Passage to Dawn

the time.

'Twenty footer!' the young man called back down, for from his high vantage point, he could make out the shadow of the great fish.

All of the crew came on deck, yelling excitedly, taking up harpoons. Any thoughts they might have had of spearing the fish dissolved into understandable fear, though, as Waillan continued to call down numbers, as they all came to realize that the shark was not alone. The counts varied-many of the dorsal fins were hard to spot amidst the suddenly churning water-but Waillan's estimate, undoubtedly the most accurate, put the school at several hundred.

Several hundred! And many of them were nearly as large as the one Drizzt had spotted. Words of excitement were fast replaced by prayers.

The shark school stayed with the Sea Sprite throughout the day and night. Deudermont figured that the sharks did not know what to make of the vessel, and though no one spoke the words, all were thinking along the same lines, hoping that the voracious fish didn't mistake the Sea Sprite for a running whale.

The next morning, the sharks were gone, as suddenly and inexplicably as they had come. Drizzt spent the better part of the morning walking the rails of the ship, even climbing up the mainmast to the crow's nest a few times. The sharks were gone, just gone.

'They're not answering to us,' Catti-brie remarked late that morning, meeting Drizzt as he came down the mast from one of his skyward jaunts. 'Never that. Suren they're moving in ways they know, but we cannot.'

It struck Drizzt as a simple truth, a plain reminder of how unknown the world about him really was, even to those, like Deudermont, who had spent the bulk of their lives on the sea. This watery world, and the great creatures that inhabited it, moved to rhythms that he could never truly understand. That realization, along with the fact that the horizon from every angle was nothing but flat water, reminded Drizzt of how small they really were, of how overwhelming nature could be.

For all his training, for all his fine weapons, for all his warrior heart, the ranger was a tiny thing, a mere speck on a blue-green tapestry.

Drizzt found that notion unsettling and comforting all at once. He was a small thing, an insignificant thing, a single swallow to the fish that had easily paced the Sea Sprite. And yet, he was a part of something much bigger, a single tile on a mosaic much huger than his imagination could even comprehend.

He draped an arm comfortably across Catti-brie's shoulder, connected himself to the tile that complimented his own, and she leaned against him.

*****

The winds picked up the next day, and the schooner rushed on, to the applause of every crewman. Robillard's mirth disappeared soon after, though. The wizard had spells to tell of impending weather, and he informed Deudermont that the new winds were the forerunners of a substantial storm.

What could they do? There were no ports nearby, no land at all, and so Deudermont ordered everything battened down as much as was possible.

What followed was among the worst nights of Catti-brie's life. It was as bad as any storm anyone aboard the schooner had ever suffered. Deudermont and the forty crewmen huddled belowdecks as the Sea Sprite rode out the storm, the long and slender ship tossing about wildly, nearly going over more than once.

Robillard and Harkle worked frantically. Robillard was on the deck for most of the storm, sometimes having to take cover below and view the deck through a magical, disembodied eye. All the while, he enacted spells to try and counter the fierce winds. Harkle, with Guenhwyvar and a handful of crewmen beside him, scrambled about on all fours in the lowest hold, dodging rats and shifting crates of foodstuff as they inspected the hull. The Harpell had a spell to keep the area well lit, and others that could enlarge wood to seal cracks. The crewmen carried tarred lengths of rope that they hammered in between any leaking boards.

Catti-brie was too sick to move-so were many others. The tossing got so bad at one point that many of the crew had to tie themselves down to stop from bouncing off the walls or crushing each other. Poor Dunkin got the worst of it. In one particularly bad roll, the small man, reaching at the time for an offered length of rope, went flying head over heels and slammed into a beam so violently that he dislocated a shoulder and broke his wrist.

There was no sleep that night aboard the Sea Sprite.

The ship was listing badly to port the next morning, but she was still afloat and the storm had passed without a single loss of life. The crew, those who were able, worked through the morning, trying to get up a single sail.

About midday, Catti-brie called down from the crow's nest, reporting that the air was alive with birds to the north and west. Deudermont breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had feared that the storm had blown them off course and that they would not be able to recover in time to put in at the Gull Rocks, the last charted islands on the way to Caerwich. As it was, they were well to the south of their intended course, and had to work frantically, particularly poor Robillard and Harkle. Both of the wizards had bluish bags under their eyes that showed their exhaustion from both the physical and magical strain.

Somehow, the Sea Sprite managed to veer enough to get to the rocks. The place was aptly named. The Gull Rocks were no more than a series of barren stones, most smaller than the Sea Sprite, many large enough for only two or three men to stand upon. A couple of the rocks were substantial, one nearly a mile across, but even these large ones were more white than gray, thick with guano. As the Sea Sprite neared the cluster, thousands and thousands of seagulls, a veritable cloud of them, fluttered in the air all about her, squawking angrily at the intrusion to this, their private domain.

Deudermont found a little inlet where the water was more calm, where repairs could be done in peace, and where each of the crew could take turns off of the ship, to calm their churning stomachs, if nothing else.

Later on that day, at the highest point on the Gull Rocks, perhaps fifty feet above sea level, Deudermont stood with Drizzt and Catti-brie. The Captain was looking south using the spyglass, though he obviously expected to find nothing but flat water.

It had taken them nearly two weeks to cover the five hundred miles from the westernmost spur of the Moonshaes to the Gull Rocks, nearly double the time Deudermont had expected. Still, the captain remained confident that the provisions would hold and they would find their way to Caerwich. Nothing much had been said about the island since the Sea Sprite had put out of Wyngate. Nothing openly, at least, for Drizzt had overheard the nervous whispers of many of the crew, talk of ghosts and the like.

'Five hundred behind us and five hundred to go,' Deudermont said, the spyglass to his eye and his gaze to the south and west. 'There is an island not far south of here where we might gain more provisions.'

'Do we need them?' Drizzt asked.

'Not if make good speed to Caerwich, and good speed on the return,' Deudermont replied.

'What're ye thinking then?' Catti-brie asked.

'I grow weary of delays, and weary of the journey,' Deudermont replied.

'That's because yer fearin' what's at its end,' Catti-brie reasoned bluntly. 'Who's for knowin' what we'll find in Caerwich, if even there is a Caerwich?'

'She's out there,' the captain insisted.

'We can always stop at this other island on our return,' Drizzt offered. 'Certainly we've enough provisions to get to Caerwich.'

Deudermont nodded. They would make straight for Caerwich then, the last leg of their journey out. The captain knew the stars-that was all he would have available to take him from the Gull Rocks to Caerwich. He hoped that the map Tarnheel had provided was accurate.

He hoped that Caerwich truly existed.

And still, a part of him hoped that it did not.

Chapter 9 CAERWICH