But still, despite the logical understanding that the journey was on course and going well, Drizzt could not help the swells of anger that rose up in him. It was something about the ocean, he realized, the boredom and the solitude. Truly the drow loved sailing, loved running the waves, but too long in the open ocean, too long in looking at emptiness as profound as could be found in all the world, grated on his nerves.
Catti-brie walked away, muttering. Drizzt looked to Deudermont, and the experienced captain's smile relieved the drow of a good measure of his worry.
"I have seen it before," Deudermont said quietly to him. "She will relax as soon as we sight Mintarn, or as soon as we make the decision to turn back to the east."
"You would do that?" Drizzt asked. "You would forsake the words of the doppleganger?"
Deudermont thought long and hard on that one. "I have come here because I believe it to be my fate," he answered. "Whatever the danger that is now pursuing me, I wish to meet it head-on and with my eyes wide open. But I'll not risk my crew more than is necessary. If our food stores become too diminished to safely continue, we will turn back."
"And what of the doppleganger?" Drizzt asked.
"My enemies found me once," Deudermont replied casually, and truly the man was a rock for Drizzt and for all the crew, something solid to hold onto in a sea of emptiness. "They will find me again."
"And we will be waiting," Drizzt assured him.
*****
As it turned out, the wait, for Caerwich at least, was not a long one. Less than an hour after the conversation, Harkle Harpell bounded out of Deudermont's private quarters, clapping his hands excitedly.
Deudermont was the first to him, followed closely by a dozen anxious crewmen. Drizzt, at his customary spot on the forward beam, came to the rail of the flying bridge to survey the gathering. He realized what was going on immediately, and he glanced upward, to Catti-brie, who was peering down intently from the crow's nest.
"Oh, what a fine bird, my Reggie is!" Harkle beamed.
"Reggie?" Deudermont, and several others nearby, asked.
"Namesake of Regweld, so fine a wizard! He bred a frog with a horse-no easy feat that! Puddlejumper, he called her. Or was it Riverjumper? Or maybe …"
"Harkle," Deudermont said dryly, his tone bringing the wizard from the rambling confusion.
"Oh, of course," babbled Harkle. "Yes, yes, where was I? Oh, yes, I was telling you about Regweld. What a fine man. Fine man. He fought valiantly in Keeper's Dale, so say the tales. There was one time …"
"Harkle!" Now there was no subtle coercion in Deudermont's tone, just open hostility.
"What?" the wizard asked innocently.
"The damned seagull," Deudermont growled. "What have you found?"
"Oh, yes!" Harkle replied, clapping his hands. "The bird, the bird. Reggie. Yes, yes, fine bird. Fastest flyer of the lot."
"Harkle!" a score of voices roared in unison.
"We have found an island," came a reply from behind the flustered Harpell. Robillard stepped onto the deck and appeared somewhat bored. "The bird returned this day chattering about an island. Ahead and to port, and not so far away."
"How large?" Deudermont asked.
Robillard shrugged and chuckled. "All islands are large when seen through the eyes of a seagull," he answered. "It could be a rock, or it could be a continent."
"Or even a whale," Harkle piped in.
It didn't matter. If the bird had indeed spotted an island out here, out where the map indicated that Caerwich should be, then Caerwich, it must be!
"You and Dunkin," Deudermont said to Robillard, and he motioned to the wheel. "Get us there."
"And Reggie," Harkle added happily, pointing to the seagull, which had perched on the very tip of the mainmast, right above Catti-brie's head.
Drizzt saw a potential problem brewing, given the bird's position, the woman's sour mood and the fact that she had her bow with her. Fortunately, though, the bird flew off at Harkle's bidding without leaving any presents behind.
Had it not been for that bird, the Sea Sprite would have sailed right past Caerwich, within a half mile of the place without ever sighting it. The island was circular, resembling a low cone, and was just a few hundred yards in diameter. It was perpetually shrouded in a bluish mist that looked like just another swell in the sea from only a short distance away.
As the schooner approached that mist, drifting quietly at half
sail, the wind turned colder and the sun seemed somehow less substantial. Deudermont did a complete circle of the island, but found no particularly remarkable place, nor any area that promised an easy docking.
Back in their original spot, Deudermont took the wheel from Dunkin and turned the Sea Sprite straight toward Caerwich, slowly slipping her into the mist.
"Ghost wind," Dunkin remarked nervously, shuddering in the sudden chill. "She's a haunted place, I tell you." The small man tugged at his ear ferociously, suddenly wishing that he had gotten off the schooner at Wyngate. Dunkin's other ear got tugged as well, but not by his own hand. He turned about to look eye to eye with Drizzt Do'Urden. They were about the same height, with similar builds, though Drizzt's muscles were much more finely honed. But at that moment, Drizzt seemed much taller to poor Dunkin, and much more imposing.
"Ghost wi-" Dunkin started to say, but Drizzt put a finger to his lips to silence him.
Dunkin leaned heavily on the rail and went silent.
Deudermont ordered the sails lower still and brought the schooner to a creeping drift. The mist grew thick about them and something about the way the ship was handling, something about the flow of the water beneath them, told the captain to be wary. He called up to Catti-brie, but she had no answers for him, more engulfed by blinding mist than he.
Deudermont nodded to Drizzt, who rushed off to the forward beam and crouched low, marking their way. The drow spotted something a moment later, and his eyes widened.
A pole was sticking out of the water, barely fifty yards ahead of them.
Drizzt eyed it curiously for just an instant, then recognized it for what it was: the top of a ship's mast.
"Stop us!" he yelled.
Robillard was into his spellcasting before Deudermont agreed to heed the warning. The wizard sent his energy out directly in front of the Sea Sprite, brought up a ridgelike swell of water that halted the ship's drifting momentum. Down came the Sea Sprite's sails, and down dropped the anchor with a splash that seemed to echo ominously about the decks for many seconds.
"How deep?" Deudermont asked the crewmen manning the anchor. The chain was marked in intervals, allowing them to gauge the depth when they put the anchor down.
"A hundred feet," one of them called back a moment later.
Drizzt rejoined the captain at the wheel. "A reef, by my guess," the drow said, explaining his call for a stop. "There is a hulk in the water barely two ship-lengths ahead of us. She's fully under, except for the tip of her mast, but standing straight. Something brought her down in a hurry."
"Got her bottom torn right off," Robillard reasoned.