“I will buy the ships we need,” Kyroun told Muldure when they met at the encampment the Seer had established for his followers. “Almovaar will protect us on our voyage. And when word of your feat of seamanship spreads across the world, those who now disdain you will speak your name in tones of wonder.”
“You say your god can get a ship to this lost land,” Muldure said. “Can he bring us back here?”
“Do you really want to come back here?” Kyroun countered.
Muldure considered. He believed Kyroun was a madman and his proposed voyage an invitation to suicide. Yet without a deck under his feet and a tiller in his hands, he might as well be dead anyway.
Pel Muldure accepted Kyroun’s offer. He had nothing to lose. Neither did the crews he assembled for the two ships Kyroun’s gold bought. Some of them were old friends, such as Lyann, who had suffered for their loyalty to him; others were dockside drifters and miscreants who, like him, were unable to find other employment.
When the ships, the White Gull and the Swordfish, set sail from Fiadol’s crowded harbor, the other captains provided a derisive sendoff. “Voyage of fools,” they called the venture. They did not expect to see either Muldure or the Almovaads again.
Months passed before the White Gull and Swordfish came within sight of the Sea of Storms. At first, it appeared as a faint gray smudge stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. Day by day it grew, consuming the sky as the Almovaads drew closer, the Seer sailing in the White Gull, the Swordfish trailing in its wake. Then the storm engulfed them, and the thaumaturgy Kyroun had learned from the Yaghans was put to its ultimate test.
He constructed a protective barrier around both ships, an unseen shield strong enough to prevent the warring elements of wind and water from wreaking their havoc. At the same time, he conjured a ghost-wind that propelled the White Gull and Swordfish forward, ever forward, in the direction in which old maps indicated Matile lay.
To perform either task would have been a remarkable feat of sorcery. To do both simultaneously, unceasingly – the Almovaads’ awe of their Seer increased ten-fold. Even the ship’s crew – of whom only a few had become Believers – began to respect him as the days in the storm passed.
More than that, they began to fear him ....
Still, Kyroun was only mortal, a flesh-and blood conduit through which the power of Almovaar flowed. Soon enough, the conduit corroded. Kyroun’s weakening was imperceptible at first. However, as the days in the storm dragged into weeks, the strain on the Seer became more noticeable. And the disquiet among Believers and non-Believers alike grew with each buffet of wind and wave against the ship’s hulls.
When the last of Kyroun’s strength ebbed away, the thwarted elementals lashed at the White Gull and Swordfish with a vengeful fury, nearly tearing both ships apart. But Kyroun managed to summon a final gust of ghost-wind that pushed the White Gull out of the storm, even as he and the others who remained alive lost consciousness. But he did not have enough strength left to save the Swordfish. The Elven woman had been on that ship. Kyroun had preferred that she sail with him, but she had insisted on a different arrangement, and he had not argued with her. Now, she was lost, as were all the others on the doomed ship.
But he could not regret that loss. He could not do anything more as the White Gull drifted with the tide until it struck the docks of Khambawe.
“And now I am home,” Kyroun said, ending his story.
He then released the hands of Gebrem and Tiyana, and the In-Seeing came to an end.
CHAPTER NINE
Contemplations
1
The original surfaces of the rooms, halls and chambers of the Gebbi Senafa had not been visible for centuries. Layer upon layer of paint, gilding, sculptures, tapestries and furnishings had provided a thick patina of opulence to the interior of the palace. And this was only the latest of the royal dwellings, an earlier one having been abandoned long ago.
In only one small room of the Gebbi Senafa did the walls remain bare of ornamentation. Unlike the other rooms of the palace, this one had no formal designation. Its sole function was to serve as a sanctum for Matile monarchs at times when they needed solitude.
Dardar Agaw, the Emperor who had salvaged the remnants of the Matile Mala at the end of the Storm Wars, had been the one who set aside this austere chamber. According to his writings, which his successors had studied with varying degrees of diligence, Agaw had needed a place in which he could be free, even for a short time, from the entreaties and machinations of his courtiers and advisers. The tactic had proven successful for Agaw, at least in terms of his reign as Emperor. History credited him with preventing a complete collapse of the Matile people in the wake of the disaster that had befallen them.
Now, Dardar Alemeyu was the one who sat on Agaw’s plain, granite bench – the only furnishing his predecessor had permitted in the chamber. The decision Alemeyu pondered was not nearly as momentous as the ones with which his distant ancestor had been burdened. Agaw’s meditations had shaped the future of the Matile. Alemeyu’s task was only to consider the fate of the Fidi.
The room in which he sat was small, little more than a cubicle. Its walls were made of granite slabs, featureless save for scratch marks that were all that remained of the decorations Dardar Agaw had ordered to be removed. The overall effect of the chamber was more reminiscent of a prison cell than an Emperor’s refuge. But sometimes, Agaw
