out the various strange plants growing there and told me their names: the beach rose and the rounded shrubs of the beach plum; the matlike dusty miller, with its tiny yellow flowers and the blue-eyed grasses rippling in the wind.
After we had ridden down the last of the dunes, we came out upon a wide, sandy beach. There was much seaweed and many shells along the high-tide line. The air smelled of salt and carried the sound of the crashing surf. The sun was a great, golden chariot rolling down the clear blue sky toward the west. Because of the lateness of the hour we decided to go no further that day. Of course, with the ocean only a hundred yards away, there was really nowhere else to go.
'Unless,' as Master Juwain observed, pointing out toward the sea, 'this isn't the Bay of Whales after all.'
'It must be,' Maram said, coming down off his horse.
Kane stood on the sand with his hand above his eves, shielding them from the water's fierce glare. He seemed lost in memories as deep as the sea.
'What do you think?' I asked, coming up next to him.
Kane's hard hand swept out to the right and then the left. 'The coast here runs east and west. So it would be with the most inland part of the Bay of Whales.'
'And so it would be with the coast on either side of the Bay of Whales,' Master Juwain put in. He had studied his maps as well as any man, and was prepared to give us a geography lesson. 'If we came too far to the north, then the Bay of Whales will still lie to the west of us.'
'We didn't come too far north,' I assured him.
'And if we came too far west,' he said, looking at me, 'we will have overshot the Bay altogether. In that case, it would lie to the east.'
Kane's thick white hair rippled in the wind as he said. 'The Bay can't be more than sixty miles at its widest eh? If this is the Bay and we ride west, the beach should begin curving toward the north soon enough.'
'But if it isn't' Master Juwain said, 'we'll ride many miles to no good end. And then have to turn back.'
We stood there for several minutes debating what course to set the next day. Then Liljana came forward and laughed at us as if we were squabbling children.
'Of course this is the Bay,' she told us.
'But how do you know?' Maram asked, looking at her in surprise. 'Because,' she said, her nostrils quivering as she gazed out at the sea, 'I can smell the whales.'
We all smiled at this wild claim. But after remembering how she had saved me from Baron Narcavage's poisoned wine, I wasn't so sure.
'Why don't we make camp and decide tomorrow which way to turn,' I said. 'We'll think better if we're not so tired.'
Maram, I saw, was still exhausted from what Meliadus had done to him, and all of our faces were haggard and cut from our passage through the Vardaloon. I had seen warriors, after months of siege and starvation, who had looked better than we did.
And so we spread out out furs on the soft sand and Maram gather driftwood for a fire. Kane, foraging farther down the beach for logs or bushes with which to fortify our camp, came upon many blue crabs trapped in a tide pool between two belts of sand. He gathered up a hundred of these strange-looking beasts in his cloak and brought them back for Liljana to cook. Master Juwain dug up some clams from the hardpack near the ocean, and these he presented to Liljana as well. She added them to the stew that she was already cooking in her pot. Many of the crabs, however, she saved to be roasted on spits over the fire. It seemed to take hours for her to prepare this unusual meal. But when; she had finished, all our mouths were watering. We sat around the fire cracking the crabs with stones and devouring the succulent meat. We mopped up the stew with some bread that Liljana made, and washed it all down with mugfuls of brown beer. In all my life, I had never had a finer feast.
The next morning, I awoke early to the harsh cries of seagulls fighting over the shells of the crabs. We spent a few hours in the shallows washing the blood from our clothing and bathing our wounded bodies. Master Juwain said that sea salt was good for mosquito bites and other hurts of the skin. The water was cold and rimed pur clothing, but we all welcomed its healing touch.
After that, we gathered on the beach and looked out across the ocean for the Sea People. All we saw, however, were sparkling waters broken only by waves. Master Juwain brought out his variste and pointed it at the rolling blue swells in the hope of sensing any kind of life. But all he found in the water were more crabs. Atara looked into her crystal sphere for a long time, but if she saw anything there resembling these mighty swimmers, she didn't say. Alphanderry took up his mandolet and sang to the sea in the sweetest of voices, but no one sang back.
'Ah, perhaps this isn't the Bay of Whales after all,' Maram said. 'Or perhaps the Sea People don't come here anymore.'
His words were as heavy as the sea itself. We stood staring out at the gleaming horizon as we thought about them. No one seemed to know what to do.
And then a strange look fell over Liljana's face. With great excitement, she began stripping off her still-moist tunic. When she had uncovered herself, she began walking quickly down toward the water. Modesty demanded that I look away from her, but I was afraid that her usual good sense had left her, for I felt in her an urge to swim far out into the surf. So I watched her dive into the breaking waves. She was a stocky woman, big-breasted with wide hips, and still quite strong for her years. She swam straight out to sea with measured strokes, and I marveled at her skill and power.
'Liljana, what are you doing?' Maram called to her. But the booming surf swept away his voice, and she seemed not to hear him. And so he turned to me and asked, 'Val – what is she doing?'
But I couldn't tell him. I could only watch as she swam farther out to sea.
'Ah, shouldn't you do something?' Maram asked me.
'What, then?'
'Swim after her!' I watched Liljana pulling and kicking at the water, and I slowy shook my head. In truth, I was a poor swimmer. It took all my courage even to jump into a mountain lake.
'But she'll drown!' Maram said.
Atara came up and smiled at him. 'Drown, hmmph! She seems as likely to drown as a fish.'
'But the ocean is dangerous,' Maram said 'Even for strong swim mers.'
'Then perhaps you should go after her.'
'I? I? Are you mad? I can't swim!'
'Neither can I,' Atara admitted.
And neither could any of us, I thought, swim as Liljana did. We all watched from the beach as she made her way far out past the line of the white-crested breakers.
And then Maram's puffy, mosquito-bitten face went as white as if another monster had drained him of blood. He pointed toward Liljana as two grayish fins suddenly cut the water near her, and he cried out, 'Sharks! Sharks! Oh, my Lord, she'll be eaten by sharks!'
In only a few more moments, as I drew in a deep breath and felt the hearts of my companions beating as quickly as mine, another ten or twelve fins appeared in a circle around liljana. They were closing on her quickly, like a noose around a neck.
And then, without warning, a bluish shape leaped straight out of the water only a few yards from Liljana and fell back in with a terrific splash. Two more broached the surface and blew out their breaths in steamy blasts while others raised their heads out of the water and began talking in a high-pitched, squeaking language stranger even than the songs that Alphanderry sang for us. They had long, pointed snouts that seemed cast in perpetual smiles, and Master Juwain called them dolphins. He said that once they had been the most numerous, if the least powerful, of the Sea People, For a long time, the dolphins swam near Liljana. They jumped out of the water, doing flips seemingly just for the fun of it. They nudged her with their noses and buoyed her up with their sleek, beautiful bodies. And all the while, they never stopped whistling and clicking and speaking to her. But what words of wisdom they imparted to her, none of us could tell.
After perhaps half an hour of such frolic, Liljana turned back toward the land. Two dolphins, one on either side of her, swam with her as far as the line of the breakers.
They appeared to watch as she caught herself up in a gathering wave and let it carry her a good way toward the beach. As Liljana stood up suddenly in the shallows and streams of water dripped from her olive skin and dark
