She was a strange ship, stranger even than Weatherlight. There was not a stick of furniture in her, no stores, no ballast, no heads, no crew. There was not even a helm. The ship sailed according to her own will. Indeed, she had a will. She had navigated the tight confines of the glacier with an expert rudder, sliding through impossible spaces. Her masts never ground upon the ceiling, her gunwales never scraped the walls. She made sail and reefed sail not according to the torrents of wind beneath the ice but according to the winds of another world. Always, she found the fastest path. Always, she drew up the thousands upon thousands of Keldons and elves who survived beneath the ice. Though her hull was commodious, it could not truly have held this many, and yet each new arrival found room among his or her fellows. Within her hull, they were warm and dry, neither hungering nor thirsting-healed of all they lacked, clothed and rested, even given to understand the speech of each other.
She was an odd ship, constructed not from material but from ideal. She did not sail true seas but rather the seas of dream.
Amid impossible thousands of others, Eladamri and Liin Sivi stood on deck as the Argosy emerged from beneath the ice. Together they saw the aching blue sky. The sun broke upon the two of them but cast down a single shadow.
"Once again among the living," Eladamri said gladly.
"Once again," Liin Sivi echoed. Her hand found his, and she slid her fingers between his. "I hadn't doubted it, not from the moment I saw this ship."
Drawing a deep breath of the bright air-no more the wet chill murk-Eladamri replied, "Oh, I doubted. I thought we would never see daylight again. I thought the ship itself a dream. I am not certain it is not."
"They are not a dream," Liin Sivi said, pointing to a nearby shoulder of stone. A Keldon camp perched there. Warlords and lackeys crowded the cliff, gazing in wonderment. "Nor is Port Bay a dream." She gestured toward the great Keldon city, its domes and spires jagged against the sparkling sea. "How can this be a dream?"
"This is a dream," came a voice in High Keldon, though both Eladamri and Liin Sivi could understand. They turned to see Doyenne Tajamin, Keeper of the Book of Keld. "But this dream is more true than truth."
"More prophecies from your ancestral cudgel?" Liin Sivi asked.
Tajamin shook her head slowly. Her eyes were twin embers, and her teeth gleamed in a scarred smile.
"No, these words are written nowhere except on my soul. I have learned the power-and the limits-of written revelation. It can be misquoted as easily as quoted. The truth of figures is always figurative truth."
The doyenne's smile spread to Eladamri. "These are strange words from the Keeper of the Book of Keld."
"These are strange times," she replied. "It was written that the true heroes of Keld would descend from the Necropolis to fight the true foes of the land. I had always believed that this meant the honored dead would join us against the Phyrexians. In fact, the dead are the dead. They are closer allies to Phyrexia than to us.
"But that does not mean the prophecies are false. The Golden Argosy has descended from the Necropolis, gathering the true heroes of Keld to fight the true foes of the land," the doyenne said, fire shining in her eyes.
Eladamri's eyes narrowed. "Our fight has only begun, then?"
She nodded with deep certainty. "The fate of Keld, and all the world, is being decided across the sea. The Battle of Keld is won. Every last soldier who fought was dragged down to death. Only we-the true heroes of Keld-rose again." There seemed nothing more to say.
The Golden Argosy breasted the gray waves with the same divine grace she had exhibited in the glacier. The thousands in her hull felt only gladness as she bore them through the tide. On the banks of the flood stood their folk-Keldon and elf-staring. All wore the blank and blind and somewhat worried aspect of sleepwalkers. They could not understand what they saw. It was a spectacle, a phantasm.
To those aboard the Golden Argosy, it was more real than real. Eladamri, Liin Sivi, and Tajamin stood in company with two hundred Skyshroud and Steel Leaf elves. Nearby, Doyen Olvresk and his ten "fists" watched among the rest of his war band. Even Warlord Astor had survived the icy torrents. He shouted a greeting to the Keldons on the bank but got no response.
"They cannot understand you," Tajamin called to him. "They are in a mortal place. We are in a divine one. They are subject to want, to hunger, to fear, to confusion. We are not. They are sleepwalkers, only half aware of eternal things. We will return among them and be like them- some of us."
Eladamri was honestly surprised by this. "Return among them? What of the great battle that awaits us? What of the battle across the sea?"
"It is a battle for some of us but not all," Doyenne Tajamin replied. "The Battle of Keld may be done, but there is much to rebuild-whole societies. We have not won back our land only to abandon it. Some of the heroes of Keld must fight our battles here, at hearth and fire. Many of your folk must remain as well." She moved toward the rail and gripped it with powerful fists.
Suddenly understanding, Eladamri came up beside her. "You cannot leap from the ship. The icy flood will kill you."
Tajamin did not smile, but her teeth made a hopeful line. "No. It did not kill me before and will not kill me now. I must plunge into the waters as a sleeper into dream. I will rise on the far bank remembering this ship as if it were but a delusion-I and the thousands with me. We will climb, muddy and shivering, from the flood, and we will turn around to glimpse this ship. We will see it with the same unbelieving eyes as those on shore."
Staring levelly at her, Eladamri said, "If you cannot remember anything else, Doyen Tajamin, remember this. The folk of the Skyshroud are your allies, now and forever."
"Yes, Eladamri, Uniter of Keld," the doyenne said formally, "I will remember."
With that she hurled herself over the rail. She dropped away into the gray flood and was swallowed up. After her went another and a third. Warlord Astor soon followed, and Doyen Olvresk as well, and then more than Eladamri could count. Each one disappeared in the bow waves, each reappeared, drenched and struggling in the cold tide at the ship's stern. All swam for shore and for their folk, who waded in to bring them back to the land of the living.
Eladamri rode on. He, Liin Sivi, some hundred elves, and some ten thousand Keldons rode on. From the banks, their companions watched with bald disbelief.
Only Doyenne Tajamin wore a different look. The forgetful tide had not washed away one memory. She knew.
The sight of it in her eyes gave Eladamri great comfort. His people had found a home in this land. He smiled as the Golden Argosy bore him and the heroes of Keld out into the churning sea.
Chapter 29
Commander Grizzlegom emerged from a grim scene. Agnate lay within the tent, unmade by an axe. There wasn't much blood, he had been nearly dead before the weapon fell. The axe strokes-one for Agnate the man and the second for Agnate the undead-had been the only mercy in that awful place. The rest was grimness: the failed philters, the pus-covered bandages, the cot marked with finger-scars, the body that had died weeks ago but rested only now.
These were the foul provisions of a covenant with death.
In his four-fingered grip, Grizzlegom bore the provisions of a new covenant, a covenant with life. Commander Agnate's signed and signeted orders gave the Metathran army to Grizzlegom.
The Metathran guards outside the tent snapped to attention as Grizzlegom appeared. These two towering warriors would have to be his first witnesses, else they would enter, discover the scene within, and spread the wrong story.