Zeskuk considered his sister's suggestion. It smelled of prudence, even caution. Not something to let pass unnoticed in another minotaur-unless she was one's last sibling, most trusted adviser, and right more often than not.
"That hides," he said flatly "It also divides, and in the face of what lurks below as well as in the faces of the humans."
"Who knows if what lurks below even has a face?" Fulvura replied. "The humans at least are known enemies. Hiding a portion of our strength works against them, unless they are uncommonly shrewd."
"They have been known to be so."
"Now who argues for marching with babe's steps?" Fulvura said, with a guffaw that made the lamp rattle on Zeskuk's table. "We are the Chosen Ones, the Destined Race. It was never written that any one of us could be sure of being alive to see our Day of Destiny. But I would be as glad as not to be alive on the day of victory, to hear the praise songs."
"Are you sure, Sister?" Zeskuk asked. "What if the praiser cannot sing?"
Fulvura had begun to glare before she understood the jest. Instead, she made the lamp flicker with her laughter.
Torvik had no orders about how to approach the island. This suggested either great trust in his knowledge of the waters, in spite of his youth, or a great reluctance on anyone's part to be responsible for his death through obeying their orders.
He would have liked to believe the first, and it might even be true for some. He suspected the second, but it might come as much from fear of the wrath of his mother, father-by-marriage, and friends among the Knights of Solamnia as from anything else.
Regardless, Torvik steered a course well to the east, to come upon the island as far from the common haunts of the minotaurs as possible. Whether this also took him far from the haunts of the minotaur-slayers, he did not know.
What he had seen and the tales he had heard all spoke of uncanny and deadly things haunting all shores of the island. So there might be a creature or creatures lairing in the reefs on every side of the island, like monstrous watchdogs set there by Zeboim or someone in her favor.
Or there might be only a single creature behind all the tales and the dead minotaurs, lairing where it could strike with equal speed in any direction. Torvik wondered at this. There were no tales of sea caves in the Green Mountain. Many were said to pierce the sides of the Smoker, but the heart of a volcano still seemed no place for even a creature created and guarded by magic.
Both mountains towered against the sunset before Torvik ordered Red Elf's sails doused and all hands to the oars. Under those oars the ship glided swiftly across waters barely ruffled by the dying evening breeze, while the handful of crew not rowing kept watch and made ready to lower the anchor.
Torvik himself did a stint at the oars, to encourage the others. He came on deck afterward soaked with sweat, half-deafened by the clatter and squeal belowdecks, and ready to gulp in the sweet salt air of the evening as if it were the most delicate wine.
Now it was nearly dark, the wind altogether silent, and the only waves were those Red Elf made by her passage, rising white at her sharp prow and falling away into the purple twilight astern. Even on deck, the oars made such a din that Torvik was sure that only a minotaur too old and weak of hearing to be sailing in a warship could fail to hear them from the far end of the island.
Yet one sound did touch his ears, over the rowing, although so lightly that Torvik himself at first doubted what he heard. He also saw that no one else seemed to hear it, so he held his tongue.
Far off, from the direction of the island, he heard the yelping bark of sea otters.
The Dimernesti woman who named herself Mirraleen (when she did not wish to give her full name, not much shorter than a gnome's) was called the Red Walker by the true sea otters of her band. Walker for her shapechanging power, that let her take elven form and stride upright on the land, and Red for the color of her hair.
She did not know how she came by that auburn hair that flowed down to her knees when she let it fall free. There were many fewer of the Dimernesti, the shallows-dwellers, than there had been in the days when they and the Dargonesti ruled the seas of Krynn and even struck at the rule of the elves on land. Among those long gone were most of the Dimernesti elders who could have pondered or even explained why Mirraleen had auburn hair and a paler blue skin than all the others of her race whom she had ever met.
Not that these numbered more than ten, so they proved little. She sometimes wondered if that was all the Dimernesti now left alive, or at least all who still swam in the waters about northeastern Ansalon. Sometimes, she even feared that this was indeed the case, or the call for help she had sent out when she learned of the peril rising from Suivinari Island should have long since been answered.
It seemed too likely that the work here was in her hands alone, and that of any friends she could make. Nor did she have great hope of such friendships. The humans had slain so many shallows-dwellers in both elven and otter shape that it seemed likely they thought only with their harpoons and bows, where it concerned the Dimernesti.
But the barking she heard was a signal from her band of the approach of a lone ship. As she willed herself into sea otter form, she heard the watchers identify the ship, and then, much to her surprise, its captain.
They had recognized on deck the same young man who had been on the island less than half a year before. He had used wits rather than steel, and insofar as she could read his thoughts, they were bloodthirsty toward no one.
Mirraleen thrust her tail against the water and darted forward as if she were trying to reach the finest of oyster beds before her kin ate it bare. It might be foolish to trust any land-dweller, and it was certainly foolish to hope for more from him than learning of his fleet's purpose in these waters.
But even that would put the Dimernesti-would put Mirraleen, who here and now was the Dimernesti-well forward of where she had been.
She was listening now, for the sound of the ship's oars beating the water. Before long she heard it, even over the rushing water of her own swift passage. She rolled on her back to judge time by the moonlight on the surface, broached to judge the ship's course, and saw it proceeding as her friends had described.
Pursuing and meeting it might be easy. Meeting the captain alone would surely be otherwise, but far more important. Mirraleen eased her pace through the dark waters. She would need the strength to take her elven form and the breath to speak in it, when she met the captain.
The bow anchor line rasped through the blocks until the anchor splashed into the glassy waters of the bay. A second rasp and splash told Torvik that the stern anchor was also down.
Held at bow and stern. Red Elf heeled to the tide, for the moment the only movement in the water. It was a Solinari ebb, gentle enough that Torvik had no fear for the ship from it, or from the weather, unless the wind got up from the southeast in a way not common at this time of the year in these waters.
He told himself sharply that he was a boy whistling to keep up his courage as he walked past the ruins of the ghoul-lord's castle. All the men aboard Red Elf together could probably not save her from what had slain the minotaurs.
The best he could contrive was to see that their deaths would not be in vain. The fleet was coming for knowledge. Very well, let him lead boats out to buy that knowledge-with blood if necessary.
Since even a son of Jemar the Fair and Eskaia of Encuintras could only be in one place at a time, he decided to begin scouting the bay with a single boat. Eight picked companions, all skilled as sailors as well as fighters, would surely discover what was there to be discovered. If they returned, splendid.