Naldeth shrugged. 'He did say my life would be taking an unexpected course.'
'Show me a seer that doesn't.' Kheda restoppered the vial of astringent lotion. 'All they have is vagueness to swap for their meat and drink on the trading beaches.'
'How can you say that?' Risala was more puzzled than angry. 'How can you say the beliefs of generations and countless domains mean nothing, just because you have lost your faith in them? Don't you think we might not have got so mired in this mess if you had been reading the right omens?'
'I did meet one soothsayer who had some very interesting predictions.' Naldeth was ready to explain.
Kheda found himself disinclined to listen. 'This is hardly the time or the place to debate such things.' He dressed Naldeth's burn with the leatherspear salve and a light bandage of fine gauze.
'No—' Then Naldeth stammered and blushed, retreating back to the tiller.
Kheda realised Risala was stripping naked down on the deck. She slung a bucket into the sea and washed herself briskly. He slid down the ladder-like stair and returned his physic chest to the stern cabin. Wordlessly, Risala
offered him the bucket and he washed in turn, gasping at the bracing chill of the water on his warm body. Still not speaking, she tossed him clean clothes, redolent of different herbs used to ward staleness from stored cottons in some other reach of the Archipelago.
It would be so easy to tell Naldeth simply to turn this ship's prow to the south, to round that cape and sail away east, leaving this strange and dangerous land. Velindre could find us with her magic, couldn't she? But when we return to the Archipelago, will I arrive to find I've lost Risala?
Kheda fetched scouring paste, rag and oil and cleaned his sword and his dagger, polishing them till they shone. Risala brought dried meat and fruit from some store, taking a share to Naldeth, still without a word. They ate, all remaining silent, watching the broken cliffs subside and the broad mouth of the river open up before them. The Zaise bucked as Naldeth's magic drove the ship through the turbulent water where the river's muddy flow forced itself out into the surging sea. The wide mudflats stretched away on either side.
'Watch the skies.' Kheda searched the sandbanks with their tangled tussocks of grasses.
Risala shaded her eyes with her hand. 'There's nothing to see, not even birds.'
Kheda noted the same lack of life across the fertile mudbanks. There were no birds, no sign of any animals. He called up to Naldeth. 'Has all the wizardry used in this valley today frightened everything away? How far does magic's influence reach? Does it taint the water, or the air?'
'Look over there.' Risala pointed at a pillar of smoke that was rising from the far edge of the grasslands on the northern bank, just a little eastwards of their own position.
'It's an ordinary fire,' Naldeth called, unperturbed.
Kheda tried to judge the intervening distance. 'And nowhere near the cave dwellers.'
'Isn't it near where we left Velindre?' Risala stood beside him, tense.
'She could let us know if she were in trouble, couldn't she?' Kheda tried to swallow his own apprehension as he realised Risala was right. 'Come on, we'll see more from the stern.'
They climbed up the ladder to join Naldeth.
'Isn't that the tree-dwellers' valley?' Risala turned to point to a shallow notch in the undulating land where it ran away westwards towards the broken shore.
'I think so.' Still looking inland, Kheda saw that the fire was rather more than half-way between the caves and the tree-dwellers' settlement.
That's the direction we fled in the night, when we met that old woman and she showed us shelter.
'Naldeth, if Velindre were in trouble, could she use this magic of yours to find the Zaise ? Or would the spell just carry her to the cave where we left it?'
'I don't think anyone's ever tried translocating to a boat while it's under sail.' This new idea evidently intrigued Naldeth. 'What—'
A gang of wild spearmen appeared on the north bank. Shouting and waving their spears, they beckoned to the Zaise and Kheda recognised several faces, even through their covering of grease and filth.
'I take it those are our friends?' Naldeth wrapped a skein of blue light around his burned hand and hauled the prow around towards the north shore regardless.
'They don't look too happy to see us,' Risala said slowly.
'No,' Kheda agreed, 'but they don't look as if they're about to attack us either.'
'They look more apprehensive than anything.' Naldeth's
newfound high spirits faltered for the first time. 'Velindre would have found a way to warn us, if there was danger.'
'There's definitely some kind of trouble.' Kheda studied the faces of the men waiting on the bank.
A good number of the men offered a studied blankness just short of defiance. Others were more openly nervous, their eyes flickering from Kheda to Naldeth. A few gazes slid to Risala with a hint of guilty appeal.
'Velindre had better not be hurt.' Naldeth's tone hardened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Zaise juddered as the keel sliced into the river bed. A ramp of mud reared up to bridge the gap between the ship's rail and the bank.
Kheda saw some of the spearmen on the bank react with violent surprise while the rest merely took a step back, more concerned with beckoning the three mariners ashore. 'Some of these warriors must be cave or tree dwellers. They haven't seen Naldeth's bridging trick.'
'Then Velindre has found some way to convince them to cooperate rather than fight.' Nonetheless, Risala looked uncertain.
'We can ask her once we find her.' Growing concern was rapidly quelling Naldeth's good humour. He swung himself over the rail and hurried to the bank.
Kheda noted which spearmen looked agog at the wizard's metal leg. He gestured to Risala to go on ahead, keeping one hand on his sword hilt as he brought up the rear.
The spearmen had trampled a broad path down to the river. They retraced their steps along it, noisily beating the stubborn tussocks with their spears and stamping down already crushed blades of the razor-sharp grass.
Kheda looked around in hopes of finding the scarred spearman or the stooped hunter. Neither wild man was anywhere to be seen. He recognised some faces, and registered all too clearly the beseeching glances that slid his way.
Whatever this trouble is, they're hoping I'll take their side.
Kheda hurried after Risala, who was walking as fast as she could to keep up with Naldeth. The joints and rivets of the wizard's metal leg glowed with scarlet fire. As the grasses thinned, they reached a line of straggling nut trees cut off from the main sprawl of the forest by a stony slope. Wild men were busy dragging fallen wood to add to a long fire that was the source of the smoke they had seen.
Just as Kheda realised this was familiar ground approached from an unfamiliar direction, Risala pointed to a shallow cluster of rocks. 'That's the cave we hid in, the one with the paintings.'
'There's Velindre.' Naldeth nodded at the magewoman, profoundly relieved. 'She's not hurt.'
Velindre was sitting on the bare earth hugging her knees some distance below the entrance to the cave. He recognised the scarred spearman standing some distance away, ringed by a band of warriors whom he identified as having come from the village across the river.
'What do you suppose they've done?' Risala wondered.
Kheda saw the wild men who'd met them at the river spread out to join the warriors on the far side of the cave or those gathering firewood, demonstrably disassociating themselves from the scarred spearman and his band. The shunned men hadn't a spear or a club between them. He caught an ominous breath of sickly putrefaction.
'Velindre!' Naldeth called out as the magewoman got slowly to her feet. 'Are you all right?'