Once clear of the harbour Shelim, who had taken the tiller, turned the boat northwards, for every Vorthenki knew that the dragon isle lay to the north east of the lands of men, far out in the great ocean. Azkun knew they expected him to call the dolphin to guide them, but all he could think of for now was the hymn the Vorthenki folk had sung to him and the promise he had made them.
They sailed on into the dusk with a good wind and a calm enough sea. Althak contrived to ignore Thalissa completely. Azkun needed no special sight to see he was uncomfortable in her presence. He moved about the boat checking the ropes, tightening them or loosening them where necessary while Shelim manned the tiller, and ignoring any offers of help from her.
Early the following morning Althak found that a sack of oats in the hold had split open and an impromptu porridge was forming in the bilge water. They spent about an hour cleaning it out and Azkun found it a foul task. The hold stank of the fat used to seal the wooden hull, a thick, sulphurous smell that caught in the throat like acid. Tenari could not be made to help and Shelim was busy with the tiller. Althak and Thalissa were least disturbed by the stench below deck so Azkun found himself by the gunwales lifting bail buckets of oaty sludge from the deck hatch to empty over the side as Thalissa passed them up to him.
“Why did you come with us?” asked Althak; there was bitterness in his voice. Thalissa paused so long that Azkun thought she was not going to answer, but she did.
“When you've lost everyone dear to you, and you find them again, you can't let them go.”
“How can Azkun be dear to you? You've hardly seen him since he was born.”
“I spent nine long months with him in my womb. I spent three days with Tenari before Menish took her away. They're all I have.”
“Tenari scratched you. What makes you think Azkun has any more love for you?” The buckets stopped.
“Why do you hate me, Althak?”
“Because you are what you are.”
“No, because Menish hates me. I tried to poison him once, no doubt he told you. Olcean, his friend, died instead, but that's not why he hates me. You'd laugh if I told you.” Another bucket appeared in the hatchway and Azkun passed the empty one down in its place. “He hates me because I seduced him.”
There was a splash and a muttered curse. Althak must have dropped the bucket he was holding.
“That's ridiculous.”
“I suppose he has other reasons. I turned Sinalth against him. But that's the main reason.”
“Your brain's been turned by the Chasm. Menish is Anthorian. He's devoted to Adhara. How could you have seduced him?”
“They used to tell me I was beautiful then, even Menish said so. He was far from home, lonely, and I got him drunk enough to forget his wife. Menish claimed the wine I gave him was drugged, but that wasn't true.
“These things do happen, even to a king of Anthor. He hated me for it. He said so. That was why he left me for Thealum and took away my son.” She stopped suddenly and they continued working silently. When she spoke again her voice was cracked with weeping. “It was just a simple pleasure. Why did he hate me so?”
“It was you who tried to kill him.”
“What else could I do? He would have turned Sinalth against me. I didn't want to join the once-loved cast-offs in the women’s bower.”
After that Azkun noticed that Althak did not avoid her so pointedly. He still seemed uncomfortable when he spoke to her, but his hatred of her had faded into mere dislike.
They were three days out from Atonir, and Azkun still had not called the dolphin, when Althak indicated land ahead of them. A bony spine of mountains marched along its back.
“That's the island of Ramuz. We'll stop at a harbour called Tethim to fill our water casks for the long journey ahead. We may find other islands on our way to Kishalkuz, but there are no known lands beyond Ramuz.”
“What people live there? Relanese folk?”
“No, Ramuz has always been Vorthenki. Sinalth launched his invasion from there, and even now Vorish has no power over it. His might lies in his cavalry, not his ships. There the Vorthenki are free to practise the old ways.
“They kill maidens for Kopth, you mean.”
“Not all of the Vorthenki ways celebrate death, Azkun. We're not the folk of Gashan. The priestesses are healers as well. On the eastern coast of Ramuz there's a place where maidens go to learn the craft. They're trained in medicine and herbs as well as the rite of sacrifice. The only rite they do not learn is that of Dragonseed, for no men, nothing male at all, is allowed near there to ensure their purity to Kopth. They even have to send their sheep over the mountains to be put with rams.”
“No, you are right.” He remembered the people singing to him on the pier. “They are only misguided. They are not filled with evil like the Gashans. But I will not show myself to them. I do not want to be responsible for more sacrifices.”
The next morning Shelim turned their boat so that they sailed along the coast and by noon they reached a town of Vorthenki long houses on the shore with a stone pier reaching into the sea. There they moored their boat and Althak went ashore for their supplies. It was important they topped up their fresh water casks before they left the known lands.
By evening they had sailed again, this time on the long leg of their journey, and Azkun knew he must call his dolphin to guide them. The next day, as they rounded the northern tip of Ramuz he stood at the gunwales and waited.
He had not yet attempted to call the dolphin, partly because he wanted to be sure they had left the coasts of men and partly because he was unsure of himself. The things he had done by the power of the dragons up until now had been done at their bidding, they had not been calculated. He had acted on impulse, on their prompting, and their power had been manifest. It was only as they set out on this voyage that he remembered how large the seas were, and how finding one dolphin in them was no simple task. Only the dragons could help him and only when they chose could he call the dolphin.
And there lay another problem. He was the bridge to the dragons, he had told people that, but he was also evil. He had killed a Gashan, he had relied on Monnar magic to rescue them from the marshes. The dragons had kept him alive, curing his centipede bite and preventing him from starving, but he had done no great works in their name since he had murdered the Gashan. Did they still want him at Kishalkuz? Dared he go there?
But he did not dare do otherwise. He had promised them dragons, all of them. Menish had not accepted his promise, Vorish had not been without his doubts, but he had promised nevertheless. He had promised Althak, and Althak had given up his friendship with Menish to support him. Shelim, Tenari, the Vorthenki of Atonir, even the folk who had sacrificed to him when he had refused to land there, all of them depended on him. But more than any of these, he had promised himself. That dark part of himself that had murdered the Gashan still lurked in his mind haunting him. Only the dragons would be able to exorcise it.
For the others, all the Gashans could do to them was to kill them. Not so for himself. They could get into his mind with their own evil, they could make him do things and all he could do would be to watch with horror as his personal guilt piled up in death around him. Only the dragons could provide him with salvation from himself.
At this moment he needed their aid to call the dolphin. He did not know how to do it for himself, other than to stand at the gunwale and hope. Already he had sensed Althak’s unspoken questions. Why did he delay? Shelim needed a course to steer, the vaguely north-east direction their prow pointed was not enough. But he did not know how to call on the dragons, it was they who always called on him. And perhaps they would call him no more.
For a night and a day he stood at the gunwales and waited. He had once heard Hrangil say that to invoke Aton the Relanese would sometimes fast and go without sleep. He could not fast for he did not eat. But he could go without sleep and this he did, standing motionless with Tenari at his side as always. He told her to sleep but she remained with him.
During the night Althak and Shelim took turns on the tiller as they sometimes did during the day. The sea swished and foamed about the prow and the pale moonlight from the new moon shone whitely on the foam as if it were bleached bones.
When the greyness of dawn showed in the east, slowly tingeing the clouds with red, his legs ached with cramp and fatigue and his eyes were heavy. He forced himself to go on. After all he was guilty. His invocation should cost something.
But there was nothing. No dragon appeared in the clouds, only gulls that hovered about the mast hoping for a meal without having to fish for it. No silver-grey shape with chattering thoughts showed itself in the bow wave. He could stand no longer. He sank down by the gunwale, still trying to keep awake, and slowly rubbed his aching legs. Althak, who had just been relieved by Shelim, came and squatted beside him.
“Azkun?”
“I know, we need a course. The dolphin has not come to me. I do not know where the island is myself.”
“I thought you could just-”
“So did I, but I have spent all night trying to call it.”
“Perhaps it's far away.”
“Perhaps too far.”
“It's not like you to despair.”
“I am weary. Do not worry, Althak. I will think of some way. After all, the dragons want us to get to Kishalkuz.” As he spoke he asked himself ‘Do they? Do they want me there?’ but he did not voice these doubts to Althak.
He felt the Vorthenki’s friendly grip on his shoulder.
“You will, I know you will.”
Althak’s touching confidence was like ashes in his mouth. He watched the Vorthenki rise and cross the deck to the pile of sleeping furs that were spread under the canvas awning they used as a shelter at night. Just as he lay down a fuzziness stole into Azkun’s mind, like the buzzing of a bee or the distant sound of surf pounding on rocks. Sleep tugged at his eyelids. He felt his head lolling forward and jerked it up quickly. The fuzziness remained.
All at once a cascade of images flooded his mind. The dolphin laughed merrily as it raced alongside the boat.
“Dolphin-not-dolphin swim to dragons?”
Azkun let out a whoop of delight and bounded to his feet. Leaning over the gunwale he could see the streamlined shape of the dolphin skimming just beneath the waves, its dorsal fin sometimes cutting the surface like a knife.
“Swim, swim to dragons,” Azkun laughed back with relief. The dragons had heard him. They had done as he had asked, he was still the vessel of their power. “Swim to dragons. Guide us.”
The dolphin moved ahead of the boat and, as Azkun shouted instructions to Shelim on the tiller, led them a little more to the east than their present course. Then, wearily, he lay down on his sleeping furs and slept.
The dolphin led them faithfully for days, and Azkun spent many hours talking to it. As before it was always laughing. Guiding them to Kishalkuz was a joke, the boat was a joke, even itself was a joke. Sometimes Azkun tired of it, for it refused to take anything seriously. When he tried to tell it of the Gashans it simply retorted “land things, not dolphins” and carried on laughing.
Once, when Azkun had been watching the dull grey shape beneath the water carefully, he noticed a mark on its back that had not been present the last time he had seen the dolphin.
“Are you the same dolphin?” he asked.
“All dolphins are one,” it replied with a torrent of meaningless images and laughter. Azkun got no more sense out of it that day.
Meanwhile on board the boat the human members of the expedition passed their time as best they could. Sea voyages, even for Vorthenki, were often boring affairs.
Shelim, who was by unspoken consent master of the ship because he was the most experienced sailor, spent nearly all of his time at the tiller. He took his position seriously, carefully keeping the dolphin in view at all times. He was awed by Azkun, for he had seen him struck by lightning in the storm and had heard the tales of the other things he had done. He nearly always addressed Azkun as ‘M’Lord’ but once his tongue slipped and he called him ‘Lord Kopth’ much to Azkun’s consternation. But he was a gentle fellow and took Azkun’s rebuke well. After that he avoided all references to Kopth, even when sometimes, in the evening, they sat around the little ship stove and he told stories he had heard from his mother. They carried no lamps on this little boat, but the stove cast enough light to eat and talk beside. Shelim's tales aways featured Kopth as a central character in one of his many forms, a bull, a man, or a dragon usually. But Shelim referred to him as ‘The Great Dragon’, which made the bull stories somewhat confusing at times.
Azkun tried to imagine Shelim, a little boy on his mother’s knee in a Vorthenki long house. Would Thalissa have told him such stories he wondered as he looked at his mother in the light of the stove. The warm red glow from the dying embers softened her old face into something like it must have looked when she was younger. He supposed she must have been pretty, but he had no idea of such things. He felt cheated, he had known no childhood, no mother to tell him stories or soothe away his fears and hurts. He had known only the howling gale of the Chasm.
Althak began to avoid Thalissa less and less as the voyage lengthened. They had exchanged their harsh words and Althak’s hatred of her had been shown to be of Menish’s making. She was a sad person. There was a weight of past sorrow on her that showed in her eyes, and Althak could only respond to such sadness with comfort. He began to coax her into eating more, saying gruffly that she ate less than a gull. At first she returned his interest with a scowl, thinking he mocked her, but Althak’s grin was too infectious for her to sustain that. So began a guarded friendship. They worked together when necessary, adjusting the sail under Shelim’s direction and preparing the meals.
Their diet consisted mostly of oat porridge, dried meat and water. From time to time they caught fresh fish and occasionally they snared a sea gull. But as they left land further behind them the gulls became rare and hard to catch. There was not much meat on them anyway. Fish also became less plentiful as they moved out into the great ocean towards the edge of the world.
Tenari had quickly resumed her blank manner when they left the comforts of Atonir. As always she was at Azkun’s side, her solemn stare fixed on him. Thalissa tried to speak with her but she was wary. Tenari ignored her.
For Azkun the voyage was a happy time. The deaths of fish and birds did not bother him, just as the death of the snake had not. The dolphin’s continual and infectious laughter drove out his sombre feelings of guilt. The dragons had heard him and, through the dolphin, were guiding him to them.
When they were fourteen days from Ramuz they saw an island in the distance but the dolphin did not lead them towards it. Twice more on their journey Shelim told them they were near land though they could not see it. He could tell, he said, by the clouds and by the fact that sea birds circled their mast.
But on the thirty-seventh day, when there was some concern about how long their supplies of fresh water would last, Azkun saw a dark spot on the horizon. The dolphin was guiding them directly towards it.