Drowning ....
Muldure grinned ruefully, reflecting on how grotesquely a dream could magnify a few drops of water. In response, the dark woman’s smile broadened, and she appeared to relax. Then Muldure spoke to her, expressing in a single word the question foremost on his mind. It was a word that was not to be found in his own language, but one that had started him on his voyage through the Sea of Storms.
“Ma-teel?” he said in a tentative tone.
The smile on the woman’s lips abruptly changed to a gaping circle of surprise. Had she not shot out a hand to balance herself, she would have toppled backward onto the deck. As it was, water splashed out of the vessel she was holding.
Before either she or Muldure could react further, a loud laugh cut through the air. Muldure turned his head and his gaze met a familiar pair of eyes: sky-blue beneath a tousled mass of yellow hair cut raggedly to shoulder length. The face in which the eyes were set was heart-shaped, with an upturned nose and a generous mouth. It was not a beautiful face, but it was not a plain one, either.
Her name was Lyann, and she was Muldure’s first mate on the White Gull, the finest ship ever to sail from the docks of Angless, chief port of Fiadol. But then, in Muldure’s opinion, all the ships he had ever helmed had been the best for a time – until ill-fortune took command away from him.
“About time you made it back the land of the living, Captain,” Lyann said. Her bantering tone couldn’t quite mask an underlying sense of relief.
Muldure could only nod; his throat felt as though he had swallowed sandpaper, and it seemed that every muscle in his body was being hit with hammers.
Hands on breeches-clad hips, Lyann looked down at him. Above-average in height, her lean body had been hardened by nearly a decade of life at sea. Her tanned skin had not yet acquired the leathery look of a longtime seafarer. The time when it would, however, would not be much longer in arriving.
The wooden buttons of her white linen shirt were undone and its tails were knotted over her flat, smooth-muscled stomach. The scabbard belted at her side was, like his, empty. But Muldure was still too disoriented to worry much about being weaponless in a strange land.
Still grinning, Lyann made a drinking motion with one hand. For a moment, Muldure was puzzled. Then he realized her gesture had not been directed toward him.
In response to Lyann’s signal, the dark woman at Muldure’s side, having recovered her composure, offered him water in a black earthenware cup. He took the cup in his hands, raised it to his lips, and drank. The water was cool and sweet, as though flavored with fruit. It soon smoothed the roughness in his throat.
He smiled his thanks to the woman. She spoke to him in a torrent of syllables that meant nothing to him. Even though he couldn’t understand her, though, the reaction she showed when he spoke the word “Ma-teel” told him all he needed to know.
Against overwhelming odds, the White Gull had arrived at its improbable destination ... Ma-teel, the almost-mythical Land Beyond the Sun, a place that over the centuries had become more legendary than real after all contact with it had been mysteriously lost.
“You plan on getting up anytime soon, or do you intend to spend the rest of your life sitting on your arse?” Lyann demanded, breaking into his thoughts.
“I’ll get up,” Muldure said. “No telling what might happen to this ship with you in charge.”
Lyann laughed. Then she extended her hand. Muldure took it, and with her help he made it to his feet. As he stood, dizziness assailed him, and every bruise on his body throbbed in painful protest. He willed some stiffness into his legs and managed to remain upright.
He was only a few inches taller than Lyann, with a frame spare and sinewy as whipcord. Endurance, not size, was his strong suit. He could outwork and outfight sea-dogs twice his size and half his age, and outsmart the rest. A thick, drooping black mustache framed his mouth. Only the thinning black hair pulled back from his forehead and his rough, permanently-browned skin betrayed the many years he had spent on ships that sailed from the Ice Isles to the Moondragon Sea, working his way up from cabin-boy to captain at an age younger than most.
And then he had worked his way back down again ... and back up ... and back down, a cycle he seemed doomed to repeat itself until he died.
Muldure’s heart sank as he surveyed the deck and realized the extent of the damage the White Gull had sustained. Broken planking; holes in the hull; stone dockwork piercing the bow; a web of ropes securing the ship to the wharf – at first, and second, and even third glance, the ship appeared to be beyond any hope of salvaging.
And the condition of its passengers and crew was only slightly more heartening. Some were on their feet and moving about, and when they saw him they waved and called out greetings, which he returned. Others lay injured, tended and fed by dark-skinned men and women – Ma-teel – like the one who had given him water. Still others – far too many others – were simply ... gone. He did not have to speculate on the significance of their absence.
Muldure also noticed that, as always, the Almovaads – the Believers – had separated themselves from the ship’s crew. He scowled for a moment. He had never thought the Believers were his betters, although he was certain many of them were convinced otherwise. Now, after nearly going to the bottom of the sea, where differences in belief and station meant nothing, here they were, keeping themselves apart
