Chapter Nine
For five days they saw nothing but rough seas; the iron green waters rising and falling around them like a range of wild and constantly changing hills. Rain lashed the sails while lightning arced down to discharge itself into the water. Through all of this the Llothriall remained the one calm point, the deck remaining steady beneath their feet.
The ship sighed and sang as it made its way through the maelstrom. The magic that flowed through the Llothriall warmed it so that the temperature on board felt always like a balmy summer afternoon. On top of the subtle incense-like scent of the warm timbers was a stronger odour, like the musk of an ancient book or bales of perfumed cloth.
Kelos had told them that each strand of magic had its own particular smell and that sometimes they combined to produce heady, otherworldly scents. Ioannis was of the opinion that these otherworldly scents were more to do with the strange weed that Father Maylan was in the habit of smoking.
On the sixth day the sea calmed a little and Dunsany postulated that they had broken through the Storm Wall, the first vessel manned by humans ever to have done so.
That evening they celebrated and Ioannis introduced them all to a variety of sea shanties that Katya was grateful her child was not yet born to hear. The drinking would have continued well beyond the point where the majority of them were comfortably drunk, had not Dunsany pointed out that they probably didn't want to exhaust their supplies this early into the voyage.
And so, the crew offered their goodnights. The only one not to do so was Emuel, who had retired long before.
In their cabin Silus admired Katya as she slept, impressed that she had managed to hold court with as much elan as the drunken men who surrounded her. He kissed her as she sighed in her sleep, she didn't need drink to be witty or to be persuaded into song. Silus watched her for a moment more before leaving the cabin.
On the main deck the wheel held steady, set to a course that Dunsany and Kelos had decided between them. The boards of the deck steamed slightly as the recent rains dried and Silus enjoyed the touch of this gentle mist as he lay down.
Kerberos seemed to hang lower and larger in the sky than usual and he wondered whether the seas they were traversing would prove to be a path to the seat of the ancestors. (Father Maylan had told him that all paths lead to Kerberos, but Silus didn't fully understand what he meant). Taking a telescope from a pocket he trained it on the azure orb and watched the play of clouds that covered its surface. He wondered how many times he had sent entreaties into those impenetrable vapours. How many times had he asked a blessing of the ancestors who resided there, or cursed the unknowable sphere for some imagined bad luck or malady?
Silus put the telescope down and closed his eyes. Below him, the deck pitched gently and, for the first time during the voyage, he felt calm, though always there was the fear that the Chadassa would find them.
The susurrus of the sea and the touch of a gentle wind conspired with the alcohol in his blood to take him into sleep, and he gave up consciousness gladly.
He was falling towards an endless sea of clouds. On the horizon the first rays of a rising run sent shards of light across the slowly evolving landscape below. Flickering tongues of lightning erupted from hills of vapour, heavy with the threat of thunder while clouds parted to open up on great amethyst pools, their depths endless and hungry.
Far above him hung a blue-green sphere and he knew that it was from there that he had fallen.
He drifted down into the purple sea and the clouds parted only briefly to mark his passage.
He had no way of measuring the speed of his descent. On all sides he was surrounded by slowly rolling thunderheads, skeins of mist and great valleys and peaks that constantly shifted and changed.
A shadow passed him and he saw that there were other travellers in the storm.
He noted the look of serenity on the faces of those that fell past, arms outstretched, before they faded from view. Others rode the columns of cloud that boiled up from the depths below. He recognised one man, rocketing towards him, as Pandrick, the owner of The Necromancer's Barge. Windmilling his arms, he managed to get out of the way before Pandrick collided with him. He shouted a greeting to the publican, but any response that he may have called was eaten by the howling winds.
He only had a moment to consider what lay below him, on the other side of the clouds, before he was through and he saw for himself.
Silus was thrown out of sleep, across the deck and into the side of a locker as the Llothriall came to a sudden halt.
He struggled to regain his breath as, with a clatter of footsteps, the crew rushed up from below.
'I though that you said nothing could stop this ship.' Jacquinto shouted.
'Yes, well I wasn't counting on running into the tip of a bloody great spire out on the open seas now was I?' Dunsany snapped.
Nursing the large bruise that was beginning to blossom on the small of his back, Silus got to his feet and joined them at the prow of the ship.
There, rising above the masts, was a tapering column of stone. Looking over the side of the ship Silus could see a ragged hole where they had collided with it.
'Bail! Now!' He shouted, starting to move. But Kelos put a hand out to stop him.
'No Silus. The Llothriall will provide for herself. Look.'
Silus followed the direction of Kelos's pointed finger and saw a membrane forming over the hole. With a wet pop it quickly closed up, re-sealing the ship.
'In time she'll even grow a new skin of wood. Now, what do we have here?' Kelos said, the excitement of discovery evident in his voice.
Silus began to relax as he realised that they weren't about to sink and he took in the strange vista before them.
The structure that they had run into was just one of a ring of six towers, rising from the waves. Gulls called to each other as they swooped around the delicate spires or nested in niches in the columns of brightly marbled stone. None of the towers rose any taller than the one which had stopped the Llothriall, though several were grander in design. Intricate carvings had been wrought into three of them. From where Silus stood it was difficult to make out many details, but on one he thought that he could see the design of a figure riding a whale, surrounded by smaller creatures that may have been mermaids.
'Gods, what is it?' Katya said, joining them.
Silus slipped a hand into hers and with the other he shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun.
'It looks like the towers of a cathedral or castle.' He said. 'But who would have built such a thing out here?'
'Not the Chadassa?' Katya said, her grip on Silus's hand tightening.
'I don't think so,' Dunsany said. 'If it was I'd expect them to be swarming all over us by now.'
There were starting to drift away from the towers and Dunsany signalled to Jacquinto to secure the ship. He scurried up the foremast with a rope, Ignacio in his wake, while Ioannis shouted guidance from below. With a dexterity and grace that Silus would not have expected of such weathered brutes they managed to loop the rope over the stone column before pulling the ship in close.
'Well I told you that we'd discover something soon enough didn't I?' Kelos said. 'Ah, Emuel, you're awake. What do you make of this?'
The ship's eunuch emerged from below deck, looking so pale that he positively glowed, the tattoos that marked his face and hands standing out starkly against his flesh. He looked at the circle of gull-covered stone, his hands idly toying with the hem of his robe.
'The towers of a cathedral perhaps?' He said.
'Which means that there must be more to see below.' Dunsany said.
'Emuel are you okay?' Katya said, noticing the perspiration that beaded the eunuch's forehead.
'Oh, don't worry about him,' Ignacio said. 'He always looks like that. He'll be pining for the Faith.'
'I… I had an unpleasant dream. I'll be okay.'
Katya put a hand to Emuel's forehead. The flesh there was hot and clammy.
