King Vakurun's people grew poorer. Then, one by one, their outposts in the forest came under assault.
Dreadful tales were told: of a young warrior whose wife turned into a she-bear and devoured him; of children who had been stolen from their beds and later found drained of every ounce of blood. The third century of the Valdalonians' rule saw the gradual abandonment of towns along the Ardellan and the realm's other rivers. By the time of King Vakurun's father, King Vakurun said, his people had been reduced to eking out a living behind the walls of their original city.
'These have been bad times, the worst of times,' the King told us as we rode toward the river. 'But it's said that it's always darkest before the dawn. I pray that you'll find this lightstone that you seek. As I do that my people will someday fill all of Vardalon from the White Mountains to the sea.'
His people, I thought, could barely fill the single city that remained to them. Many of the houses about us seemed abandoned or had even fallen in upon themselves.
Aside from the few crops the Valdalonians pulled from the poor, sandy soil around their city and the hunting of the fur seals farther along the coast, they had little to sustain themselves. And so King Vakurun, early in his reign, had built a harbor in the hope of attracting the great ships that sailed the ocean to the south of the Elyssu and Nedu. From the pines that grew so abundantly nearby, his people had pressed forth pitch and turpentine with which to repair these ships. Thus they had been reduced from warriors to being caulkers and carpenters.
The two ships that he had told us about were still anchored at the harbor along the river's edge. Of course, to call four rickety docks sticking out into the river a harbor was something like calling a molehill a mountain. Still, I thought, the ships were impressive enough. One was a gailiot being fitted with new oars while the other Master Juwain called a bilander. This stout, two-masted ship had pulled into the harbor to take on a cargo of furs and was bound for Ivalo.
We rode our horses right down onto the dock to which it was tied. Then King Vakurun called for the captain to come down the gangplank and meet us. The dozen sailors who had stopped their work to look at us made way for him. Captain Kharald, as the King presented him, was a burly man dressed like the men he commanded in a wool shirt, wide black belt and bright blue pantaloons. He had the flaming red hair of a Surrapamer and eyes as green as the sea. His face, burnt red from years of sun and wind, was creased with many lines like an old piece of leather.
When he saw that the King intended us to take passage with him, it lit up with greed.
'Well it's a clear hundred and fifty leagues from here to Ivalo,' he said, looking us over. 'And there are seven of you and eleven horses, two of them heavily laden.'
The captain, I thought, was a man who liked numbers and sums -and calculating profit to the thinnest piece of silver.
Atara started to draw forth the leather purse of coins that she had won at dice in Tria. But King Vakurun stayed her hand with an unexpectedly regal look. To Captain Kharald, he said, 'These people have done us a great service, and it is our wish that they should have passage to wherever they wish. You may take the cost of this from the price of the furs that we have agreed upon.'
I started to protest this largesse, but a look from Liljana silenced me. I saw what she saw: that a king, to be a king, needed opportunities to display his generosity. I saw another thing as well. King Vakurun, it seemed, was only too happy to rid his realm of seven strangers who might prove to be even more dangerous than Meliadus.
After that, we thanked the King and set about boarding the ship. As I had feared, there was some trouble getting the horses up the gangplank and then down into the stables in the ship's hold. Altaru, especially, did not want to be taken down into this dank, darkish place. Three of the sailors assured me that they had shipped horses before, and tried to take his reins from me. This was a mistake. Altaru kicked out at them, missing their heads by inches and almost splintering the topsides above the deck. Captain Kharald's green eyes blazed like a dragon's as he inspected the divots that Altaru's iron-shod hooves had left in the wood. He said nothing, but I could almost hear him tallying up the damage and subtracting it from the price of the furs he would pay to King Vakurun. Finally, I took it upon myself to lead Altaru down the walkway into the hold. Atara and the others did the same with their horses. After making sure that their stables were clean and spread with fresh straw, we fed them oats from the ship's store and then went up to lay out our sleeping furs on the deck.
An hour later, with the ebbing of the tide and the night's first stars pointing our way west, the ship sailed out from the mouth of the Ardellan River into the Great Northern Ocean.
Chapter 26
There was a full moon that night, and it rose over a world that was nothing but water in all directions. Long past the time that I should have been sleeping with my companions back near the stern, I stood alone at the bow gripping the railing thire as I watched the ship splitting the waves of the moon-silvered sea. Sailing out of sight of the land terrified me. Merely looking out at the ocean threatened to drown me in its bright black vastness. To the south and west, east and north, I saw no bit of land upon which I could fix my gaze or hope of setting foot should a sudden storm take us under. My life, I realized, and those of my companions and everyone else aboard, was utterly tied to the fate of this rolling and pitching clump of wood that men had nailed together.
Captain Kharald had named his ship the Snowy Owl, and this gave me at least a little courage. Owls can see through the darkness, as could our red-bearded captain. He walked the deck for hours that first night of our voyage, now casting his eyes up at the wind-filled sails, now checking with the pilot who steered the ship to make sure that we held our course. This, I thought, he set by the stars. They were very bright that night. These millions of points of light streaked out of the black sky like diamond-tipped spears and almost outshone the moon itself. At no time in my life since I had climbed the mountains of my home had I felt so close to them.
I might have remained there all night gazing out into this unnerving splendor and smelling the salty spray of the sea. But then I heard steps behind me, and turned expecting to see Captain Kharald or one his crew of fifty sailors who worked the ship. Instead, a stranger stood limned in the moonlight. Or so I thought at first, for he wore neither the rough, wool shirt or pantaloons of Captain Kharald's men but rather a long traveling cloak with a deep hood that covered most of his face. And then he spoke, and I knew he was no stranger.
'Valashu Elahad,' he said, 'why are you trying to run from me?'
His voice was sweeter than Alphanderry's; when he threw back his hood, the moon's light fell across the most beautiful face I had ever seen His hair gleamed like gold, and his eyes were like twin suns pouring a golden tight into the darkness. Across the chest of his tunic, which was trimmed with black fur, there coiled a great, red dragon.
I tried not to look at him, but it seemed that my eyelids were pinned open as with nails. I tried not to listen to him, but his voice rose above the creaking of the ship's timbers and the howling wind: 'I know you murdered my son.'
I started to deny this, but then remembered that I mustn't speak to him at any cost, Morjin then reached out his finely-made hand and touched the scabbard where my broken sword was sheathed. He said, 'I told you that you would slay with this sword again, and so you have.'
'No,' I whispered, 'it was he who -'
'MY SON!' Morjin suddenly roared at me. So great was this shout that 1 thought the force of it might crack the ship's masts. And so terrible was the anguish in Morjin's voice that I was afraid it might crack me apart. 'My son,' Morjin said in softer tones that slid into me like silken knives. 'My only son.'
I threw my hands up over my ears to shut out his words. Finally, I managed to close my eyes and blind myself to the immense suffering I saw on his face.
But then Morjin touched my hands with his hands; he touched my forehead, pressing his finger against the scar there. And I heard his voice pealing out like silver chimes inside my mind; I saw his eyes seeking me out and looking where no man should look.
'The last time we met,' he said, 'we agreed that you must die. But now that you have murdered Meliadus, you must die a thousand times. Shall I show you these deaths?'
Without waiting for me to answer, his hand lashed out, catching me full in the chest.
The force of this blow was so great that it propelled me over the railing, and I fell through black space. And then 1 plunged into the even vaster blackness of the sea. I sank into the churning waves like a stone. I gasped for
