The Messenger

coursed over his body. With strong, churning strokes he began swimming to Cutter, and once there seized the ladder at the transom and quickly pulled himself up and over the rail. Shivering, with his teeth chattering uncontrollably, he pulled open the hatch and grabbed the first woolen blanket he could find. He came back out, turned, and waved to Moreen, who still stood, fully dressed, hesitant, on the flat rock.

Only then did he think to himself: Where is Coraltop Netfisher? The cabin was unoccupied. Nor was the kender in the cockpit or anywhere else on deck.

“Bring the boat here!” came the shout from shore, and he saw Moreen glaring at him, her hands on her hips.

He waved again and checked the wind, which was blowing out to sea, and the tide, which was almost at its high point. He took only enough time to slip on dry clothes before hoisting the anchor. Using his single, long oar, he stood in the cockpit and laboriously propelled the boat toward the makeshift dock.

The Arktos, meanwhile, were gathering boughs as he had asked, and by the time he had guided the sailboat to the rock, it had been circled by a thick bumper of pines.

Moreen and Bruni assisted a group of hesitant elders and overeager children to scramble over the gunwales. He sent as many of them into the cabin as would fit, then posted some of the more able-bodied around the deck. In all, he was surprised to find that he was able to get some twenty people aboard. Tildey, who still had Kerrick’s bow and arrows-grudgingly pronouncing his weapons far superior to her own-posted herself atop the cabin, where she had a clear shot in any direction. Including at Kerrick, the elf realized. Moreen announced she would linger behind with the rest of the tribe.

“Where do you want the passengers landed?” asked Kerrick, making the last, hurried preparations before debarking.

“There is a ruined citadel high on a mountainside above the water. If you can’t see the place itself, it might be marked by a permanent cloud-hot springs supposedly warm it, even through the winter. If that is the place I hope it is, there will be some kind of sheltered cove at the foot of the mountain.”

“Okay, I’ll look for a site around there,” Kerrick said. “But you should know there aren’t a lot of good anchorages along this coast.”

“Do the best you can. The tribe will stay together on the shore until all of us are over there.”

“It’s going to take me all night to make that crossing, and there’s no telling how hard it will be to find a place to land your people. As short as these days are, it will probably be pitch dark by the time I get back,” the elf continued. “If the wind is up, I’ll have to wait offshore until first light. If you can build a small fire here, one that’s visible out to sea, I might be able to make it at night. It will depend on the weather, of course.”

“Of course,” Moreen echoed. He could tell as she gazed at the sail that she was just beginning to comprehend how Cutter was powered across the water.

“The payment,” he reminded her, as they made ready to push off. “It would be customary to give me a portion now and the rest once the job is completed.”

“It’s all there,” Bruni, who was going to wait with Moreen, said. She pointed at her fur-bundled pack resting next to the cabin.

“Let’s get it below deck,” Kerrick said, trying to sound calm as he imagined a wave carrying that treasure overboard. As they drifted away from shore the strongbox was stowed in the cabin, and the tide turned. With wind and water propelling them, they quickly moved away from the little cove.

The elf, for his part, was too harried to entertain immediate thoughts of treachery. After he raised the sail the Cutter took off like a living thing, racing out of the bay. Immediately, the north wind sweeping across the full breadth of the Courrain Ocean smashed into them from starboard. The boat heeled sharply, drawing screams from some of the Arktos, but Kerrick had anticipated the gust and posted a half dozen of them on the high gunwale. Their weight was enough to keep the boat from capsizing.

Night descended, and Kerrick sailed with all possible speed, heading directly toward the far shore. In the stormy straight he sailed by astrolabe and dead reckoning, holding tight to the tiller during the length of the wind- lashed night. A few of his passengers nodded off at the rail or on the deck, but most of the Arktos clung with wide- eyed fright to their handholds. The elf had no doubts but that they were praying to their wild goddess.

Whether it was Chislev Wilder or Zivilyn Greentree or Kerrick’s own seamanship that carried them through the night, he couldn’t know, but as dawn grayed the storm-tossed sea he was gratified to hear the sounds of crashing surf warning him of the proximity of rocks and reefs. Further daylight revealed a stony bank rising high before them. Unfortunately, the land plunged straight downward into the sea, and he saw no sign of any potential landing spot.

“Go that way,” Tildey suggested, pointing south. The elf saw the heights there obscured by a clinging cloud and concurred. His passengers were miserable, cold and, seasick, but they held on uncomplainingly as the daylight swelled. For three hours he raced along that forbidding shore, riding south with the wind, constantly seeking some sign of a potential landfall.

“Look-beyond that pillar of rock, there,” Tildey suddenly said, standing on the cabin roof and pointing. “I think there might be a cove.”

Kerrick steered toward shore, noting a pillar that rose like a signpost at the mouth of a sheltered inlet. Nearby rose a rugged cliff, and other elevations rose steeply to three sides, creating a sort of deep bowl that opened, through a narrow gap, to the sea.

“Let’s land there,” Tildey declared, “and quickly.”

Fortunately this shallow cove was even better sheltered than Tall Cedar Bay, with a smooth fringe of sandy beach at the foot of the rugged precipices. They happily noted several caves right beyond the beach.

The air was clammy here, different from the frigid open sea. Kerrick was heartened to see several small clumps of cedars in the hollows. A plume of vapor rose from the mouth of a large cave, quickly diffusing into a sky now almost fully dark.

“See that steam?” Kerrick asked Tildey. “I bet there are hot springs in those caves, at least in one of them.”

“That’ll be a fine shelter for the time being,” declared one old woman, who-because of the many necklaces and talismans she wore-Kerrick judged to be a shaman or priestess.

No flat rock offered itself as a dock, so Kerrick glided Cutter as close to the beach as he could go. He was grateful for the calm water and the sandy bottom as, at last, he felt the keel slide against the shore. By letting the adults scramble overboard first, then passing the children into their arms, he was able to disgorge all of his passengers within minutes, watching them hastily wade from the chilly water onto the beach. Insisting upon going last was the frail old shaman, leaning on her staff in the waist deep water.

“Get some wood together and build a fire!” Kerrick called. “It’ll take me at least a day to get back here with the next group, but if you can keep it bright, we’ll be able to land in the dark.”

The old shaman nodded and barked instructions to several children, who hastened to collect wood. Tildey was the only one who remained aboard. She had declared that she would sail back with him.

They angled into the wind, Cutter pitching and rolling through the growing swell. Tildey offered to take the tiller so that Kerrick could get some rest, but he shook her off.

The brief daylight dwindled before they were halfway back, but a few hours later the elf saw Moreen’s people had followed his instructions. The signal fire made a beacon that guided them back to Tall Cedar Bay, and by midnight he glided into the forest-fringed cove. The wind had calmed slightly, and he was easily able to pull up to the makeshift dock and load another twenty passengers. Once more he started on the crossing, noting with concern that the north wind had picked up.

Dawn found him in the midst of the strait, the wind having swelled into a full gale. Each breaking crest cast spray across the deck, and the six sturdy Arktos women leaning on the high rail were soaked through with icy brine, as was Kerrick in the cockpit. Deftly he pulled the tiller, feeling the fatigue now with each gesture but guiding the bow between the worst waves.

A surge suddenly rose right before him, and the keen prow sliced into a wall of gray water.

“Hold on!” cried the elf, as the sea engulfed the bow. Clinging desperately to the tiller, he gasped for breath as the boat slowly struggled to right itself.

“Mergat and Kestra-the sea took them!” cried one of the Arktos, pointing astern.

Kerrick saw that only four women were now clutching the rail, and he wrenched the tiller around. “Come about!” he called to Tildey, who ducked below the swinging boom and anchored the line like a veteran sailor as the