After some eight days at sea, Maikel approached me late one afternoon. We could not have been far out from Corli. I was hauling in sail as the Master's orders snapped across the decks.
"Lady, I am concerned," said Maikel quietly to me. ''Marik is a little better in body, but he tosses in bis bed like one who dreams nightmares and cannot wake."
"Why do you tell me this?" I asked harshly, tying off the line. "I bear no love for Marik."
"I know it, lady, but Master Varien sent to ask that you come to Marik's quarters. He believes you might be able to assist."
I left my place instantly and followed him. He led me to Marik's quarters and left me in the company of my friends.
He had not exaggerated. Marik was tossing and moaning like one haunted. Even Rella looked concerned. Varien took me by the hands when I entered. "Lanen," he said softly, and his voice was balm to my heart. "We believe he is trying to speak."
"So Maikel said. What do you want me for?" I asked, trying to keep the disgust out of my voice. I could not look at Marik without seeing Akor bloodied near to death, or a vision of the Raksha reaching out for me.
"Littling, listen to me," said Varien, putting one hand to my cheek and turning me gently to face him. ''What has been done, on both sides, is in the past. For the moment we are responsible for him, and he suffers. Maikel has tended him as best he may, but says that he cannot yet make himself understood aloud."
"You want me to bespeak him, don't you, to see if I can hear what he is trying to say? Despite the fact that he is Gedri and most likely deaf and mute?" I said in traespeech. I was feeling a little dazed.
"Yes," he replied, smiling. "It is good to hear your voice, dearling, would that I could respond in kind. But I cannot, and I believe that you are his only hope. I cannot be certain, but I believe that I have heard a scattered voice, and I believe it to be his."
"So, I must help him, who would give me to demons." Varien only looked at me, waiting, his green eyes old and patient, and behind him sat Rella, saying nothing. I had expected to find myself fighting my own temper, but to my surprise I began to understand a little of pity.
Marik's plight, however richly deserved, was making me grow despite myself.
"Very well," I said, with no good grace. I loosed Varien's hands and went to sit beside the bed. "Marik, it is Lanen," I said. "Your daughter. I am going to speak to you without words. Try to hear me, and say what it is that troubles you." Taking a deep breath, I said in truespeech, "Marik of Gundar, it is Lanen Maransdatter—your daughter—who speaks to you. Can you tell me what troubles you?"
To my amazement, I heard a kind of response. Scattered it was indeed, but it could only be coming from him.
''Marik?
Lanen?
daughter
demons nonono light out of darkness
nono
lostlostlost
destroyer comes Corli Caderan stop
Caderan stopped
dead
dead dead death comes light goes where
where lostlostlost
the swift destroyer stop who were
demons lostlostlost
nononoooo . . . ."
I broke the connection, shuddering. Marik lived now in a vast darkness, but something in that broken mind sought light and life, after a fashion. "It's hard to tell, but he seems to be thinking about something called 'the swift destroyer.' I think he wants it stopped, but he wants Caderan to do it." Varien frowned. I turned to Rella. "Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
"Yes," she said grimly, looking daggers at the troubled form of Marik. "We should have strangled the bastard long since. It's a disease. The Swift Destroyer. Fever, chills, vomiting, and one of every two who get it, dies within the day. It's a demon-spawned illness. Takes a strong demon caller to bring it on, too. Damn Caderan and all like him."
"But surely if Caderan is gone he cannot bring this down upon us," I said.
"Don't count on it. The damned stuff is almost always left behind by a sorcerer as a final piece of viciousness, while they get clean away. There's some physical component to the spell, some fetish that sets it off. If we could find that, we might be able to stop it."
I looked at Rella in amazement. "How do you know so much about this?" I asked, shocked.
"I told you," she said with a grin. "I'm in the Silent Service. All that we do is learn things and remember them. You can believe me."
"What would this fetish look like?" asked Varien, taking all this in his stride. I was surprised at his calmness, until I remembered that, in a sense, it must be his usual state. You can't live more than a thousand years without gaining a certain composure about most things.
"It should be pretty obvious. I'm trying to remember— there should be a mudball about the size of a fist, a few feathers, and a handful of the incense used for the dead. Probably wrapped up together in a cloth somewhere on the ship."
"Start looking now," I said.
Well, that was another sleepless night. We looked high and low, all over the ship, for hours and hours, and found nothing. I began to wonder if Marik wasn't just babbling in his delirium, until one of his guards fell ill.
The one who had taken over Caderan's quarters.
We quarantined the man and went back over the room. We thought we had already searched it thoroughly, but I had been taught that the Swift Destroyer always struck first in physical proximity to the fetish that bound it. It must be in that room.
It was Varien who finally found it, in a hidden panel above the small desk that was bolted to the deck. He removed it with gloves on, as I instructed, and dropped it over the side, then followed it with the gloves.
The outbreak was not nearly so bad as might be expected. The guard died, poor sod, but the rest of us who contracted it had little worse than what felt like a bad cold. Varien seemed to escape the infection, which surprised me, as he had come in closest contact with the fetish. I suppose the gloves held it off.
Maikel helped us as he might, letting Marik fend for himself for a few days. By the time we started expecting to sight land, there were a lot of us on board still sniffling and sneezing, but no worse. It would have been terrible had we not found that thing in the desk. I'd never seen the Destroyer, but one look at what was left of the guard's body was enough.
And of a sudden, in the late morning of the twelfth day out from the Dragon Isle, there was a cry from the crow's nest. Corli had been sighted away off the starboard bow.
We were home.
We drew nigh to Corli as the sun rose to a splendid noon, and some three hours later I tossed the mooring ropes over the side to those who waited on the pier to haul them in and make us fast to the dock.
I sought out Varien as the ship erupted into a mad confusion. We had all been provided with tallies of the lansip we had gathered, and we were to be paid on the landward end of the gangplank. The moment we had docked all the Harvesters ran for their packs, aching to walk again on land and to collect their pay from Marik's people (and, if I had known it, to get away from this Dragon-cursed ship).
Rella and I collected our tallies from the bursar, and I went with Varien to seek out Edril, the merchant we'd bargained with for our passage. We honoured our word and handed over what now seemed to me a tiny amount of gold. Edril's eyes widened and he went so far as to bow his thanks to us. Well, fair enough, gold is exceedingly rare, and Marik never was the sort to inspire personal loyalty.