The wind slammed into the ship’s side like a fist, whistling and tearing at the rigging, and Dance-and-be-Joyful heeled to leeward so far that her spar ends touched the water.
Another moment, and the squall was past. The sun shone again. The ship righted itself, rocking in the churned water, while the wall of mist continued on beyond them. The waves were choppy and confused, and patches of foam showed on the side of the swells.
Big Tam emerged from the deckhouse and joined Narin where she stood looking at the wall of mist and whipping wind as it raced away. On this side of the squall the air felt thicker, and the quality of the light had altered. Everything looked sharp-edged and brittle, like painted glass that a touch might shatter.
“What was that?” her Second asked.
Narin shook her head. “I don’t know. Some kind of squall line.”
“Kas didn’t say anything about foul weather-luck.”
“Luck can change in a hurry,” Narin said. “And so can weather. Let’s find Kas and see if she’s got anything more to say now.”
They didn’t have far to look. Kasaly herself was coming up on deck in bare feet and a thin sleep-robe—the squall must have caught her napping.
“That was a bit more wind than we needed,” she said. “Are we going to have to do something about it, do you think?”
“I was about to ask you that,” Narin said.
“I don’t know.” Kas frowned at the ocean. “All I can tell you is that this is lucky weather.”
By the time ’Rekhe and Elaeli made their way out of the concourse, night had fallen over the starport. Street lamps at the corners of the city blocks threw overlapping circles of yellow light that didn’t illuminate the upper levels of the surrounding buildings. At least in this part of town, the Ildaonese didn’t believe in illuminated signs. Except for the concourse itself, most of the establishments appeared to have closed at dusk, and one low, square building looked much like its neighbor.
“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Elaeli asked after they had walked for several minutes.
’Rekhe thought about saying that he was sure, then thought better of it. “I’m not even certain we left the concourse by the same door we came in,” he said truthfully. “Without enough light to pick out the landmarks, it’s hard to tell one street from another.”
“I think the port is that way,” Elaeli said. She pointed with one newly gloved hand toward where the night sky appeared somewhat brighter. “I saw lights around the field that looked like they might be on after dark.”
“If that’s what we’re seeing now.” ’Rekhe had a dubious feeling about the skyglow. There was luck attached to it somehow, loose looping strands of good and bad fortune that cried out to be taken in hand and managed properly. The sensation made him uneasy. He wished that he hadn’t given in to his brother Natelth’s insistence that he serve out an apprentice-voyage first, before leaving for the Circles. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there.”
“Why not?”
He groped for the right words. “Something will happen if we do.”
“Something will happen if we don’t, too. Things happen everywhere. And if we stand here much longer, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to freeze.”
He couldn’t argue with that. The temperature had dropped markedly with the falling of Ildaon’s sun, and the wind had gotten brisker. Even with his new gloves, his hands and feet were cold, and the skin of his face felt numb.
“Toward the light, then,” he said. “If worst comes to worst, maybe we’ll find someplace open where we can ask for directions.”
They continued onward through the deserted shopping district, past buildings with empty, darkened display-windows and in and out of the circles of light from the street lamps. No transit-for-hire vehicles cruised this part of town at night, probably for lack of custom. ’Rekhe saw no other pedestrians, and the few trucks and private groundcars that rumbled past were clearly on their way to business elsewhere. He feared vaguely that, alone as they were, he and Elaeli might offer an attractive target for footpads and hooligans, but no menacing figures slipped out of dark cross-alleys or loomed up from the shadows of a recessed doorway.
After a while the illumination ahead grew brighter. The street they were following opened up into an avenue lined on both sides by street lamps in close-set rows, and by buildings with locked doors. This part of town wasn’t as dead as the one they’d wandered into after leaving the shopping concourse, but it didn’t appear to be open for business either.
Their footsteps tapped on the sidewalk, and the echoes bounced off the deserted buildings. The exhalations of their breath showed white under the street lamps.
Elaeli moved closer to ’Rekhe. “I guessed wrong, it looks like. This isn’t the way to the field.”
“No.” ’Rekhe’s ears caught the low growl of a groundcar’s engine. Further up the street, lights flashed white and violet and amber. “If that’s a bus, we’ll ask the driver how to get to the starport.”
Elaeli looked dubious. “We don’t speak the language. He may not understand.”
“He’ll see the fleet colors,” ’Rekhe said. “That should be good enough.”
Elaeli made a doubtful noise and pulled the collar of her cloak higher around her neck. The engine sounds grew louder in the street behind them, and the white lights drew closer. When the vehicle drew even with them, ’Rekhe saw that it was not a bus, but a private groundcar.
The vehicle slowed, then stopped opposite them. One of the rear doors swung open. ’Rekhe tensed—perhaps this part of town had thugs and criminals after all—but the voice that called out spoke in Hanilat-Eraasian.
“Hey, sus-Peledaen! You going to the port?”
“Yes,” ’Rekhe said.
“Then you’re going the wrong way—jump in and we’ll give you a ride.”
Narin got to the Dance’s pilothouse just as Orghe, the vessel’s chief rigger, was making his own report on the effects of the squall. She held back and let him speak; the rigger was a master at his own craft, and at the moment he looked worried.
“Cap’n, the starboard vang’s torn away.”
The Captain frowned. “How long will it take you to make repairs?” “It’ll take us a day to fix it right,” Orghe said. “Or I can have something juried for you in an hour, either way you please.”
“I want to top the catch and head for port,” Captain Soba said. “I’ve talked with the other skippers of the fleet by wireless, and they agree.” He glanced over at Narin. “That is, if our Circle doesn’t have any word against it.”
Narin shrugged. “Kasaly says this is lucky weather.”
“Call up the weather display,” Captain Soba said.
The Dance’s quartermaster punched the repeater. A map came up on the pilothouse screen displaying the west part of the Veredden Sea. A list of numbers along the right side showed the local data from Dance-and-BeJoyful’s position.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Soba said. He hit the reload button to bring in the latest data from the weather satellite system. “All clear. It was a fast squall, nothing more.”
His words were reassuring, but his face still looked troubled. Something about the weather was bothering him—and that in itself, thought Narin, was significant.
“Captain,” she said, “with your permission, I’d like to consult with the First of the Ridkil Point Circle.”
“Of course,” Soba replied.
He gestured toward the bridge-to-bridge wireless, and Narin made the connection. The First of the Ridkil Point Circle was on a fishing boat around fifty miles to the south, drawing up from another part of the same shoal of greyfish.
“No, we’ve felt nothing,” he said, in answer to Narin’s query. “The line squall passed us, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on with the eiran hereabouts.”
“Thanks,” Narin said. “Keep your feelings open, just the same. This is unchancy, I think.”
“I’ll do
that. You too.”
The sound of the wireless carrier wave was drowned out by a sudden exclamation. The quartermaster was staring at the hard-shell barometer on the charthouse bulkhead, looking from the gleaming glass instrument to the weather repeater and back again.
“Cap’n,” he said, “something funny’s going on here. This box”—he nodded at the weather readout—“says that everything’s fine, no trouble anywhere. But this one”—he pointed to the mechanical barometer—“says that the pressure’s heading for the basement.”
“What’s the update time on the repeater?” Soba asked.
“Minus fifteen.”
“Extrapolated data, then,” Soba said. “Next real info in fifteen more.”
He stepped over to look at the barometer for himself. Narin, following him, saw that the quartermaster had spoken true: The needle was swinging downward so fast she could see it moving. The recording thermometer, which plotted sea and air temperatures on a scrolling graph—a useful tool for knowing when the fishing would be good and what species to expect—showed a steady rise, and the hygrometer registered humidity at 99%. Outside the pilothouse the wind was dead calm, the waves flattening in the stillness.
Narin felt a trickle of sweat down her spine that wasn’t caused by the heat and the damp air. Soba appeared to feel the same way. He pushed the reload button on the weather satellite repeater. The data there didn’t change—and it still didn’t reflect what the Dance’s local instruments were showing. The time-to-next-pass counter clicked from thirteen minutes over to twelve.
Soba walked back over to the wireless and switched it to the general circuit that all the Amisket captains listened to.
“This is Soba on Dance-and-Be-Joyful,” he said. “Check your local weather instruments. I think satellite weather’s giving us a bad readout.”
A moment later, a response came back from Murhad, captain of First-Light-of-Morning. “Bugger me naked! What are you going to do?”
“Secure for high seas,” Soba told him. “Run for port. And ask our Circle for luck.”
Narin could recognize a departure cue when she heard one. She left Soba giving orders to the helm and climbed down from the pilothouse to where Kas and Tam were waiting.
On the working deck, some of the Dance’s sailors were striking the last catch below, while others hauled the booms inboard and lashed them to cleats. The engines began throbbing with a deeper note, and the smoke coming out of the Dance’s funnel turned to black. Shadows chased themselves across the deck as the trawler came about, her wake tracing a white arc in the sea, changing course to run east.
“Get Laros,” Narin said. “Robes and staves, everyone. Meet me in the meditation room. We have work to do.”
4:
Year 1116 E. R.
ERAASI: WESTERN FISHING GROUNDS
ILDAON: ILDAON STARPORT
In the Dance’s forepeak, where the bulkheads narrowed between the hold and the peak tank, the Amisket Circle knelt in meditation. The overhead lamp in its vapor-tight fixture gave them a steady light, but Dance-and-Be-Joyful was pitching heavily—first lifting up at the bow, then pausing at the crest of each wave and sliding forward into the trough.
Each time, a brief moment of near-weightlessness would lift Narin from the deckplates during the downward slide. Then she would be thrown forward by the heavy impact at the bottom of the trough, while the Dance shuddered around her like an animal and the metal above her head resounded with the boom of green water over the trawler’s bow. In the next instant, she would be pressed down again as the ship tilted bow-upward at the sky, coming out from beneath tons of streaming water to ride the next wave’s lifting crest before tilting into another slide.
The lifting and dropping continued without mercy, and the booming of the waves drowned out all but the strongest and most focused thought. Narin did the best she could—one hand gripping her staff, and the other holding onto a stanchion to keep from being tossed into the other members of her Circle while she worked to see where, in this tumult of wind and water, the eiran led.
Where the fleet sat, the lines were tangled. Not far off, she could detect the Circles from Demnag and Ridkil Point at their workings: Demnag trying to ease the storm, Ridkil Point trying to predict what would come. Narin herself was seeking only to understand. She thought she could detect a pattern somewhere on the edge of their current location, hidden in the surface randomness, and with knowledge of the pattern would come awareness of what ought to be done.
“Listen,” Kasaly said, her voice breaking into Narin’s concentration. “Trouble.”
Narin listened. Kas was right; something had changed on the ship. Somewhere aft, a heavy clanging started as a bulkhead-mounted piece of gear began to swing from side to side. The ship’s roll—the seesaw movement that caused the Dance to tilt from side to side at the same time as she was pitching up and down—grew suddenly more precipitous. The overhead bulb in the meditation chamber flickered once, then returned at half strength.
The change in the light brought Tam and Laros out of their meditation as well.
“Dropped the load,” Tam said. He looked grave, and with reason. If the Dance lost power, she lost steering, and if the trawler lost steering, she could turn broadside to the waves—and if that happened, they were all done for.
“Soba knows enough to put out a sea anchor and head her into the wind,” Narin said. “But losing power isn’t the only kind of trouble.”
“Could you see anything?” Laros asked.
“I saw a pattern,” Narin said. “A made pattern—but not our making. Did any of you feel it?”
“Yes,” Kas said. “It’s the luck.”
The high sound of wind howling in the Dance’s rigging penetrated even this far down in the belly of the ship. The noise made Narin’s teeth hurt and her nerves tingle. She pushed herself to her feet, still grasping the stanchion with her left hand.
“We brought the fish,” she said, “and the fish brought us here. This is all our doing.”
Kas shook her head. “No. The luck pattern is different; it’s not an echo of our working.”
“I’m going topside. I need to talk with the captain.”
“We’ll come with you,” Tam said. “Times like this, we need to keep as close together as we can.”
Narin opened the water tight door of the Circle’s compartment and made her way out into the white-painted passageway leading aft. Outside the meditation chamber, the force of the storm was even more apparent. The metal skin of the ship trembled with the blows of the waves, and as Narin climbed to the main deck the rungs of the ladder alternately pressed hard against her feet and then dropped away as the ship pitched.
The water tight hatch at the top of the ladder had been dogged down. Narin spun the wheel and pushed the hatch up until it locked. A cascade of salt water, blood warm, splashed over her as she pulled and pushed her way through—the midships passageway was awash, the water coming in through a non-tight door on the next level above and pouring down.
Narin helped Tam, Laros, and Kas clamber through after her, then dropped and dogged the hatch. “Wait for me here,” she said. “I’m going up to the pilothouse.”
She climbed the internal ladder to the pilothouse. When she reached the top, she paused, appalled.
By the Dance’s chronometer the time was still late afternoon, but the sky was nighttime-dark. Lightning came in vivid purple and blue-white strokes, each flash revealing swirling clouds and water lashed to foam. Salt spray blasted against the pilothouse windows. Somebody had been seasick not long before; the acid smell of fresh vomit burned in her nose.
A glance at the barometer showed the needle hard against the leftmost peg. The atmospheric pressure was lower than the instrument had been designed to measure. While Narin stood there, gripping a handhold for support, the Dance slid into another trough, burying her bow completely in the water. Then, ponderously, she raised herself again.
Captain Soba sat in his chair on the star
board side. He had strapped himself into place and held onto the chair arms with tight hands. Outside the windows of the pilothouse the lightning flickered, providing almost constant illumination. Thunder roared; wind shrieked in the rigging. The deck ran with water where the spray was forced past the gaskets of the pilothouse windows.
Narin turned to look at the weather readout. It was blank and dark. “Captain,” she said.
“Hello, Narin,” he replied. “Come to bring me news?”
“Come looking for it,” she said. “What happened to the weather repeater?”
“Lost it when we lost the antennae. Lost the wireless and the imaging when we found out the hard way that we had corrosion in the side of the superstructure. A big wave knocked the receiver room out.”
“They all look like big waves to me,” Narin said. “Anything from the rest of the fleet?”
“General distress call from First-Light-of-Morning,” the Captain said. “Lost the signal before we could get a position on her. Lost our own communications right after that.” He peered through the lightning-flashed, water-running windows. “Not that I have too good an idea where we are ourselves, exactly. If there’s anything you and your people can do—”
“Understood, Cap’n,” Narin said, and went back down the internal ladder to where her Circle waited in the passageway below. “Things are looking bad topside,” she said. “We have to do a working.”
“Where?” Tam asked. “Things haven’t gotten any better down here, either—word came while you were gone that there’s solid flooding below. We aren’t getting back into the chamber any time soon.”
“Then we’ll do it on the weather decks, out on the fantail.”
“In these seas?” Kas demanded. “We’ll be killed!”
Narin looked at her. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“You heard the First,” said Tam. “A storm like this, we won’t get away with anything less.”
They shuffled aft, bracing themselves with their hands against the bulkheads. “What’s our intention?” Tam asked Narin as they went.
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 4