Then the line went weightless. It swayed away sideways into the night. Pulling on the line, Hearst felt a leisurely power bearing his bait-fish away. He yanked on the line to drive the hook hard home. The answer was a sudden jerk that almost had him in the water. The line pulled taut. Cordage burnt through his hands. He swore. Then the line broke.
A larger swell rocked through the dark sea, splashed spray onto the rocks they were standing on, and boomed thunder inside the sea cave. Black clouds swallowed the moon. Something gleamed under water, big, white, far down, turning, gone – what was it? Another wave slammed home against the rocks.
'Come on,' said Hearst. 'Let's get back to the campsite.'
Later that night, waiting for sleep, he thanked his 505 fates for what had been, in its own way, a perfect day. He knew the dangers that lay ahead: the Dry Pit, the Marabin Erg, and, if they survived that, eventually a battle with the Swarms themselves. He knew the odds favoured his death: he doubted that he would live to see another spring. And so he savoured what was left to him, and found it sweet. As Saba Yavendar said:
My feet wear down the last of the road Through scarabshard cities, through shufflerock hills, Through grey timedwindled mountainscapes.
Insects feed at my sweat Till a cavemouth swallows me to its shelter.
My goatskin outglubs the last of its bub, And fills the cup to less than belly-centre:
Yet I drink, for I will not refuse the cup Simply because the wine lacks the brim.
There must have been a storm far out to sea, because for days big swells broke on the shores of the Tongue, each swell rising glass-green as it reached the shallows near the shore, then breaking to churning white spray with a boom of thunder.
As the three trekked north along the sands, the tideline now was littered with shells, and occasional clumps of black seaweed, some with thick clusters of fat pink barnacles clinging to them. Now and then they encountered signs of human life: charred timbers that had once been shaped with axe or adze, and had met fire before the sea brought them to this resting; a fishing float marked with a weather-rune; the cork-buoyed haft of a broken harpoon.
Halfway between the Elbow and the cliffs of Seagate, they found a beachside tree covered with blood-red blossoms. It was, said Miphon, a tree known to some of the peoples of the Ocean of Cambria as yanzyonz, meaning 'autumn fire'. The travellers rested in the shade of the tree; bees were at work in the blossoms.
'Honey,' said Blackwood, listening to the bees.
'That would be nice,' said Hearst.
'These things can be arranged,' said Miphon. 'If you don't mind waiting.'
'But,' said Hearst, 'you've lost your…'
'This doesn't need magic,' said Miphon. 'Watch.'
And he caught one of the nectar-seeking bees, tore pieces from its veined wings, then released it. The injured bee could fly hardly faster than walking pace. Miphon followed it, knowing it would lead him straight to the hive.
'I'm going to dig shellfish,' said Blackwood.
'Enjoy yourself,' said Hearst.
Left alone, he decided to gather some firewood. In his search, he discovered, not far from the shoreline, a low bank of old shells, long ago bleached white by the sun. Many were calcined, cracked by heat; there were banks of such shells all along the Chameleon's Tongue, where groups of people had camped for weeks at a time, feeding on shellfish, sometimes cooking them in bulk to take inland. The heap of discarded shells could have been there for years, decades or centuries.
Unbidden and unexpected, a memory surfaced. It was one of the memories of the wizard Phyphor, who, thousands of years before, had stood on the shores of the harbour of Hartzaven, at Seagate, watching a small sailing craft making for the shore.
Phyphor had said: is that them?'
And his companion, one Saba Yavendar, had said, yes, yes, that's them, that's the party come to negotiate for the Dareska Amath – Hearst remembered.
Remembered the Dareska Amath, as seen through Phyphor's eyes. A wild people, yes, much given to laughter and boasting, fond of improbable stories and outrageous dares, a tough and hardy seafaring folk, eager for the challenge of an audacious venture into the Deep South. Those were his ancestors, and… they were nothing like the people who now lived on Rovac.
The Dareska Amath had been quick to anger and quick to forget; the Rovac had developed the capacity for a sour, unrelenting hatred that nothing could appease. The Dareska Amath had possessed a sardonic sense of the ridiculous which tempered their excesses; the Rovac cultivated an overbearing arrogance and a fanatical sense of honour which destroyed their sense of proportion.
Standing there on the sands of the Tongue, Hearst thought of the way Elkor Alish had gone raging to war to revenge a wrong committed over four thousand years ago. The Dareska Amath would have laughed at such a loss of proportion – and at Alish, seeking to honour their memory by destroying the Confederation of Wizards.
Now the Swarms were sweeping north through Argan. That disaster must make Alish re-assess the situation, and see that their world was too fragile to sustain a never-ending feud that threatened the destruction of the strongest and the best. And if Alish would reconsider, then, possibly, Morgan Hearst and Elkor Alish might one day be able to meet again as friends.
The time came when the cliffs of Seagate appeared through the surfhaze: one more march would bring them to those cliffs. Another day would bring them to Hartzaven, where they hoped to be able to find a boat to take them to the northern shore.
Hearst decided to make the march to the cliffs by night, for if they were going to meet anyone on the Chameleon's Tongue, this last part of the journey was where it was most likely to happen.
They made their way by moonlight. The moon was cold and steel-bright in a clear sky. There was no cloud; every star was visible. The beach stretched away into the darkness; they walked on the wet sand, letting the waves' wash obliterate their footprints.
The ocean had calmed; the waves were less than knee-high, but broke with a series of sharp retorts, each like the crack of a whip. Breaking, each wave curled over, forming a tube in which phosphorescence was stirred to life, so it was as if a bolt of lightning shot along the inside of each tubing wave just before it collapsed into miniature thunder.
Where feet scuffed the wet sand, phosphorescence shone, a speck here, a speck there. Blackwood scooped up a handful of sand. In the centre shone the blue-green fire of one single phosphorescent creature. Its body was too small to see, but its light, in the darkness, held close to his face, was bright as one of the ardent stars of the heavens.
The Rovac warrior Morgan Hearst led them on, into the darkness.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
At Hartzaven, a sheltered harbour in the mountainous upthrust at Seagate at the end of the Tongue, the travellers stole a double-hulled ocean-going canoe from a small fishing village. They also took quantities of dried fish, sweet potatoes and white paste. The paste, extracted from the roots of a type of fern, looked and tasted a little like flour. After living for so long on lizards and shellfish, they welcomed the change in diet.
They ventured the Sponge Sea in the stolen canoe. The seas at the end of autumn favoured them with an easy crossing. They landed on the northern coast, a hundred leagues from the Dry Pit.
Much of the coastline was ancient metamorphic rock, but this was interrupted by dead, cold lava flows, which had run from far inland out to the edges of the Sponge Sea. Miphon said the lava flows had issued from the Dry Pit thousands of years before; to reach the Dry Pit, they need only follow one of the lava flows inland.
It was a hard journey, through countryside that was mostly flat and monotonous, though here and there isolated mountains rose above the barren plains. There was little vegetation, but there were many insects. One afternoon the travellers broke open an ants' nest, a nest of earth that stood half as tall as a man; they mixed handfuls of black ants and white ant eggs with the last of their fern-paste, and roasted the combination over a slow fire. Several times Miphon found small colonies of honey ants, which they ate along with roasted crickets.