Up at the bowsprit the genasi lay on his stomach, one arm dangling down. Always he was there when the ship was under sail, reaching to the water that reached back to him, rising and surrounding him with glowing spray. Marikke tended the foresail. The boy, Kip, was in the cockpit. I don t understand, he said.
How could we leave her? We didn t even fight.
These were the first words he had spoken since they d left Caer Corwell, which meant he was feeling better. On the boat his cat nature had all but disappeared, he hated water so much. Any spray or drop of water, it was as if it burned his skin. An oilskin hat covered his short, calico hair. He wore his oilskin coat, too, as if they ran a gale or were expecting squalls. It was a clear, cold, bright spring day.
Tell him, said Lukas. The golden elf was clambering aft, and now he slipped into the cockpit. As always he was dressed in black black boots, black breeches, and a soft black shirt, a mixture of silk and linen, buttoned carefully to his throat. He wore a gold ring on each of his dark fingers, and his long yellow hair was fastened in a golden clasp.
The Savage was the name he had adopted when he escaped his family. Many elves kept battle names his real name he told no one. He scratched under his long ear. That was the leShay High Lady Ordalf of Sarifal, he said, queen of the fey, ruler of Gwynneth Island. We couldn t fight her, not there.
I don t understand. Why not? continued the shifter. She had no weapons I saw. Not in that dress. If she had underpants, I d be surprised. Eladrin die like anyone else, I ve seen it. If we d fought together That s what we do.
Not this time, Lukas said.
The Savage nodded. That s the point. Each one would have been alone, struggling in darkness against forces we couldn t see. Or she would have had us fight each other, thinking we were fighting her. Or she could have turned any one of us, and had him cut the others throats.
I could have beaten her, murmured the shifter.
We could have. Marikke and me.
But the Savage continued as if he hadn t heard. Weapons we d have been her weapons. She wouldn t have raised a finger. He turned toward Lukas. It s your fault. You were the one who bound us to that idiot, he said, meaning Kendrick.
Lukas frowned. He hired us. And I gave my word. You knew the risks.
It wasn t his coin.
Not as it turned out. Would you have preferred to rot in jail? They were talking about hanging you in Callidyrr. I made the best deal I could.
It was no one s coin, the elf insisted.
There was no coin. Just a worthless promise from the procurator in Alaron there s coin now. The bitch loaded us up with it, he said, meaning Lady Ordalf. He touched the tattoo on his cheek where the lines ran like golden wires under his dark skin. Blood gold. If the gnome dies, I won t spend a copper.
They came about onto a starboard tack. Lukas s tea was cold. He watched the headland, half hidden in the shining spray that rose from the genasi before the mast. That will console her, he said. Besides, you ll spend it. Remember why you were in prison in the first place. Of all of them, the elf had the most expensive tastes.
The Savage reached under his shirt. He drew out a gold thaler and made as if to fling it away into the water or else peg one of the gulls that followed them once, twice, three times. His green eyes shone in his dark face. Then he grimaced, and replaced the coin in the pouch under his armpit. What do we know about Moray Island? he asked.
No one knows anything, answered the shifter.
Only rumors. But here s another thing I don t understand it s not far. Lady Ordalf s got no reason to trust us. If she s so tough, why not do this job herself?
Lukas watched the headland, the pinnacles that marked the entrance to the narrows, a line of rock spires like chimney stacks, or the spines of a dragon. On this tack they would avoid the last of them.
The fey don t like to travel. Every step they take from home, their power drains away. He smiled. With humans it s the opposite.
He was joking but if that were truly so, he thought, then he would be the strongest man alive. Certainly he d been all over the Moonshaes in the past few years. He had set himself the task to learn the secrets of these islands. What were rumors to Kip, to him were truths brighter than facts: Moray was cursed. Its gentle shores and harbors were the blight of any captain so foolish as to steer his ship too close.
In another few hours, at sunset, he would turn the Sphinx to the west. And he would crowd on sail, raise the fore- and staysails, and the topsails too. He d built the ship himself, and if he were to lose her, he d rather see her die as she was running hard. And he had chosen a night crossing for two reasons, only one of which made sense. The other was personal. But if the stories were true and the ship were to catch fire, he d rather you could see it from far away, racing before the wind, a fire ship with every shroud alight.
Up by the raked foremast, Marikke sat by herself. She had called upon the great Earthmother of Toril to freshen their sails and bring them safe to Moray across the straits. Now she had ceased her incantations, the nineteen formal prayers and the twenty-one codicils, two hours of labor that had left her exhausted. Yet she was happy even so, and not just happy to be done evening prayers would start soon, after all. But she was glad as she looked up at the straining sail. She imagined her body now possessed by the goddess, as if the wind that drove the boat flowed through her, or as if the sinking light that warmed them fell from her. She felt light and heavy at the same time, relaxed and alert, as the wind whipped her yellow hair over her face, and the cold spray rose around her; the genasi at the bow had raised his own kind of exultation.
There were as many ways to speak to the goddess as there were creatures in the world, she thought, because the goddess took many forms. She had heard priestesses of Chauntea claim that all the deities of the pantheon good and evil, light and dark were really aspects of the same god. Not everyone thought so. In many places of the world, these priestesses would have been put to death, their bodies hoisted onto gibbets to make food for flying rats. But here in the private temple of Marikke s mind, she found it brave to think so, brave also to think the opposite, that some gods disappeared and died as the world changed, and so were gone forever. Since the Spellplague, many evil demigods had disappeared, as the world shed its need of them. Marikke had heard a story when she was young, how a seven-masted ship had sailed the straits between Gwynneth and Moray. Wherever it passed, a gigantic shrouded figure stood on deck shouting, Malar is dead. Great Malar is dead. And on the cliffsides, and from the mountain peaks, and in the deep forests of Moray rose such a wailing of lamentation that it seemed the land itself was crying out. Malar was dead, cruel exarch of the hunt, tracked down, it was said, by his own beasts. Marikke hoped that it was so. But what did it mean to kill a god, if there was still a creature who believed in him?
Back in the cockpit, the golden elf was complaining. It s not true. I left home when I was scarcely grown. Sometimes you forget that I m a fey.
Lukas laughed. You re the one who forgets it, which was true. The Savage had a taste for human women. On Alaron he had seduced the wife of a high official, convinced her to rob her husband, which was the reason they found themselves in their current predicament. A bad situation, which Lukas had swapped out several times for a worse one. Moray was cursed didn t everyone know it? Perhaps, but they didn t know the particulars. Lukas considered whether to tell them what kind of danger they faced. He d want to know if his last hours had come, if their positions were reversed. On the other hand, why steal the surprise? The knowledge wouldn t change anything. He still had to weigh the certainty of Suka s death against the likelihood of theirs. Nothing had changed. He had no choice. It was too bad about the boat.