Drakis stood at the tiller that night. He shifted the course of the Cydron five points to starboard and held it there for nearly three days. All Urulani’s arguments were brushed aside by him as he held that course. . because, he said, the song was calling to him, and this was the course where he heard it the loudest.
By the dawn of the second day the distant shoreline could just be made out on the northern horizon. It took until just before noon for the coast features, such as they were, to become defined: short, gnarled trees and scrub brush painting a dark line above a bright sand shore. Here and there a tumble of rocks could be seen, but for the most part it was the most unremarkable coast Urulani or any of her crew had ever seen.
Drakis leaned hard on the tiller, his red, sleepless eyes struggling to peer over the bow. Despite the lack of landmarks, however, he steered the ship with remarkable precision up one of a dozen channels that flowed over a wide sandy delta. The Cydron was made for shallow-draft river raiding and passed smoothly over the delta waters and into the main channel of what Jugar at once proclaimed to be the River of Tears. Only then did Drakis relinquish the tiller to Urulani. . and he collapsus on the deck just as Urulani called for the sweeps to be set and the oarsmen to start pulling.
Drakis did not awaken again for another day and a half.
“How is your head?” Urulani asked.
“Much worse,” Drakis replied as he stretched. “Where are we?”
“I can report that we are definitely somewhere,” she replied, “And we are making good time.”
“Wonderful news,” Drakis responded, looking around them. The river had cut a meandering course, which Urulani was trying to make her ship follow. “I see that the riverbanks are sand. What’s beyond?”
“More sand,” Urulani replied with a twinkle in her dark eyes.
“Then I think you are wrong,” Drakis said, drawing in a deep breath. “We’ve gone right past somewhere and have definitely reached nowhere.”
The shores of the Sand Sea drifted past them for a time, the silence broken only by the rhythmic stroke of the oars to the drum below.
“How is your Mala?” Urulani asked.
“She is. . she is doing better,” Drakis replied. “She has calmed down and is speaking again. . but she is still undoubtedly broken.”
“Then why keep her with us?” Urulani said to him with surprising softness in her voice. “I do not ask you this to be cruel, Drakis, but what kind of a life can you have together without trust? She is clearly a danger to you and perhaps to us all. What kind of a life can she have beyond the forgetful lie that the elves offer to all their slaves?”
“You make sense, Urulani,” Drakis responded. “In fact, all of you make sense. . even Ethis is starting to make sense to me. I cannot explain it, but I feel responsible for her.”
“You did not break her, Drakis,” the captain said. “It is not your fault that she is how she is.”
“Yes, I know,” he said gazing out over the bow. “But I made promises to her when she was whole-when I thought she was mine-and now that she is no longer whole, I feel that those promises should still mean something. Maybe it wasn’t real for her, but it was for me-or at least as real as I believe anything to be any more.”
“So, are you this Drakis they all want you to be?” Urulani asked through a smile.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll really tell you. . I don’t know.”
“That’s no answer,” Urulani scoffed.
“That’s all the answer I’ve got,” Drakis said, reaching up for one of the back stays and leaning against it. “There’s only one thing that I’m certain of and that is that I need to know-one way or the other-if this is my destiny. So much has happened, so many people have sacrificed so much-even their lives from time to time-that I have to wonder if all of this has some meaning. . some purpose. Belag once told me that he had to believe in me or his brother’s death would have had no meaning. All I’m left with now is that thought and this terrible song in my. . wait! Look ahead, just around this bend!”
The bow was swinging around another turn in the river.
Urulani’s face shifted into a crooked smile.
“Is that a road?” she asked.
“Ethis! Jugar!” Drakis shouted. “Break out the packs and make sure they’re stocked! We’re going on a little trip.”
“Master Ganja, you are in charge,” Urulani said, checking her pack and closing it. “I’ve got six of the crew with me. . the rest are to stay here.”
There was a groan among those left behind. They would have liked the opportunity to see this new land.
“Drakis, are you ready?” she asked as she shouldered her pack.
“We’re all ready,” he replied.
Urulani turned to acknowledge him when she was caught up short. “You’re not serious!”
The captain had expected Ethis and Jugar to be joining the expedition but there, too, was a brightly beaming Lyric and, most surprising of all, Mala holding her pack and looked down at the deck, seemingly avoiding anyone’s eyes.
“There is no way they are coming with us!” she said.
“There is no way they cannot,” Drakis replied.
“I’m not dragging those women across the Sand Sea!”
“You’re not dragging anyone,” Drakis said. “Both the Lyric and Mala need to be watched. . and not out of my sight.”
“You don’t trust my crew?”
“Not with Mala,” he replied.
“Fine!” Urulani shouted. “But if she so much as spits in my direction, I’m going to kill her myself, and I promise you I will not be asking your permission ahead of time, you understand?”
“I understand,” Drakis answered.
Urulani turned on Mala, jabbing her finger at her collarbone. “And do you understand, princess?”
“Yes,” Mala answered, not looking up.
“Well, what a happy crew,” Urulani said though there was nothing happy in her tone at all.
Urulani had beached the Cydron on the riverbank, so they jumped from the bow of the boat onto the sands of the shore. Their feet sank down into the warm sands, causing them to struggle slightly until they managed to clamber up onto the remains of the roadway. There was some concern about the dwarf, who panicked for a time in the sands trying to get his footing, but in the end they managed to pull him onto the path as well.
The road of tightly fitted stones was broken in many places and completely obscured by drifting sand in so many more that Jugar feared they would lose it altogether, but in time they followed it up, at last cresting the sand dune at the edge of the river’s channel.
They were greeted with the sight of a chain of towering mountains that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Purple-blue in the distance and appearing to waver in the heat of day, their peaks were sharp, jagged pinnacles whose crests were still draped in the white of perpetual snow. They looked as though they had been pushed up angrily from below, rising abruptly from the sands at their base in sheer granite crags and towers-the savage teeth of the world.
“The God’s Wall!” Jugar cried and began dancing a strange, dwarven step on the ancient stones.
“How did we miss that?” Ethis blurted out.
“We’ve been in the river channel,” Urulani shrugged. “The dunes must have hidden them from us.”
“That doesn’t prove anything, dwarf,” Drakis said, his eyes narrowing to try to examine the mountains better. He raised his arm and pointed. “What are those?”
“What?” Urulani asked.
“There at the base. . those tall shapes at the base of the range. They’re too evenly spaced to be natural, and they seem to run down the length of the range.”
“They are my brothers,” the Lyric said with pride. “We are home!”
“The Sirens!” Jugar crowed. “Those are dragons, my boy! The dragons of the prophecy calling to you!”