Black waves, white-tipped with fury in the howling night. Rol had outsailed the sheltering promontories of the deep-bitten north Dennifreian coast, and he was truly out in the open ocean now. The great swells that were looming astern had come all the length of the Wrywind and were monsters of their kind-or so it seemed to him with nothing but coastal squalls to compare them to. A numbness had set itself about Rol’s mind, and he watched the pitching horizon with a kind of dulled stubbornness, the tiller clamped grimly in one armpit. He ought to shorten sail, but the numbness kept him sitting there at the steering bench, and below him Gannet was hurled forward recklessly. In the hollow of the great waves it grew almost calm, but as the wherry coursed manfully up the side of the next swell the wind would take hold again, and the boat would stagger, the stem digging deep in the flanks of the sea, water foaming aft and flooding down into the hold. Already, she was lower in the water than she had a right to be, and her painful dance was becoming jerky as that of a mishandled puppet.
There came a moment when Rol finally realized that he must see to his craft or perish there in the heaving night. Painfully, he rose and slipped the deadman’s lines about the tiller to hold the course, and then methodically set about reducing sail. As he loosed the halliards the gaff struggled against him, beating about the mainmast, but finally he had it lowered on deck and began gathering in the loose bunt of the mainsail. The canvas thrashed him in the face as it flapped and fought his fists but he managed to secure it to the gaff and then square away the yard, Gannet pitching and rolling under him like a wild horse all the while. Finally he set up a little triangle of a storm-jib that they kept in the forward locker for emergencies, and that was just enough to keep the wherry’s head to the wind and prevent her from broaching-to. The effort left him bleeding, bruised, and exhausted. He stumbled aft like a man who has been flogged, and then set about sealing the mainhatch with a swatch of tarred canvas. That done, he was able to collapse on the steering bench once more, securing himself there with a length of cordage.
West-nor’west, the wind on the larboard quarter. Rol had no idea what speed Gannet was making, but even with the mainsail taken in, it was greater than any he had ever seen her achieve before. The wherry, broad-beamed as a duck, seemed to skate across the great swells, moving now with a more rational purpose. Rol bent and kissed the smooth wood of the tiller, momentarily loving the sturdy little craft and her valiant heart. She had not been designed for deep water, but seemed to revel in the challenge all the same. Some of the numbness that had fogged his brain seemed to lift, and his mind began turning again. He looked up and saw the stars glittering cold and white above him, found the Mariner, and the five points of Gabriel’s Fist. Still on course, then. Some new life awaited him out there along the winking pathways of the nighttime sky, and he knew now that he was ready for it.
The storm blew itself out in the watch before the dawn, the sun rising over a succession of long, blue swells. Seen from land, even a stormy sea is flat, a featureless horizon. But to one at sea in a small boat, the ocean is a moving landscape of hills and valleys, mountains and canyons. When Gannet rode up the side of the tall waves Rol was able to look straight into the eyes of swimming fish, as though they lived in some great-walled tank of glass. Then the wherry would be over the crest, and he would be as it were sliding down a steep hill into the windless valley at the bottom.
A clay beaker of water and some sheaves of dried fish were kept always in the boat’s stern locker. The water was weeks old, but it tasted sweet and cool to Rol as he sluiced the salt out of his mouth and nibbled on ablaroni fillet. It would last some days, with care. The welcome sunlight began to dry out his sodden frame, and a curious gull circled the wherry, perching for a while on the truck of the mainmast and preening itself unconcernedly. The sight was somehow reassuring-the wider world had not disappeared in the chaos of the night. Umer wheeled on as always amid the vast gulfs of the stars. Life continued on the other side of the storm.
Twice during the days that followed, Rol caught sight of other vessels abroad upon the Wrywind. They were high-seas ships, tall carracks flying pennants of silk. One sailed close enough to become hull-up on the horizon, and he could actually glimpse the tiny forms of mariners about her decks. He watched them with a strange mixture of fear and longing. He trusted no man now-whatever his heritage was, men obviously feared and hated it. Could they even sense it, like a horse smelling fire? And yet he would have given much to be one of those mariners, no longer alone, but part of a ship’s company abroad upon the open ocean. Belonging to something.
The carrack passed, until even her masts had disappeared beyond the curve of the earth. They could not have seen the tiny scrap of jib that was all the canvas on Gannet ’s yards. Rol’s horizon was empty again. These were well-traveled waters, full of the sea trade of the Seven Isles, policed by oceangoing enforcers in the pay of the Mercanters. He need not, at least, fear pirates here; they cruised in the warmer waters of the Westerease Sea, and down in the Inner Reach. So Grandfather had said, back in saner days.
Rol studied his left palm in the clear morning light. It was white, pale as the inside of a shell, and scalloped in ridges. A cluttered tangle of tiny lines, darker than the skin about them, wound about the scar like the blind trails of sea-worms. Almost he thought there was a pattern to them. The thing that had done this to him-it was no man, of that he was certain-had said things, called him by a name that he could not now remember, so much having happened after. So many things.
He thumped Gannet ’s timbers in frustration, shouted at the empty sky, cursing his grandfather’s riddles and mysteries; and finally bent his head and wept for the ending of the world he had known. Angry tears, full of salt.
Four days he sailed along, keeping rigidly to his course. He set the mainsail again as the wind fell and Gannet began to wallow, and dozed shivering on the hard steering bench by night, the deadman’s lines securing the tiller. His clothes he took off and flew from the mast to try to dry them. On his naked skin the salt sat dusty and ash-gray, and his hair was harsh as a horse’s mane with it, his eyes red-rimmed and smarting. He grew sick of the very sight of dried fish.
The skies remained clear, the wind backing a point now and again, but always veering round once more, as though under orders to remain constant. It was cold, but bright, as if spring had come early to the Wrywind. The swell never grew taller than half a fathom, and Gannet puddled along equably, as though she had been made for this crossing of the open sea.
On the fifth morning Rol sighted land fine on the larboard bow, a tall blue line of hills, and a white-tipped mountain in their midst. He was in the coastal waters of Gascar now, at the center of the Seven Isles. Some eighty leagues he had sailed, and a few more would see his landfall. He studied the sunlit hills as though he might decipher the answers to all his questions on their slopes.
The wind dropped to a moderate breeze, and as Gannet coasted with Gascar’s hills to port, Rol passed a few late inshore fishermen taking advantage of the unseasonally clement weather. They stopped and stared at the strange sail before continuing to haul in their catch. There was little enough in the coastal grounds this late in the year, but a last netful might mean the difference between hunger and plenty at the tail end of winter.
Rol rounded a long promontory, wooded with tall green pine and fir and girded with gray rock. A square-rigged caravel went by, beating into the wind, her crew singing in the shrouds. Thanks to his grandfather’s endless stories Rol knew that the gilded porpoise at her stem meant she was out of Corso, to the southwest. The Corsoans, short and dark as seals, were consummate deepwater sailors, and their pilots were in high demand over all the Twelve Seas. He felt a momentary thrill of excitement. All those tall tales, they had been an education, in a way. Perhaps Grandfather had been preparing him for a day such as this.
Ascari, capital of Gascar. It shone bright in the sunlight at the foot of its long bay. White houses with red clay roofs, a haze of smoke hanging over them, and in the harbor at the city’s foot half a hundred vessels of all ports and builds, cradled by a whitewashed mole of squared stone that arced protectively into the glittering waters of the bay. He had made very good time, and Grandfather’s sailing directions, brief though they had been, were still accurate.
The hills surrounding the port killed the wind, and the water in the bay was calm as glass. Rol broke out Gannet ’s heavy sweeps, and for a sweating couple of hours labored first at one and then the other, as if propelling an oversized rowing boat. A swift six-man cutter put out into the bay and hailed him as he worked. The helmsman was grinning through a salt-gray beard.
“Hot work, even on a cold day, young ’un! We’ll tow you in, if you have a mind, take you right snug up to the wharves. What say you?”
Rol wiped his forehead, panting. “How much?”
The men in the cutter looked at one another. The helmsman’s grin widened. “No more than you can afford, with a pretty face like that. Give me, Aradas, a roll in the hold and we’ll scull you to port in style.”
Rol bared his teeth, and spat over the side. “Too dear for my liking. I’d sooner sweat.”
Aradas laughed. “Suit yourself, my proud one!” and the cutter was sculled rapidly away with its crew hooting and calling derisively.
It was late evening by the time Rol had finally made Gannet fast fore and aft to stone bollards set in the harbor mole. By that time he was spent, his back aching and his hands blistered-except where the strange scar had somehow protected one palm. The first stars were out, and his breath was a pale fog before his face. He sat on the mole by Gannet for a while, feeling the cold stiffen his sore muscles and start to work a chill within his sweat-soaked clothing. At the base of the mole Ascari was a maze of yellow lights, and he could hear raucous laughter, shouts, clattering cart-wheels. A burst of song from the open door of a tavern. At his feet the waters of the bay plopped and hissed and Gannet floated, creaking. It was the ebb of the tide.
Rol had never felt so alone.
A lantern-bearing shape loomed up out of the night, the fragrance of whitherb wound about it. A bearded man with a short pipe jutting from his mouth, and eyes black as bubbles of pitch in the lantern-light. He took his pipe out of his mouth and spat on the whitened stone of the mole. “When’d you get in, younker?”
“Just now. Just this moment.”
“Berthing fee to be paid. Five minims a day, unless you’re kin to one of the fisherfolk. What’s the name?”
Rol rubbed his face. “I’m a friend of Michal Psellos. Would you know where to find him?”
The man’s pipe paused on its way back to the reeking hole in his beard. He glared. “Ten minims a day for such as you, then, and make it quick or I’ll have the Harbor Watch impound that cockleshell o’ yourn.”
Rol stared at him, smelling the dislike. A few short days ago he might have been cowed, but not now. He stood up, hand on the dirk in his belt. “You’ll have your money and more if you tell me where Psellos is to be found.”
He was eyed narrowly. “You’re not of Gascar. There’s a tang of Dennifrey in your accent, and something else maybe. What would you be wanting with a creature like that? Do you know Psellos at all?”
“I was to look him up here.”
The man seemed to study him closely. “You didn’t sail from Dennifrey in that thing, did you?”
Rol shrugged, too tired to elaborate.
“You want my advice, then set sail for home again. You don’t want to go mixing with folk such as that. You’re only a boy-I see now. Ascari’s no place for a youngster alone.”
“I’ve nowhere else to go.”
The man hesitated, and then: “Go to the top of the town, up the hill. There’s a gray tower there in the eaves of the wood. Psellos is there some of the time at least.”
“What about the ten minims?”
“Pay me tomorrow, if you see tomorrow. If you don’t, I’ll take your boat.”
Rol was too weary to argue further. He nodded wordlessly. The man gave him a last stare, spat over the side of the mole, and walked away shaking his head.
The life of Ascari, even in winter, seemed to take place on the streets. Everywhere along the narrow cobbled ways, braziers burned outside open shopfronts, and men sat drinking by them. Once a drunkard lunged for Rol, and he whipped out his dirk, eyes blazing. The man’s companions reeled him back in, laughing and bowing mockingly. Women called to him from upper windows, blew him kisses, promised him all manner of carnal services. Urchins pawed at his waist, eyes bright in wasted faces. He thrust them aside, loathing and pitying them at the same time. He passed fevered knots of copulation in wet alleyways, and once a group of feather-capped men bending over a body sprawled on the cobbles. Music eddied out into the night, cooking smells brought the water into his salt-tainted mouth. He was famished and parched, but knew better than to enter any of the dank taverns he passed. He walked his slow, obstructed way up the hill upon which Ascari sprawled and felt that he was being assaulted by a whole new range of experience, a different world that his mind struggled to take in. This beetling hive of humanity was at once fascinating and repulsive. He wondered how men could live like this-piled atop one another-without going mad.
Farther up the hill the town became less congested, the houses larger and better made. Trees were planted in stately avenues and banners flapped atop the spires of tall towers. The streets became wider, and Rol began to breathe more easily, though with his travel-worn clothes he was more remarked by the better-dressed strollers who passed him by. When he paused and looked back he was able to see the lights of the port strung out down the hillside and along the shore to the northwest and southeast. He realized that the hill and harbor made up only a portion of the entire town; it extended in haphazard fashion for thousands of yards along the coast with no order or design to its layout.
Ascari was unwalled, as were all of the cities of the Seven Isles. They relied on their navies to keep out invaders. Grandfather had said that though the Isles might war amongst themselves from time to time, when an outsider threatened any of the seven he would find himself attacked by all. Not even Bionar had ever felt strong enough to assault the Isles by sea, though Arbionar had been a colony of hers once upon a time.
The last building before the wooded summits of the nearer hills was a stone tower, although the term did not do justice to its gaunt massiveness. Unlike the rest of the town, it was unpainted and unadorned, constructed of massive courses of dark masonry, and it seemed to be built into the hill itself, with low wings extending back from the cylindrical base of the main structure. Not so much a dwelling as a fortress. A light shone high up in a window, and near the conical roof Rol thought he could make out an open space, a balcony of some kind. There was a huge double door a fathom from its foot, reached by a steep wooden staircase. Set within it, a smaller postern was framed in iron. Clambering up, Rol hammered on the wood of the postern with his fist, not allowing himself time to think or hesitate.
He waited. Nothing. He stood unsure and afraid, hand on the hilt of his dirk. The tower seemed dead and empty despite the light he had glimpsed far up its flank.
All this way he had come for this, and if it turned out to be a barren errand, what then would he do? The night seemed vast and empty and alien to him. He knew of nowhere else in the world he might go.
The door scraped back on its jamb, startling him. A hooded figure stood holding a candle-lantern. He stepped back, and came close to falling off the stairway.
A woman-no, a girl. She was not hooded but had a heavy mane of black hair that fell down on either side of her white face. Her eyes were so pale as to be almost colorless, with no whit of warmth to soften their hue. She stood silent, as severely beautiful as a marble statue.
“I’m here to see Michal Psellos,” Rol stammered.
The cold eyes looked him up and down, and then the door was slammed shut in his face.
He stood gaping for a moment, and then began hammering on the door with his fist. “Open up!” When that failed he drew his dirk and pounded on the stout timbers with the pommel, suddenly furious.
The door opened again. The hard white face was unchanged, but something glittered at the girl’s waist. Before it could register, Rol felt a hard punch to his midriff, and his legs turned to water. He fell to his knees. There was no pain, simply a sense of utter weakness. He had no idea what could have happened, even when he bowed his head and saw the dark stain on his shirt.
He looked up again. The girl seemed to be studying him. Then her foot came up and kicked him in the chest. He toppled backwards, off the wooden stairway, and thumped to the earth six feet below. Lying on his back he looked up at the distant brilliance of the stars until, one by one, they went out.
Four