The Stone Key

by Isobelle Carmody

  “We do not have four…” I stopped, and understanding swept over me. “Rushton will ask the Sadorians for use of their two remaining spicewood greatships!”

  Brydda nodded. “Two Sadorian ships, plus the Stormdancer and the ship that Dardelan has had built these two months, and we will just manage the four, though the Stormdancer will need repairs and Dardelan’s ship must be completed. And all the ships will have to be especially fitted for such a journey.”

  “What said Shipmaster Helvar about this?” I asked.

  “He said he must consult with the ship’s proper master. Indeed, the Stormdancer left for Herder Isle even as Zarak set off. But the lad says the Norselanders were ferocious at the mere idea of losing a freedom so recently won.”

  “I cannot see the tribes refusing their ships, given their hatred of slavery and the fact that their own land will be in danger, too,” I said.

  “Jakoby says as much, but even so, the request must be made to the tribes, and if it is not made when they are together, someone must ride to each of the tribes to ask if they would agree to holding another conclave. This would be a task of many sevendays, perhaps even months. Maryon must have seen as much, or why urge Dameon to send someone after Rushton at all speed?”

  “Ye gods. This is sickening news,” I said. “But even with all four ships filled with fighters, we will still be too few to take on the slavemasters’ hordes, there or here. It would be better to meet them here, for we would have the chance to prepare defenses, and we could use all the Hedra and soldierguards as well.”

  “That would still not be enough, apparently,” Brydda said. “But Maryon insists that if four ships travel to the Red Land, the enslaved people will be inspired to rise against their masters.”

  “But,” I said, and then stopped. Maryon was right; the ships would rouse the enslaved people, if Dragon was aboard one of them. Indeed, it would take only one ship to do it. Then something else occurred to me. “A journey begun in the Days of Rain will be terribly dangerous, for Reuvan once told me that, amongst shipfolk, the season is called the Days of Storm. And if the ships survive that, they would still be traveling when wintertime came. They would also be beyond Land’s End, where few ships have ever traveled, and I have heard that the way from Land’s End to the Red Queen’s land is perilous. Do you know how to go from there? Does Dardelan or Gwynedd?”

  “Gwynedd does not know the way, but he says there will be maps and charts on Norseland, for once upon a time, the Norse kings had some dealings with the queens of the Red Land,” Brydda said. “Getting those maps is another thing that Gwynedd hopes to accomplish while we are ashore.”

  I nodded absently, turning over in my mind what Brydda had said and wondering at the neatness of a prophecy that would send to the Red Queen’s land ships, one of which would carry the lost queen whose mind contained a vital clue to finding something the Seeker needed. Was it a real futuretelling, I wondered, or merely a manipulation by the Agyllians?

  Then it struck me that it was not just Dragon who would be aboard those ships. I would have to travel to the Red Queen’s land, too.

  “Elspeth?” Brydda’s voice drew me back to myself. “I need to go and speak with Dardelan and Gwynedd about keeping Rushton aboard before he and Jakoby join us in the saloon.” He hesitated. “Under the circumstances, I think it best if you do not attend the meeting. Indeed, perhaps you ought to remain in your cabin for the time being. I will come later and tell you what has been decided.”

  I nodded, but after he had gone, I remained at the side of the ship, gazing blindly out to sea and struggling to order my thoughts. A hand touched my arm, and I turned, expecting to see Brydda again, but it was Gilbert, carrying a lantern. I snatched my arm away, and a shadow crossed the armsman’s handsome face.

  “You would rather be alone?”

  I struggled with irritation and frustration, and finally I looked directly into his eyes and made myself ask evenly, “Why do you seek me out so constantly?”

  Gilbert looked taken aback at my bluntness, and fleetingly I saw again the man I had liked in the Druid’s encampment. “Is not the answer obvious?” he finally said, and now he was smiling again.

  “I fear that it is,” I said softly, deciding there was nothing for it but to be ruthlessly honest.

  His smile faded. “I thought that you had some…liking for me when we were in the Druid’s camp. Was it merely a pretense to gain my help?”

  “No,” I said. “You did not despise me for being a gypsy, and you were kind.”

  He laughed roughly. “I felt that there was more than liking between us back in the White Valley.”

  I forced myself to answer him truthfully. “I think there was some…some potential that we both recognized. I felt that you were a man I might have cared for under other circumstances.”

  “You no longer feel that way,” Gilbert said.

  I bit my lip and said awkwardly, “It seems you have changed. I felt it when I saw you in the Beforetime ruins.” He said nothing, and I struggled for clarity, feeling it was owed. “In the White Valley, you did not smile so much or give voice to elaborate flattery. The man I met in the Druid’s camp had a seriousness and a steadiness in him that…that anyone might feel they could rely upon. I do not think that man would have left his babies so easily, saying they had no need of him.”

  Gilbert paled so much he looked ill, and then it seemed that some pleasant facile mask he had worn melted away as pain flooded into his eyes and mouth. He turned abruptly to face the sea and drew a ragged breath. Then he said slowly and very softly, “There can come a moment in life when you see your heart’s desire, though you did not know of its existence until that moment. So it was for me when I first saw you. I was determined that I would protect you from Henry Druid’s prejudice against gypsies and against his foolish spoiled daughter’s jealousy. When Erin contrived that you would be given to that ape Relward, I near went mad thinking how to prevent it. But…you escaped and then I saw you carried off by the river. I thought you had died.”

  “I…I did not know…,” I stammered.

  “Of course you did not, for you saw only a vague potential in me, but I saw in you a blazing beacon of meaning and purpose. You understand how seeing such a wondrous radiance quenched might…change a man? I do not think I was utterly changed at once. So much happened so suddenly. You were gone, and then the Druid’s camp was destroyed in a firestorm while I was still too grief-stricken to think. Then I and the other few survivors realized that those from the camp had been sold as slaves. I rode with two other men who had survived, because we had been sent out to scout, but eventually we parted. I do not know where the others went. I had no clear plan but to go as far as I could. That single notion brought me to rose-colored Murmroth where I met Gwynedd. Meeting him was…was like an awakening from numbness, because, like you, he blazes with a purpose and potency that illuminates the lives of those about him. I joined his cause and threw myself into becoming his man and serving his dreams. For a time, I found contentment. But then I made a mistake.”

  “The woman you bonded with?” I said softly.

  He nodded. “Serra was…” He looked away to the sea again and concluded harshly, “She looked like you—the same long dark hair and proud look. The same gravity about her, as if there were hidden depths that one might spend a lifetime trying to plumb…I courted her and we bonded. But Serra was less deep than wont to brood, and after a time she began to fret at me. I felt that she wanted something from me that she could not name and did not even know, and without it she could not be content. She became jealous of my devotion to Gwynedd, and the more she nagged and scowled, the more time I spent away from home. Then she became pregnant. I was glad, for I thought that a child might fulfill her. She gave birth to twin boys, and I could have loved them and loved her for them, but she had become cold and pointed out my faults to them so that soon they regarded me suspiciously and rejected me.”

  “You said they were babies,” I said.


  He nodded. “So they are, yet Serra’s sullen eyes and her grudging nature look out of their faces. I learned not to care and to laugh and make light of all that seemed serious and deep and true. I discovered that women would laugh with me if I flattered their beauty and paid them compliments and kept my deeper self from them.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I pitied him enough to fight my reticence and lay a hand over his clenched fists. At once he turned his hands and caught mine between them.

  “I could find the man I once was, with you.” A yearning in his eyes made the words a question. I wanted to pull my hands away and flee from the naked emotion in his face, but I forced myself to meet his eyes and shake my head. The longing in his face dimmed, but he did not resume the careless, flirtatious mask I had so disliked. Instead, he said with a sad acceptance that ached my heart as much as it relieved me, “You are different now, too, Elspeth who was once Elaria. I see it clearly in this moment.”

  I said, “Since the rebellion, I am freed from having to hide my Misfit abilities, but…there is a man that I love. I knew him when I met you, but I did not know that I loved him. I was afraid to see it.”

  He sighed, a long exhalation. “Well, then, perhaps it was that gypsy girl who hid from love and hid her true self that I loved. You are stronger and more courageous than that girl was, and I hope the man you love is worthy of you. In honor of the love I bore Elaria, I offer you my friendship.”

  “The friendship of one who is honest and courageous is precious,” I said gravely.

  Gilbert released my hand and looked up into the night, drawing a long breath and expelling it. The wind blew more strongly now, and the smell of rain was in the air. “A storm is coming,” he said softly, and walked away.

  I watched him go, a strong, straight-backed man with flame-colored hair that caught the lantern light from a saloon window, and I wondered again how love could cause so much pain.

  My neck prickled, and I turned to look up at the truncated upper deck where I had sat the previous day with Jakoby. A cluster of lanterns hung from hooks and showed the tribeswoman clearly, standing by the wheel and speaking to one of her men, her hair and clothes fluttering wildly in the rising wind. A little apart from them stood Rushton, gazing down at me with a black rage that sent a cold blade into my heart.

  15

  THE CLAP OF thunder that shook the ship testified to the mounting fury of the storm that had come upon us so suddenly and dramatically hours before and showed no sign of abating. Lightning filled the cabin with a weird, distorted radiance, and I got up and staggered over the pitching floor to the window. Opening it a crack, I saw a great jagged spear of lightning slash through the black night, revealing a sky clogged with massive thunderheads. The sea was a heaving gray expanse from which rose the smoking peaks of enormous waves. Then darkness swallowed everything until claws of lightning rent the night again. This time, I saw a massive wave rise alongside the ship and topple over with deadly slowness. I realized with sick horror that just one such mountain of water breaking over the bow would smash the greatship to splinters.

  The thought of Gahltha smote me like a blow, and I muttered a curse at my callousness. He and the other horses had been shifted belowdecks soon after the storm began, but the storm would have destroyed his hard-won control over his fear of water, and I ought to have gone and seen him long since, regardless of the need to stay out of Rushton’s way.

  Thunder reverberated as I groped for the quilted vest hanging on a hook behind the door. Dragging it on, I looked back at the bed to see Maruman sleeping soundly, oblivious to the storm. Afraid that he had gone onto the dreamtrails for the longsleep, I staggered back to lay a hand on his warm back, but he was only sleeping. Relieved, I mounded some pillows about him and made my way back to the door. I opened it, and the wind forced it wide and blustered at me with such ferocity that I was flung backward. I lowered my head and shouldered my way out of the cabin, heaving the door closed behind me and making sure it was securely latched.

  For a moment, all was darkness and noisy disorienting chaos, then lightning illuminated the deck, revealing slick wood and snaking ropes. Oddly, there was not a shipman or woman in sight.

  I had not gone far when the ship nosed into a trough, the hull groaning and creaking as if it were about to break in two. I was thrown from my feet, but instead of crashing to the deck, strong arms caught me. I looked up to find Jakoby holding me in a viselike grip. I expected her to order me back to my cabin, but instead she pointed forward and shouted at me to go to the saloon. I shook my head and tried to explain that I needed to stay out of Rushton’s sight. But thunder rumbled and lightning cracked, smothering my words. Jakoby pointed insistently, and her vehemence made me turn. My jaw dropped at the sight of a sheer stone cliff rearing up out of the churning water directly ahead and extending up out of sight.

  “Norseland,” Jakoby bellowed in my ear.

  “It can’t be!” I shouted back. Then I laid my hand on her arm and sent, “We can’t have got here so swiftly.”

  “The storm blew us directly across the strait instead of along the normal shipping path,” Jakoby shouted. “It was a perilous passage, for we had to negotiate the many shoals in the midst of the storm, but it is done, and now we are less than an hour from the Norsemen’s Uttecove.”

  I glanced at the cliffs, which were rushing toward us at a speed that dried my mouth, but at that moment, the Umborine lurched and plunged and groaned, the deck and hull creaking horribly as the ship slowly turned broadside to the cliffs. Instead of looking relieved, Jakoby merely shouted into my ear that I should go to the saloon, for the ship boats would soon be launched.

  I gaped at her in disbelief, unable to believe she meant to go ahead with Gwynedd’s strategy in the midst of the storm. Yet Jakoby did not look as if she were joking. I swallowed hard, remembering that I had agreed to take part in what must surely be a lunatic’s venture.

  Jakoby was shouting more, and I touched her arm again so I could enter her mind and asked her to repeat her words. “The storm will prevent us from being able to maneuver the Umborine close enough to Norseland to see the inlet; therefore, the ships will have to be launched in faith.”

  I nodded, understanding that I was receiving a warning, and Jakoby pointed urgently toward the shipmaster’s deck. Then she let me go and hastened toward the rear of the vessel, as sure-footed as a cat on the heaving deck.

  I stood for a moment, indecisive amid all the wild wind and water, but then I continued along the deck to the entrance to the hold. I was about to descend when I saw a Sadorian shipgirl carrying a lantern and a coil of thick oiled rope. I lurched over to her and asked where the holding corral was belowdecks. She shouted something, but the roaring of the wind and the raging sea made it impossible to make out her words. Realizing that I could not hear her, she pointed down and then toward the rear of the ship. Then she showed three fingers. I nodded, understanding that Gahltha was on the third level toward the rear of the ship.

  I reeled and stumbled down the steps into the pitching, creaking blackness. At one point, I heard Jak’s voice and realized he must be striving to keep his precious insects safe, but I continued to descend until my nose told me I had reached the holding boxes. I drew a deep breath and shouted Gahltha’s name. My heart lurched with relief and dismay as he gave a high-pitched, terrified whinny of response. Full of remorse for not having come to him sooner, I groped my way toward the sound. At last my straining hands found his hot, trembling flank.

  “I am here, dear one,” I sent. “I am so sorry I did not come sooner.”

  “It is not your fault that I am a coward,” Gahltha sent miserably.

  “My great-hearted Gahltha, you are the least cowardly creature I have ever known,” I told him fiercely, sliding my arms around his neck and kissing his silky muzzle.

  “You are leaving the ship,” Gahltha sent, having seen it in my mind.

  “I must,” I said. “But when I return, we will go to S
ador, and after that, we will ride back to Obernewtyn.”

  Unable to offer any further assurances, I held him and stroked him until at last I felt the keen edge of his terror blunt. Then, knowing I could delay no longer, I kissed him one last time and made my way back up to the deck.

  The cliffs seemed closer than ever in the flashes of lightning, and I told myself that at least no one would have seen us approach the island in the middle of such a black stormy night. The first the Hedra would know about anything was when the Umborine sailed into Main Cove. I could just make out movement around the ship boats, which had been lashed to the deck beyond the saloon, but I had one last errand before I could join the others. I ran back to my cabin and wakened Maruman to explain what I was going to do. Before he could utter any of the protests I sensed gathering in his mind, I knelt by the bed, took his small pointed face in my hands, and looked into his shining golden eye.

  “Maruman, darling heart, listen to me. There is no time for tantrums,” I told him with stern tenderness. “I have to go ashore for many reasons, some of which are connected to my quest as ElspethInnle, but Gahltha is very frightened. I need you to go to him and help him to endure the storm. Will you do this for me?”

  For a long moment, he looked into my eyes. Then, at last, he sent softly into my mind, “Maruman/yelloweyes will go to the Daywatcher. Be careful, ElspethInnle.”

  Outside, the wind had grown stronger, and now it was beginning to rain. A Sadorian, seeing me emerge, leaned into the wind and handed me the end of a rope, indicating that I should tie it around my waist. I obeyed and he made another gesture, which I did not understand, before hurrying off.

  I made my unsteady way along the deck toward the main saloon, but the rope was too short and brought me to a sudden stop. I saw another rope end tied and coiled against the wall and realized the meaning of the Sadorian’s gestures. He had been trying to tell me that I needed to move from one secured rope to another. I tied the new one about my waist, untied the other, and fastened it to the wall before continuing along the ship. Beyond the saloon, I could see the Sadorians unlashing the small ship boats, but there was no sign of Gwynedd or his men, so I untied the rope from my waist, curled it around a hook to which a number of other ropes were fastened, and entered the saloon.