“Perhaps!” Wigg answered, every fiber of his being trying to summon yet more power into the speeding the litter. “But I’m nearly exhausted! If we crash into the azure water, no one knows what will become of us!”
As another sharp bend approached, Tristan considered Wigg’s warning. The subtle matter was important, he decided, but it wasn’t worth their lives.
“Then put the litter down alongside the wreck, if you must!” he shouted.
Still trying to keep the subtle matter in view, Wigg nodded, then threw the litter around another sharp bend, nearly driving the litter into the rock wall on the left-hand side. Then came another quick series of sharp turns. During the third turn, the right leading corner of the litter struck the rock wall, smashing part of the litter to bits. Most of the litter’s right side suddenly gave way and tumbled into the azure water with a great splash. As Wigg desperately negotiated the next few blind turns while also trying to keep up speed, the damaged litter rocked sickeningly, threatening to throw everyone from its meager safety and into the sea.
As the litter rounded the next bend, the sidewalls started to narrow dangerously, adding another threat to the pursuers’ plight. Then they were suddenly around the bend and chasing down another length of straight channel. As the litter carried them along above the waves, Wigg, Tristan and Tyranny finally saw the shipwreck in the distance. Looking farther, they saw something else-something disheartening and totally unexpected.
They were fast approaching a dead end.
Like the channel walls, the rocky edifice at the channel’s end rose straight up out of the sea. Its craggy surfaces reached all the way to the radiance stones lining the channel ceiling, and it stretched from one side to the other, leaving no option but to stop the litter in midair. As Wigg slowed the litter, Tristan scanned the wall. He could find no cracks or caves in it, telling him that their journey to Shashida had reached an abrupt and unsuccessful end. Tristan and Tyranny looked around for the subtle matter that had led them here, but it had vanished.
Using his last bit of energy, Wigg gently set the litter down atop the huge rock ledge in the right-hand channel wall. The litter was dwarfed by the ledge and the great wrecked ship that lay on it. As the three passengers left the wrecked litter, the two hundred armed Minions finally reached this strange place. At a hand signal from Tristan they drew their dreggans and landed warily atop the rocky shelf.
Tristan gave Wigg a sad look. “It seems that this is where our dream ends,” he said. “I had such hopes…”
“You’re right,” Tyranny said. “We can do nothing but go back. If Khristos still waits for us on the far shore, we will have to fight our way out of the Caves.”
“So it would seem.” Wigg replied. “But for now let us finish what we came here to do.” As Wigg turned to look at the great wrecked ship, so did Tristan, Tyranny, and the hundreds of warriors.
Despite her ravaged condition, the vessel remained magnificent. Easily the size of theTammerland, she rested on her port side, just as the young Night Witch had reported. Her hull seemed cannibalized, as though her hull ribs and timbers had been chewed on by some great unknown beast. In some places, parts of her ribs still arched away from her gunwales like wizened fingers. Broken masts and sail spars lay everywhere atop the rocky ledge, and battered and torn sailcloth draped her topside like dingy burial shrouds.
Like those of theTammerland and theEphyra, her timbers were dark as night. Seeing such a once magnificent vessel looking as if it had been fed upon by some ravenous creature was an eerie feeling. As the wind blew through her wooden bones it whistled hauntingly, as if trying to warn the audacious visitors to flee before they too came under the spell of whatever had done this terrible deed.
Tristan walked to the wreck and reached up to touch one of the few remaining hull ribs. Ashen flakes loosened from it to drift away on the channel breeze. Hoping to find more clues to the ship’s history, he led Wigg and Tyranny on a long walk down her side and toward her stern. An elaborately carved plaque affixed to her stern readIntrepidus.
“Is that Old Eutracian?” he asked Wigg.
The wizard nodded. “In our modern tongue, she would be known as theIntrepid. ”
“She is easily as large as theTammerland, and she shows similar lines,” Tristan said. “I think that she was built from the same plans that you and the Directorate members used so long ago to build your fleet against the Coven. Could she have been one of yours?”
Wigg shook his head. “No,” he answered. “We had no Black Ship by this name-although her name could have been changed, I suppose. But I agree that she is much like theTammerland and theEphyra. ”
“You’re right.” Tyranny agreed. “But who built her? And how did she come to be wrecked on this ledge?”
Wigg pursed his lips. “There are two possibilities,” he answered. “Either some great force threw the ship here, or her crew purposely beached her.”
“Why would they beach her?” Tristan asked. “They could simply have reversed course.”
“Perhaps they didn’t have the chance,” Tyranny offered. “If they were being chased by something, they mightn’t have had that luxury. One doesn’t exactly turn these great ships quickly. Besides, the dead end meant that they couldn’t go on.”
“Well said,” Wigg replied. “But there might be another answer as well.”
“Such as…?” Tyranny asked.
Raising one arm, Wigg called the craft to send a narrow azure beam against one of the few remaining hull ribs. He held the beam in place for a time, then moved it back and forth with a sawing motion. Soon an end of the rib fell to the rocky ledge.
The three visitors and a host of curious Minions walked nearer. Nodding, the First Wizard pointed at the smooth end of the rib. To everyone else’s surprise, its freshly exposed interior glowed brightly with the distinctive hue of the craft.
“So the spells used to strengthen theIntrepidus remain in place,” Tristan said. “That’s surprising after all this time, but it doesn’t explain your other reason why she might have been deliberately beached.”
Wigg lifted an eyebrow. “Doesn’t it?” he asked. “I suggest you think again.”
Tyranny grasped the frightening possibility before Tristan. “It’s because of the azure water in the channel!” she exclaimed. “What we feared might happen to our ships happened to this one! The water seeped into theIntrepidus ’ hull and destroyed it little by little! That’s why it looks like it’s been eaten away!”
Wigg nodded. “It would explain a great many things,” he said. “And if this is truly what happened to theIntrepidus, the future doesn’t bode well for theTammerland and theEphyra. ”
“But we can fly our ships back,” Tristan argued. “With any luck, we won’t have to put down in the water again.”
“True,” Wigg answered. “But for all we know, theIntrepidus was in the water for no longer than were our ships-perhaps less. If this is what happened, I suspect that the damage is insidious, eating the wood from the inside out. And if that’s true, then by the time the damage is seen it might already be too late.”
“That could be what happened,” Tristan agreed. “But it still doesn’t explain how she came to be beached this way.”
“As Tyranny said, if they were being chased and they encountered this dead end they might have had no choice but to set her down on this rocky shelf,” Wigg replied. “In any event they would have done everything in their power not to set her back down on the water. But when they landed her on the ledge, her rotting hull gave way and she rolled over on her port side, marooning her here forever. If her crew was being chased, they might all have been killed. If not, they probably starved to death.”
“A precious Black Ship and her gallant crew, all lost,” Tristan mused. “What a terrible waste.”
Wigg placed his hands into opposite robe sleeves, then cast his discerning gaze up the side of the great vessel that lay there like some monstrous beached whale.
“Don’t be so quick to mourn either this ship or her crew,” Wigg replied quietly.
“What do you mean?” Tristan asked.
“Although theIntrepidus was likely built and skippered by mystics, who’s to say that they were Vigors practitioners?” the First Wizard asked.
“Do you have reason to believe that this ship was manned by Vagaries worshippers?” Tyranny asked.
“Unknown,” Wigg answered. “But the possibility seems equally likely.”
“All of which raises other questions,” Tyranny said. “What freed the subtle matter? Or did it somehow free itself? Why did it lead us here, and where is it now?”
Tristan took a quick look around but could see no trace of the beautiful material that had a mind all its own.
