The last red light of sunset burned on the water, reflected off brass-plated figureheads, as a vast fleet of black ships, powered by great banks of oars, rounded the point at Apharos, glided past the last of the nine grim fortresses guarding the harbor and the bay, and came out on the open sea.
Standing on the foredeck of his flagship, which alone bore Ouriána’s likeness cast in solid gold, Prince Cuillioc gazed out across a seemingly boundless expanse of fiery ocean, and for one moment it seemed that all the world had turned to blood and flame.
Then the water began to swirl and shimmer with a sorcerous light. An almost impossibly beautiful vision appeared on the surface: Ouriána, her face pale as pearl, her eyes as deep and dark as the night sky, her ruddy hair stretching out across the sea from horizon to horizon in burning streamers of crimson and gold. The night fairly swooned with her presence, like heady incense.
He saw her red lips move, heard her voice chiming like crystal against crystal inside his head: Do not fail me. This time, do not disappoint me.
Cuillioc’s mouth went suddenly dry; he clutched at the rail, his pulses quickening. For a brief time more she was there, filling the night; then her image faded, and the sea went dark and empty. The Prince released a long slow breath, and his shoulders sagged.
This time, do not disappoint me. It was, he knew too well, meant for a warning as much as a command. If Mirizandi did not fall; if he did not return to Apharos in the autumn, his ships richly laden with silks and perfumes, gold, gemstones, jade, and rare spices; if instead of the fabled wealth of the southern continent he had nothing to lay at her feet but another tale of misfortune and miscalculation…
Ouriána had excused much in the past simply because he was her son, yet she was not, as a rule, either patient or forgiving. The thought that he might spend the rest of his days banished from her presence, crushed by the terrible knowledge of her implacable displeasure—Cuillioc felt a familiar pain twist inside him, and it was almost too much to bear.
The sun went down beneath the water, and a young moon painted the sea in shades of silver. It was after midnight before the wind freshened, the sails were set, and the Prince abandoned his vantage point on the deck for his cabin and his narrow bed, hoping to catch an hour or two of sleep before sunrise.
But his mind was overwrought, his nerves unstrung with anticipation. And every time he closed his eyes, he could feel the horror of the nightmare pressing down on him; all his hopes and fears chased each other through his brain. He tossed and turned, threw off his silken comforters, and beat at his goose-down pillows, until finally the very effort to rest exhausted him, and he rose from his bunk, cold and haggard in the chill grey hour before the dawn. Dressing hastily, he returned to his place beside the rail just in time to see the first flash of gold on the eastern horizon.
For more than a fortnight the armada continued south and east, between the scattered islands of the central archipelago. Depending on the wind, they rowed or sailed: past lonely islands where primitive villages straggled along ivory beaches or huddled under shiny black cliffs; past islets clothed in trees, and atolls occupied only by multitudes of seabirds.
A hundred miles from the southern continent, where a chain of rocky islets so small, desolate, and uninhabitable they did not appear on any map jutted out of the sea, the galleys each dropped anchor, small boats were lowered from the sides, and slaves rowed the various dignitaries from their respective vessels to the Prince’s flagship, there to take part in a final Council of War before the invasion.
The priest Iobhar was the first to arrive, pale and unnatural in his scarlet robes, but soon the deck was aswarm with the richly clad nobles, each apparently intent on outshining his fellows.
Their meeting was brief but decisive. Elaborate plans had been laid before leaving Phaôrax, and no one, least of all Cuillioc, saw fit to alter those plans in any detail. Having arrived at an agreement with remarkable dispatch, everyone then took part in a meal laid out by the Prince’s servants for the Prince’s guests under a crimson silk canopy.
Whatever his faults, none could deny that Prince Cuillioc was an excellent host, and his flagship had embarked fully provisioned. Moreover, there were those in attendance that day who, for all their gaudy display of velvets and embroidered silks, were accustomed to regard themselves as pursepinched if not absolutely indigent—they were therefore more than happy to dine at the Prince’s expense, on mussels simmered in white wine and artichokes steeped in butter; on salads of cress and sharp green lettuce, poached fish of all sorts, eel pies, and soft cheeses; to nibble on candied fruits and sip a cool sweet wine flavored with anise.
While these noble gentlemen inclined to linger long over the sugared figs and dates, there were others who wandered off together in smaller groups, seeking such privacy as the limited space provided. The furiádh Iobhar and a certain Lord Cado made up one such cabal, and were, in fact, the first to excuse themselves.
They retreated to the tiny afterdeck, where they were deep in conversation when the priest startled his companion by interrupting himself in midsentence and diving behind a pile of rope and tackle. There he engaged in a brief brisk scuffle with some unknown person and emerged a moment later dragging behind him a scrawny small boy, rather grubbily attired as a page in soiled silks and rubbed velvets.
“Now, whose spy are you, little rat?” hissed Iobhar, holding both thin wrists in an iron grip that the child could not break for all his squirming and his frantic struggles. When the boy refused to speak, the priest heaved him up off the deck and dangled him over the rail.
Suspended some fifteen feet in the air with nothing between him and the dazzling surface of the water, the urchin very wisely went utterly limp and still.
“Is it mute, do you suppose?” asked Lord Cado, viewing the proceedings with a dispassionate eye.
Ignoring his question, Iobhar spoke to the boy in a threatening growl. “I don’t suppose you know how to swim, little rat. I have only to open my hand and you’ll sink like a rock, never to be seen again.”
“Your pardon,” said a cool voice behind him. “But that disreputable object belongs to me. If he has done anything to annoy you, I can only apologize, but unless one of you has a burning desire to spend the rest of the voyage acting as my body servant, I urge you to return him to me. A comely child he is not, but he is the only page I’ve brought with me.”
Iobhar dropped the boy unceremoniously on the deck. He landed with a soft thud, scrambled to his feet, and scurried below. The priest and Lord Cado acknowledged Prince Cuillioc’s presence with stiff bows.
“Great Lord,” said Iobhar, slipping his hands into the hanging sleeves of his scarlet robe. He bared his yellow teeth in what might have been intended for a conciliating smile, their color a startling contrast with his dead white skin and hair.
It was unlikely he had ever been a good-looking man, with his sloping forehead and weak chin, but of all the Furiádhin there was a particularly loathsome quality about him—one that never failed to raise the fine hairs at the back of Cuillioc’s neck. It was said that no man knew the precise nature of Iobhar’s deformity, but he walked with a slight limp, and sometimes there was a little scaly rustling sound under the long train of his robes. Next to Goezenou, the Prince hated him most of all.
“I had no idea I was meddling with your property. The boy was insolent; I will say no more than that. No doubt you will wish to deal with the matter yourself.”
“No doubt I will,” Cuillioc replied agreeably, baring his own even white teeth. “As well as any other displays of—insolence—I might chance to encounter.”
Hostility flared, briefly, between the Prince and the furiádh. But then, with an effort, Iobhar remembered himself. “I am duly reprimanded,” he murmured, making a deeper and more reverent obeisance than before. “But surely the son of the Goddess knows that I am his to command.”
Cuillioc shrugged. “That goes without saying. As for the boy—I will make certain that he doesn’t annoy you again.”
The visitors returned to their ships soon after, and it was time to pull up anchor. With a stiff breeze bellying their sails, the Prince’s armada left the chain of islands behind and looked fair to reach the Bay of Mir before many more days had passed.
They had strayed into waters where no man of Phaôrax had ventured for more than a hundred years. By night, clouds of stars whirled overhead in strange constellations. So alien were these stars that Cuillioc could never quite make out their patterns; as soon as he thought he detected a figure, it somehow seemed to shift. By day, a hot southern sun beat mercilessly down, turning the waves the color of molten gold.
Once, a school of whales swam by in the middle distance. With water pouring off their blue-grey flanks, they sent up columns of wild white spray. Another time, the Prince’s galley passed by a solitary beached leviathan, dying on a rocky shoal. Staring into the tiny sunken eye of the half-dead whale, Cuillioc felt a shiver of fear pass through his stomach at the ill omen.
It soon proved accurate. The fleet was spread out over a half mile of ocean, already within sight of land, when a great storm roared in from the east, bringing with it a pelting rain and waves of such enormous size they seemed likely to swamp some of the smaller vessels.
Cuillioc arrived on deck, caught hold of a mast to keep from being blown away, and peered out across the water. Visibility was so poor that most of the fleet was already hidden behind inpenetrable curtains of rain, yet it was impossible to mistake Iobhar standing at the rail of the nearest ship, his red robes flapping, his silky white hair streaming on the wind, as he shouted out spells to quell the blast.
Whether by chance or design, his sorcery took effect too late to prevent the Prince’s ship being separated from the others and blown back out to sea. Driven by fierce winds, pounded by colossal waves, the galley was soon swamped. The Master stood on the afterdeck bawling out orders that no one could hear, and even the Prince and the gentlemen of his household took their turns at the pumps. By dint of furious pumping and bailing, they managed to keep afloat—though how long they might be able to do so was anyone’s guess.
For a day and a night, the storm continued. Cuillioc was often on deck, lending a hand wherever he could, feeling the agony of the ship as though it were his own, as she was pounded by the wind and tossed from wave to wave. His face lashed raw by the gale-driven rain and his eyes streaming with salt tears, his voice grew hoarse and his lips chapped, yet he continued to work right alongside the other men. Again and again, he felt the ship raised high by a monstrous grey wave, then dropped through the air to hit the sea with such force that the galley shuddered from stem to stern. It hardly seemed she could continue to suffer such abuse without breaking up.
Then, just as suddenly as it had sprung up, the storm died. The clouds parted, flooding sea and sky with warm amber light. Wind and wave subsided; air and water went utterly still.
Rolling a red-rimmed eye at his nearest companions, Cuillioc went below, cursing his luck. First storm-tossed, now becalmed. He began to doubt whether he would ever see Mirizandi at all.
Meanwhile, with the sails hanging slack and the ship floating motionless on the sun-shot face of the water, the Master gave orders to break out the oars. Down in his cabin, the Prince heard the by-now-familiar rattle and thump of oars slipping into place. Then the drum took up its monotonous thud-thunk, like a weary heartbeat.
The slaves kept at their backbreaking labor for hour after hour in the relentless heat, faces red, muscles straining, skins slick with sweat, until word came down from Prince Cuillioc to drop anchor and give the men a rest.
A short while later, the shipmaster, going in search of the Prince and finding him sprawled, sick and exhausted on his bed, was moved to protest. “Great Prince, there was no need. It’s not my place to question your orders, but in all truth the men were good for a long time yet.”
Cuillioc put his hands behind his head, scowled at the man across the candlelit cabin. “We’ll not reach Mirizandi any sooner by killing the oarsmen.”
The Master shuffled his feet. “They’re able to do more than you may think. And even if we lose a man here and there, I promise you, Great Prince, it will hardly matter. The ones that survive can be urged on to greater efforts, being that much stronger.”
“In common humanity, then. And in recognition of their mighty labors working the pumps during the storm.”
The man goggled at him. “In common hu—The oarsmen are slaves—criminals snatched from the gallows.”
But Cuillioc had made up his mind. He had seen what happened when galley slaves were pushed too hard, the way the bodies of the dead—and sometimes of those too weak to continue rowing—were commonly thrown overboard to lighten the load. He had no wish to leave a trail of waterlogged and fish-eaten corpses behind him, all the way to Mirizandi.
“We will wait here until sunset. If the wind doesn’t rise, the men can row all through the night, when it is cooler.”
Shaking his head, the Master withdrew. The Prince rolled over on his side, pulled a pillow over his head, and lapsed into a restless doze, from which he woke a short or a long time later, trembling, sweaty, and hagridden.
He reappeared on deck just as the sun was hovering on the horizon, about to dip into the ocean. A large flock of seagulls flew overhead, heading for the land. Cuillioc leaned over the rail, watching them grow smaller and smaller until they finally disappeared in the dusky air. A waxing moon was already high in the sky.
Just as the sun went down, a stiff breeze sprang up. There was activity in the rigging, the sails were set, and soon the galley went skimming across the water far more swiftly than the men could have rowed her.
Cuillioc went up to the afterdeck, where he stood sniffing the air. There was, he decided, a distinct scent of sorcery on the wind. Nor had he any doubt as to the origin of this highly convenient change in the weather. His heart swelled within him.
Looking in the direction of Phaôrax, he folded his arms and bowed his head in the ritual salute accorded the Empress. “Thank you, Mother,” he said under his breath.
And feeling that he had somehow been unaccountably returned to favor, he turned around and went below with a light step and a satisfied smile on his face.