by Janny Wurts
Seawater exploded into froth beneath the dory's keel. The little boat tipped not a hairsbreadth, but stayed cradled on an apex of forces that threatened her capsize at any moment. Korendir neither crouched nor grabbed at thwarts in self-protection. Instead he laid aside his oars as if the elemental's assurance of his safety was already foregone conclusion. Shamed to favorable decision, Cyondide tamed the seas. Waves foamed and flattened; as far as the eye could see, the ocean lay like sheet glass against the feet of the cliffs.
Korendir sat down unperturbed and threaded his oars. The echo of his stroke as he rowed fell like a shout on eddyless air. His manner reflected no haste, yet Haldeth observed that he worked without wasting movement. In less than an hour, he had mounted the hardware to berth his sloop between islet and shore. Although the temperature plunged like a stone, not a cat's paw of wind troubled him as he returned and warped Carcadonn from her anchorage. Haldeth helped secure the sloop to the rocks. Although at Fairhaven, the smith had seen twenty-ton ships less stoutly moored, he refrained from disparaging comment. Against the fury of Cyondide, steel cable would chafe like simple hemp; a man would be supremely lucky if even forged chain did not break.
Korendir loaded the dory with food, spare clothing, and coils of pale new rope. To these basics he added a square of uncut sail cloth, a climber's axe, and a tied bundle of pitons. Haldeth dogged the hatches and silently boarded up the companionway. The quiet made him ache with uneasiness. Although weather elementals lacked any sense of sight, when aroused, their hearing could be preternaturally acute.
Carefully, Haldeth dropped from Carcadonn's deck into the laden dory. As Korendir took up the oars, the smith settled in the stern seat and asked the question that had fretted him throughout the hour. "Who on Aerith is Ishone?"
Korendir leaned into his stroke and returned a whisper. "Another elemental."
Unreassured, Haldeth sat braced as the dory ghosted forward. "And your message?"
Korendir's mouth stiffened obstinately. His oars rose dripping from the sea and descended again without pause.
Soon after, a gust cracked the calm. Ripples shivered the reflections of the rocks, and Cyondide's impatience rebounded from the ice-scabbed cliffs overhead. "Mortal, your safe-conduct wearies me. Deliver your message."
Korendir dragged an oar blade and turned the bow. A fragile wake of bubbles trailed astern as the dory nosed past an ice floe.
"Mortal! Answer Cyondide, or be dashed to a rag on the rocks."
Korendir cried back in annoyance: "Is Cyondide without honor, that a messenger from Ishone is met with threats?"
Haldeth tucked his head between his shoulders, expecting at any moment to be spilled from his seat and whirled to his death in the sea.
Yet Korendir's stroke resumed undisturbed. One league, then two passed beneath the dory's keel. Stillness pressed against Haldeth's nerves until he felt he must split from the pressure.
Oars poised, Korendir leaned forward at last and whispered into his companion's ear. "Start looking. If the tide's out, we ought to find a small ledge. The entrance to Sharkash's lair should lie just above."
"Mortal!" boomed Cyondide. "You do me no service by squeaking in the manner of a mouse. Speak louder, that I might hear what tidings Ishone sends in the mouth of a man."
The dory glided ahead. Black with wet, and glistening under rungs of ice, the rocks showed neither ledge nor cave mouth. Discouraged, Haldeth peered down into depths too cold to grow weed. There, beneath a fathom of water, he found the outcrop. Cyondide's interference had upset the tides since the bygone days of the dragons. The entrance to the lair lay submerged, hopelessly inaccessible to a dory laden with tools.
Haldeth waited in dismay as Korendir shared the dilemma of discovery. Committed beyond retreat, they would suffer the fate of the dragons, drowned, or maybe frozen, all for an elemental's caprice.
The dory rocked; Haldeth looked up in time to see his companion fill his lungs with arctic air. "Cyondide! I have been six weeks upon the sea, and my feet grow weary of boats. Give me solid ground, and I shall deliver Ishone's tidings."
A wave arose and smacked against the cliff base. "There are ice floes about, mortal, that offer footing as firm as any land. Choose one of these, and swiftly, for my patience wears thin."
"What is ice but water frozen?" Korendir's tone turned scornful. "Does Cyondide lack the might to drop the tide one fathom, that Ishone's envoy have dry rock for his feet?"
"Cyondide could ebb the tide until the sea bottom crumbled and grew desert fern. Stand warned, mortal. Cyondide could blast your bones to powder also."
"Words are only bluster," Korendir returned with bitten insolence.
Haldeth cringed through a moment tight-drawn as the calm before killing storm. Then the ocean sucked away from the cliffs in a roaring, eddying rush. The dory spun. Water curled over her gunwales. Korendir caught the rowlock to keep from falling. Then he sat and threaded oars. The instant he recovered steerage, he jerked his chin at the smith.
Haldeth leaped across to the ledge. Fast as he dared, he unloaded tools and ropes into the dripping mouth of the cave.
"Mortal, your message!" Icy wind froze the droplets as they fell; Haldeth shivered as salty, unnatural sleet bounced down the rim of his collar. Cyondide's impatience charged the air with the ozone of an immanent lightning strike.
Korendir inventively strove to stall. "The words that Ishone charged me to deliver to Cyondide are complexly phrased, and lengthy. They concern a most delicate subject."
Haldeth listened, a prickle of dread giving rise to suspicion: his companion's strategy was no plan at all, but only a brazen bluff.
Korendir shipped oars and stepped ashore. "Cyondide offers grave discourtesy, to force important matters on a messenger still weary from travel. Surely Cyondide can forbear, that Ishone's chosen envoy might rest."
"Then beware your fragility, mortal!" the elemental boomed back. "Your demands have not pleased Cyondide."
Haldeth helped drag the dory onto the rock. Then he hurried to unload the remaining supplies. Elementals had touchy natures; possessed of towering pride, a few had been known to hurl themselves into tantrums violent enough to obliterate their own existence. Power alone commanded their respect. Arrogant of their might, they challenged enchanters for sport; few wizards in Aerith owned lore enough to contest with the beings and survive. All that restrained Cyondide from destroying the trespassers on the ledge was the implied slight to his omnipotence.
Had the elemental at Whitestorm possessed sight to observe the men upon his cliffs, he would have dashed them into the sea to drown. Yet since mortals lacked the aura that clung even to the weakest of wizards, only sound could betray them. Korendir muffled the climbing axe with sail-cloth, then gestured to his companion. Haldeth accepted the tool. While Korendir stood vulnerable on the ledge, the smith ascended the rock shaft that angled upward from the waterline.
Whitened bands of salt marked the floods of countless tides. Though his hands and feet froze to numbness, Haldeth pressed stubbornly forward. No ambassador's courtesies could avert retaliation once Cyondide pressed his demands. The smith had no desire to be drowned like a rat by the rage of a duped elemental, not with the dragon's lairs and safety just a few yards higher overhead. Haldeth did not bother with pitons and axe, but forced his shivering frame up the black throat of the shaft by touch. In time the rock walls widened. A hand-hold, a kick, and a slither, and the smith rolled onto a shelf that extended an unknown distance in the dark.
He sat, breathing hard, and rubbed his fingers. Then he unlashed the spare rope from his waist. Sweat dampened his temples by the time the knot came free. Haldeth loosened the coils. He flaked the line down the shaft to Korendir, who tied a pack to the end. A twitch signalled back, and the smith raised the rope hand over hand. He hoisted the bundle over the lip of the shelf. Tired of fighting the darkness, Haldeth dug into the pack after flint, stakes, and a wad of oil-soaked rags.
Spark snapped in the smi
th's palm. Flame kindled round his new-made torch as he knelt and raised his arm. Fire fluttered to brilliance and sparked a glitter from the shadow. A sapphire blazed like splintered starlight from a hollow not a pace beyond his elbow.
Haldeth sprang up in exultation. His head cracked rock with a force that stunned him dizzy, but his excitement remained. Passageways branched outward in three directions just past the overhang that had bruised him. There the caves lay polished, ground smooth by the scales of dragons; the sapphire twinkled in promise. Surely Sharkash's main horde awaited in caverns higher up.
Haldeth jammed his torch in a cleft. By the loops still coiled at his feet, he judged his climb had covered close to three hundred feet. Whether Cyondide could drive the tide that far was a point best left untested. The remaining supplies must be hoisted without delay.
Korendir caught the line at the cliff base, aware his ruse was wearing thin. The air over White Rock Head hung cold as death; had a man attempted sleep in such conditions he would have frozen solid, as Cyondide no doubt intended. The sea seemed to mirror the elemental's pique in brooding, green-black depths.
Numbed past hope of dexterity, Korendir labored urgently over knots that should have taken seconds to complete. As he raised the final bundle from the ledge, a piton slipped from the wrapping.
Korendir fumbled the catch. With a thin, ringing chime, the metal bounced and splashed into water. A circular band of ripples fled the site. Korendir lost a moment to horror. Then he dropped the pack and slashed the cord free with his dagger.
"Mortal!" The voice of the elemental shivered the air like a thunderclap. "Speak, mortal! Cyondide will wait no longer."
Korendir flung off his gloves. He caught the rope barehanded and secured a loop to his waist.
Tremors shook the ledge underfoot as the elemental shrieked a command. "Deliver Ishone's message to Cyondide!"
A wave arose from nowhere. Doused to the waist, Korendir slammed forward into rock. Blood dripped from a gash in his forehead as he planted his weight to resist the drag of current against his shins. Cornered now, and left but one alternative, he raised his voice.
"Cyondide!" Anger chiselled his shout. "Know that you have offended Ishone through abuse and injury to his envoy. For this insult, in the name of Ishone, this envoy issues challenge to Cyondide. Never shall peace exist between Cyondide and Ishone until a duel of power brings settlement."
Before his echoed words had faded, Korendir dove for the cave mouth and frantically hauled on the rope.
The sky split. Lightning seared the ledge, and rock splinters flew where his feet had rested barely an instant before. The sea sucked back with a rush like an indrawn breath, even as the man threw himself upward with all of his desperate strength. For a moment the wind screamed maledictions; then water smashed up from beneath with the battering momentum of a log ram.
Korendir never felt the cold. Crushed headfirst into stone, he went limp. Blackness claimed his awareness, even as the waters crested in a rush up the shaft and foamed over his body.
* * *
The rise of the tide echoed upward like the roar of an infuriated dragon. From the ledge in the upper cavern, Haldeth bellowed in wordless rage. Aware that the rope now supported the fleeing weight of his companion, the smith pulled, driven to heroics by fear. He never saw the water that boiled over the lip of his outcrop, though wavelets soaked his feet and kicked the stacked supplies on a tumbling roll into darkness. Haldeth heaved mindlessly. Coil after coil splashed from his hands. The flood chuckled and slapped over stone, and then as abruptly subsided. Sea water gurgled downward. The rush of its ebb tore greedily at hard-won cordage, and whirled the supply packs like dice.
Hemp burned through Haldeth's fingers. He cursed, and kept hold, though callus tore from his hands and his footing was nearly sacrificed. Maddened by the sting of flayed palms, he separately damned every body of water in Aerith. Scared witless at the prospect of a lonely end at Whitestorm, he recovered his stolen yardage. Foot after foot, the rope arose from the shaft, until torchlight caught on a spill of bronze hair. Haldeth's muscles knotted one last time. He heaved Korendir's frame over the brink and sprawled him face up on his back. Gray eyes were fixed and sightless. Water dripped from a slackened mouth, and blood that shone black in the torchlight flowed over temple, forehead and cheek.
Haldeth bent, trembling with shock. He laid hands on sodden cloth, but felt neither movement nor life. The ribs beneath his touch stayed stone still. He shouted, overtaken by rage. "Die on me, will you?"
Only echoes answered. Mocked by their repetitive sound, the smith succumbed to fury. Riches, fortress, safety itself seemed a fool's dream, as far past his reach as the family left slaughtered by Mhurgai. Crazed by grief, Haldeth gripped his companion by the shoulders. He shook Korendir's lifeless torso as if violence by itself could negate the finality of defeat.
Korendir choked. His head rolled back. A flare of sparks from the torch showed a flicker of pulse at his neck. Shocked back to reason, Haldeth changed his grip. He turned the unconscious man over and administered a sharp blow to his back. After a moment Korendir sputtered. Water spilled from his nose and mouth, and his chest shuddered weakly into motion.
"Praise Neth!" Suddenly aware of the cold, the smith stripped the clothing from Korendir's body, then wrapped him in his own dry cloak. The packs lay wedged in a fissure. Haldeth drew his dagger and cut them free, praying furiously that the tinder inside was not entirely soaked through.
* * *
Korendir awakened to the warmth of sunlight on his cheek. Furs bound his limbs in clinging warmth, and a fire snapped at his back. One of his eyes was swollen entirely shut; almost everywhere else he was bruised. His chest ached. His face stung. The sunlight, and the shadow of his form against rock grated against his awareness with a wrongness he could not identify.
"Cyondide has deserted Whitestorm to duel Ishone," said a voice; Haldeth's, by its Southengard drawl.
Memory returned. Korendir tried to move, changed his mind, and grimaced. He managed a rough-edged whisper. "I'd hoped for that." It hurt, even to speak.
Motionless beside the fire, Korendir listened as Haldeth told of his search through the cavems that laced the strata of the headland. Early on the smith had discovered a tunnel which accessed the summit of Whitestorm's cliffs. In more detail, he described the dragon lairs, and the first, torchlit inventory of Sharkash's legendary hoard.
"There's enough gold in these rocks to pay every mason in Aerith," the smith finished. "You'll have your holdfast, if we can find a way to move such a grand weight of treasure."
A companionable silence passed before Korendir stirred himself to question. "What of the dory?"
Haldeth shook his head. "I burned bits of the transom for firewood. That's the only fragment I could find."
Yet the thorn trees which grew in black, impenetrable stands on the clifftop offered hope to solve this setback. Though unpleasant to work, the trunks yielded passable timber. Already Haldeth had begun construction of a raft to ferry jewels back to Carcadonn.
Korendir grunted approval. "While you're busy, better cache some kindling in the driest, best ventilated lair you can find." He caught his breath, then continued with a trace of the timbre that had outbluffed Cyondide. "Whichever elemental wins that duel will return in high passion for vengeance."
Already worried over that, Haldeth shoved to his feet. "If we're caught before we sail, we're both dead."
"We'd be pursued, regardless," Korendir finished matter-of-factly. While his companion unhappily pondered the complications of that, he closed his good eye and slept.
* * *
Korendir rested soundly until dusk, when Haldeth swore a vicious oath in his ear. The anger behind the curse was sincere. Startled half out of his furs, the injured man whirled, drew his dagger, and lashed out to skewer an assailant who was not there.
The ledge by the campfire stood empty. The packs, the food stores, the spare coils of rope: all were stacked undi
sturbed. No footsteps fled down the passage which led toward the dark of the dragon lairs. Korendir was utterly alone. The imprudence of sudden movement made itself felt in a multitude of aches. Still, he did not lie back. He waited, poised in thought, for reasonable explanation to present itself.
A second later, Haldeth repeated his malediction. This time a reference accompanied that placed blame on his Neth-forsaken climbing axe.
Korendir frowned. He slipped clear of his furs and coaxed stiffened muscles to bear weight. His companion's epithets rang preternaturally clear, as if the smith sat adjacent to the firepit. Korendir was certain he suffered no hallucination; neither had the words been the product of a wizard's spell. Some trick of the rock must have deceived his ears. Intrigued, the adventurer reached for his breeches and boots. He clothed himself, preoccupied beyond noticing bruised limbs and swollen cuts.
When Haldeth returned, he found his companion perched, cloakless, on the brink of the four-hundred-foot drop that fronted their campsite. Chill winds whipped Korendir's hair into tangles, and the coals at his back had gone cold.
"What in the Mhurga's many hells are you doing?" The smith threw down his sack of tools and knelt irritably to rebuild the fire.
Without turning, Korendir recited Haldeth's earlier oath with a pitch and inflection that were maddening for their mimicry. "The weather's mild," he added. "And I can't stay bundled in furs like a babe any longer."
Haldeth dumped his logs, then sneezed as he inhaled a disturbed cloud of ash. "You'll rest if I have to forge chain to keep you down."
Korendir let that pass. He pursued his earlier train of thought as if the smith had neither threatened nor interrupted. "Where were you, and what made you curse with such enthusiasm that I was wakened from sleep?"
"What?" Haldeth stopped with his flint poised motionless over the bark he had shredded for tinder. "Neth, man, you're raving. You couldn't have heard me. I was in a tunnel east of Sharkash's hoard."