They sailed on into the dusk with a good wind and a calm enough sea. Althak contrived to ignore Thalissa completely. Azkun needed no special sight to see he was uncomfortable in her presence. He moved about the boat checking the ropes, tightening them or loosening them where necessary while Shelim manned the tiller, and ignoring any offers of help from her.
Early the following morning Althak found that a sack of oats in the hold had split open and an impromptu porridge was forming in the bilge water. They spent about an hour cleaning it out and Azkun found it a foul task. The hold stank of the fat used to seal the wooden hull, a thick, sulphurous smell that caught in the throat like acid. Tenari could not be made to help and Shelim was busy with the tiller. Althak and Thalissa were least disturbed by the stench below deck so Azkun found himself by the gunwales lifting bail buckets of oaty sludge from the deck hatch to empty over the side as Thalissa passed them up to him.
“Why did you come with us?” asked Althak; there was bitterness in his voice. Thalissa paused so long that Azkun thought she was not going to answer, but she did.
“When you've lost everyone dear to you, and you find them again, you can't let them go.”
“How can Azkun be dear to you? You've hardly seen him since he was born.”
“I spent nine long months with him in my womb. I spent three days with Tenari before Menish took her away. They're all I have.”
“Tenari scratched you. What makes you think Azkun has any more love for you?” The buckets stopped.
“Why do you hate me, Althak?”
“Because you are what you are.”
“No, because Menish hates me. I tried to poison him once, no doubt he told you. Olcean, his friend, died instead, but that's not why he hates me. You'd laugh if I told you.” Another bucket appeared in the hatchway and Azkun passed the empty one down in its place. “He hates me because I seduced him.”
There was a splash and a muttered curse. Althak must have dropped the bucket he was holding.
“That's ridiculous.”
“I suppose he has other reasons. I turned Sinalth against him. But that's the main reason.”
“Your brain's been turned by the Chasm. Menish is Anthorian. He's devoted to Adhara. How could you have seduced him?”
“They used to tell me I was beautiful then, even Menish said so. He was far from home, lonely, and I got him drunk enough to forget his wife. Menish claimed the wine I gave him was drugged, but that wasn't true.
“These things do happen, even to a king of Anthor. He hated me for it. He said so. That was why he left me for Thealum and took away my son.” She stopped suddenly and they continued working silently. When she spoke again her voice was cracked with weeping. “It was just a simple pleasure. Why did he hate me so?”
“It was you who tried to kill him.”
“What else could I do? He would have turned Sinalth against me. I didn't want to join the once-loved cast- offs in the women’s bower.”
After that Azkun noticed that Althak did not avoid her so pointedly. He still seemed uncomfortable when he spoke to her, but his hatred of her had faded into mere dislike.
They were three days out from Atonir, and Azkun still had not called the dolphin, when Althak indicated land ahead of them. A bony spine of mountains marched along its back.
“That's the island of Ramuz. We'll stop at a harbour called Tethim to fill our water casks for the long journey ahead. We may find other islands on our way to Kishalkuz, but there are no known lands beyond Ramuz.”
“What people live there? Relanese folk?”
“No, Ramuz has always been Vorthenki. Sinalth launched his invasion from there, and even now Vorish has no power over it. His might lies in his cavalry, not his ships. There the Vorthenki are free to practise the old ways.
“They kill maidens for Kopth, you mean.”
“Not all of the Vorthenki ways celebrate death, Azkun. We're not the folk of Gashan. The priestesses are healers as well. On the eastern coast of Ramuz there's a place where maidens go to learn the craft. They're trained in medicine and herbs as well as the rite of sacrifice. The only rite they do not learn is that of Dragonseed, for no men, nothing male at all, is allowed near there to ensure their purity to Kopth. They even have to send their sheep over the mountains to be put with rams.”
“No, you are right.” He remembered the people singing to him on the pier. “They are only misguided. They are not filled with evil like the Gashans. But I will not show myself to them. I do not want to be responsible for more sacrifices.”
The next morning Shelim turned their boat so that they sailed along the coast and by noon they reached a town of Vorthenki long houses on the shore with a stone pier reaching into the sea. There they moored their boat and Althak went ashore for their supplies. It was important they topped up their fresh water casks before they left the known lands.
By evening they had sailed again, this time on the long leg of their journey, and Azkun knew he must call his dolphin to guide them. The next day, as they rounded the northern tip of Ramuz he stood at the gunwales and waited.
He had not yet attempted to call the dolphin, partly because he wanted to be sure they had left the coasts of men and partly because he was unsure of himself. The things he had done by the power of the dragons up until now had been done at their bidding, they had not been calculated. He had acted on impulse, on their prompting, and their power had been manifest. It was only as they set out on this voyage that he remembered how large the seas were, and how finding one dolphin in them was no simple task. Only the dragons could help him and only when they chose could he call the dolphin.
And there lay another problem. He was the bridge to the dragons, he had told people that, but he was also evil. He had killed a Gashan, he had relied on Monnar magic to rescue them from the marshes. The dragons had kept him alive, curing his centipede bite and preventing him from starving, but he had done no great works in their name since he had murdered the Gashan. Did they still want him at Kishalkuz? Dared he go there?
But he did not dare do otherwise. He had promised them dragons, all of them. Menish had not accepted his promise, Vorish had not been without his doubts, but he had promised nevertheless. He had promised Althak, and Althak had given up his friendship with Menish to support him. Shelim, Tenari, the Vorthenki of Atonir, even the folk who had sacrificed to him when he had refused to land there, all of them depended on him. But more than any of these, he had promised himself. That dark part of himself that had murdered the Gashan still lurked in his mind haunting him. Only the dragons would be able to exorcise it.
For the others, all the Gashans could do to them was to kill them. Not so for himself. They could get into his mind with their own evil, they could make him do things and all he could do would be to watch with horror as his personal guilt piled up in death around him. Only the dragons could provide him with salvation from himself.
At this moment he needed their aid to call the dolphin. He did not know how to do it for himself, other than to stand at the gunwale and hope. Already he had sensed Althak’s unspoken questions. Why did he delay? Shelim needed a course to steer, the vaguely north-east direction their prow pointed was not enough. But he did not know how to call on the dragons, it was they who always called on him. And perhaps they would call him no more.
For a night and a day he stood at the gunwales and waited. He had once heard Hrangil say that to invoke Aton the Relanese would sometimes fast and go without sleep. He could not fast for he did not eat. But he could go without sleep and this he did, standing motionless with Tenari at his side as always. He told her to sleep but she remained with him.
During the night Althak and Shelim took turns on the tiller as they sometimes did during the day. The sea swished and foamed about the prow and the pale moonlight from the new moon shone whitely on the foam as if it were bleached bones.
When the greyness of dawn showed in the east, slowly tingeing the clouds with red, his legs ached with cramp and fatigue and his eyes were heavy. He forced himself to go on. After all he was guilty. His invocation should cost something.
But there was nothing. No dragon appeared in the clouds, only gulls that hovered about the mast hoping for a meal without having to fish for it. No silver-grey shape with chattering thoughts showed itself in the bow wave. He could stand no longer. He sank down by the gunwale, still trying to keep awake, and slowly rubbed his aching legs. Althak, who had just been relieved by Shelim, came and squatted beside him.
“Azkun?”
“I know, we need a course. The dolphin has not come to me. I do not know where the island is myself.”
