung to the place, and Teb lay awake a long time.