Western Shore

CHAPTER NINE

How fast is this current carrying us along? How much faster is this ship moving thanks to Velindre's magic? Why is there no wind? Is this more of her magic? Perhaps not. There are glassy seas in the central domains. Risala has crossed the windless reach between the northernmost Archipelagan isles and the seas that lap the unbroken lands. The fickleness of wind is why we Aldabreshi have always trusted in triremes and mocked becalmed barbarians.

He surveyed the sea, flat and calm all around. Without wind to swell the canvas, the Zaise's sails were furled, yet the ship sped on through the water. Kheda threw out his line and leaned over the rail to watch the hooks disappear in the curls of white water trailing alongside the Zaise. 'Risala, if I ever complain about sailer pottage again, remind me how much I dislike eating nothing but fish.'

'It's going to be plain fish if we don't make landfall soon.' Risala knelt next to him, gutting a silvery handful. 'We've nearly used up all the herbs.'

'There's some sailer grain left.' His flesh-and-bone foot tucked under the knee of his half-crooked steel leg, Naldeth sat baiting a line of viciously barbed hooks with rancid duck meat wriggling with indefatigable maggots. His northern features and plait of lank barbarian hair still looked incongruous above the cottons of an Aldabreshin slave.

'And we have all the fresh water we need.' Velindre spread her hands over the barrel lashed to the stern mast and the seawater briefly shimmered bluer than the sky

above. She frowned and a battered leather bucket emptied itself to wash the slime and fish blood from the deck planking.

'Have you managed to scry out this isle yet?' Kheda scowled. 'The Lesser Moon has gone right round the heavens, darkened and brightened again—'

'What have you tried by way of additions to your scrying water?' Naldeth looked up from his noisome task. 'Inks or oils?'

'When I need a fire mage's advice about a water spell, I'll be sure to ask you.' Velindre looked out past the prow. 'I can feel the currents of the ocean meeting some land not too far ahead. And it resonates with elemental vigour.'

'Do you suppose the confluence of elements is what attracted the dragon?' A maggot wriggled unheeded between Naldeth's finger and thumb. 'Or that the dragon somehow drew the elements together?'

How much longer before we learn something to justify my making this voyage? All I have done so far is enjoy the peace and calm of days without anyone making demands on me. Was it the prospect of such freedom that seduced me into agreeing to come, at least in part, even if I didn't realise it at the time?

Kheda wished briefly for a thin mantle to wear over his faded grey tunic and trousers. These seas were palpably cooler than Archipelagan waters. 'How much further?'

'I'm not entirely sure.' A frown deepened the fine creases around Velindre's hazel eyes. 'There's considerable turmoil ahead.'

'A storm?' Risala asked with some alarm.

'No.' Velindre shook her head confidently before frowning again. 'I'm not sure what it is.'

Kheda looked up from his taut fishing line. 'Before we get any closer, I want you to scry for Itrac. I want to be

sure that she and the children are thriving before we risk any unknown peril.'

'As you command, my lord.' There was no malice in Velindre's quip. She spread her hands over the barrel again and vivid green radiance dripped from her lingers into the water.

'You can do this without that necklace now?' Kheda moved to look into the vision the magewoman was summoning.

Velindre shrugged. 'Magic's like most skills - the more practised you are, the more effective you become.'

'A fact the Council and Archmages of Hadrumal are remarkably disinclined to make widely known, even among the mageborn.' Unblinking, Naldeth studied Velindre with a hint of envy hardening his undistinguished features. 'Your touch with water magic these days is truly remarkable for a mage with an air affinity. You learned more than I realized from Azazir.'

'If I'd ever imagined the toll his obsession had taken on his sanity and humanity, I'd never have gone near him.' There was a brief flash of anger in Velindre's eyes.

Anger and fear. Fear of the power you saw or of what you might become, if you let yourself go down that path? But if you hadn 't gone to find this wizard, be he mad or sane, we'd never have had his knowledge of dragons to help us free Chazen.

Kheda concentrated on the image in the scrying spell. He was surprised to see Itrac seated in the west-facing hall of the observatory tower. Books were strewn across the table and she was deep in conversation with Jevin. The slave stood just behind her, one hand on her purple-draped shoulder. Itrac smiled at something and looked further down the room to a rug surrounded with cushions where Touai's daughters were laughing and playing with the baby girls.

Who's reading the heavens for you, Itrac? Are you comforted to see the Diamond, talisman for warlords, riding in the arc of marriage with the Horned Fish and the Opal? Are you wearing amethyst silks and jewels as the Greater Moon rises to its full to promote truth in your dreams of me, as the Amethyst rides with the Spear that's token of a man's valour in defence of his family and home?

While in truth I'm just idling away my days and spending my nights in Risala's arms, as if I have no more onerous responsibilities than pleasuring us both. I can't even fool myself that some shift of the heavens tells me I deserve such an interlude after all the trials I've undergone.

'She looks as well as ever and little Olkai and Sekni are plainly thriving.' Velindre snapped her fingers and the vision shifted. 'There are an admirable number of trading ships in the lagoon and no sign of any unrest.' The spell sped around the islets so fast it left Kheda dizzy. 'Does that suffice or do you want me to search the sea lanes as well?'

'If you please,' Kheda said shortly. The reflections in the water dissolved into a meaningless blur as he let his thoughts wander.

Itrac looks well, but is she commanding respect through the domain and among our neighbours? Should I have Velindre send me back to Chazen? But we've come this far.

'Has no Archipelagan ever thought of building a real sailing boat?' Not for the first time on this interminable voyage, Naldeth's thoughts had drifted away on a new tangent. 'A tall ship like those that sail the eastern ocean, out beyond Tormalin and the Cape of Winds?'

'I don't know.' Kheda shook his head. 'I don't know anything about barbarian boats.'

'Triremes and galleys are far better suited to Archipelagan waters.' Risala looked up from scraping another fish's innards into the scrap bucket.

'An ocean ship would find anything but the wider sea lanes of the outermost domains a real trial,' agreed Velindre, 'given the way the winds sheer around the islands.'

'So why not still build ocean ships for those outer reaches?' Naldeth demanded.

'Because no one sees the need.' Kheda leaned against the ship's rail.

Naldeth sighed with exasperation. 'Has it never occurred to any Archipelagan that the barbarians might know something useful?'

'Archipelagahs rarely consider barbarians at all,' Risala pointed out, 'unless we're looking to trade for metals we lack or things like pine resins.'

'Most of our seers say our peoples are like oil and water.' Kheda yielded to a mischievous impulse. 'That we're fated never to mix.'

'You can mix oil and water - or vinegar, come to that,' argued Naldeth. 'If you add spice ground to a really fine powder. You people make sharp sauces that way.'

'Which goes to prove philosophers rarely tell the whole story,' Kheda replied without rancour.

Naldeth waved a slimy hand towards Velindre. 'Everyone thinks she's part-barbarian and no one cares.'

'They think I'm an Archipelagan who happens to have barbarian blood in her - or rather, his - recent ancestry.' Velindre's gaze out beyond the prow didn't waver. 'That's quite a different matter. There are some who will assume that's why I was made zamorin, to cut out that barbarian bloodline. If they bother to think about it all,' she mused. 'Anyone dealing with me is only concerned with who I am in the here and now. My past is my own affair, like my future.'

'I thought the Aldabreshi see time like that star circle of Kheda's,' retorted Naldeth. 'Always chasing its own tail.'

'It's true that the more self-referential aspects of Archipelagan thinking are influenced by Aldabreshin concepts of time,' Velindre said thoughtfully as she fitted the lid back onto the water cask. 'The cyclical nature of the heavenly compass can mean an omen seen a hundred or more years ago can be significant today or a hundred years hence. But in essence Archipelagan time is a constant entirety, a perpetual present.'

'Do barbarians even have records going back a hundred years?' Kheda challenged.

'We do.' Naldeth took up this new discussion with relish. 'But we see those days as left in the dust of the trail behind us. We look to our next step on the path, on the way to something new and better. You've been building triremes in the same way for generations. Every mainland shipwright is searching for some way to improve his craft. Your seers and sages tread the same circles as those who've gone before them, reinterpreting the same stars and omens. Kvery mainland philosopher is looking for new ways of thinking, towards a more rational understanding of the world.'

'A man who looks inward might come to a better understanding of himself, and his place within the world.' Kheda looked over at Velindre. 'Are you mages all climbing this endless ladder towards some greater understanding?'

'Climbing it and treading on each other's fingers in our haste to be first to reach some new nuance of elemental knowledge,' she said caustically.

' I thought you enjoyed sailing the Archipelago because of the lack of questions, Naldeth,' Risala remarked slyly. 'You've said how restful it must be knowing your place in life and having everyone else know it just as clearly.'

It's certainly a welcome relief from the exacting expec-tations of some of our more competitive colleagues,' Velindre agreed.

'You've not stayed in the place you were born to.' The young wizard turned to Risala. 'Shek Kul was your warlord, wasn't he, in a northerly domain?'

'He's a just and powerful warlord who keeps his people in peace and prosperity, as his father did before him.' Risala scraped blood from a gutted fish's backbone. 'They don't have to ask where their next meal is coming from or if some rival warlord's triremes are about to seize their island. They're happy for their lives to follow the same course year after year.'

'But you weren't?' Naldeth persisted.

'The stars marked out a different path for me,' Risala said sunnily. 'We're not all going round in circles.'

'So you became a poet?' Naldeth looked for Risala's nod of confirmation. 'And a spy.'

'Confidential envoy,' Risala corrected him with a grin.

'A new role where you nevertheless trade on the fact that people in the domains you visit will just see the poet and satisfy themselves with all the assumptions that go with such an occupation,' Velindre mused.

'Whose side are you on in this argument?' Kheda wondered.

'I wasn't aware we were taking sides,' the magewoman replied serenely.

Risala looked at Kheda with a smile that melted his heart.

You're the one person mho sees me for who I truly am in all this confusion that has overwhelmed my life. You 're the one person who doesn't burden me with expectation or assumption. But will you ever accept that I cannot believe in omens any more?

'I'll wager Aldabreshin seers and barbarian philosophers share the ability to tire the sun with their talking.' Kheda walked across the deck to pick up the bucket of fish guts beside Risala, bending to kiss the top of her head before dumping the rank contents over the rail. 'Do you really

have no idea how far it is to our destination, Velindre?' Keeping tight hold of the rope tied to the bucket, he let it fall into the sea to rinse itself before he hauled it up again full of clean water.

Risala came to stand beside him and began scrubbing fish blood and slime off her hands. She stopped, mouth open. 'Kheda, look—'

'A bird.' Kheda narrowed his eyes to make out this newcomer more clearly. 'And not another zaise.'

It was considerably smaller than the great white wanderers and more solidly built, akin to the coral gulls of the long-distant Archipelago. Not so closely akin, though. It had dark-brown undersides to its wings and a mottled belly as well as rusty-red legs. As it came closer, squawking on a rising note, Kheda saw a vicious downward hook to the point of its beak. It dived into the residue of fish guts floating on the water.

Velindre came to join them. 'It seems to think it's at least half-fish.'

In the clear seas, they could all see the strange gull folding its wings close to its body to undulate through the waters more like a fish than a bird.

'I don't want to hook that.' Kheda hastily dumped the bucket on the deck and began pulling in his fishing line hand over hand.

'A bad omen?' Naldeth bent to rinse his own hands in the bucket of seawater.

'Did you see that beak?' Kheda retorted. 'Would you like to try getting close enough to beat out its brains and pull the hook out of its gullet?'

He dumped the tangle of line on the deck and looked Up from his task to see Velindre hurrying up the ladder to the stern platform. 'That's no ocean bird,' she called over her shoulder. 'We must be closer to land than I thought.'

Risala grinned at Kheda. 'You can take the foremast.'

'Thank you,' he said with a grimace. 'Stow those fish, Naldeth. We don't want to lose our supper if that bird's a scavenger.'

The boat's calm passage made climbing the ladder-like ratlines to the top of the mast easy enough, though Kheda still did his best not to glance down. The deck seemed all too narrow and all too far below him, surrounded by far too much sea for him to fall into.

Though presumably Velindre would catch me.

He braced himself in the rigging and looked out to the west and to the north. On the far horizon he could see a billowing drift of white cloud.

'What can you see?' Naldeth was pacing the deck in frustration, his rocking, stiff-legged gait setting the bucket of fish swinging alarmingly.

'Clouds caught by high ground,' Risala called out from the aft mast. 'There's land ahead.'

The curious gull or one very like it swooped past Kheda, startling him with its rising cry. Choking back a curse, he pressed himself against the knotted ropes.

'Loose the sails.' Some breath of magic brought Velindre's calm words clearly to his ear amid a rush of newly summoned wind.

Kheda did so as quickly as possible and made his way back down the ladder of ropes with a treacherous tremor in his arms and legs.

We Aldabreshin have the sense to stick to oars and square-rigged sails that you can manage from deck. Only mad barbarians would risk climbing up and down masts in ocean seas.

Risala met him on deck. 'Shall we keep watch from the prow?' The rising breeze tousled her black hair and tugged at the hem of her loose blue tunic.

'Let's.' Kheda nodded amid the flap and creak of the newly liberated canvas.

The ship rose and fell beneath their feet as it had not done for days on end. Velindre's magic scorned the natural indolence of the air and lashed it into motion. Glimmers of sapphire blue threaded through the lively gusts filling the Zaise's sails, as the ship left the windless seas and the strange current that had carried them this far. The ocean swells grew taller again, blunt billows rising and falling and edged with the barest lacing of spume.

Kheda held on to the ship's rail with both hands, Risala safe between his arms. The white bank of cloud on the horizon waited motionless as the Zaise soared over the dull blue waters towards it. Kheda felt the chill wind teasing his wiry brown hair.

Naldeth came up beside them, peering straight up into the sky.

'Have you seen some more birds?' Kheda squinted upwards too.

'I thought I'd keep an eye out for dragons,' the mage said slowly.

'Look.' Risala pointed down into the water.

'A tree branch.' Kheda's heart pounded with absurd relief. 'We're definitely approaching land. Though that's not from any kind of tree that I recognise,' he added doubtfully.

'Do you want a closer look?' Naldeth raised a ready hand glowing with ruddy magelight as the branch floated away.

'No.' Kheda concentrated on the clouds ahead, piling high into solid white banks reminiscent of those above the fire mountains and scarps of higher ground on the larger islands within the Archipelago.

Almost imperceptibly, the sea took on a greener hue, and here and there they spotted drifts of weed. More gulls appeared like the first, and other smaller creamy birds with pale-blue heads and darker wingtips, diving after unseen prey. A squabbling trio floated past perched

on another sodden tree branch, heedless of the rise and fall of the ocean.

Kheda studied the fluffy fragments torn from the misty bulk growing closer on the horizon. It was strange to see clouds scudding towards them while the wind pressed his tunic to his back. He bent to speak into Risala's ear over the noisy rush of water beneath the prow. 'I want to talk to Velindre.' She nodded and he made his way back along the unsteady deck.

Velindre's eyes were bright as she directed the steering oars with one hand and twisted the easterly wind to her bidding with the other. 'What can you see?'

'There's all manner of detritus in the water.' Kheda paused half-way up the ladder. 'Are you sure there hasn't been some storm in these reaches?'

'No.' The magewoman was adamant. 'Whatever this elemental coil is, it's not a storm.'

'As soon as you know what it is, let me know.' Kheda slipped back down the steps and returned to the prow.

Dark smudges appeared on the horizon below the swelling white clouds. It still took an age to reach the islands, even with Velindre summoning all the elemental air within reach. She abandoned concealment and the Zaise\ sails crackled with azure radiance. The wind blew scraps of magelight away to fall into the foaming wake, glittering briefly before the water snuffed them. The waters were turbid now, choked with sand swirling away in patterns drawn by submerged currents. Weed and broken trees thudded against the Zaise's hull and Kheda was glad of the double planking at stem and stern.

'This reminds me of the days after a whirlwind struck Shek waters, when I was still apprenticed to Gedut,' Risala commented speculatively. 'He composed a poem about it.'

'Velindre says she sensed no storm.' Kheda drew Risala

back with him. 'Let's see what we can see from the stern platform.'

The land ahead was breaking into a chain of dark islets riven by narrow channels.

If there are wizards or even dragons, I want to be beside a mage I've seen calling lightning out of a clear sky and bringing down a dragon with a rival beast of her own creation.

Risala hesitated. 'You'll keep watch, Naldeth, so we don't run aground on anything?'

'Yes, of course.' The young wizard's eyes were unfocused. 'There's a peculiar tangle of elements here,' he breathed.

Disquiet prickled down Kheda's backbone as he hurried the length of the ship, Risala's hand in his. 'Velindre—' he began as he climbed the steps after Risala.

'Naldeth's enjoying a rush of blood to his affinity, I take it?' Velindre sounded amused. More to the point, as far as Kheda was concerned, she was clear-eyed and wholly composed. 'There's been wild fire magic at work here.'

'How recently?' demanded Kheda.

'It's difficult to tell,' Velindre said thoughtfully. 'Long enough ago for storms to have doused it pretty thoroughly.'

'There's nothing that could set your cargo alight?' he persisted. 'If Naldeth hasn't got his wits about him, we could burn to the waterline.'

'I'd say not,' Velindre replied, offhand.

Kheda wasn't overly reassured.

Could whatever accursed enchantment is rousing Naldeth's wizardry stir that dragon's egg down in the hold? Why did Velindre bring it here?

Kheda chewed his lip as they sailed on and dark rocks rose up on either side of the Zaise in the fading light towards the day's end. A few of the blue-headed

gulls hopped insouciantly along invisibly narrow ledges, chattering among themselves.

'Can you see anything?' Kheda scanned the broken facets of dull brown stone that seemed to absorb the sinking sun's glow rather than reflect it.

'Nothing bigger than a bird.' Risala was keeping alert watch on the far side of the stern platform.

Velindre gestured at the masts and the sails drew themselves back to the spars to be lashed tight by snaking ropes. 'Let's have as clear a view as possible.'

Kheda's disquiet grew as the channel narrowed and they sailed into shadows the setting sun did not penetrate. The waters grew dark and forbidding, a rank odour floating over the surface.

'What's the draught of this hull?' he asked dubiously.

'I'll know to within a finger's width of water if we can sail on or not,' Velindre assured him.

Kheda looked down over the stern platform's side, the magewoman's confidence notwithstanding. The water was stained dark with rotting vegetation hanging in clumps stirred by their passage. Stirred but not washed away. He realised what he was seeing. 'There are trees under this water.'

Risala looked around, puzzled. 'Is this a river in flood?'

'No.' The magewoman looked thoughtful. 'This is salt water, not fresh.'

Naldeth came hurrying back from the prow, his false foot loud on the planks. 'This isn't a channel between two islands.' He climbed deftly up the ladder, scarlet magelight bright in the joints of his steel leg. 'This used to be a valley. This whole expanse of land just sank.'

'How?' Kheda looked from the young wizard to Velindre.

She chewed her chapped lower lip. 'I've really no idea.'

'Let's find out,' Naldeth urged impatiently.

The Zaise slid silently over the drowned trees. The

channel or valley, whichever it was, turned an abrupt corner around a shattered cliff where a steep scree tumbled into dark shadows. The sky opened up above them as the heights retreated on either side. A long expanse of sluggish water stretched ahead to a sloping shore rising out of the lapping sea. Dead trees bristled with split and broken branches. Those closest to the water were stripped of all branches and bark to leave bare spikes jutting up from muddy ground that reeked of decay. The Zaise slowly advanced, faint blue magic shimmering like marsh light around her. Something grated along the underside of the hull.

'Velindre?' Alarmed, Kheda couldn't help himself.

'I told you, I can gauge the depth of the water beneath us,' she reminded him. 'And whatever happened here happened long since.'

Kheda surveyed the desolation. 'Did magic do this?'

Naldeth shook his head. 'I've no idea.'

Something dropped into the water with a plop that echoed around the valley.

'There.' Risala pointed at ripples in the murky water.

A blunt scaly snout caught the light. A lizard as long as Kheda's arm was swimming across the drowned valley. It reached a dead tree and climbed rapidly up it. Pot-bellied and short-tailed with sprawling legs, its stubby toes were tipped with needle claws that dug deep into the lifeless wood. A ridged red crest ran down its back.

'That's no beast I know,' said Kheda.

'There's no magic to it.' Naldeth sounded disappointed.

Odd angularities among the stubs of a handful of storm blasted trees caught Kheda's eye. 'What's over there?'

The air shone oddly around Velindre's eyes. 'Something was built in the trees,' she said slowly.

'So there were people here.' Kheda searched the shore with new intensity, his hand going to his belt knife. He remembered his weapons stowed unheeded down below. 'Risala, fetch my swords for me, please.'

'Are these people still here?' She didn't wait for an answer, dropping down the ladder and disappearing into the stern cabin.

'You won't need those.' Naldeth turned in a slow circle, one hand raised with a scarlet flame dancing on his palm.

'These wild mages can sense some new wizard working his magic in their territory,' Kheda rebuked him.

'Then they can learn who they're dealing with,' retorted Naldeth, his flame flaring.

'If there was anyone here to be drawn by magic, we'd have seen them by now.' Velindre waved at the sapphire magelight glistening on the Zaise's rails. 'All I'm sensing is the echo of old enchantments among the elemental chaos.'

'Do you remember how fast a dragon can appear?' Kheda challenged.

The boat's blunt prow nosed through the clouded water. As they drew nearer to the muddy shore, they saw that a platform of lashed logs had been fixed into notches gouged deep into the trunks of the stricken trees. Walls of woven twigs were broken and splintered, any roofing long since torn away.

Kheda looked beyond the makeshift building to piles of debris cast up by successive storms. 'Those are the hollowed logs the savages use for boats.'

'The wild men who came to plague the Archipelago lived here?' Risala climbed up the stern ladder and handed Kheda his swords. 'They fled this disaster and came to steal our lands and we killed them.'

'Did we kill them all?' Irresistible hope rose in Kheda's chest. All the same, he doubled his sword belt around his

hips and thrust the scabbarded blades securely between the overlapping loops.

The Zaise slid sideways through the water to brush up against a mottled grey trunk with a few remaining scabs of black bark. They could all see the ragged marks where the heartwood had been gouged out of the log with crude tools and rough points had been shaped at each end.

'What were they fleeing?' Naldeth sounded disappointed. 'The dragon? Do you think it pursued them?'

'As best we can tell, they were expecting it to follow them,' Velindre reminded him.

'It was only the wizards and their warriors who came to attack us.' Risala gazed around the eerie valley. 'We never saw any women or children or elders. Perhaps they stayed behind.'

Kheda joined her in scanning the barren slopes. 'To die here, without their men or magic to sustain them.'

Have we come all this way for nothing?

Somewhere a bird screeched and drilled into a tree with a resonant burr that shattered the silence.

'But what happened?' Naldeth persisted. 'What about the dragon? Did it live here before it followed the wild men to Chazen?'

'I think we should investigate a little further,' Velindre concurred and the Zaise obediently eased away from the dead trees. The ship retreated slowly back along the bright reflection of the cloud-strewn sky between the dark waters mirroring the sombre heights on either side.

Kheda looked up. 'Dusk comes later and more slowly in these reaches but we don't have much daylight left.'

'I can give you all the light you want,' Naldeth saidscornfully.

'Setting a beacon to draw anyone or anything that might be curious about us?' challenged Kheda.

'Let's just see what we can before dark.' Velindre guided the Zaise deftly down a different channel, the barest suggestion of a summoned breeze stirring her hair.

Naldeth watched the muted ripples of the ship's wake spreading behind them. 'Your studies with Azazir certainly paid off.'

'I wouldn't call it studying with him.' Velindre gave the young wizard a mordant look. 'And he's an object lesson to us all as to what can happen when you become entranced by your own affinity.'

Kheda saw Naldeth acknowledge that caution with a meek nod.

Velindre isn 't going to discuss this Azazir with you, boy, accept it. Dev said he had been banished by the other wizards as a danger to any who came near him. Yet she went to find him because he was the only one who knew the secret of weaving a false dragon out of summoned magic. How many wizards die in their quests for learning?

'This place isn't quite as dead as it looks.' Risala came to stand beside Kheda and pointed to the edge of the cliff looming above them.

As Kheda looked up to see a tracery of twisted stems tufted with leaves outlined against the sky, a cloud of pink and grey birds erupted from niches in the rocks. Their whistling cries filled the air as an eagle, or something akin, soared overhead, claws splayed. Circling, it stooped and dived to snatch something from the water in a flurry of spray. It climbed into the sky with powerful strokes of black-and-white-banded wings, pointed tail feathers sharp as shears. A long fish, brown as the decaying leaves, writhed in its grip, trailing silver drops of water.

'That would be an omen,' Risala said with a shiver. 'If we were looking for such things,' she added quietly with a hint of foreboding.

'We're looking for any sign of savages who were left

behind.' Kheda peered keenly around as the Zaise emerged into a wider channel. 'Or some clue as to what became of them.'

'Velindre, over there.' Naldeth suddenly pointed to a larger lump of land some way off rising steeply out of the water to a peak high enough to snare a skein of mist. 'There's something . . .' His words trailed away into uncertainty.

'Was this land or sea?' Kheda studied the black waters on either side of the boat.

'Does it matter?' Velindre was peering at the peak ahead, eyes narrowed. 'Naldeth, what do you sense in that cloud?'

'Ash and steam,' the youthful wizard said slowly as they drifted closer. 'That's a fire mountain.'

'We're safe enough as long as it's breathing white smoke.' Kheda searched the plume for any hint of the grey that presaged catastrophe. He caught Naldeth's slight surprise. 'There are plenty of records of the omens seen around fire mountains erupting in the Archipelago.'

'I shall have to look them up when we get back.' The wizard grinned.

'Is it safe to go any closer?' Risala was looking at the strange seas ahead. Ridges of greenish water were surging up from the depths, breaking in ragged trails of white foam.

'For the present.' Velindre was unconcerned as the Zaise rocked erratically in the confused seas. 'This is just the currents fighting their way through new paths in the deep.'

'There's fire in the deep as well,' Naldeth said suddenly, 'in the rocks underneath the sea.'

They crossed the uneasy channel and the waters abruptly stilled. Now they were close enough to see the full strangeness of the island ahead. The peak was riven from top to bottom, with a wide central cleft belching

out the pale cloud that streamed away over the mastheads. Below the sheer drop of the uppermost rocks, molten stone had congealed in ungainly twists and lumps, sparkling with incongruous beauty here and there as the sinking sun struck some glassy facet. A paler flow overlaid a lifeless black slurry disappearing into the water. The grey column of cooled stone was contorted like a tree crippled by a strangling vine, dividing to thrust rootlike tendrils into the sea, sharp and spiky where they had been brutally snapped off.

'This is close enough.' Velindre waved a hand and a cloud of green magelight gathered around the ship's hull, drawing them away from the waters sucking ominously around the ugly margin of the shattered rocks. They drifted slowly past the cliff, the cloven rock sharp as a knife edge.

'How long ago did this happen?' Kheda asked. 'How many storm seasons does it take to blunt something like that?'

'This wasn't just one cataclysm.' Naldeth gazed at the mottled rocks. 'I would say the trouble began a couple of years ago. There would have been earth tremors and lesser eruptions to begin with.'

'Then the land began sinking and the seas encroached further with each passing season.' Velindre looked back to the drowned valleys. 'So men and beasts alike moved into the heights.'

'Then the final eruption shattered these islands,' muttered Naldeth, keen eyes searching intently among the fissures and bulges.

'So the wild men came to Chazen.' Risala nodded her understanding. 'Looking for somewhere safer to live.'

'But the dragon stayed here for nearly a full year more.' Kheda studied the shore now coming into view. 'Did it do this?'

The long, smooth slope of this side of the island was a striking contrast to the destruction of its other face. It looked no more inviting, though. A thick forest of mighty trees had been laid low, like sailer stems slashed with a scythe. Barely a handful were still standing, down by the shallow curve of the beach, white and skeletal amid a choking layer of ash and boulders. The only hint of colour ran along the high-water mark where the brown decay of storm-tossed branches was valiantly nourishing a fringe of feeble grasses, a few tufts of sturdy cane and even an unknown infant tree.

'I can't think why a dragon would destroy its home,' Naldeth said dubiously. 'And it would have liked it here. The elemental fires of the mountain would have buoyed up its magic'

'Until they broke loose.' Velindre turned the Zaise broadside to the beach.

'The people fled first and finally things got too hot even for a fire dragon.' Kheda looked back across the trackless ocean towards the Archipelago. 'So it followed them.'

'But what happened to the women and children?' Risala wondered. 'They didn't come with the wild wizards and their warriors.'

No one could answer her as they sailed slowly past the pallid landscape. Velindre guided the Zaise towards a bulging crag thrusting out to sea. The ripples running outwards from the ship's blunt prow washed against the pale rock, staining it black. The stone was pocked with broken edged holes, some overlapping, some deep enough to swallow a man whole. Further up, long furrows had been gouged into the once-molten ridges.

'This wasn't caused by the fire that came up out of the earth to destroy the mountain.' Naldeth sounded pleased. 'Magic's been at work here - though long since, I'm afraid.

But this wasn't caused by a fire dragon, either. An earth dragon must have been drawn to the eruption.'

'You're sure?' Kheda regretted the words as soon as he'd said them.

'Believe me,' said Naldeth sardonically. 'My fire affinity has given me a sympathy with earth magic. Once I got back to Hadrumal after my . .. mishap, I spent a year and a half studying with one of the finest stone masters that element has ever imbued. He said -' and Kheda got the distinct impression the young mage was quoting this unknown wizard precisely '- "You may as well do something more constructive with your time than stare at that empty metal foot of yours and imagine you can feel your toes."'

'The fire dragon would have fought to defend its territory,' mused Velindre. 'I wonder if their feral magic stirred up the fire mountain.'

'I'd say it was more likely the other way round,' Naldeth demurred.

'You're sure it's gone, this earth dragon?' Kheda glanced up to reassure himself that the cloud rising from the narrow peak was still blandly white.

'Yes,' the young mage said slowly. 'Though this is still a very strange place as far as the elements are concerned.'

'Where did it go?' Risala shared Kheda's concern. 'We'd have heard if any other dragon had come to the Archipelago.'

'The news would have run the length and breadth of the domains,' Kheda agreed.

'There are plenty of places in the northern mainland where dragons could find a focus of elemental power.' Velindre shrugged. 'And hide themselves from anyone wishing them ill.'

As if anyone other than a mage could threaten a dragon with the slightest harm.

Kheda held his tongue as the ship rounded the bulbous headland to find a narrow cove clogged with the floating stone that erupting fire mountains threw up into the air and Aldabreshin seers prized for its contrary nature. But these were not the fist-sized pieces that traders offered in the Archipelago. Slabs of the frothy rock as thick as a man's arm was long bobbed in the slack water.

Tree roots and stumps were caught up with the jostling stones, dark and waterlogged yet kept afloat by the strange rock. Paler shards lay atop some of the uncanny rafts, yellow as old bone. Kheda looked more closely. It was bone. He saw sallow lengths knobbed at each end and the shattered fan of a ribcage. The stained bones were dry and free from flesh and there was no smell of putrefaction.

Countless animals must have been killed when the mountain exploded. No wonder there are still plenty of birds here. The scavengers must have feasted till they couldn't fly.

Then he saw the smooth dome of a skull, empty eye sockets vacant, lower jaw gone. Now he knew what he was looking at, his eyes were irresistibly drawn to a ghastly grin just beyond, a smashed brow above the stained teeth.

He found his voice. 'This is what happened to the women and elders.'

'And the children.' Risala pressed her hands to her face, eyes rimmed with white as she stared at a fragile broken skull amid a mess of tiny bones.

'With all the animals dead, and all the people too, there was nothing for the dragon to eat.' Velindre strove to keep her words dispassionate but her voice shook nevertheless.

Kheda looked at the uncanny, macabre scene.

Can this really be the end to it all, after this long voyage and all its apprehension?

'Their mountains were burning and their land was drowning. They had some way of living with one dragon but a second came to fight it.' There was an odd strained

note in Risala's voice as she turned her back on the charnel cove. 'The men and their mages sailed off on their logs and rafts, heading east into unknown waters full of sea serpents and whales and all manner of sharks. Did they know how far they would have to go to find somewhere safe? Did they even know the Archipelago lay out there? And the women and children and the old men and women waited and waited, but no one came back because they all died in the fight for Chazen. So everyone here died as well when the mountain exploded.'

We didn 't know. We didn 't know who they were or why they had come. They attacked us with fire and spears and magic and showed us no mercy. We didn't start the fight. All we did was defend ourselves and our own.

Kheda turned around, but any attempt at words to comfort her died on his lips. There was no more land on this side of the fire island. The eerie waters lapping this drowned domain yielded to more natural seas that stretched out dark and mysterious in the deepening twilight. The indigo sea melted into a lavender sky streaked with all the reds and oranges of sunset. Black and featureless as the sun sank behind it, a vast island lay long and low on the horizon, larger than any Kheda had ever seen or heard tell of, capped with a bank of gilded white cloud.

Risala gazed at it. 'What's over there that's so horribly frightening to people with wizards and even a dragon to call on somehow, that they'd risk the open ocean rather than make less than a day's sail to a certain shore?'

Kheda could only shake his head for an answer.

'Let's find out,' Naldeth said incautiously.

Kheda found his voice. 'Why?'

'Because that earth dragon went somewhere,' Velindre reminded him. 'And we don't know what other dangers

might lurk there. Forewarned is forearmed. That's why we came here.'

'Can't you scry from this distance?' Kheda objected. 'Why put ourselves at risk, if the wild men and their mages chose to avoid the place?'

'Hadrumal's magic is considerably more sophisticated than these savages' spells.' Naldeth sounded faintly offended. 'You must have learned that from Dev.'

'Scrying's not the most robust of enchantments.' Velindre silenced the young mage with a wave of her hand. 'There's fire beneath the water hereabouts and both are woven into the depths of the earth where the mountain's eruption has split the sea bed. The steam and the ash are weaving all the other three elements into the air. The best course is to sail over there and see what there is to see with our own eyes.'

'The confluence of elements stretches all the way over there.' Naldeth was looking increasingly eager as he stared at the distant shore. 'We've come all this way. There has to be more to learn here.'

'I suppose so,' Kheda said with deep reluctance.

/ had better return with some solid news to set in the balance against the contented indolence and self-indulgence of this voyage so far.