sandy wastes. And there was one other similarity, one the witch did not want to consider: the sea, like Anauroch, was hospitable to those who knew its ways-and merciless to those who did not.
Ruha contemplated her growing chill and decided it probably would not kill her. She was not shivering, she still felt her toes and fingers, and her teeth were not chattering. All in all, the witch had spent more frigid nights in the desert, and she suspected that the cool water was keeping her from bleeding to death. There were dozens of cuts on her body, some both long and deep, but all stinging bitterly from the salt. The witch could feel her blood swirling about her, warm and viscous against her skin, but she could not tell how much she had lost. Had she been on dry land, she would have examined her cuts and bandaged them all, starting with the worst one first. But in the dark, heaving sea, she had to content herself with running her fingers over each wound in turn, feeling for a heavy flow that suggested a severed vein or artery.
Ruha found no rushing streams or pulsing tides, but she could count her inspection only a partial success. The swirling saltwater made it difficult to distinguish an ooz- ing flow from a gushing one. In the end, she decided the mere fact that she did not feel light-headed was proof enough that she was not bleeding to death. And she thought of at least one good thing about being adrift: in the desert, some hungry jackal or lion would smell her blood and come running, but such a thing could not hap- pen at sea. No creature she knew could follow a scent through water.
Having convinced herself she would not be dead by the time the caravel returned, Ruha turned her thoughts to making certain she would be found. Her own people, the
Bedine, used large, curled horns called amarats for such purposes. The witch did not have an amarat, since only the men were allowed to use them, but she did have wind magic.
Ruha drew a deep breath. Then, speaking from her belly, she uttered a wind spell. Within her chest, she felt a tremendous sensation of expansion, as though her torso were growing as large and round as an oil cask. She tipped her chin back and cupped a hand around her mouth.
'I am here!' The voice that came from her lips sounded like that of a giant, deep and resonant. It was so loud that it made the water reverberate like a drum. 'Come and help me!'
Ruha pulled her hand away from her mouth and silently counted to a hundred, then repeated the mes- sage. As before, her voice was that of a giant. The witch counted again, then fell into a regular pattern of silence and calling. She was always careful to keep constant both the strength of her voice and the duration between her cries, hoping that would help the caravel captain deter- mine whether he was moving closer to her, or farther away.
Ten calls later, Ruha's cries became thunderous croaks, for her throat had begun to ache from the sheer power of her booming voice. Nevertheless, she continued to shout, determined not to vary her routine until her windpipes burst-though she was starting to fear the cold would kill her first. Goose bumps were rising all over her body, and she felt a cold numbness creeping into the marrow of her bones. To make matters worse, the flotsam from the
Storm Sprite was drifting apart faster than she had expected. She could see nothing close by except a handful of splintered deck planks, an oil cask riding low in the water, and several slabs of rotten dragon flesh.
As Ruha watched, one of the scaly chunks vanished beneath the sea. The slab did not slip gently under the surface, as though the meat had become too waterlogged to float. It plunged downward with a sharp swish, leav- ing nothing on the surface except a small circle of swirling water.
Ruha was not entirely puzzled. She had seen fish take insects swimming on the surface of oasis ponds, but the slab of dragon meat had been as large as her head. The witch could not even imagine the fish big enough to swal- low such a morsel. She thought other bloody legs dan- gling in the water and wished for a larger piece of timber-one onto which she could crawl entirely. Ruha pulled herjambiya from its sheath and prayed it would not slip from her grasp. The long, curved dagger was not particularly valuable, but it had once belonged to a man to whom she had been married for two days. He had died fighting a band of brutal invaders, and thejambiya was all she had to remember him by.
The time to call came again. 'Please hurry! Something is under the water!'
Ruha forced herself not to think about her dangling legs and tried to study the sea around her, watching to see if the dragon meat continued to disappear. The task was an impossible one, for no sooner would she glimpse a slab than a dune would heave up in front of her. When the water subsided, the scaly chunk was as likely as not to be gone. The witch never glimpsed any telltale circles to indicate the morsel had been taken by a fish, but she knew better than to assume she would in such dark, rough water.
Ruha felt herself rise on a dune, then something bumped into her knee and rubbed past her thigh. Her scream filled the sky with a cry that boomed like thun- der. She thrust herjambiya into the water and sliced into a sinuous body, her knuckles brushing along a gritty hide. A huge tail fin slapped her arm, and the creature flitted away.
The witch let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. It had only been a fish-one as large as a man, but a fish nonetheless-and apparently it intended her no harm.
A distant voice came to her on the wind. 'Keep yelling,Witch! Do you think I can see you in this murk?'
Ruha glanced toward the voice and saw the blocky sil- houette of a small, makeshift raft cresting the next dune.
On top of it kneeled two figures, both digging into the water with short sections of deck planking. One of the men appeared rather lanky and gaunt, but the other was stocky and stout, with the jutting brow and swinish snout of a half-ore.
Ruha slipped from the crest of her dune and lost sight other rescuers. 'I am here, Captain Fowler! One dune ahead!'
'What was… booming about?' Now that the sea had risen between Ruha and Fowler, the wind rendered his voice almost inaudible. 'Are… hurt?'
'I am well. Something bumped my leg, but it was only a fish.'
Fowler's voice remained silent for a brief moment, then suddenly rose above all the other sounds: '… yourself! That fish could be a…'
Ruha scowled and tried to pull herself farther onto the beam, but it only twisted and dumped her back into the sea. She tried again, kicking her feet to help lift her weight out of the water. Something slammed into the thick part of her leg. Her arms slipped free of the wet wood, and she felt herself spin and glide away from the timber. She heard a peal of thunder and realized it was her own wail of agony, magnified a thousand times by the magic of her wind spell. A keen, crushing ache erupted in her thigh and raced through the rest of her body, and finally she noticed the teeth. They were clamped around the thick part of her leg, driven deep into her flesh.
Ruha thrust her free hand into the water and caught hold of a gritty dorsal fin. The fish began to work its jaw back and forth, scraping the points of its serrated teeth across her thigh bone. She pulled herself toward its tail and plunged herjambiya into its flank, then dragged the curved blade back toward herself. A torrerrtTofcool, greasy blood gushed from the wound, covering her hand.
The fish dove, dragging Ruha into the black stillness beneath the sea. She could not see its lashing body, but it seemed to be the same creature that had bumped her earlier, about six feet long, with a slender, lashing body and a plethora of long, pointed fins. She twisted herjam- biya in the wound and pushed it toward the creature's underside, praying she would find something that re- sembled a throat.
The blade struck bone, and the jaws other attacker closed more tightly, threatening to crush her thigh. The fish whipped its head from side-to-side. Ruha's flesh tore, and her lungs burned with the need for fresh air. She thrust Yierjambiya into the side of the beast's head and slashed through something soft. She felt a rush of frothy water, but the creature seemed to feel no pain. It whipped its body around and went deeper, jerking her after it. A sharp crack reverberated up her spine, followed by a bru- tal, stabbing pang that seemed to spring from her bone marrow itself. The witch opened her mouth-she could not stop herself-and screamed.
A deafening roar throbbed through the water, striking
Ruha's eardrums with such force that it seemed her entire skull had shattered. Without realizing she had raised them, the witch found her hands clamped over her pulsing ears, the hilt other dead husband's jambiya pressed against her temple. The sound had a much greater effect on the fish. The creature's body went slack, its jaws opened, and it began to squirm about drunkenly, nearly tangling itself in her aba before it scraped its gritty tail across her cheek and vanished into the black waters.
Ruha had a fierce urge to cough and realized that her body had been trying to fill its air-starved lungs with sea- water. She clamped her jaws shut and kicked toward the surface-then nearly forgot herself and screamed again when a sharp jolt of pain shot through her thigh bone.
