“Althak, they are going to…” He turned a pale face to the Vorthenki and stopped. Would Althak understand? Was he not Vorthenki? He had not tried to stop them at Deenar. Menish appeared from his shelter demanding to know what was happening.
“They've heard that we carry Kopth aboard,” said Althak. There was a smile in his voice as if he did not quite believe it himself yet, but was indulging the belief of others.
“Not another village of fawning idiots and shameless women! Awan! Turn the ship! We'll not land here!”
Awan hesitated, looking from those on shore who chanted for Kopth to Azkun. Azkun also looked at the beach. They were close enough now to see the figures through the rain. Among them he could make out the white-robed victim. For an instant between the noise of the sea and the voices ashore there was silence and Azkun spoke. “Turn the ship!”
Now Awan did not hesitate. He hauled on the tiller and called orders to his men. The main spar swept across the deck and the ship heeled around and moved away from the beach.
A dreadful hush descended on the chanters and Azkun felt their dismay. He ran the length of the ship and leaned over the stern where Awan held the tiller.
“I have not deserted you!” he cried. ‘I will come back to you! But do not…” A shrill cry sounded over the waves and the blackness of death washed over him like a wave of evil. They had killed her anyway. He sank down onto the deck and wept.
For a long time he simply lay on the wet deck and remembered what had happened with horror. A young girl, no older than the one they had been ready to kill for him in Deenar, her mind sluggish with the drugs they had given her, had slipped into the aching darkness that leered at him from every sharp knife, from every large wave. She was not so drugged that she did not scream when the knife had ripped her flesh and her blood had poured out onto the beach. She was not so drugged that she did not fear the oblivion that swallowed her.
And he knew the priestess had hated herself for doing it. It was impossible to believe that she could despise herself so and yet still wield that knife. But she had. Some need or fear drove her beyond self-despite to murder. It was fear of Kopth, fear of Azkun.
That was the worst thing of all. They had done it for him. They had slaughtered a human being, one of their own, for him. That it was because of a misguided notion that he was Kopth was irrelevant. He had not denied that he might be, he did not himself know. It had led to this. Now he was guilty of murder.
So he lay in the darkness with the sound of the insane waves dashing against the cliffs. The sailors feared to touch him, even Althak kept his distance, not knowing what he should do. The Anthorians were all ill and Tenari sat wordlessly beside him.
It was Keashil who finally came to comfort him. She felt her way along the deck, ignoring Althak’s cautioning, and sat in a puddle that lay near Azkun’s head. The rain had stopped but the wind still filled their sails and the waves still thudded against the hull.
“Azkun?” He felt her hand on his head as she checked his position. “Azkun, you've been still for a long time. I heard weeping before. What is it?” He lifted his head, his neck was stiff and sore. How could she not know? How could they not have felt that darkness and not know that it was his doing?
“They killed her. They killed her anyway, because of me.”
He felt the hand on his head again.
“Oh, Azkun,” she said quietly and when he looked at her he saw her blind eyes crying in the lamplight. She was silent for a time, her quiet weeping could be not heard over the waves. Althak, overcoming his caution, came and sat on the deck beside her.
“It's the Vorthenki way,” she said presently. “Maidens are given to Kopth by the sacrifice.”
“They killed her for me,” he said flatly. “The priestess, she hated herself for doing it, but she did it anyway. She killed her for me.”
“Azkun,” said Althak, “we all heard a cry, but we were far from shore. How can you know-?”
“I did not eat her in some dark place or whatever I am supposed to do with my victims!” he shouted suddenly. “I am horrified by what your people do for me. It is evil!”
“It's the Vorthenki way…”
“Then it must stop. It is wrong.” He hesitated, to be Kopth or not? He did not know, perhaps he was, perhaps not. But only Kopth could stop them. “I command that it stops.”
Althak looked at him for a moment in silence, and he could not see his face in the darkness.
“Althak, who do you think I am?’
“They say you're Kopth, or Gilish. You're not like either, yet you're not as other men.”
“I do not eat maidens and I do not build in stone.”
“Yet you speak of dragons and you quote from the Mish-Tal,” said Keashil.
“That's not what I meant,” said Althak. “Kopth has never found death abhorrent, Gilish would have helped to fight the pirates.”
“You have not answered me. Who does Althak think I am?”
“I don't know. As I said, you're not like other men.”
“If I must be Kopth to forbid the sacrifices then I will be Kopth.”
“Perhaps there is another possibility,” said Keashil, and Azkun heard a smile in her voice that comforted him. She held Althak’s harp and as she spoke she lifted it into a playing position. “You speak Vorthenki?”
“No.”
At that she laughed quietly. “Could Kopth not speak Vorthenki? No matter. If I cannot sing a Vorthenki song I can sing you a song of Golshuz that was borrowed from the Vorthenki and made into the Relanese tongue.”
With that she began to sing, plucking at the harp, but it was hard to hear the notes she played. She sang of a famine in the far north. Winter lay on the land for year after year. Summer, that brief time when the ground can be tilled and the cattle fattened, did not come and the people hid in their houses, for they could not endure the cold. It was said that Kopth was angry with a man who had killed a priestess and was determine to punish him. Sacrifices were offered but it was no use. The snow would not melt and there was no food. Storms lashed the coast and no one could sail south for help, they were trapped.
A man named Galth, whose house had been decimated by hunger, came forward. He would brave the storms and seek help. But he would not sail south. If Kopth had not afflicted the south as well then he would be given no hope of passing through the storms.
Galth determined to travel not south but east, to the isle of Kishalkuz. There, if Kopth willed it, he would come before him and plead for his people.
They told him it was foolish, for no one could return from Kishalkuz, but he set out anyway and they marvelled at his courage. No more was ever seen of Galth from the day he left. After many days the winter lifted, the sun shone and summer came at last. That summer they harvested more grain than they had stores for.
As for Galth, a priestess who was famous for her wisdom prophesied that he had, indeed, reached Kishalkuz and had been received with honour in the house of Kopth.
When she stopped singing Azkun had almost forgotten that she had some reason for singing him this song. He was absorbed by the idea of sailing to Kishalkuz, of seeing the halls of his masters. The dolphin had promised to guide him.
“Perhaps you're neither Kopth nor Gilish. Perhaps you're like Galth, a man on whom the gods have laid some purpose.”
“A bridge,” he said quietly. “A bridge to the dragons.”
Chapter 14: Atonir
The wind blew them steadily onwards through the night, and by late afternoon of the following day they had crossed the gulf of Keatel, which lay between the rocky peninsula of Gomol and the land of Relanor. All day they had seen no land at all, even the gulls had deserted them for the time being. But sometime during the afternoon they returned (or others from the Relanese coast found them). Omoth, who was manning the lookout, shouted that he had seen land at last and Azkun strained forward at the bows to see it. Presently a dark line on the horizon was visible and, after a time, he could just make out a white tower that stood on a promontory in the distance.