Prophet of Moonshae

along the next stretch of the march to the Moonwell.

The light of dawn barely penetrated the rainy shore of Salmon Bay. The city of Gnarhelm bustled, however, with lanterns and torches sputtering in the dampness. Crates and barrels, plus a cluster of humanity, occupied the dock and the longship moored beside it.

Brandon directed his crew with precision, and the loading of provisions into the Gullwing was quickly completed. The prince had selected some sixty warriors for the voyage, with Knaff the Elder to man the helm. The firbolgs Yak, Loinwrap, and Beaknod willingly joined the crew. Alicia, Tavish, and Keane would also accompany them. Brandon had found it necessary to roughly overrule some superstitious grumbling from men who feared the presence of the women would bring bad luck.

'Well, I'm ready for a little salt air,' announced Tavish, winking at Alicia. The bard busily tuned her harp while the pair boarded the vessel and stood near the stern.

The princess frowned, irritated. 'Still, they let the firbolgs sail without complaint! I'm annoyed that it took an order to get them to accept you and me!'

'We're here, anyway-and who knows, maybe they would have done us a favor by leaving us behind,' replied the bard in that confounded good humor. 'Perhaps there's something else that's bothering you.'

The princess sighed, casting a look at the commanding figure of the Prince of Gnarhelm. 'Aye, Auntie, indeed there is. He probably assumes I agree with his 'proposal' because I haven't said anything. Proposal? It sounded like he was talking about a diplomatic treaty!'

'Relax, child,' Tavish noted, her eyes glimmering with amusement. 'It probably hasn't occurred to him yet that you have anything to say about the matter.'

'He'll find out otherwise when this is all over,' the princess noted grimly.

Keane, his expression glum, climbed over the gunwale and took a seat beside the mast. Quickly the crew scrambled aboard. Alicia avoided Brandon by going to sit beside the mage as the young prince ordered his men to oars and rigging. She knew, however, that sooner or later she and Brandon would be forced into proximity. She found that her anger over his arrogant proposal had soothed somewhat, but she didn't want to risk conversation on the topic until their mission was concluded.

The ebbing tide carried them silently away from the dock, where the king and many other bearded captains and warriors watched solemnly. The oars dipped in smooth cadence, propelling the sleek vessel through the choppy waters of the bay.

After a time, Tavish strummed a tentative chord on her harp, and then another. In a few minutes, her fingers began to bounce about the strings, and powerful music filled the air. Yet, the princess knew, it was more than music flowing from the unadorned instrument. Indeed, a feeling of celebration and joy surrounded the ship.

The bard herself looked surprised as the sounds of power rang through the Gullwing.

'The harp from Cymrych Hugh,' murmured Keane.

'An artifact of magic,' Alicia agreed.

'In the hands of one who can work its sorcery very well.'

The crewmen, hearts swelled by the song, strained at their oars. The longship raced across the bay, easily breasting the high waves that indicated the nearness of the open sea.

As soon as the Gullwing passed beyond the sheltered waters of Salmon Bay, the relentless and powerful Sea of Moonshae began its assault. The storm winds of Talos heaved against the surf, and rain swept from the skies, backed by the force of a developing gale.

'Can you make headway in this weather?' Alicia asked of Brandon, who had come to stand beside her at the mast. Above them, the sail remained furled, while the oarsmen strained at their benches. In the stern, Tavish still played, and the music gave the men strength.

'It's no worse than any summer storm,' he reassured her, but she detected something in the narrow set of his eyes.

'But it's not just any storm, is it?'

The prince met her eyes shrewdly. 'You sense it, too, then?' he asked.

'There's a power behind it that seeks to thwart us-that much I can feel. But what power? And can we prevail?'

Brandon nodded his head slowly. 'The Gullwing is the finest ship in Gnarhelm, and I've picked the most able crew. If the force of the gale doesn't increase, I'm confident.'

'And if it does?'

'We'll make our prayers to Valkur the Mighty and sail all the harder!' he exclaimed. Alicia sensed little bravado but much determination in the northman's words.

Alicia looked at the expanse of surging sea and wished for a moment that she had faith enough in some deity to allow her to pray. Though she remembered the sudden vitality of the Moonwell, that transformation seemed remote and irrelevant now. It hadn't changed her life; she had seen no further evidence that the goddess was a real presence in the world. She shivered and looked at the twin silver bracers spiraling about her forearms. The metal chilled her skin uncomfortably.

Keane joined her, catching himself on the mast to keep his balance in the pitching, rolling hull. The mage came from the gunwale, where he had just deposited the remnants of their previous evening's dinner over the side. His thin face was cast in a sickly shade of green, but Keane had impressed Alicia by his lack of complaint thus far into the voyage.

'I've always enjoyed a pleasant cruise on a sheltered sea,' he informed them, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his chagrin.

'Splendid sailing weather!' boomed Brandon, clapping the slim Ffolkman on the back, a gesture which almost sent Keane lurching back to the rail.

Despite the northman's heartiness, which seemed somewhat forced to the princess, even Alicia's unpracticed eye could see that the swells grew higher and higher as they pressed toward the south. Gray mountains of water loomed over the bow, seemingly ready to swamp the craft, yet somehow the sleek figurehead rose into each precipitous crest and carried the ship smoothly to the top.

There the Gullwing teetered on the breaking summit, white water foaming all around them, and then she tipped forward to careen with dizzying velocity into the trough between the heaving swells. Though the vessel stretched nearly a hundred feet in length, the waves rose or lowered her as if she were a mere cork bobbing in the brine.

'Stroke, you fainthearted wretches!' called Knaff from his position at the stern. The oarsmen redoubled their efforts, and Alicia saw the old warrior turn and bark something to Tavish, who sat beside him. His words were inaudible over the pounding of the sea, but the princess heard the music of the bard's harp, louder than ever, fill the ship with renewed strength and determination.

A gray wall of water rose suddenly, and tons of the icy sea poured over the bow, soaking Alicia and the others as it thundered the length of the hull. The ship wallowed and slowed, growing sluggish, as yet another, higher, wave loomed before the sea gull figurehead.

All the northmen not straining at the oars seized buckets and frantically started bailing the water over the side. Alicia joined them, while Keane clung to the mast, his teeth clenched, his greenish cheeks taut with determination.

The mage fumbled in his pouch as the wave began to break, reaching with greedy fingers of foam to embrace the craft as the vessel nearly foundered. Keane finally removed that which he sought-two tiny squares of crystal. He raised them, pinched between his fingers, as the water crashed downward toward the open hull of the Gullwing.

'Dividius! Arcani-tuloth!' He cried the enchantment as the crew bailed and Brandon looked fiercely upward at the angry spume that threatened to doom his ship.

Keane shattered the two crystals with a snap of his fingers, and abruptly, magically, the frothing barrier parted before the Gullwing's prow. A trough appeared, slicing as if a knife divided the great wave, and the longship slipped through while the swell collapsed into a maelstrom on either side.

Brandon turned to regard the passenger, his face a mask of shock, but Keane took no notice. Instead he stared forward, where gray swells-all of them capped with angry caps of foam-stretched to the far horizon.