Tenari still sat blankly at his side like a ministering angel who had forgotten her purpose. He remembered the finger, or was that a dream? His memories of the day before were mercifully muddled. He did not want to look at that darkness again.
Keashil’s pain ached in him. He could see her from where he lay. She sat curled against Althak, her blind eyes still weeping the tears she had refused in her captivity. Azkun knew that she was blind. The fact was stamped indelibly on her mind. Her eyes were darkness, yet they were not darkness. They did not see darkness, they did not see anything. Althak held her and stroked her hair. Azkun felt his compassion and it eased the hurt that he had taken as his own.
His head still throbbed, especially when he moved, but he could not remain where he was. This blind woman’s pain stirred him. Althak’s care for her challenged him. It made him wonder about answers to anguish, answers to darkness. When he stood up shafts of pain raced through his head and neck, the deck appeared to spin about him and rock more than the motion of the waves justified. He stumbled. A red haze clouded his vision. Tenari had stood when he had. He grasped at her shoulder, missed and tumbled to the deck.
He was not hurt. The red haze cleared and he slowly rose to his feet again. Tenari made no move to help him. She had made no move to catch him when he had fallen. She was a blank wall.
This time he caught her shoulder before the dizziness could return. He turned her so that she faced him and looked into her blank stare, trying to touch his mind to hers.
“Tenari.” But he could think of nothing to say to her, her mind was as blank as her stare. Again there was a hint of something that slipped away from him, like a door closing behind his back just before he turned. A door in the nothingness.
Keashil’s grief was more real. Holding Tenari’s shoulder and walking carefully on the gently rolling deck he reached Althak and the woman. Menish, Hrangil and Drinagish lay on skins nearby in the rough shelter of the sailcloth windbreak. They still slept. A small boy, unnoticed before by Azkun, lay on the other side of Althak. He too was asleep.
Althak looked weary. He had fought hard yesterday and he looked as though he had not let himself sleep all night. Azkun sat down near him and remembered how the Vorthenki had given him garments and food when they had met, how he had tried to help him through his moments of darkness.
Keashil had stopped weeping. She had woken from a fitful sleep not long before Azkun, it seemed, and the memory of where she was had brought back her sorrow.
“Good morning,” said Althak with a serious smile, not his usual grin. “How's your head?”
“Not too painful. Dizzy still, but I am well enough.”
“And your arm, and the other hurts from the river?”
“Oh, I had not noticed them. My arm is no longer painful.” He looked at Keashil.
“You haven't met,” said Althak. “This is Keashil, we rescued her from the pirates, and her son Olcish. She has suffered much and-”
“Yes I know, she is blind.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, obviously wondering how Azkun knew so easily. Then he turned to Keashil.
“This is Azkun. He is a fellow traveller, one of our company. He was hurt yesterday by a blow on the head, which is why you didn't meet him then.”
Keashil had shifted herself to a more dignified position when Althak had greeted Azkun. She now sat beside him, composed but with reddened eyes.
“You are perceptive,” she said. “Few people can tell my condition so easily. I'm told I appear normal to the sighted until I walk.”
Azkun hesitated, wondering if perhaps she could sense his mind the way he could sense hers.
“I am… perceptive.” The channels of her thoughts were strange, lacking any hint of vision. But, as far as he could tell, she had only a quick mind and a ready ear.
“Who's the other, the one with you? I heard a step.”
“That's Tenari,” said Althak, “a woman who also accompanies us. She doesn't speak.”
“Why not?”
“She was found at the mouth of the Chasm of Kelerish a few days ago. No doubt she suffered great harm there.”
“From the Chasm?” Keashil shuddered as if she knew something of the horror of the place. “Then it's little wonder she cannot speak. I've never heard of anyone escaping that place. How old is she?”
“Young, she's full grown, but she's young. Perhaps sixteen or seventeen years. Sometimes she appears older. I think that if the layers of dirt were removed she'd show her age better.”
“Come here, child,” said Keashil. “Let me touch you.”
Tenari, of course, did not move.
“She follows Azkun as faithfully as a hound, but she obeys no commands. She does nothing, says nothing.”
Azkun remembered the episode with the dead finger.
Keashil was determined. She felt her way across the space between herself and where she had heard Tenari sit down and delicately touched her face. She ran her fingers down her dark hair and across her cheeks. Tenari ignored her, except that she closed her eyes when Keashil touched her eyelids. Keashil sighed and returned to her place beside Althak.
“I wondered. My daughter would have been only a little younger than her and when the pirates took us I never knew what happened to her. But this is not my Falia.”
Presently the others stirred. Shelim brought them food shortly afterwards. The Anthorians were in good humour, especially Drinagish. He was pleased with the fight and would have recounted a graphic description of every sword stroke he had delivered when Menish interrupted.
“Drinagish, we have a woman of Golshuz in our midst. They are not, as our own folk, made for war.” But he smiled at his nephew as he spoke. He seemed pleased with Drinagish’s performance of yesterday.
Hrangil looked tired. His injured leg still immobilised him and he seemed hurt in other places. But Azkun perceived his satisfaction with the fight. It was as if fighting were a thing to be lived for, to be sought after to test oneself. It repelled Azkun, but he was growing inured to darkness. As long as he rejected food he felt that this crime would not be a part of him. It was not a good answer to corruption, he was not even sure if it was as good an answer as Althak had given Keashil, but it sufficed for now.
Even so he could not stay with them long. Death was still appalling, and every move they made brought back little visions of battle and blood and darkness. Menish had just suggested that Keashil could, if she wished, accompany them to Atonir where she could be placed under the Emperor’s protection when he excused himself and walked to the bows.
His head no longer hurt, the dizziness had left him and even the swelling in his forehead was reduced. Tenari followed on his heels and even imitated the way he leaned over the gunwale to watch the bow wave. He looked at her again. At least she did not eat. If she did nothing else she did nothing that brought him distress.
He stood watching the bow wave for a long time, trying to find an answer to the complexities that surrounded him. He could not stomach death, yet what else could they have done when the pirates attacked? He had felt Thalissa’s pain and had done nothing. Menish had acted, though he did not understand what he had done. He had felt Keashil’s pain and Althak’s comfort. They were killers, these friends of his, but they had answers to pain where he had only spectres in the dark and an enigmatic companion.
His thoughts were interrupted by a splash on the other side of the boat.
He thought someone must have fallen overboard and rushed to the other gunwale. There was nothing.
“I heard a splash!” he called to Shelim who was not far away. The sailor strolled over to him, unconcerned.
“Don’t worry. It's only a dolphin.”
“Dolphin?”
“Yes, a fish of sorts. They're sacred to Yaggrothil, the dragon of the deep. You can see it below the surface, there.”
Azkun looked into the water again. A silver-grey shape darted along beneath the bow wave. As he watched it rose to the surface, broke water and plunged under again. He caught a glimpse of a sleek body and a powerful tail, little more. But he also touched its mind.