She looked down at the pale figure with the gaudy golden head still standing motionless, turned to watch the fast-disappearing green beast. Was the one with the brown
headdress his servant? Powerful painted men allowed lesser ones to attend them, all the while on the alert for their treachery, or so it was whispered around the hearths of the villages.
Did this mean that the painted men were going to land on her deserted shore? Would their followers soon be arriving, driving on captives laden with laths and grass to build their huts? Would the painted men be summoning uprooted trees to be split with wedges of stone and hammers of bone? Would the timbers be thrust into the sands to make the merciless wall of a stockade for whatever hapless captives would be offered up to sate the beast's hunger? Did that mean the green beast would be coming ashore? Presumably a painted man would know such things. And the lack of food or water wouldn't worry these painted men. They could always summon such things out of the empty air. How soon would their followers be coming? Had the painted men on the blue raft lured the beast away so they could set up their encampment without it biting their heads off before they had got started?
The old woman sighed with deep, aching regret. She had been content here. Now she would have to pick up her gourd and her bundle and start walking again. Which way should she go? Backwards, retracing her painful steps? She quailed at the thought and turned to look along the sunset side of the point of land. Surely whatever lay in that direction couldn't be any worse than the hostile barrens she had crossed?
But that was where the painted men were going. She watched the blue raft slowly picking its way along the narrow channel between the line of foaming rocks and the sandy coast. But did that mean their spearmen would soon be coming to this point of land? If they did, they would surely find her and capture her, tying her up to be fed to the green
beast. Or were they heading up the sunset side of the land to meet their followers? Would they be walking along the sands or along the shallow, crumbling cliffs? If she went that way, would she blunder into their lethal embrace?
Not if she was careful, she concluded. Whereas if she stayed here, there was every chance she would be discovered. She had left footprints in the sand and tossed broken shells plucked from the rocks carelessly from the ledge of her little cave. Not for the first time, her only hope of Safety lay in keeping moving.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Are you sure it's not following us?' Kheda stared out over the Zaise's stern, trying to see into the sand-clouded water. His gut was still tight with tension.
'Quite sure.' Velindre adjusted their course with a delicate push on one steering oar. 'It'll chase that waterspout till the magic unravels and then—'
'It'll come back to find us,' Kheda concluded heatedly.
'It will go back to enjoying the elemental forces stirred up by the collision of these incredible currents.' Velindre was unconcerned. 'I'm sure of it. It's an animal, Kheda, albeit a magical one. It's not evil or even malicious, certainly not in the way a man would be. It was more curious than intent on killing us and there must be plenty of other prey for it in such rich waters. Think how many sea serpents we've seen.'
'And it'll be finding gems on the sea bed,' Naldeth added thoughtfully. 'There must be rich seams of gemstones given how closely earth and fire are allied under these waters. The nature of rubies—' He broke off, suddenly self-conscious, and stared up at the banded rocks of the cliff.
You thought of rubies because of that dragon's egg stowed in the hold. How can magic fuse such a mass of jewels together and twist itself into whatever unnatural life gives birth to a dragon?
'But why did it chase that sea spout rather than attacking you?' Risala asked Velindre as she ran lithely up
the ladder from the Zaise's deck. 'The dragon that came to the Archipelago was set on killing Dev. You said they see any other magic user as a rival. That's why we had to dull your magic, and Dev's, with that potion Shek Kul found for Kheda.'
'That's a very good question.' Naldeth climbed rather less nimbly after her, with a grating squeak from the joints in his metal leg.
'Just in case you're about to suggest it, I have no intention of ever taking those cursed herbs again and being cut off from my affinity.' Despite her caustic tone, a half-smile widened irresistibly on the mage woman's thin lips. 'Which is why I've been practising working my magic at as much of a remove as I can, the better to go unnoticed by dragons or anyone else. Behold my success.'
Naldeth stared at her, affronted beneath his ruddy tan. 'You didn't think to share that with me?'
'I wasn't sure it would work,' Velindre admitted a little ruefully. 'Now we've seen that it does, I can explain the principle and then we'll see if you can grasp it.'
'Oh, I will,' promised Naldeth tersely.
'This is hardly the place for experiments,' Kheda broke in. 'The savages' wizards can sense magic being worked as well as dragons. They came after Dev and Risala that first time, when Dev came across them—'
'Let them come.' Velindre's composure was unshaken. 'Then perhaps we'll finally learn if anyone lives on this desiccated rock. That's what we came to find out, isn't it?'
The Zaise slid on through the treacherously narrow channel between the vivid corals of the reef and the muted rocks of the shore.
'I'm sure there must be more dragons here.' Naldeth looked up eagerly at the shallow sandy cliffs.
'Won't they be sensing whatever magic it is that you're
using to stop us being wrecked?' Risala looked around far more uncertainly.
'I doubt it,' Velindre said easily, 'any more than you'd hear someone whispering on the far side of an island in the middle of a rainy-season tempest. I'm using very little wizardry and there's so much wild magic in the very nature of this place thanks to the elements meeting here. We're sure to go unnoticed.'
Do the times I've found a wizard's confidence misplaced balance the scales against the times when they 've been able to fulfil their impossible promises?
Kheda took Risala's hand and squeezed her fingers reassuringly. 'Thus far we've seen one dragon and no sign of wild men.' He turned to Velindre, challenge in his expression. 'How far are we going to sail around this island before we decide it's safe to go home?'
Where I must take up my proper responsibilities once again.
'We're at the southernmost point of the main mass of land.' Velindre's expression grew distant, almost dreamy. 'Water that has circled the whole compass of the ocean collides as one current brings heat down from the central seas and another brings a cold surge up from the far south. The winds meet here, too. Some have travelled with the currents; others are rising from the land here and mingling with them, fighting against them.'
'Each current carries earth run off from rivers in distant lands, as well as all manner of sea creatures—' Naldeth broke off and narrowed his eyes. 'There are definitely fire mountains inland, and hot springs.'
'You're still certain this is just one island?' Kheda interrupted.
Naldeth nodded unhesitatingly. 'One island, several hundred leagues long and a hundred wide at its broadest, near enough. Where the raw elements of earth and
fire are remarkably closely interwoven,' he continued thoughtfully.
'There are powerful currents and seasonal wind patterns back in the Archipelago.' Risala looked from the tall, slender magewoman to the stockier younger wizard. 'As well as fire mountains that have blown half an island into clouds of burning dust before now. We're not plagued with dragons. Why should we expect more of them here?'