Cail gazed flatly at her as if he did not mean to reply. But then he spoke, and his voice held a concealed edge. “That we do not question. Does not Corruption believe altogether in its own lightness?”
At that, Linden went cold with shock. Until now, she had not perceived how deeply the Haruchai resented her decisions in Elemesnedene, Behind Cail's stolid visage, she sensed the presence of something fatal-something which must have been true of the Bloodguard as well. None of them knew how to forgive.
Gripping herself tightly, she said, “You don't trust me at all.”
Cail's answer was like a shrug. "We are sworn to the ur-Lord. He has trusted you." He did not need to point out that Covenant might feel differently if he ever recovered his mind. That thought had already occurred to her.
In her bitterness, she muttered, “He tried to. I don't think he succeeded.” Then she could not stand any more. What reason did any of them have to trust her? The floor was still canted under her, and through the stone she felt the way Starfare's Gem was battered by the waves. She needed to escape the confinement of her cabin, the pressure of Cail's masked hostility. Thrusting past him, she flung open the door and left the chamber.
Impeded by the lurch of the Giantship's stride, she stumbled to the stairs, climbed them unsteadily to the afterdeck.
When she stepped over the storm-sill, she was nearly blown from her feet. A predatory wind struck at the decks, clawed at the sails. Angry clouds frothed like breakers at the tips of the yards. As she struggled to a handhold on one of the ascents to the wheeldeck, spray lashed her face, springing like sharp rain from the passion of a dark and viscid sea.
Twelve: Sea-Harm
THERE was no rain, just wind as heavy as torrents, and clouds which sealed the Sea in a glower of twilight from horizon to horizon, and keen spray boiling off the crests of the waves like steam to sting like hail. The blast struck the Giantship at an angle, canting it to one side.
Linden gasped for breath. As she fought her vision clear of spume, she was astonished to see Giants in the rigging.
She did not know how they could hold. Impossible that they should be working up there, in the full blow of the storm!
Yet they were working. Starfare's Gem needed enough sail to give it headway. But if the spars carried too much canvas, any sudden shift or increase in the wind might topple the dromond or simply drive it under. The crewmembers were furling the upper sails. They looked small and inconceivable against the hard dark might of the storm. But slowly, tortuously, they fought the writhing canvas under control.
High up on the foremast, a Giant lost his hold, had to release the clew-lines in order to save himself. Dawngreeter was instantly torn away. Flapping wildly, like a stricken albatross, it fluttered along the wind and out of sight.
The other Giants had better success. By degrees, Starfare's Gem improved its stance.
But towering seas still heaved at the vessel. Plunging across the trough of a wave, it crashed sideward up the next ragged and vicious slope, then dove again as if it meant to bury its prow in the bottom. Linden clutched the stairs to keep herself from being kicked overboard.
She could not remain there, She feared that Starfare's Gem was in danger for its life-that any increase in the storm might break the ship apart. And the storm was going to increase. She felt its fury concatenating in the distance. The dromond rode the fringes of the blast: its heart was drawing closer. This course would carry the Giantship into the worst of the violence.
She had to warn Honninscrave.
She tried to creep up onto the stairs; but the wind flung her hair against her face like a flail, sucked the air from her lungs, threatened to rend her away. An instant of panic flamed through her.
Cail's arm caught her waist like a band of stone. His mouth came to her ear. “Seek shelter!” The wind ripped the words to pieces, making his shout barely audible.
She shook her head urgently, tried to drive her voice through the blow. “Take me to the wheeldeck!”
He hesitated for a moment while he cast a look about him, estimating the dangers. Then he swung her up the stairs.
She felt like a ragdoll in his grasp. If he had been any ordinary man, they would both have been slashed overboard. But he was an Haruchai. Surging across the weight of the wind, he bore her to the wheeldeck.
Only three Giants were there: Honninscrave, Galewrath, and the First. The Storesmaster stood at the great wheel, embracing it with both arms. Her muscles were knotted under the strain; her feet were widely planted to brace herself. She
looked like a granite monolith, capable of standing there and mastering Shipsheartthew until the sea and time broke Starfare's Gem into rubble.
Anchored by her weight and strength, the First remained still. The Search was out of her hands. Under these conditions, it belonged to the storm-and to Starfare's Gem. And the dromond belonged to Honninscrave.
He stood near Galewrath; but all his attention was focused forward like a beacon, burning for the safety of his ship. The bony mass of his brows seemed to protect his sight. He bore himself as if he could see everything. His trenchant bellow pierced the wind. And the Giants responded like a manifestation of his will. Step by arduous step, they fought sheets and shrouds and canvas, tuned Starfare's Gem to endure the peril.
Linden tried to shout; but the wind struck her in the teeth, stuffed her voice back down her throat. With a fervid gesture, she directed Cail toward the Master.
“Honninscrave!” She had to scream to make herself heard. “Change course! We're running right into the storm!”
The import of her words snatched at his attention. Bending over her, he shouted, “That cannot be! This storm rises from the south! Riding as we do, we shall remain on its verge and be driven only scantly from our path!”
The south? She gaped at him, disbelieving that he could be wrong about such a thing. When she forced her vision in that direction, she saw he was not wrong. Her senses plainly discerned a cusp of violence there, though it was several leagues distant. Honninscrave's present course would carry Starfare's Gem around the fierce core of that storm.
But a look toward the northwest verified what she had seen earlier. A hurricane crouched there, titanic and monstrous. The two storms were crowding together, with Starfare's Gem between them. Every heave and crash of the dromond's keel angled it closer to the savagery of the stronger blast.
With a cry that seemed to tear her throat, she told Honninscrave what she saw.
Her news staggered him. He had never had a chance to see the hurricane. The first storm had taken hold of the Giantship before it entered the range of the second. Disaster loomed along the heading he had chosen. But he recovered swiftly. He was the Master of Starfare's Gem in every nerve and sinew. He sounded ready for any peril or mischance as he shouted, “What is your counsel?”
Gritting herself, she tried to think-gauge the intersecting paths of the storms, estimate the effect they would have on each other. She was not adept at such visualizations. She was trained to map the insidious cunning of diseases, not the candid fury of gales. But she read them as best she could.
“If we keep on this way!” Her chest ached at the strain of yelling. “We might be able to pass the one in the south! Or the worst of it! Before we get too far into the other one!”
Honninscrave nodded his approval. The abutment of his forehead seemed proof against any storm.
“But the other one!” She concluded as if she were screaming. “It's terrible! If you have to choose, go south!”
“I hear you!” His shout was flayed into spray and tatters. He had already turned to hurl his orders across the wind.
His commands sounded as mad as the gale. Linden felt the hurricane ravening closer, always closer. Surely no vessel-especially one as heavy as the dromond- could withstand that kind of fury. The wind was a shriek in the ratlines. She could see the masts swaying. The yards appeared to waver like outstretched arms groping for balance. The deck kicked and lurched. If Gale
wrath did not weaken, the rudder might snap, leaving Starfare's Gem at the mercy of the hungry seas. While Linden hesitated, the last sail left on the aftermast sprang suddenly into shreds and was gone, torn thread from thread. Its gear lashed the air. Instinctively, she ducked her head, pressed herself against Cail's support.
Yelling like ecstasy, Honninscrave sent Giants to replace the lost canvas.
Linden pulled her face to the side of Cail's head, shouted, “Take me forward! I've got an idea!”
He nodded his understanding and at once began to haul her toward a stairway, choosing the windward side rather than the lee to keep as much of the tilted deck as possible between her and the seething rush of the sea.
As they reached the stairs, she saw several Giants-Pitchwife and others-hastening across the afterdeck, accompanied by Ceer and Hergrom. They were stringing lifelines. When she and Cail gained the foot of the stairs, Pitchwife and Ceer came slogging to join them. Blinking the spray from his eyes, Pitchwife gave her a grin. With a gesture toward the wheeldeck, he shouted like a laugh, “Our Honninscrave is in his element, think you not?” Then he ascended the stairs to join Ws wife and the Master.
Linden's clothes were soaked. Her shirt stuck to her skin. Every gobbet of water the seas hurled at her seemed to slap into her bones. She had already begun to shiver. But the cold felt detached, impersonal, as if she were no longer fully inhabiting her body; and she ignored it.
Then rain gushed out of the clouds. It filled the air as if every wavecap had become foam, boiling up to put teeth into the wind. The ocean appeared to shrink around Starfare's Gem, blinding all the horizons. Linden could barely see as far as Foodfendhall. She spat curses, but the loud rain deafened her to her own voice. With so little visibility, how would Honninscrave know when to turn from the approaching hurricane?
She struggled to the nearest lifeline, locked her fingers around it, then started to pull her way forward.
She had an idea. But it might have been sane or mad. The gale rent away all distinctions.
The afterdeck seemed as long as a battlefield. Spray and rain sent sheets of water pouring against her ankles, nearly sweeping her down the deck. At every plunge of the Giantship, she shivered like an echo of the tremors which ran along the dromond's keel. The lifeline felt raw with cold, abrading her palms. Yet she strove forward. She had failed at everything else. She could not bear to think that this simple task might prove beyond her strength.
Ceer went ahead to open the door of the housing. Riding an eddy of the storm, she pitched over the sill, stumbled to the floor. The two Haruchai slammed the door; and at once the air tensed as if pressure were building toward an explosion in Foodfendhall, aggravated by the yammer and crash outside. For a moment of panic, she thought she heard pieces of the ship breaking away. But as she regained her breath, she realised that she was hearing the protestations of the midmast.
In the lantern-light, the shaft of the mast was plain before her, marked by engravings she had never studied. Perhaps they revealed the story of Starfare's Gem's making, or of its journeys. She did not know. As she worked forward, the groans and creaks rose into a sharp keening. The spars high above her had begun to sing.
She nearly fell again when Ceer opened the door, letting the howl strike at her like a condor. But Cail braced her, helped her back out into the blast. At once, the rain crashed down like thunder. She chose a lifeline anchored to the foremast.
With the cable clamped under one arm so that it upheld her, she lowered her head and went on against the wind.
A Giant loomed ahead of her, following the lifeline aft. As they reached each other, she recognized Sevinhand. He paused to let her pass, then shouted like an act of comradeship, “Such a storm! Were I less certain of our charting, I would believe that we had blundered unwitting into the Soulbiter!”
She had no time to reply. Her hands burned with friction and cold. The cable wore at her side like a gall. She had to reach Findail. He alone on Starfare's Gem had the power to avert the disaster of the advancing hurricane.
At the foremast she rested briefly, standing so that the wind pressed her to the stone. In that position, the torment of the mast thrummed acutely into her. The granite's vitality was being stressed mercilessly. For a moment, the sensation filled her with dread. But when she thrust her percipience into the mast, she was reassured. Like Honninscrave, the dromond was equal to this need. Starfare's Gem might tilt and keen, but it was not about to break.
Yet the heart of the hurricane was towering toward her like a mountain come to life, a dire colossus striding to stamp the Giantship down to its doom. Clinching a cable which ran in the direction of the prow, she went on.
As she squinted through sheets of water as binding as cerements, she caught sight of Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood midway between the foremast and the prow, facing forward as if to keep watch on Findail. And he was as rigid as if the heaving surface under him were a stationary platform. Even the wind had no effect upon him. He might have been rooted to the stone.
Findail became visible for a moment, then disappeared as the Giantship crashed into the trough of the seas and slammed its prow against the next wave. A deluge cut Linden's legs from under her. She barely kept her grip on the lifeline. Now she could only advance between waves. When Starfare's Gem lifted its head, she wrestled forward a few steps. When the prow hit the next wave as if the dromond were being snatched into the deeps, she clung where she was and prayed that her grip and the cable would hold.
But she moved by stages and at last reached the railing. From there, she had only a short way to go.
The last part was the hardest. She was already quivering with cold and exhaustion; and the Giantship's giddy motion, throwing her toward and then yanking her away from the sea, left her hoarse with involuntary curses. At every downward crash, the force of the vessel's struggle hit her. The sheer effort of holding her breath for each inundation threatened to finish her. Several times, she was only saved by the support of Cail's shoulder.
Then she gained Findail's side. He glanced at her between plunges; and the sight of him stunned her. He was not wet. The wind did not ruffle his hair; the rain did not touch him. He emerged from every smash into the waves with dry raiment and clear eyes, as if he had tuned his flesh to a pitch beyond the reach of any violence of weather or sea.
But his unscathed aspect confirmed her determination. He was a being of pure Earthpower, capable of sparing himself the merest contact with wind and spray. And what was any storm, if not Earthpower in another form-unbridled and savage, but still acting in accordance with the Law of its nature?
At the impact of the next wave, she ducked her head. The water pounded her, covered her face with her hair. When the dromond lifted again, she loosed one hand from the rail to thrust the sodden strands aside. Then she drove her voice at Findail.
“Do something! Save us!”
His pain-lined expression did not alter. He made no attempt to shout; but his words reached her as clearly as if the storm had been stricken dumb.
“The Elohim do not tamper with the life of the Earth. There is no life without structure. We respect the workings of that structure in every guise.”
Structure, Linden thought. Law. They are who they are. Their might is matched by their limitations. Starfare's Gem dove. She clung to the rail for her life. Chaos was death. Energy could not exist without constriction. If the Lawless power of the Sunbane grew too strong, it might unbind the very foundations of the Earth.
As the deluge swept past her, she tried again.
“Then tell Honninscrave what to do! Guide him!”
The Elohim seemed faintly surprised, “Guide-?” But then he shrugged. “Had he inquired, the question would have searched me. In such a case, where would my ethic lie? But it boots nothing now.” The Giantship plunged again; yet Linden could hear him through the tumult of the water and the shrill wind. “The time for such questions is lost.”
When the prow surfaced, she fought her si
ght clear and saw what he meant.
From out of the heart of the hurricane came rushing a wall of water as high as the first spars of the Giantship.
It was driven by wind-a wind so savage and tremendous that it dwarfed everything else; a wind which turned every upreaching sea to steam, sheared off the crest of every wave, so that the ocean under it mounted and ran like a flow of dark magma.
Starfare's Gem lay almost directly athwart the wall.
Linden stared at it in a seizure of dread. In the last pause before the onslaught, she heard Honninscrave roaring faintly, “Ward!” Then his shout was effaced by the wild stentorian rage of the wind, howling like the combined anguish and ferocity of all the damned.
As the wall hit, she lunged at Findail, trying to gain his help-or take him with her, she did not know which. The impact of the great wave ended all differences. But her hands seemed to pass through him. She got one last clear look at his face. His eyes were yellow with grief.
Then the starboard side of the Giantship rose like an orogenic upthrust, and she fell toward the sea.
She thought that surely she would strike the port rail. She flailed her arms to catch hold of it. But she was pitched past it into the water.
The sea slammed at her with such force that she did not feel the blow, did not feel the waters close over her.
At the same moment, something hard snagged her wrist, wrenched her back to the surface. She was already ten or fifteen feet from the ship. Its port edge was submerged; the entire foredeck loomed over her. It stood almost vertically in the water, poised to fall on her, crush her between stone and sea.
But it did not fall. Somehow, Starfare's Gem remained balanced on its side, with nearly half of its port decks underwater. And Cail did not let her go.
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