8
Though she had merely intended to rest her eyes a moment or two before she began preparing dinner, a deep and powerful sleep came quickly over Elsinome when she lay down, drawing her into a cloudy realm of yellow shadows and rubbery pink hills; and though she had scarcely expected a sending to come to her during a casual before-dinner nap, she felt a gentle pressure at the gateways of her soul as she descended into the fullness of her slumber, and knew it to be the presence of the Lady coming upon her.
Elsinome was tired all the time, lately. She had never worked so hard as in the last few days, since news of the crisis in western Zimroel had reached the Labyrinth. Now the cafe was full all day long with tense officials of the Pontificate, exchanging the latest information over a few bowls of fine Muldemar or good golden Dulornese wine—they wanted only the best, when they were this worried. And so she was constantly running back and forth, juggling her inventories, calling in extra supplies from the wine merchants. It had been exciting, in a way, at first: she felt almost as though she were participating herself in this critical moment of history. But now it was merely exhausting.
Her last thought before falling asleep was of Hissune: Prince Hissune, as she was still trying to learn to regard him. She had not heard from him in months, not since that astonishing letter, so dreamlike itself, telling her that they had called him to the highest circle of the Castle. He had begun to seem unreal to her after that, no longer the small sharp-eyed clever boy who once had amused and comforted and supported her, but a stranger in fine robes who spent his days among the councils of the great, holding unimaginable discourse on the ultimate destinies of the world. An image came to her of Hissune at a vast table polished to mirror brightness, sitting among older men whose features were unclearly limned but from whom there radiated great presence and authority, and they were all looking toward Hissune as he spoke. Then the scene vanished and she saw yellow clouds and pink hills, and the Lady entered her mind.
It was the briefest of sendings. She was on the Isle—that much she knew from the white cliffs and the steeply rising terraces, though she had never actually been there, never in fact been outside the Labyrinth—and in a dreamlike drifting way she was moving through a garden that was at first immaculate and airy and then imperceptibly became dark and overgrown. The Lady was by her side, a black-haired woman in white robes who seemed sad and weary, not at all the strong, warm, comforting person Elsinome had met in earlier sendings: she was bowed with care, her eyes were hooded and downcast, her movements uncertain. “Give me your strength,” the Lady murmured. This is all wrong, thought Elsinome. The Lady comes to us to offer strength, not to receive it. But the dream-Elsinome did not hesitate. She was vigorous and tall, with a nimbus of light flickering about her head and shoulders. She drew the Lady to her, and took her against her breast and held her in a close strong embrace, and the Lady sighed and it seemed that some of the pain went from her. Then the two women drew apart and the Lady, glowing now as Elsinome was, touched her fingers to her lips and threw a kiss to Elsinome, and vanished.
That was all. With startling suddenness Elsinome woke and saw the familiar dreary walls of her flat in Guadeloom Court. The afterglow of a sending was on her beyond any doubt, but the sendings of other years had left her always with a strong sense of new purpose, of directions redirected, and this one had brought only mystification. She could not understand the purpose of such a sending; but perhaps it would manifest itself to her, she thought, in a day or two.
She heard sounds in her daughters’ room.
“Ailimoor? Maraune?”
Neither girl answered. Elsinome peered in and saw them huddling close over some small object, which Maraune put quickly behind her back.
“What’s that you have there?”
“It’s nothing, mother. Just a little thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“A trinket. Sort of.”
Something in Maraune’s tone made Elsinome suspicious. “Let me see it.”
“It really isn’t anything.”
“Let me see.”
Maraune shot a quick look toward her older sister. Ailimoor, looking uneasy and awkward, simply shrugged.
“It’s personal, mother. Doesn’t a girl get to have any privacy?” Maraune said.
Elsinome held out her hand. Sighing, Maraune brought forth and reluctantly surrendered a small sea-dragon tooth, finely carved over much of its surface with unfamiliar and peculiarly disturbing symbols of an odd, narrow-angled sort. Elsinome, still in part enveloped in the strange aura of the sending, found the little amulet sinister and menacing.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Everyone’s got them, mother.”
“I asked you where it came from.”
“Vanimoon. Actually Vanimoon’s sister Shulaire. But she got it from him. Can I please have it back?”
“Do you know what this thing means?” Elsinome asked.
“Means?”
“That’s what I said. What it means.”
Shrugging, Maraune said, “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a trinket. I’m going to drill a hole in it and wear it on a string.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
Maraune was silent. Ailimoor said, “Mother, I—” She faltered.
“Go on.”
“It’s just a fad, mother. Everyone’s got them. There’s some crazy new Liiman idea going around that the sea dragons are gods, that they’re going to take over the world, that all the trouble that’s been happening lately is a sign of what’s to come. And people say that if we carry the sea-dragon teeth, we’ll be saved when the dragons come ashore.”
Coldly Elsinome said, “There’s nothing new about it. Nonsense like that has been going around for hundreds of years. But always hidden, always in whispers, because it’s crazy and dangerous and sick. Sea dragons are oversized fish and nothing more. The One who looks over us is the Divine, protecting us through the Coronal and the Pontifex and the Lady. Do you understand? Do you understand?”
She snapped the tapering tooth in half with a quick angry motion and tossed the pieces to Maraune, who glared at her with a fury that Elsinome had never seen in the eyes of one of her daughters before. Hastily she turned away, toward the kitchen. Her hands were shaking, and she felt chilled; and if the peace of the Lady had descended upon her at all in the sending—that sending which now seemed to have come to her weeks ago—it was entirely gone from her now.
9
The entry to Numinor harbor took all the skill the most skillful pilot could muster, for the channel was narrow and the currents were swift, and sandy reefs sometimes were born overnight in the volatile underbeds. But Pandelume was a calm and confident figure on the wheel deck, giving her signals with clear decisive gestures, and the royal flagship came in jauntily, past the neck of, the channel and into the broad sweet safe anchorage, the only possible one on the Alhanroel side of the Isle of Sleep, the one place where a breach existed in the tremendous chalk wall of First Cliff.