Western Shore

CHAPTER EIGHT

How long will this place smell of burning? How far does the breeze carry the decaying breath of this place, to remind passing ships of what happened here? Does it keep them away?

Kheda watched the blackened isle rising above a slew of jagged reefs just high enough above the water to give a foothold to tenacious tangles of grey-stemmed midar. The tormented screams of dying Daish warriors echoed loud in his memory.

My swordsmen, my faithful captain Atoun, ripped apart by whip lizards transmuted to something half-way between animal and man by the wild mages. My first encounter with magic that was as foul as I had always believed it. Yet I come here now in a barbarian wizard's company, finding myself increasingly persuaded that she alone can show me what threat to the domain lies beyond the horizon.

'We could have been here last night.' Velindre sat on the Reteul's stern thwart, one hand on the tiller.

'This isn't a shore I wanted to come on in the twilight or with a contrary wind.' Kheda adjusted the angle of the sail.

We did kill all the monsters, didn't we? Surely nothing could have survived.

The Reteul continued on her way, the morning breeze negating any need for magic. Both magewoman and warlord wore the loose unbleached cotton tunic and trousers of zamorin.

Not that anyone will take me forzamorin with my beard. Not that there's anyone to see me hereabouts.

The little boat skirted the vicious corals. Kheda studied the shore. There were no trees, just stark black stumps still taller than a man where the insatiable flames had devoured the mighty iron woods. The dense stands of tandra trees and dappled figs hadn't been able to withstand the all-consuming flames, reduced to heaps of charred wood. The clusters of nut palms that had edged the beach were just a memory, their ashes a stain spread across the white sand by the storms of two successive rainy seasons.

Velindre shook her golden head at the devastation. 'If I didn't know better, I'd have said elemental fire did this.'

'It was sticky fire,' Kheda said shortly. 'We don't set such blazes lightly, but there are times when only the purification of burning will suffice, especially in times of disease.' A shift of the wind brought a richer scent to mingle with the memory of burning and he noticed swathes of fresh green among the dark ruination.

Renewal. I could have called that a favourable omen, if I still believed in such things.

Coral gulls walked splay-footed and unbothered along the sandy shore. Unseen among the newly grown low brush, crookbeaks squabbled raucously. Looking over the side rail, Kheda saw a school of sunset fish flash from yellow to orange and disappear into trailing sea grasses.

'There's our anchorage.' The magewoman waved a hand towards a blunt headland defying a sizeable reef not far out to sea and the Reteul veered obediently inshore.

'Thai's your ship?' Kheda looked at the blue-hulled vessel lying at anchor in the shallow cove. 'You've certainly applied yourself as a scholar to have sufficient learning to trade for something like that.'

'I'm flattered that you think I could do so,' Velindre said, a trifle sarcastically. 'No, I took a leaf out of Dev's book. I've been trading, which incidentally gave me an excellent excuse for idling around the beaches to listen to sailors' tales of mysteries out on the deep.'

'You didn't think such stories were just prompted by your barbarian liquors and dream smokes?' Kheda tried to keep the distaste out of his voice.

'Hardly, given that's not what I trade,' Velindre retorted acidly. 'Dev was a fool to risk being caught with such contraband.'

'What is your cargo?' Kheda was curious.

Velindre didn't answer, studying the vessel ahead instead. 'That's how they build ships in the western domains, so it's robust enough to take out onto the open ocean. We wouldn't survive this voyage in a cockleshell like this one.'

The blue-hulled vessel was nothing like the Reteul. Kheda certainly hadn't seen many similar ships in these southerly waters. The twin masts were much of a height and each carried a creamy triangular sail hanging half-furled from a raking yardarm. Bright with yellow paint and carving, a six-sided platform rose solidly above the steering oars at the stern, its angularity incongruous. Kheda would have been hard pressed to tell which was the prow or the stern without the steering oars and the cant of the sails. Both ends of the ship were equally rounded, blunted with a layer of double planking. Solid clinker-built panels were fixed to shield the steering oars from violent seas.

'You can sail that yourself without arousing suspicion?' he asked dubiously. 'Without magic?'

'It's a two-man ship.' Velindre wasn't offended. 'The sideways sweep of each sail can be governed from the stern platform as long as there's a second pair of hands

to adjust the pitch of the yardarms. You see those ropes running to the pulleys on the side rails?'

Kheda lost all interest in the complexities of the unfamiliar rigging when he saw two figures on the raised stern platform.

Risala.

'We'll beach the Reteul up above the high-water line. If anyone does sail by, they can assume you're ashore communing with the past.' Velindre took a firm grip on the tiller and lifted one long hand towards the sail. 'Hold on to something.'

Kheda grabbed at the side rail as the Reteul accelerated towards the shore. Velindre's magic drove the little ship swiftly up the sloping sand, shells grating beneath her hull.

'Don't spring any planks,' he warned the magewoman sternly. 'I shall want to sail home in this boat.'

The Reteul slowed to a halt. As Kheda waited a moment to be certain the deck wasn't about to shift beneath his feet, he saw one of the figures on the blue boat dive off the stern. Fetching anchors from the lockers in the Reteul's prow and stern, he swung himself over the side and down onto the sand. He had the little boat firmly secured by the time Risala reached the shallows.

She stood waist deep, wiping wet hair out of her eyes and smiling. 'Good morning, my lord.'

Taking a moment to appreciate her slenderness outlined by her clinging wet tunic, Kheda grinned back before a faint noise inland sent a shiver down his spine. He turned to look at the burned trees and clumps of new brush. 'We did kill all the monsters, didn't we?'

'The biggest thing on this island is a chequered fowl,' Risala assured him. 'Naldeth - the other wizard — he's been ashore several times and scried across the island besides.'

'Has he had any more success scrying out to the west?' Velindre called down from the ReteuPs deck.

Risala looked up, shading her eyes with one hand. 'Not really.'

'Why has he been ashore?' Kheda demanded, frowning.

Never mind any thought of portent, I won't have any barbarian mage disturbing Chazen Saril's bones to satisfy some macabre curiosity.

'Because his elemental affinity is with fire.' Velindre leaned over the ReteuPs rail, unconcerned. 'He was curious to see how the burning spread once you'd set your fires, and how the land is recovering.'

Kheda looked at Risala. 'He's a fire mage like Dev?'

'He's nothing like Dev.' She chuckled, running her hands through her damp hair to leave it a mass of unruly black spikes.

Kheda looked back up at Velindre. 'Is he your lover?'

'Oh no.' The magewoman laughed. 'He's not to my taste and I don't imagine I'm to his.'

Risala giggled. 'He's far too much in awe of Velindre to lay a finger on her.'

Kheda shrugged. 'I shall want to get his measure before I agree to sail anywhere with him.'

'Then come and meet him.' Velindre stood up and swung her meagre bundle of clothes tied with a leather strap over one shoulder. Kheda saw she was also carrying his little physic chest and had his twin swords thrust through her belt. 'If you don't want to be away for too long, the sooner we start this voyage, the better.' Velindre vanished in a spiral of twisted air to reappear on the stern platform of the blue-hulled ship.

Kheda stepped close and slid his hands around Risala's narrow waist. 'I've missed you.'

'No more than I've missed you.' She drew his face down to kiss him long and deep.

After some indeterminate time, Kheda reluctantly broke free. 'What do we do now?'

Risala raised one black brow and pressed her hips against his. 'I can tell what you want to do.'

'I can wait.' Kheda kissed her again. 'I meant, what do we do about this voyage Velindre's determined on? I haven't agreed to go with her. I only came here to be sure you were in no danger.'

'We'll all be in danger if those wild men come again, or another dragon.' Risala laid her hands flat against Kheda's muscular chest and tucked her tousled head under his bearded chin. 'I don't particularly want to go with them but surely forewarned is forearmed.'

'That's what she keeps saying.' Kheda tightened his embrace. 'But how can I leave Chazen and Itrac at a time like this?'

'The domain's quite at peace,' Risala said slowly. 'People have plenty of food, and new trade and newborn children of their own to occupy them. But they're still afraid of fire in the night coming to overthrow it all again. They need to know they are safe. Or if they're not, this time they need to be told to flee before they're slaughtered.' She shivered involuntarily.

Kheda heaved a sigh. 'A warning is not much to offer.'

'It's better than nothing,' Risala muttered. 'Naldeth says we can reach this strange isle by the dark of the next Lesser Moon.'

Kheda looked up to the morning sky where a pearl sliver indicated that the Lesser Moon would still be with them for a handful of days or more. He frowned. 'That's impossible, if this island is so far—'

'Not with their magic,' Risala reminded him. 'And that magic can bring us home with no need for ships.'

'Both wizards will know this place at least,' Kheda

conceded grudgingly. 'But how can I disappear for a whole turn of the Pearl?'

'What did you tell Itrac, to explain coming away with Velindre?' Risala toyed with the laces at the neck of his tunic.

'That I needed time and solitude to consider the omens for the domain,' Kheda said sourly, 'since I find I can't read any clear meaning in the earthly or heavenly compasses at present. At least that's no lie.'

Risala took a moment to answer. 'No one would think a turn of either moon was unduly long to spend on such an important thing. Besides, all Itrac's attention will be focused on her babies. She'll barely know that you're gone.'

Kheda grunted. 'Perhaps. But Ulla Safar will know as soon as word gets back to Redigal and Ritsem.'

'Ulla Safar won't spare you a second thought,' Risala said with conviction. 'He'll be lucky to still have a head on his shoulders by the time we get back, if Orhan's supporters have anything to say about it.'

'Truly?' Kheda leaned back so that he could look at her.

'That was the word on every second beach where I made a stop on my way to meet Velindre,' she assured him, no doubt in her blue eyes. 'And anyway, what would Safar do? It's not as if you're leaving the domain, as far as anyone knows or even suspects. I take it you said you were coming here?'

'I told Itrac,' Kheda said slowly, 'but no one else.'

'Jevin will make sure Ritsem Caid and Redigal Coron know.' Risala bit her lip. 'What of Daish?'

'I told Sirket I was likely to be away for some time,' Kheda admitted. 'That I needed to know if the wild men or any dragon were coming to threaten us again.'

'Then why make that a lie?' Risala slipped out of

Kheda's arms and walked back towards the sea. 'Come on. Come and meet Naldeth.'

Kheda followed, wading and then cutting through the waves with powerful swimming strokes. Risala at his side, he trod the chill water by the swelling side of the western-built ship. 'Velindre? A rope?' he called out.

A woven ladder slapped down the blue planking. Kheda steadied it with his weight as Risala climbed nimbly up. He followed, wiping water from his hair and beard as he swung his legs over the rail.

'My lord Chazen Kheda.' The unknown man standing just in front of the aft mast bowed courteously.

You 're certainly nothing like Dev.

'Naldeth.' Kheda bowed briefly in reply. 'So you're playing the slave to Velindre's zamorin scholar?'

'Slave or servant,' the mage replied easily. 'We say whatever suits the beach we land on.'

Perhaps a year or so older than Risala, Naldeth was only a little shorter than Kheda. He had the rounded features of a true barbarian and had evidently not been sailing the Archipelago as long as Velindre, for his pale northern skin was still more ruddy than tanned. He wore his unremarkable dun hair drawn tidily back in a short braid, sun-bleached to a shade just lighter than his mild brown eyes. His somewhat sparse beard was neatly trimmed along his jaw line. He wore the same unbleached cottons as Kheda.

He wears a Chazen dagger, like Velindre, but here in the south he must turn heads, he's so plainly barbarian. In the central and western domains, northern slaves are more common, so I don't suppose he warrants more than a passing glance. Apart from his lack of a leg.

Having made his bow, the wizard was leaning on a well used crutch. One cotton trouser leg was drawn up and tucked through the belt on his tunic, making it plain that limb ended abruptly at mid-thigh.

At least he has his knife hand free.

Kheda turned to Velindre, who was descending the steps from the stern platform. 'What's your vessel called, shipmistress?'

'The Zaise.'' The magewoman smiled. 'It seemed appropriate, from what I've read of bird and ship lore.'

'Would you call that a good omen, Chazen Kheda?' Naldeth's attention was fixed on the warlord.

'Kheda will suffice.' He glanced briefly at the youthful wizard. 'I don't look for omens for this voyage.'

He felt Risala stir at his side and resisted the urge to look at her.

'Did you know that western mariners venture out into the deep to catch currents running along the outer edge of the Archipelago?' the wizard persisted. 'One comes down from the north and another runs up from the south.'

'If those western mariners are lucky as well as bold, they avoid the point where the currents meet and will sweep them out west to die of thirst and madness on the open ocean,' Velindre said sardonically.

'Is that the route we're to take to this strange isle of yours?' Kheda raised his brows. 'If I agree to come with you—'

Naldeth scowled. 'You must—'

Velindre shook her head to silence him before answering Kheda. 'There's another current in the southern ocean beyond Chazen's waters that'll carry us west and then curl north to bring us to the savages' isle.'

Kheda noticed that the space beneath the stern platform had been made into a low cabin, its door tied shut. The wooden grates that would normally shed light into the ship's holds were cloaked with sailcloth held down with tightly nailed battens. 'Just what cargo have you been trading through the domains?'

'We're carrying naphtha and rock tar.' Velindre's smile

widened. 'And the sulphur and resins that go with them to make sticky fire and suchlike.'

'That's a volatile mix.' Kheda looked down involuntarily as if he could see the barrels of potential blazing death beneath his feet.

'Not with a fire mage on board.' Naldeth shifted his crutch noisily on the planking. 'Kheda, when Dev—'

'It gave us an excellent excuse to anchor well clear of every other ship on the trading beaches.' Velindre spoke over the young wizard again. 'And with incendiaries always a warlord's secret, I was trading with their most trusted stewards and guard captains, which made it all the easier for me to ask about curious omens washed up from the deep or blown in on storms.'

'I gather you set that inferno with sticky fire?' Naldeth continued, gesturing with his free hand towards the blackened isle.

That's not what you were going to say, young wizard. What do you know of Dev?

'It's the only thing that will burn long and hot enough to set fire to a whole island.' Kheda turned back to Velindre. 'This is a risky cargo to take out into the open ocean. What if some barrel springs a leak in a storm?'

'My elemental affinity is with the air, Kheda,' she said with faint rebuke. 'I don't propose to fall foul of any storms.'

'Why do we have to sail all the way to this island?' Kheda looked around the ship. 'If you can't use your magic to carry yourselves there, why can't you look for it with your bespelled waters? You could find Dev all the way from the northern wastes.'

'We've tried, believe me,' said Naldeth with feeling.

'There's magic there, Kheda, even if it's not being worked by men or dragons,' Velindre said slowly. 'It's in the earth and the air, in the seas and the rivers. There's

some confluence of power—' She broke off, shaking her head. 'Whatever it is, it foils all our attempts to scry for wild wizards or dragons. We'll just have to go and see with our own eyes.'

Kheda looked at her for a long moment, searching for any hint of dissembling or falsehood. 'You say you can get us there in the next cycle of the Lesser Moon?'

Velindre looked at Naldeth, her lips thinning. 'Perhaps. Certainly it shouldn't take much longer than that.'

Kheda rubbed a hand over his beard. 'And you could use your magic to send me home at any time? Me and Risala?'

'Oh yes.' Velindre had no hesitation about that.

'Dev said you can scry for someone you don't know if you have something of theirs.' Kheda reached into the neck of his tunic and unclasped Itrac's silver and turtleshell necklace. 'Show me that my wife and children are happy and secure.'

Velindre narrowed her eyes at him. 'If you insist.'

She took the necklace and coiled it in her palm. Moving to the barrel of water lashed to the stern mast, she dipped a handful to cover the gleaming links. The liquid lay obediently in her palm, not a drop escaping. The mage-woman passed her other hand over the necklace and the water cloaking it glowed turquoise. 'See for yourself,' she said simply.

A scene like a painted miniature was caught in the circle of silver and mottled turtleshell. Itrac was lying on a wide day bed set beneath the shade of a bower in the garden at the heart of her pavilion. She was holding little Olkai on one side and Sekni on the other as they drowsed together. Jevin stood watchful while both nurses sat placidly sewing tiny garments of shining white silk.

Kheda watched for a moment. 'I'll come with you if you show me at least once a day that all's well at the residence,'

he said with resignation. 'You'll scry for the trading beaches too, to look for any upheaval that might signify trouble between the domains. If we see any such thing, I want your oath on whatever you hold sacred that you'll send me home. Me and Risala.'

'At once.' Velindre nodded. 'On my honour and my element. Is that enough for you?'

Would I have believed Dev if he'd sworn such an oath? Doubtful, and I wouldn't necessarily have believed whatever he had shown me in a spell. But Velindre is different, isn 't she?

Kheda nodded curtly. 'Then if you can be sure this cargo won't be the death of us, let's get under way. As you've been saying, there's nothing to be gained by delay.'

Naldeth looked as if he wanted to respond to that but Velindre waved him forward. 'See to the foresail. Risala, show Kheda how we set the aft sail.' The mage-woman turned to climb the ladder-like stair up to the stern platform.

Naldeth stumped away, his crutch loud on the decking. Tossing the prop aside, he leaned against the side rail, needing both hands to adjust the ropes that angled the yardarm.

Risala tugged on a rope and cursed under her breath. 'Something's stuck.' She swung herself up onto the ladder-like ratlines stretching up from the side rail to the top of the mast. Kheda watched her run up the tarred rope rungs and reach carefully out across the spar to free the rope hampering the billowing sailcloth. The scrape of Naldeth's crutch brought his attention back down to deck.

The young wizard was waiting. 'So are you going to ask me about this?' He gestured towards the stump of his thigh. 'You're not worried that I won't be able to play my part in this voyage?'

'I'll take Velindre's word that you'll be more help than hindrance,' the warlord answered calmly.

'You don't want to know what wrongdoing or folly brought me to such a mischance?' Naldeth persisted. 'Such accidents are seen as omens in the Archipelago, aren't they?'

'I told you, I don't look for portents concerning this voyage.' Kheda's voice hardened a little.

And these past few years have disabused me of any belief that any man's future is inexorably determined by his past choices.

'It was pirates.' Naldeth wasn't to be deterred. 'I was doing no one any harm, sailing to help settlers making a new life in a wilderness. We were captured and thrown into the ship's hold. When they were pursued, the pirates trailed me in the water on the end of a rope, cutting me to bleed till the sharks came. They said they'd carry on till I had no arms or legs unless our rescuers withdrew. Do you think that's a just fate for someone as evil as a wizard?' There was a distinct edge to his question.

'You were evidently rescued before you lost all your limbs.' Kheda met the youth's hot stare with cool equanimity. 'I assume these pirates met a death appropriate to their crimes?'

Don 't you know that one of the first things a warlord learns is not to respond to contentious challenges?

'I was rescued by my fellow mages, as it happens.' Naldeth scowled. 'And yes, the pirates were hanged.'

'It's not for me to make sense of such things for you.' Kheda gave a single shake of his head. 'I don't know you. You're the only wizard I've met besides Dev and Velindre and I've no idea which of you might be typical of your breed or even of northern barbarians. I've met none of them either.' He surprised the taut-faced youth with a grin. 'I suspect you're all noteworthy in your own way. I

know you've at least enough courage to sail waters where your magic would condemn you to be skinned alive. For this voyage, I'll judge you on the evidence of my own eyes.'

Naldeth stared back at him for a long moment, unblinking. 'And I'll do the same.'

'I thought we wanted to get under way,' Velindre called down irritably from the stern platform.

Kheda turned his back on the youthful wizard and scaled the stern ladder to join the magewoman by the steering oars. 'We want to pass well to the south of that isle.' He pointed to a distant lump of land. 'Otherwise we'll spend the next three days wallowing in knot-tree swamps.'

'I know.' Velindre was leafing through a newly sewn book of reed paper filled with annotated sketches of coastlines and sea lanes.

'You've made up your own route record,' he said with some surprise.

'Naturally. What Aldabreshin shipmistress would be without one?' Velindre traced a course across the page she had sought with a nail-bitten finger. 'Then we leave that reef to the north.'

She tucked the precious book into an ample pocket inside the waist of her trousers and pulled on the ropes canting the aft-sail mast. As she adjusted the steering oars, the Zaise turned obediently away from the shore.

'Just make sure our course takes us well away from the pearl reefs,' Kheda insisted. 'Chazen's safety depends at least in part on people thinking I'm still in the domain. I can't be seen to be leaving.'

'I )on'l worry about that,' Velindre said confidently.

Would it be any use if I did?

Kheda dropped down to the deck where Risala was sitting in the shade cast by the stern platform.

She looked up at him, her face unreadable. 'Did you bring a star circle with you?'

'Only to count the days.' He sat down beside her.

'Both moons are sharing the arc of friendship with the stars of the Canthira Tree,' Risala observed stiffly, 'an emblem of new life born of fire. Let's hope that means you can be friends with Naldeth.'

Kheda studied the young wizard. He was still by the foremast, making what looked like an unnecessary adjustment of the pulley blocks. 'What have you made of him while you've been waiting for us?' He moved closer to Risala and put an arm round her shoulders.

'There's no harm in him.' Risala shifted position to turn into his embrace and kissed his cheek. 'Other than being a wizard, of course. As far as his leg's concerned, he just needs to be convinced you won't assume he's lacking wits as well as a foot.'

'Then let him convince me,' Kheda said quietly.

It wasn't long before he was at least convinced that Naldeth was practised in sailing the Zaise. With Velindre at the tiller, there was little for Kheda and Risala to do. Whether favourable winds or wizardry propelled them, the ship made good speed. By noon they were leaving the most densely settled islands behind, seeing no ships larger than fishing skiffs and none close enough to hail. The sun was gilding the western sky as they escaped the last contrary currents winding around the treachery of coral and sandbanks. The pearl reefs that were proving so valuable for Chazen were barely smudges on the eastern horizon.

They sailed into deeper, darker seas where Chazen ships didn't venture. The waves grew larger, lifting the Zaise on ever taller swells. No longer veering at the dictates of islands, the winds blew steadily from the east. As far as Kheda could judge, the barrel-sided ship was cutting through the seas as fast as any trireme.

/ wouldn't want to be caught in these winds without a shipload of strong oarsmen to fight our way back. I hope our shipmistress knows what she's doing.

'I'm hungry.' Risala heaved herself up from the deck and disappeared into the low stern cabin. She reappeared holding four lidded bowls close to her chest.

'Sailer pottage.' Kheda grimaced.

'It keeps without spoiling for days at a time, and rowers stay healthy on it,' chided Risala handing him a bowl and a spoon.

'And I ate a lifetime's worth when I was a nameless oarsman on a galley.' Kheda dug the horn spoon into the sticky steamed grain mixed with shreds of smoked meat, half-dried pepper pods and oily crushed tandra seeds.

Velindre slid down the ladder from the stern platform and accepted a bowl. 'We can trawl for fresh fish at dusk. Naldeth!' She waved to the young wizard, who had managed to stay busy about the ship all day.

He joined them and thanked Risala courteously as he took his meal from her. He looked thoughtful as he chewed. 'Chazen Kheda, I'm curious about those creatures Risala said were altered by these wild mages. What can you tell me about them?' He filled his mouth with another spoonful.

Kheda found the dense, cold pottage sticking in his throat. 'They were cinnamon cranes and robber crabs grown twice and three time their usual size.'

'That's a curious trick.' Naldeth's brows knitted. 'What about these tales of lizards turned into men? Is that some poet's embellishment?'

'No poet would invent such a lie,' Risala objected.

'There were whip lizards on the island and those are dangerous enough in themselves.' Kheda's stomach tensed at the bloody memory. 'Some spell stood them

upright like men, reshaping their bones and flesh. They attacked us like animals, though, with teeth and claws.'

Naldeth looked at Velindre, animated. 'Hearth Master Kalion's discovered a certain amount about altering minerals with fire.' He gazed avidly out to the west. 'I'd dearly love to know how one would go about changing the very substance of a living creature.'

Kheda found he had lost what little appetite he had for the sailer pottage.

Is this insatiable curiosity common to all mages? Will it prove as lethal for you as it did for Dev? Was it the pursuit of new lore that took you on that voyage where you lost your leg? An Archipelagan would have taken that for a sign to spend the rest of his life close to home and been grateful to still be alive to realise that.

'Whales,' Risala said with surprise.

'Where?' Velindre scaled the ladder to the stern platform.

'Yonder.' Risala pointed as they joined her. Naldeth followed, dropping his crutch to pull himself up the steep ladder.

Away to the south, white puffs of moist breath shot up from the cobalt waters and dark shapes rose and fell just beneath the surface. A huge barnacled head broached, underside pale and striped with deep grooves, tiny eyes black in the dappled margin between dark hide and light. The mighty beast plunged down in a flurry of foam and its massive black tail swept up. It struck the water with a resounding splash before the whale vanished. Almost at once, a second surged up from the depths and crashed back down.

'Coron will be pleased to see them in Redigal waters if they head north.' Risala looked at Kheda with a smile.

'What's that?' Supporting himself with one hand on the rail, Naldeth pointed to a swell laced with spume just beyond the whales.

Something long and sinuous slid through the ocean, a shadow quite unlike the oval backs of the whales.

'A sea serpent.' Kheda felt cold despite the sun and the sturdily built Zaise suddenly felt all too fragile beneath his feet. 'Velindre, get us away from here.'

'I don't think it's after us.' She spoke quietly as if the creature might hear her. 'If we run, there's always the chance it'll chase us instead of the whales.'

'It's hunting the whales?' Naldeth stared out at the ocean, mouth half-open.

'Better them than us,' Velindre said with regret.

'It's after one of the young ones.' Kheda pointed to a black whale blotched with barnacles riding high in the water. A shorter shape was just visible in the white foam beside it.

'There's another serpent.' Risala took an involuntary step back as a rough-skinned loop the greenish-brown of seaweed broached the surface between their boat and the group of whales.

This second serpent twisted in the waters and vanished. The whales were swimming faster.

Naldeth gasped as the greenish sea serpent suddenly shot up out of the sea, straight as an arrow and reaching taller thanthe Zaise\ masthead. A long fin ran the length of its drab body, translucent in the sunlight, and drops of water gleamed on its coarse hide. Eyes like jet shone in a head no thicker than its body with no hint of a neck. Beneath a blunt snout, its mouth was agape, lined with ugly yellow teeth. Bending itself bonelessly in half, the creature dived back into the water, pointed tail finally flicking up a trailing edge of that single fin.

Is it going to attack?' Naldeth wondered breathlessly.

'No.' Kheda pointed to the distant sea serpent as the whales veered sharply away from the more obvious threat. 'That's the one going in for the kill.'

'It's hunting the slowest.' Velindre nodded as the lithe menace slid behind a solitary black shape now falling behind the rest of the whales.

'She can't leave her young one,' said Risala, distressed. Kheda reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers with a comforting squeeze.

'Can't she fight back?' protested Naldeth as he saw the smaller beast pressing close to its mother's dark flank.

As he spoke, the mother whale rolled in the water with surprising agility and smashed her mighty tail down towards the pursuing sea serpent. As the creature lurched away, they saw it was darker than the other, with a thick black edge to the long fin running down its back.

'She can't fight both of them,' Velindre said with measured pity.

The second serpent was now cutting a curving course through the water between the chosen victims and the rest of the fleeing whales. As the mother rolled again to put herself between her young and the black-finned serpent still harrying her, the greenish serpent dived. It reappeared snapping at the frantic youngster. Blood blossomed briefly on the turmoil of foam, shocking scarlet amid the muted colours of beasts and ocean.

'We have to do something!' Naldeth looked from Kheda to Velindre.

'Why?' The magewoman looked back, impassive.

'Why let an innocent creature suffer?' the younger wizard demanded with some heat.

'Sea serpents must eat,' Kheda said with mild regret.

'Serpent for danger and chaos,' said Risala involuntarily. 'But twin serpents of any kind can be an omen, of renewal in death or hope after peril's evaded.'

'So we mustn't act for the sake of not altering some omen?' Naldeth demanded belligerently.

He looked back out to sea where the mother whale was now striving to force the persistent greenish serpent away from her youngster. The smaller whale circled on the surface, blowing out a plume of spray snatched away by the wind. The black-finned serpent briefly broached the surface to snap at the ugly raw gash in the youngster's flank before disappearing into the depths.

'I don't see any sense in drawing those serpents this way,' Kheda said curtly. 'Haven't you heard tales of them wrecking ships?'

'Have you ever seen that happen?' snapped Naldeth.

'No, and I'd never seen a dragon before last year,' Kheda retorted. 'As it turned out, the poets' tales didn't tell the half of it.' He looked out to sea. The mother whale was drawing a circle of foam around her youngster, nimble despite her great bulk. The serpents were swimming the other way, looping through the water, drawing gradually closer and closer.

'Velindre, if you won't do something, I will,' Naldeth warned.

The magewoman looked at him, exasperated. 'The antipathy between fire and water—'

Scarlet steam exploded in front of the black-finned serpent as it broke off its circling to dart towards the mother whale. Kheda glimpsed a brilliant streak of white light cutting through the air as Naldeth made a throwing motion. The sea around the greenish serpent boiled furiously as well. The mother whale shrank back from this incomprehensible happening and blundered into her youngster. Both vanished below the seething waves along with the greenish serpent.

The black-finned serpent twisted this way and that, lethal mouth agape. Naldeth flung out both hands. He would have overbalanced if Kheda hadn't caught him with a strong arm under his elbow. The black-finned serpent

rose out of the water in looping confusion, snapping at its own coils. The mother whale reappeared to vent a noisy plume of spray and then dived deep, her wide tail smacking down hard on the surface of the sea. There was no sign of her young or of the greenish serpent.

'What have you done?' Risala watched, appalled, as the black-finned serpent's teeth ripped into its own hide. Dark blood stained the frothing water around it and uncanny crimson reflections ran along the creature's coils.

'The other one's making its escape.' Velindre's eyes grew distant for a moment, unfocused. 'The two whales are following the rest. The young one is badly bitten. Are sea serpents poisonous, Kheda?'

'Opinions vary,' he said shortly, withdrawing his arm from Naldeth's elbow. 'What did you do?'

'Burned the oils in its own skin.' The young wizard leaned on the rail, still intent on his magic. The sea serpent's struggles grew more laboured. Its blood was now a black slick on the surface of the water, glinting with scarlet malevolence. He shot a defiant glance at Velindre. 'At least those whales have a chance now.'

Can you do something like that to a dragon?

Kheda decided not to ask.

Coral gulls appeared to hover over the dying serpent with raucous cries of anticipation. Unseen scavengers from the deep pocked the sea with ripples as they tasted the spreading blood. The serpent floated motionless on the swell, then began slowly sinking. As the last hint of magic faded, the gulls dived, beaks tearing. Vicious angular fins cut through the soiled waves and the serpent's hide reappeared here and there, coils thrust up from below. Blunt grey heads broached the surface as the sharks ripped into the moribund sea serpent.

'Satisfied, Naldeth?' Velindre placidly resumed her meal of sailer pottage.

Kheda saw that the young wizard had gone pale beneath his tan, eyes wide with the shock of memory as he stared at the sharks. He shook the youth's shoulder briskly. 'The wind's shifted and strengthened. Some slack in those forward lines wouldn't come amiss.'

'What?' The wizard looked at him, bemused, before recollecting himself. 'Yes, of course.' Ungainly as he supported himself with the rail, he slid down the ladder to the deck and retrieved his crutch to stump away.

'How can we read the omens if he does things like that?' Risala looked abruptly down at the planks where Naldeth's discarded bowl was rolling to and fro, trailing sailer pottage. 'And we don't want to be wasting food,' she added crossly.

Kheda realised with some surprise that he still held his own bowl. He looked at the remains of his meal. 'I think I've lost my appetite,' he said apologetically.

'Me too.' Risala took Kheda's bowl from him and jumped down to disappear into the stern cabin.

The silence on the stern platform was broken only by the scrape of Velindre's spoon.

'Do you want me to take a turn at the tiller?' Kheda offered after a few moments.

'Not until I'm sure we've picked up that current I mentioned. After that, you two can share watches with me and Naldeth. He has no great feeling for water but his fire affinity gives him sufficient sympathy with air to be sure we're following the course I set him.'

Kheda glanced towards the young wizard, who was now standing in the prow, looking out across the ceaseless barren swells. 'When did that happen to him?'

'Three years ago.' Velindre said unemotionally.

Kheda yielded to his curiosity. 'How did you persuade him to risk himself in Archipelagan waters? What does this voyage to the west offer him?'

'The chance to learn something new about the magics of elemental fire.' Velindre smiled thinly. 'Something sufficiently extraordinary that our fellow mages will want to talk about his splendid new discovery whenever they encounter him, rather than trying to find a way to ask how he lost his leg and was he really a hero who saved those settlers. Either that or they tie their tongues in knots trying to avoid mentioning anything about it.'

The disdain in her answer left Kheda disinclined to enquire further. 'I'll go and see where Risala's got to.'

He climbed down the ladder and ducked his head to enter the low stern cabin. In the dim light filtering through small windows set beneath the aft beams, Risala was scraping the unwanted food into a bucket. 'We can throw this into the water at dusk if you're going to try fishing,' she said curtly.

Let's not discuss whether or not there might have been omens in the struggle between whales and serpents that Naldeth has polluted.

Kheda gestured to the barrels lining the wooden walls. 'What food are we carrying, besides sailer pottage?'

'Smoked fish. Duck sealed in its own fat.' Risala counted off the casks with a finger. 'Dried zira shoots and pickled reckal roots. Herbs and spices.' She nodded towards a net of plump sacks hanging from a beam. 'And there's plenty of dry sailer grain.'

Kheda contemplated the wooden trap door in the planking. 'What's down there?'

'The stern hold where we'll be sleeping.' She managed a brief smile. 'The rock tar and naphtha and the like are in the central holds. Naldeth has the fore hold and Velindre sleeps in here.' She pointed to a tidy pile of blankets in a box bed built against the bulwark.

'I think I'll see just what we're carrying.' Kheda

reached down for the brass ring sunk into the trap door. 'And that it's all securely stowed.'

'I'll call if Velindre wants you.' Risala looked upwards, her expression pensive.

Kheda pulled up the trap door and slid down the ladder beneath. This stern hold was shorter than the deck cabin with a reassuringly thick bulkhead built around the crossbeams bracing the hull. It was almost completely dark and he could taste the oily metallic bite of naphtha in the stale air.

'Leave the door to the deck open,' he called up to Risala. 'I'm not sleeping down here unless we get rid of these fumes.'

He tried the door in the solid bulkhead and found it unlocked. He went through to find more light was filtering through the canvas-shrouded deck gratings. Barrels were held back against the curved hull with plank partitions and further secured with nets wound between stout hooks. The scents of tar and oil were muted, which augured well for the seals on the casks. Kheda made a slow circuit all the same, looking for dark stains of seepage. As satisfied as he could be in the dim light, he tried the door to the next hold and found that unlocked as well.

A yellow smear on the chests of rough wood secured along one wall of the hull was bright in the gloom. It tainted the air with sulphur. Lidded baskets opposite held thick glass bottles tightly wrapped in woven straw. They were sealed with corks and twine and wax to be sure none of their viscous golden contents could leak. Kheda recognised them.

Barbarian pine resins. Janne Daish would offer equal weight in mother-of-pearl in trade for such bottles. What do these barbarians know of Aldabreshin recipes for sticky fire? Is there any quicklime here, or just sulphur?

As Kheda studied the other unhelpfully anonymous

chests, he realised that something else was tucked behind the one wedged closest to the stern bulwark. About the size of a small barrel, it was thickly wrapped in clean sacking tied with new hemp rope. Kheda reached over the inconvenient chest and tested the ropes. They had been knotted tight and not by an Archipelagan seafarer.

He eased the tip of his dagger into the heart of the topmost knot and worked it back and forth, careful not to cut the rope. Winning just enough slack to be able to shift the sacking beneath, he tugged at the coarse weave. The dim light from the covered grating fell on a dull maroon surface, gently rounded, smooth as glass, and beneath it a fresher red, the colour of blood. The web of fine cracks crazing the surface glinted softly.

Kheda drew back, blood pounding in his temples.

How could we have guessed what that dragon flying in from the western ocean wanted with our rubies? We were just relieved that chests of gems would placate it, would buy us time and lives and land. Who could have imagined the dragon could concentrate its magic so fiercely that it could meld the jewels it chose into this unnatural gem and generate a spark of new life in its very heart?

Why was it that this egg burned Dev alive when he turned his own magic to killing that nascent dragon? What enchantment seduced him to that unhallowed rapture even as the flesh melted from his bones and he was reduced to ashes?

Motionless in the breathless hold, he tried to force away the obscene recollection of the mage's death.

Why did Velindre demand the dead dragon's dead egg as her price for betraying the second dragon to me, the simulacrum she wove from air and magic to light the true fire dragon? Why did I give it to her? That false dragon would have died anyway. She'd already told me there was no sapphire at its heart to give it true life. Could I have convinced the people of Chazen that I was a warlord they could trust

if my leadership hadn 't been sanctioned by that deceitful victory? How many men died believing the lie that they were fighting to save the domain from a second predator?

As he stared at the mystery half-hidden in the shadows, the door to the foremost hold opened, startling him.

'Are you looking for something?' Naldeth stood in the doorway.

'I was just wondering exactly what you were carrying.' Kheda turned his back on the bundle, hoping to hide the disturbed sacking with his body. 'Are all these chests full of sulphur?'

'No.' Naldeth hopped into the hold, steadying himself with one hand on the door. 'We're carrying a fair amount of alum. Warlords who want to buy the stuffs to make sticky fire generally want the means of stifling it as well.' He lowered himself carefully to the floor of the hold. 'Did Risala tell you not to discard the vinegar from the pickles? It'll be more useful than water if I'm not on hand to kill a fire for you.'

'Indeed.' Kheda gazed at the remarkable contraption the one-legged wizard was laying out before him on the planks. 'What is that?'

'I thought such personal questions were considered impolite among you Aldabreshi.' Naldeth looked up from untangling a confusion of leather straps and buckles. He was grinning. 'How many folk do you think have actually asked me outright how I lost my leg since we sailed south?'

Kheda smiled back but didn't rise to the bait. 'Who made it for you?'

Dull steel was shaped into a blunt-toed foot beneath a curved metal calf riveted to a shin plate. Concentric curved plates overlapped at the front of knee and ankle to suggest that the remarkable creation would bend at both joints. The hollow thigh was topped with more straps and buckles.

'An armourer first came up with the idea.' Naldeth rapped the facsimile limb with his knuckles, the noise loud in the confines of the hold. 'We barbarians don't fight the endless battles that Archipelagan poets insist must constantly ravage the north, but there are enough pointless wars to leave all too many men missing a leg.'

'So these armourers profit when they send men to fight and again when they come back maimed.' Kheda propped himself casually on a chest.

'Don't tell me any Aldabreshi smith wouldn't do the same.' Naldeth shifted on his buttocks and eased his stump into the open top of the metal leg. 'If you're not the bloodthirsty savages our barbarian minstrels sing of, you're certainly as avid a flock of merchants as ever traded.'

'Does it bear your full weight?' As the wizard buckled a stout leather belt around his waist and began securing dangling straps to matching buckles on the metal thigh, Kheda reached stealthily behind his back and tucked the loose sacking under the ropes to hide the exposed surface of the dragon's egg.

'The steel skin's mostly for show.' Naldeth pulled a final strap tight. 'A solid wooden post runs all through the middle, down to the foot plate. There's a metal spring in the angle between the foot and the post, and this —' he tugged on a cord that disappeared into the angle behind the knee '— and some hinges inside mean I can bend it when I want to.'

Kheda nodded with admiration. 'Steelsmiths on the trading beaches must have made handsome offers for a chance to study it.'

'Velindre hasn't let me wear it in Aldabreshin waters.' Naldeth got to his feet with surprising ease, pulling and slackening the cord that bent the metal knee. 'She said you people don't wear plate armour, so it would mark me out as too newly come from the north.'

'That's true enough.' Kheda watched the wizard walk slowly up and down the hold, swinging the stiff leg out slightly with each step. 'It's a remarkable contrivance.'

'I still need my crutch if I'm not using a touch of magic to keep me upright.' Naldeth grinned. 'Which is another reason for not wearing it on trading beaches, that and the soft sand.' The wizard twisted to adjust a strap at the side of his waist. 'No Aldabreshi's ever asked me what happened to my leg, not once. Velindre said they wouldn't. No one asked how I was coping with such a loss or what I would do with the rest of my life.' He swallowed his unguarded anger and managed a thin smile. 'There's something very restful about the way you people simply accept a person for what they are. It must make life much simpler.'

'My life's hardly been simple.' Kheda strove to keep his words light. 'And every turn of the heavens seems to bring some new twist, such as Velindre turning up to propose this voyage.'

'We'll just have to see how it all turns out.' Naldeth studied the warlord for a moment. 'Are you sure you won't be looking for omens?'

Something in the wizard's gaze made Kheda a little uneasy. He looked up at the canvas-shrouded grating. 'Do you suppose it's worth trying some fishing yet?'