passing league after league of almost featureless flat coastline, flat as a calm sea, an endless plain of sand and grass. He had not realized that land could be so flat; never before had he seen any sort of terrain but the gentle hills and graveled beaches of his homeland.
And when he glimpsed the Great Lighthouse in the distance, even before he realized its actual size, that did not help at all; the single huge tower thrusting up from this strange, level world had seemed almost threateningly out of place. As the ship drew nearer and the palace dome appeared, followed by the endless expanse of red-tiled roofs, his uncertainty grew steadily. Row after row of buildings lined the sandy shores, leagues of them, it seemed, as the ship worked its way up The Channel, past the Outer Towers, past the Outer Docks, past the Inner Towers, and into Seagate Harbor.
The city even smelled strange; an odd, hot scent reached the ship, compounded of smoke, fish, and tight- packed humanity as well as other things he could not identify. No place in the Free Lands had smelled like that.
He stood at the rail, fending pole in his hands, and stared in dumbfoundment. How could there be enough people in all the world to fill so many buildings? What did they all do? Where did their food come from, with no farmland inside the walls?
A fishing boat drifted uncomfortably near, and the next man aft from Tobas fended it off, then cursed the Telvener roundly for his negligence. Tobas woke up enough to turn his eyes from the shore to the surrounding water, but even that was mind-boggling; more shipping was crowded into this one harbor, he was sure, than could be found in all, the Free Lands of the Coasts put together.
It was all too much for him, and when the ship was safely docked and the captain called for all who were going ashore, he remained where he was, hanging onto the rail and staring at the bustling streets.
A few moments later, the captain — Tobas had learned two days out that the captain’s name was Istram and the ship’s was Golden Gull, but he still thought of the man simply as “the captain” and the vessel simply as “the ship” — came up behind him and asked, without preamble, “Aren’t you leaving the ship?”
Tobas jumped. “Ah... no,” he said. “I think I’ll stay on, if you don’t mind.”
The captain shrugged. “An extra hand is welcome — if you pull your weight. You weren’t much use with that pole coming into port, and you have yet to show me any of the magic you claim to know.”
“It’s all fire magic,” Tobas explained defensively, his hand falling to the hilt of his athame. “What use is that on a ship?” He had settled on this explanation when taunted by the crew and had gone so far as to use his single spell to ignite his worst tormentor’s bedding to prove his ability.
After that, no one had bothered him, but apparently word had not reached the captain. “I’ve been lighting the galley fires, but what else can I do?”
“We don’t need a wizard to light fires!” Istram said scornfully.
“I’m not asking for a wizard’s pay!” Tobas retorted quickly. The captain smiled. “Good, because you wouldn’t get it. You haven’t even earned the boots we gave you or the food you’ve eaten. I’m a kind man, though, so if you want to stay aboard, you may; our next port is Ethshar of the Spices, if you care to leave us there; after that, it depends on what cargo we can get, probably we’ll head back west.”
Tobas nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He glanced down at the boots just mentioned, which had been donated by a lad in the crew who had outgrown them. The captain was right; he hadn’t really done enough work yet to earn them.
He sighed; he was a long way from the rich, easy life he wanted.
They were two days in port, unloading roughly half the cargo of furs, oils, and other goods and replacing it with freshly slaughtered beef, and a warlock, whose magic would keep the meat cool and prevent spoilage. There was enough lifting, hauling on ropes, and general hard labor involved that, by the time the ship was loaded full again, Tobas felt he had earned a cobbler’s entire shop. Once or twice he gave serious thought to deserting — or rather, since he had never formally signed on, leaving — but the sight and sound and smell of the crowded streets were still enough to deter him. Ethshar of the Sands was terrifying in its immensity and alienness; Ethshar of the Spices might not be.
He also remained on board in hopes of getting to know the warlock and perhaps even learning a little of this strange new school of magic that required none of the rituals and paraphernalia of wizardry. After all, a career in any sort of magic might well be profitable; simply because he had been initiated into the Wizards’ Guild, he saw no reason not to pursue studies in the other varieties of arcane skill.
Of course, the ship had had another magician aboard all along; the white-robed woman who had stood beside the captain when Tobas first came aboard was a priestess, an expert theurgist, Tobas had learned, and was the magician charged with defending the vessel against pirates or other perils.
Theurgy, however, was not a form of magic that appealed to Tobas, since he understood it to call for a great deal of hard study and abstinence from many of life’s little pleasures, while still being less than perfectly reliable and predictable in its effects. Besides, the priestess refused to associate with anyone aboard other than the captain.
Tobas thought warlockry sounded far more appealing.
However, one sight of the warlock’s dark and forbidding face convinced him not to press the issue. This was obviously not a person eager to make friends.
No one else seemed to know the warlock any better than Tobas did; even Captain Istram, who treated the theurgist as just another crew member, seemed slightly wary of him. As with the priestess, no one spoke of him by name; he was simply the warlock. Tobas was not entirely sure he had a name; for all he knew, warlocks were not even human.
This warlock slept in a hammock slung down in the hold, close to the meat he was there to preserve; he had his meals brought to him there. As the cook’s assistant, Tobas was responsible for their delivery.
Once settled in his place, the warlock spoke to no one; he accepted his meals in silence and never emerged from the hold for any reason. Tobas guessed that maintaining the spell, for the hold was always very definitely chilly, despite the summer sun glaring on the sea on every side, took all his concentration and energy.
The journey passed uneventfully, for the most part, and Tobas was reasonably content with his lot. He was fed and housed. His clothing left something to be desired, as he still had only the one outfit, but he was able to wash it twice a sixnight in the communal tub. Still, shipboard life, with its crowding, hard work, and poor food, was far from his idea of the ideal life, and Golden Gull would never be home.
On the last night of the voyage, after the ship had rounded the great peninsula and begun beating its way northwestward up the Gulf of the East, the entire crew was awakened by the warlock screaming as if he were being gruesomely murdered, perhaps skinned alive, or, one imaginative crewman suggested, eaten by rats. Tobas, as the one who had the most contact with him and the purported magician in their midst, was selected by acclamation to go and investigate.
The screams had stopped by the time he made his way down into the hold. He stood at the foot of the ladder for a moment, his lantern flickering, before he found the nerve to go on.
The candle in the lantern had not been very well lit or was perhaps clogged with wax; he considered using Thrindle’s Combustion to brighten it, but, upon remembering the explosion in Roggit’s cottage, decided against it. Using the spell on something already burning was dangerous, and he had no intention of blowing even this feeble flame out while he stood surrounded by unknown horrors.
When he finally gathered his courage and made his way back to the meat storage area, he found the warlock sitting up in his hammock, leaning back against the bulkhead with his head in his hands. His long, thin legs thrust up pale bare knees that gleamed white as bone in the lantern light; his elbows rested upon his knees, and his face upon trembling fingers.
“Sir?” Tobas ventured, trying to keep his voice and hands steady despite his terror and the unnatural chill in the air.
The warlock looked up. “My apologies if I disturbed you, child. I had an unpleasant dream.” His voice was deep and mellow, and he spoke with an accent very slightly different from the Ethsharitic of the crew.
Tobas could not believe he had heard the warlock’s words correctly. “A dream? Just a dream?”
The warlock smiled bitterly. “Yes, just a dream. A drawback of my craft, child, warlocks are prone to nightmares of a very special variety. They arrive when we attempt to overextend our abilities, as I have on this journey, and they can lead to... well, we do not know what they lead to, but warlocks for whom the nightmares have become a regular occurrence tend to disappear. I may well have doomed myself for the sake of fresh meat for
