Corsair

Hulburgan warship. “All right, we’ll try again at dusk.” He mastered his disappointment and went back down to his cabin to get a few hours’ rest. He’d been awake for the better part of three nights running, and the time he’d spent unconscious in the cellar in Sulasspryn hardly counted as sleep.

A little before sunset, he roused himself and went back up on deck. Gray ramparts of cloud scudded along the horizon to the north, and the wind was growing stronger again. Geran had Galehand order all hands on deck, since he didn’t know what would happen if the compass worked, and he waited for the last orange gleam of daylight to fade in the south. Then he turned to Sarth. “Let’s try it now,” he said.

“You should remember, this is not my field of expertise,” the sorcerer replied. Sarth murmured arcane words and laid his hand on the surface of the compass. The pinpricks of starlight embedded in the crystal orb began to glow brighter and swirl slowly under his touch. Geran held his breath, watching intensely. Nothing else happened. Sarth frowned and tried a different incantation. That failed as well. Then he attempted a third, with a similar lack of effect. “I am sorry,” Sarth said. “There must be a specific incantation to address the device.”

Geran turned away and slammed one fist against the ship’s rail. “Damnation!” he snarled. Now what were they supposed to do? He’d assumed that the operation of the starry compass would be no obstacle, but it seemed that wasn’t the case.

“Wait!” said Hamil. “I forgot that I had this. Try the incantation from Narsk’s letter!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “It’s a little sodden from that swim in the harbor the other night, but you can still make out the words.”

Sarth took the paper and looked at the words. “Very well,” he said. “Perhaps the Red Wizards who gave Narsk the compass gave him this incantation to awaken it.” He laid his hand atop the compass again and read aloud from the damp paper. “Jhel ssar khimungon, jhel nurkhme thuul yasst ne mnor!”

Around the circumference of the device, ghostly white runes became visible. A tiny dot of white light appeared near the top of the compass. Geran could sense the arcane power of the device at work. A faint silvery sheen appeared around Seadrake’s deck and masts, like moonlight caught in mist, and the ship leaped swiftly over the wavetops. “I think it’s working this time!” he called to Sarth.

“You have the helm, Geran,” Sarth answered. “The compass should be answering to you.”

Geran nodded. He wondered how he was supposed to steer up. After all, there was no set of sail or rudder he knew of that would carry a ship aloft. But he hadn’t seen any special gear on Kraken Queen in the brief time he’d been alongside the Black Moon flagship, so he didn’t think he needed any. The device was magical; perhaps it answered to the helmsman’s voice or will.

Feeling a little foolish, he fixed his eyes on the compass and said aloud, “Ascend slowly.”

Whether it was the sound of his voice or his simple intent, the starry compass heard him and answered. Its pinprick lights glowed brighter, and Geran let out a startled exclamation as some unseen force began to push the deck up under his feet. From either side of the hull the silvery sheen playing over the deck extended into two ethereal wings, seemingly made of nothing more than stardust and moonlight. He heard the sudden rush of water under the hull, the ruffle of the confused wind in the sails, and the mix of curses, gasps, moans, and whoops from the crew. The bowsprit rose high into the sky, and the ship leaped clear of the Moonsea in a burst of white spray. Almost immediately she heeled over in the breeze, carrying far too much canvas aloft now that there was no longer the weight of her hull in her water to hold her upright. Geran automatically spun the wheel to turn straight downwind and correct the dangerous heel, and the ship answered to his direction easily even though the rudder had no water to bite into.

“We’re flying!” Hamil said with a laugh of delight. He leaned by the rail, one hand knotted in the shrouds as he looked over the side.

“Lord Geran, I’ll give ye every gold coin I own if ye’ll only set us down again,” Andurth Galehand answered. “It’s no’ right for a ship to behave in such a way!”

“We’ve more flying ahead of us, so you might as well learn to like it,” Geran told the sailing master. “I’ll hold her steady for a bit. Have the crew take us down to half-sail or less. I don’t think we need much canvas at all right now.”

The dwarf looked pale, but he nodded. “Aye, m’lord.” He turned and started shouting orders at the crew.

Geran looked at the compass and said, “Level now, and steady as she goes,” he said. The bowsprit dropped a bit, and the deck slowly leveled in front of him. Now they might be sailing along on a smooth, calm day-but the Moonsea was hundreds of feet below their keel. He realized that he could see quite a distance from their height. Off his port bow he could make out the distant peaks of the Galena Mountains, glimmering orange with the sunset above a mantle of clouds that blanketed their lower slopes. And on his starboard beam he could faintly make out the snowy slopes of the high Earthspurs, rising in the wild lands south of Mulmaster-the better part of a hundred and fifty miles off, if he was right in his reckoning.

“Amazing,” he murmured. He watched the crewhands taking in sail. When he was satisfied, he turned gently to run across the wind again. The ship heeled over, but much less than before; it was about the same as running across a stiff breeze in a waterborne vessel. “Ascend normally,” he said aloud. This time the bowsprit came up even higher, and the ship seemed to soar upward as she climbed. A glance over his shoulder at the Moonsea dropping away below convinced Geran that he wouldn’t ever need to order the ship to ascend at its best rate; he already felt as if he’d better hang on to the helm to make sure he didn’t fall over the sternrail. He was surprised to see a small wisp of cloud pass by beneath them.

“How high can we go?” he wondered. “The air grows thin and cold atop the highest mountains. If we sail into the high reaches of the sky, wouldn’t we encounter the same conditions?”

“What little I have read of voyaging in the Sea of Night suggests that we will,” Sarth said. “The aether above the world is too rare to breathe, but artifacts such as the compass or magical helms gather it closely about the vessel-or so I have read. I recommend a cautious ascent, so that we can turn back if I am mistaken.”

“A wise suggestion,” Geran agreed. He glanced again at the compass and saw that the symbols along its equator were glowing brightly. The skies were darkening overhead, and he could make out the first dim stars glittering in the sky. Symbols and stars … he smiled at his own thickheadedness. “The compass symbols are constellations!” he said to Sarth and Hamil. “Look, that one right in front of us, that’s the Swordsman,” he said, pointing at the compass. “And look where our bow is pointed-the Swordsman is rising right in front of us. And that one to the left of it, that must be the Phoenix.”

Sarth leaned close to inspect the compass. “I think you are right, Geran,” he said. “Terrestrial directions must become meaningless in the Sea of Night. With no north, no south, a voyager must find some other way to mark his course. The constellations keep their places in the sky as Toril turns beneath them.”

Seadrake continued to climb up through the twilight. Gale-hand peeked over the rail and quickly retreated with a sick look on his face. “Where are we bound?” he asked Geran. “Just how high d’you mean to sail?”

“That’s a good question,” Hamil said. “Where are we bound? I’d sort of hoped it might be obvious once we got aloft, but now I’m not so sure. Kraken Queen could be anywhere!”

Geran pondered the question for a moment. Narsk might have had some instruction from the Red Wizards in Mulmaster, but he doubted that Kamoth would have entrusted them with the location of his hidden isle. It was more likely that he’d told Narsk how to find his retreat beforehand. “Kamoth’s letters,” he murmured. He frowned and brought them to mind again. In the second letter there’d been a strange phrase, something he hadn’t understood at the time: Neshuldaar, the eleventh tear.

He focused on the starry compass, with its slowly turning constellations and bright pinpricks of light. “Show me the course to Neshuldaar,” he said to the device.

The small pinpoint of white light at the top of the compass abruptly moved and disappeared. It returned a moment later at the side of the compass, but this time it was a bright, six-pointed star, the brightest symbol visible in the device. Geran grinned and slowly turned the helm in that direction; the six-pointed star swung around like the needle of a lodestone until it rested in the center of the device, and there Geran steadied the helm. Their course seemed to lead a little to the right of the Swordsman.

“Look there,” Geran said to Hamil. He pointed at the flickering star. “That’s where we’re bound. Neshuldaar, whatever or wherever it might be.”

They were higher than the tallest mountain peaks now, and the world was passing into night below them.