CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Sea Road to Grarby

“I object to water for its wetness, which is really its worst quality.” Deor would have gone on, but Morlock, weary of his incessant complaints, took a handful of water from the drinking barrel on deck, formed it into a ball, and threw it at him.

While Deor sputtered and the rowers cheered and laughed, Kelat stared in open-mouthed astonishment. “How did you do that?”

Morlock silently mimed the actions of throwing something.

“No, no: I mean the water. It held together like a snowball.”

“I convinced it to.”

“How?”

“Water is quite gullible, in small amounts,” the crooked man said.

Kelat reflected on this for a moment and said, “And in larger amounts?”

From the steering bench Lady Ambrosia said, “Moody. Dangerous. Usually beautiful, but always unpredictable. Sounds like your wife, Morlock, eh?”

Kelat was thinking that it sounded like Lady Ambrosia, but he didn’t think it right to say so. Somehow Morlock had convinced her to bring him along on this journey; he didn’t want to wreck anything, the way he usually managed to do.

Deor, quenched in more ways than one, came back to sit by Morlock. “Harven, have I been getting tiresome?” he asked quietly.

Morlock opened one hand, closed it.

Evidently Deor knew what that meant and said, “Sorry.”

“Eh. Don’t let it worry you.”

It was the second night of their travels, and by dead reckoning they were fairly near their destination, the settlement of Gray Folk on the northeast coast of the Sea of Storms. Kelat had never been on a sea voyage that long, and he loved it. He stood by whenever Morlock and Ambrosia took the bearings of true-east and true-north with the seastone and plotted their progress on the map. He took turns at the oars. He took turns spelling the drummer who helped the rowers keep time. He stood watches as lookout. He spent time watching the different techniques of the steersman (or steerswoman, in Ambrosia’s case). He wished the journey would never end.

He turned to look past the prow and sang out, “Fire on the horizon.” There was a dim red spark there, where the darkness of the sky met the darkness of the sea.

“Where? What? How?” Deor demanded.

“Dead ahead,” Kelat said, pointing. “Something burning. I don’t know how.”

“I see it,” Ambrosia said grimly. “That’s where Grarby ought to be. Any thoughts, Morlock?”

“Get closer,” he said.

“Boat’s made of wood, Morlock,” Ambrosia observed. “Wood burns.”

“It burns?” Morlock looked around in surprise. “Why?”

“Because. . . . Because. . . . Shut your stupid face!”

Morlock shrugged. “Closer.”

“So we go closer,” Ambrosia said. “But listen to me, Master Drummer and all you oarsmen! Be prepared to go to half speed.”

They drove on into the dark water, and the red bud on the horizon grew into a bright, burning flower.

“Lady,” said the captain, “we can beach the ship north of Grarby and march with you.”

“Vornon, you’re a giant,” said Ambrosia easily, “but it can’t be. This ship and crew must return intact to the fleet to help defend our fishing waters.”

The flower grew. Its red light spread toward them, like bright petals cast on the dark water. Ambrosia ordered half speed.

She called the rowers to halt when they could actually see individual buildings on fire in Grarby.

“Haul out the skiff,” she said.

The oarsman stood and moved their benches. They reached down into the innards of the hull and drew out a narrow little skiff on ropes. Morlock came over to help them lower it over the prow into the water.

“What is that?” Deor asked, in real distress.

Ambrosia stood up from the steering bench, stretched luxuriously (causing several sailors to stare wildly—including Kelat, he feared) and leaped forward to clap Deor on the shoulder. “That’s the last boat to Grarby, Deortheorn! Climb aboard!”

“It’ll sink.”

“Then we’ll swim. Get your stuff and come on!”

Deor glumly grabbed his pack and Morlock’s; Kelat ran back to fetch his own and heard Ambrosia say quietly to Vornon, “You’re in command now. Get this ship back and put it at the Vice-Regent’s disposal. Stand by him, Vornon. It will be a long, hard year, and that brings out the traitor in weak-minded men.”

“You’ll be gone for a year?” Vornon said.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I don’t know how soon that will be. Carry out my orders, soldier.”

“Yes, Lady Ambrosia!”

Kelat brought Ambrosia’s pack along with his and handed it to her. She grinned at him, and he felt like he’d been punched. Where was the distant, cold, often angry Lady Ambrosia he’d known all his life?

Ambrosia danced across the benches and jumped over the side, landing neatly in the skiff. “Come on!” she called.

If the skiff had been the jaws of a sea monster, Kelat would have done exactly as he did: run past the benches, leap over the side, and land right in front of her. He lost his footing and his pack almost went over the side, but she seized it and him and no disaster occurred. He hoped he wasn’t gaping at her, but he couldn’t stop looking at her as she turned toward the warship and called, “Come on, you two! Grarby is burning and, for all we know, the sun is not. There’s no time to lose.”

“That thing will sink if all four of us get into it,” Deor said, not in a joking way but as if he believed it. Kelat turned to look back at him, not because he wanted to, but because he was embarrassed to keep staring at Ambrosia.

Morlock didn’t reply to Deor, but he made his way somewhat unhandily down the side of the ship by way of the ropes. Once he was in the skiff he looked up to Deor and opened his hands.

Deor shrugged. “Catch!” he said, and tossed down first his pack then Morlock’s. At last he followed Morlock down the ropes into the skiff.

“I think we can trust you two landsmen to row—” Ambrosia began.

“I am not a man. Madam.”

“Your pardon, Deor. If you’ll take one set of oars, I see Morlock is already shipping the others. Kelat, you’re lookout. I’ll steer.”

They cast off the ropes. Ambrosia bid Vornon and his crew farewell, and they cheered the skiff on its way. Deor and Morlock got fairly soon into a rhythm with the oars and they pulled away from the warship. When the skiff was well away, they heard Vornon calling out orders, and the warship’s oars began to dip and sweep. It made a long turn south, then west, back home to the cold camps of the Vraids on the northern coast of the Sea of Stones.

“This tub is going to sink,” Deor muttered.

“Probably,” Morlock agreed.

“Absit omen!” Ambrosia snapped. (Kelat didn’t understand that, exactly, except it seemed to be meant to ward off bad luck.) “You should know better, Morlock.”

“Every ship or boat I’ve ever been in has sunk, unless Aloê was in it, too,” Morlock observed.

“That’s not funny, brother.”

“No,” he agreed flatly.

“Er. Really? You mean it? Well, we all know how to swim—I hope?”

No one said her nay, and they rowed onward over the dark water toward the burning town.

The glittering red water was broken by the black-and-white furrow of a wake. “Something coming toward us in the water,” Kelat called back to the others.

“A ship?” Ambrosia asked calmly.

“Something under the water.”

The oars stopped rowing. Harsh ringing music: Morlock was drawing his sword. Kelat scrabbled about for his spear—where was it? Back on the warship?

The thing in the water: he could see it now. Sort of see it. It had a circular maw, ringed with knife-teeth that lifted from the water—

Morlock brushed past him and leaped off the prow of the boat, sword in hand, directly at the beast in the water.

Kelat shouted something, he never remembered what.

Morlock landed atop the scaly back of the beast. He stabbed the dark sword deep into it—there was no head—there was no neck—there was just the place behind the maw, and that’s where Morlock struck. His blade went all the way into the monster until the hilts were pressed against the scaly back.

The knivish ring of teeth clenched and champed. The beast screamed and rolled in the water. Morlock disappeared.

Deor cried out and Ambrosia called out, “Steady! Ware the waves!”

It was excellent advice. The fish-beast kept on thrashing and bucking in the water. Morlock came into sight betimes, hanging desperately onto the grip of his sword, still anchored in something—the beast’s spine, perhaps. Whenever he came into sight, he was already going out of sight as the fish-beast spun again and again in the water, arching its body and swinging its great finned tail.

The turmoil of the sea threatened to overturn the skiff, but it was the fish-beast’s tail that destroyed it, shattering the side of the boat so that the dark sea poured in.

Kelat tottered and fell from the prow, and in the chaos of foam and bitter cold water and blood and broken wood he knew nothing for a time except the struggle to stay near the surface and breathing.

The tumult in the waters slowed, ended. The fish beast drifted in the water, as dead as their boat. Morlock was nowhere in sight.

Ambrosia snarled, “Death and Justice! If he’s dead, I’ll bash his damn brains in!” Her dark shape dove beneath the dead beast and returned in a moment with a choking, water-spewing Morlock.

Kelat paddled over to help but Ambrosia snarled, “Don’t strain yourself. The danger’s over.”

“Don’t you strain yourself, harven,” said Deor. He thrashed his way over, their packs in tow . . . somehow all floating on the surface of the water. Their weapons were bound to the packs.

“How . . . ? How . . . ?” Kelat said, gulping as he trod water.

“Don’t know! One of Morlock’s little devices. Said it was best to be sure—he had bad luck on the water.”

“Man thinks ahead,” Ambrosia agreed, with chattering teeth. “Except when it comes time to jump on a sea-monster’s neck.”

Morlock had been more or less limp in her arms, but then he started and tried to get away.

“Hey, you!” she shouted in his ear. “It’s over! Relax!”

“Sword,” he said.

“Death and Justice! Can’t you just make another?”

“Sword.”

“It’s—”

“Sword!”

“Fine! Fine! I’ll get your little toy. Hang onto your pack, here. Don’t let him slide off, you two.”

“Lady Ambuh-buh-buh-brosia,” Kelat stuttered, but she was gone under the water again.

She seemed to be angry at him, and he didn’t understand it. Should he have jumped into the maw of the creature? He hadn’t even had his spear. She hadn’t done anything to aid or forestall Morlock either—she seemed to have stopped Deor from doing so. Why was he, Kelat, to blame?

Ambrosia reappeared with the strange crystalline sword and tossed it atop the floating packs.

“Let’s follow Vornon’s plan,” she said, “and beach ourselves north of the t-t-t-t-t-town. And hope the w-w-w-w-water doesn’t kill us before we get there.”

It didn’t, but it was a near thing. After an eternity of struggling in the cold, dark water, they finally dragged themselves onto the rocky shore. They lay there for a time, gasping. Then Morlock sat up and started fiddling with his pack.

“Morlock,” croaked Ambrosia. “What doing?”

“Dry clothes.”

“Stupid. Stuff’s as wet as water.”

Morlock looked at her with surprise. He continued opening his pack and pulled out dry clothing. With a marked absence of shame, he stripped off his wet clothes, and by that time, anyway, the others were ferociously attacking their own packs.

When they were all dressed in dry clothes and more comfortable, Ambrosia said, “So how did you do that?”

“Water’s gullible. Stitch runes through the packs that convince water to stay out. Easy.”

“You’re easy,” she jeered. “That’s what the girls on the waterfront tell me, anyway.”

A strange voice spoke next—inhuman, vibrant, crunching words like rocks. Kelat looked up to see a dozen mandrakes, armed with swords and spears, standing above them on the beach.

There was water in Kelat’s ears and he hadn’t quite caught the words. But, whatever they had said, it didn’t sound friendly.