The mul glanced over the stern and saw nothing but the impenetrable blackness of the dust curtain. “I don’t see anything.”
“You weren’t sitting on top of the mast,” Sacha countered. “There were a dozen clusters of them, spread out across the horizon. It’s a fleet coming up behind us.”
Tithian cursed.
“What do you know about this?” Rikus touched the tip of his sword to the king’s throat. “If you’ve betrayed us-”
Tithian slapped the blade away. “This is no trick,” he sneered. “It’s the fleet of the sorcerer-kings.”
Rikus moved his sword back toward the king and said nothing.
“What do I have to gain by lying?” growled Tithian. “When the sorcerer-kings came to meet Borys in Samarah, they arrived on a fleet of Balican schooners. It appears they’ve been summoned to Ur Draxa.”
“Why?” asked Neeva.
“To find us, I suspect,” said the king. “From my experience, Balican fleets sail in tight formations. If they’ve spread out, they must be searching for us.”
Neeva went forward to wake Caelum and Sadira.
“Bring me the Dark Lens,” said Tithian.
Rikus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You stupid mul!” hissed Sacha. “It’s our only chance.”
“Our only chance to get killed,” Rikus countered. “Even with the Dark Lens, we can’t sink a fleet of ships carrying all the sorcerer-kings of Athas-at least not at night, when Sadira’s powers are so limited.”
“We can’t outrun them, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Tithian. “They have too much sail.”
“Then we’ll do the next best thing-we’ll hide,” said Rikus. “The dust curtain will conceal us.”
“It won’t,” said Tithian. “They have magic cones of glass-king’s eyes-that they use to see through the silt haze.”
“And what do they use to see through the dark?” asked the mul. When the king did not have an answer, Rikus smiled. “I thought so. The next time we top a dust swell, swing us around so we’re sitting across the slope, near the bottom of the wave.”
The mul sheathed his sword and went forward to the mast. He waited until Tithian started to bring the dhow around, then he lowered the sail, furled it to the boom, and undid the lashings holding the whole assembly to the mast. By the time he had pulled the rigging free and had laid the boom and sail aside, Neeva had awakened Caelum and Sadira. The dwarf helped Rikus unstep the mast, fold the long yardarm down, and lay the whole thing in the bilge.
“Cover the boat with silt,” suggested Tithian.
Rikus frowned. “Won’t that sink us?”
The king shook his head. “Why should it? I’m holding us aloft,” he said. “We won’t be able to move very fast, but with our mast down, we’re not going anyplace anyway.”
Rikus nodded, then he and the others began pulling dust from the upslope into the dhow. Soon only their bodies and the tops of the gunnels-made of weathered bone almost as gray as the silt-showed above the sea. The mul instructed the others to lie down, then he began covering them with powdery loess, leaving only their faces exposed so they could see and breathe.
“This should hide us from the fleet,” said Neeva. “But what about Jo’orsh? We could lose him.”
“Perhaps, but he hasn’t changed direction in days,” said Sadira. “And if the sorcerer-kings are behind us, I suspect we’re still traveling toward the Dragon’s home.” “Right,” agreed Rikus. “But I am worried that the banshee will stick his head up at the wrong moment. His glowing eyes would be hard to miss on a night like this.”
“You needn’t worry about Jo’orsh,” said Tithian. He pushed a liver-spotted hand under the dust to maintain contact with the floater’s dome. “He can take care of himself.”
With that, the king slid down into the bilge, accompanied by Sacha, who had carefully remained out of everyone’s reach during the preparations. Rikus covered the pair with dust, then took a moment to inspect the dhow. When he was satisfied that everything was covered as well as it could be, he drew his sword and lay down, taking care to position himself between the king and the Dark Lens.
They waited in the silt-heavy gloom for what seemed an eternity, listening to their own heartbeats and the wind hissing across the silt. The hollow that they had carved from the dust swell slowly filled in, and loess gathered around Rikus’s nose and mouth. At first, he tried to keep a clear air passage by blowing the stuff away, but this did not work, and he eventually had to move his hand up to fan the stuff away. He began to doubt that Sacha had really seen any lights, and occupied his time by trying to think of possible reasons for the disembodied head to lie. Aside from Sacha’s malevolence, he could not see what the head might gain by making the dhow sit motionless in the dark.
Rikus was just about to rise when he heard the distant creak of straining masts. The others heard it, too, for the dhow fell even more silent, as if everyone had drawn a deep breath and had held it. The sound grew louder and steadier, until at last the mul recognized in it the rhythmic cadence of a ship sliding over dust swells.
Far to the dhow’s stern, the flickering beams of huge oil lamps began to dance across the silt. The rays roved back and forth in great arcs, creating long columns of bright, windborne silt that pierced the darkness like spears. Even with the lights, the dust was so thick that Rikus doubted the Balican searchers could see more than a few yards beyond their gunnels-at least they couldn’t have, if not for the magical king’s eyes Tithian had mentioned.
The lights danced ahead to the next swell, then the schooner itself slipped into the trough. If not for the muffled voices of its crew and the halos of its deck lamps hovering far above the dust, Rikus would hardly have known it was there. It took many moments for the ship to pass. From the lights shining on the various decks and portholes, the mul formed a fair picture of its size and shape. The thing was huge, at least three times the size of the mighty war wagons Hamanu had sent to attack Tyr during the war with Urik. It seemed entirely possible that the whole village of Samarah could have fit on one of its decks. By the time the schooner’s stern lights faded into the dusty night, Rikus felt more certain than ever that he had made the right decision in electing to hide. Fighting the schooner would have been like battling an entire legion.
The ship had hardly passed when the glow of another schooner’s lantern stabbed through the darkness overhead. Rikus heard his companions gasp, then the light illuminated a small circle on the crest of the next dust swell. The yellow disk began to sweep slowly down the slope, coming in their direction.
Rikus gripped the Scourge more tightly, preparing to leap up and fight. As his companions tensed to do the same, he heard dust rustling all around him. “Stay still,” he whispered. “Don’t move unless I say to.”
The light continued to come toward them. Rikus guessed the beam would sweep across the ship just about where he lay.
A loud hiss sounded from just in front of their dhow. An instant later, a huge bowsprit drifted over the crest of the dust swell in which they had buried themselves. The spar was as long as a tree, and it gleamed with the reflected rays of an oil lamp. It was passing so close that Rikus could have jumped off their little craft’s bow and caught hold of it.
The schooner’s lantern beam approached to within an arm’s length of the dhow. At the same time, the prow of the Balican schooner burst through the dust swell, spraying a thick plume of silt high into the air. Rikus closed his eyes and ducked down beneath the dhow’s gunnel, pulling himself toward the bottom of the bilge.
The mul felt the bow rise as the schooner’s wake pushed their little craft aside. The dhow spun toward the bottom of the swell and began to slip down the slope. It moved easily for it was still being levitated by Tithian. Fighting the urge to sit up, Rikus opened his eyes to the burning silt. He saw yellow light illuminating the silt over his head. He could do nothing except remind himself that this was the reason they had camouflaged their boat, and to hope that his companions also remembered that.