Upon arrival at the Eroean, Long Tom assembled all hands on deck, and with Aylis looking on and Aravan leading, the sailors and warband took an oath to reveal no secrets of the Elvenship: the old hands renewing their pledge; the new hands vowing for the first time. Then all pledged a second time to never divulge to anyone the fact that they would sail with a Pysk, for she was one of the Hidden Ones, and preferred to keep it that way. Finally, the Dwarves and Men took an oath to reveal nought of this voyage whatsoever to anyone not of the crew. And when the pledging was done, Aravan looked to Aylis, and she nodded in satisfaction.
Under the tutelage of Nikolai and Brekk, the new crew members spent days familiarizing themselves with the ship and their duties, while the old hands spent time setting things to shipshape, some removing the scars the hull had taken in combat with the Rovers of Kistan, and laying on new paint where needed.
And as they readied the craft, Aylis spent time recording in her journal the tales they had told one another in the nights before the hearth. And the Châkka warband stripped and cleaned and regreased and reassembled the ballistas, or laded fireballs and round stones and huge arrows aboard, or sharpened axes or polished war hammers or oiled crossbows and such. And sailors swabbed or painted or coiled lines, or practiced reefing and goosewinging as well as running out the studding sails, and other such duties of seamanship.
As they worked at familiarizing themselves with the Elvenship, one of the new crewmen asked Aravan, “Beggin’ pardon, Captain, but what be the name Eroean mean?”
“ ’Tis an Elven word, Jules, and difficult to translate into Common, yet as close as I can come, it means Dancer on the Wind.”
“Ar, then Wind Dancer be her name, eh?”
Aravan smiled and said, “Not quite, but close.”
Within a sevenday all was ready, and Aravan had rowers in dinghies hale the Eroean to a pier, and there he tied up; and with the docks and ship abustle and cargo nets on booms swinging up and across decks and below, they laded on kegs and crates and barrels and bales of food and water and other such goods for the long voyage ahead. When the last of the provisions was lashed down in the holds, Aravan granted the crew a final day of shore leave, for they would sail morrow’s eve, and it would be many a moon ere they saw these shores again.
To the Red Slipper the sailors and warriors went, while Aravan and Aylis and Urus and Riatha stayed aboard, along with Pipper and Binkton and Aylissa and Vex.
Even as the crew took their leave, a man rowed a dinghy to the ship. “Ahoy, the deck!” he called.
Aravan stepped to the rail.
It was Realmsman Tanner.
“I have a gift for two of your shipmates,” called the realmsman.
“And they would be . . . ?”
“Binkton and Pipper.”
Hearing their names, the Warrows stepped to the rail as well.
“Hand it up,” said Aravan, lowering a rope and board ladder, “and then welcome aboard.”
Tanner hefted up a large chest, one painted with flames. “It’s empty, I’m afraid.”
As Aravan leaned down and took hold of an end handle and hauled the chest adeck, “King Ryon,” blurted Pipper.
Binkton sighed in exasperation, and Pipper said, “What I mean, Bink, is that the High King must have cleaned out Rivers End, else we wouldn’t have our chest.”
“Ah,” said Binkton.
“The High King did at that,” said Tanner, climbing aboard. “Cleared out Rackburn and the mayor and most of the city watch. Kingsmen now run the government there.”
“What about that rat-eating Tark and his toady Queeker?”
“Sorry, but it seems they escaped,” said Tanner.
“What?” demanded Binkton. “What Rûck-loving idiot let them get away?”
“I think they were elsewhere when the High King led the raid,” said Tanner.
“I wouldn’t call the High King a Rûck-loving idiot if I were you, Bink,” whispered Pipper.
“Ah. Well.” Binkton took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Tanner and Aravan laughed.
“Wull, they’re on wanted posters, right?” blustered Binkton.
“Indeed,” said Tanner, controlling his mirth.
Binkton turned to Pipper and said, “When we get back from this voyage, Pip, we’ll run them down ourselves, if they are still on the loose. After all, they tried to kill us.”
Pipper sighed and said, “Oh, Bink.”
“Wouldst thou have a brandy?” asked Aravan.
“Indeed,” said Tanner.
As they started for the Captain’s Lounge, Pipper turned to Binkton and said, “Come on, Bink, empty though it is, let’s get our chest below.”
Late the next afternoon the crew returned, a few carrying others over their shoulders. The ladies of the Red Slipper, some weeping, came down to the docks as well, for they would see the crew off. Long Tom and his family were there, Little Tom with his eyes agog at the magnificence of the ship. Long Tom gave Little Tom a hug and a kiss; then he scooped up his tiny wife, Larissa, in his arms and kissed her long and deeply. He set her afoot and turned and boarded the Eroean, last of all of the crew.
As the sun set and dusk drew down and the tide began to flow outward, “Get us under way, Tom,” said Aravan, when the big man reported in.
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” replied Tom.
He turned to Noddy and Nikolai. “Cast off fore, cast off aft, hale in the gangplank, and rowers row.”
These two called out orders, and dock men waiting on the pier cast the hawsers from the pilings, while crewmen drew the large mooring lines up and in and coiled them on the deck, as others pulled up the footway and stowed it in its place below. Rowers in the dinghies haled the ship away from the quay and turned her bow toward the mouth of Arbalin Bay.
Even as the dinghies were lifted up to the davits, Noddy piped the crew to raise the staysails, and on these alone did the craft get under way; and in the deepening twilight, folk on the piers called out farewells and blew heartfelt kisses, some on the Eroean returning the sentiments in kind.
As the Elvenship cleared the mouth of the harbor and rode out on the ocean prime, “Where to, Captain?” asked Fat Jim, steersman again, his arm no longer in a sling. “What be our heading? Where be we bound?”
Aravan looked out across the broad Avagon Sea, the cool night air filling the silks above. Then he stepped up behind Aylis at the aft starboard rail and pulled her close and she leaned back into him. With men standing adeck and looking up at the captain embracing his lady, he reached ’round and cupped her right hand in his and pointed her finger and raised her arm and aimed at a bright gleam in the western sky. “Set our course on the evening star yon, all sails full, for we go to the rim of the world and beyond.”
The bosun then looked at Long Tom, and at the big man’s nod he piped the orders, and sailors scrambled to the ratlines and up to the yardarms, where they unfurled silks, the great sails spilling down in wide cascades of cerulean, while others of the crew stood ready at the halyards and sheets; and as this was done, Noddy strode along the deck and called out, “Look smart, men. You heard th’ cap’n. Set those sails brisk, f’r surely we’re bound on a venture grand th’ loiks o’ which th’ w’rld has ne’er seen.”
And with all silks flying in a following wind and filled to the full—mains and studs, jibs and spanker, staysails, topsails, gallants and royals, skysails and moonrakers and starscrapers—and with a luminous white wake churning aft in the night-dark Avagon Sea, her waters all aglimmer with the spangle of light from the stars above, westerly she ran, the Elvenship Eroean, the fastest ship in all the seas.
She was bound for the rim of the world and beyond. . . .
. . . the rim of the world . . .
. . . and beyond. . . .
54
Dark Designs
DARK DESIGNS
SPRING, 6E10
In a tall tower hidden deep in the Grimwall, that long and ill-omened mountain chain slash
ing across much of Mithgar, a being of dark Magekind sat in his dire sanctum and brooded about retribution.
A single thought occupied all of his waking hours. . . .
. . . Aravan must die.
“Not bad for a pair of chicken thieves, eh?”
—PIPPER WILLOWBANK
MID AUTUMN, 6E9
Afterword
For those who might wonder, most of this story, City of Jade, occurs in the time between the ending of the novel Silver Wolf, Black Falcon and the beginning of the collection Red Slippers: More Tales of Mithgar. For clarification purposes, I do “steal” a bit of Silver Wolf, Black Falcon to start this tale, and I steal a bit of Red Slippers toward the end of this story as well. And I go just a bit past Red Slippers at the last of this tale.
I also refer to several events occurring elsewhere in the series, although City of Jade stands on its own, as do all the other books in the chain (with the exception of anything called a trilogy or a duology; naturally, they must be read as a whole).
For those of you who are new to Mithgar, if you are interested in the sweep of the entire saga, a chronological list of the books in the series is printed at the front of this tome.
—Dennis L. McKiernan
Tucson, 2008
About the Author
I have spent a great deal of my life looking through twilights and dawns seeking . . . what? Ah, yes, I remember—seeking signs of wonder, searching for pixies and fairies and other such, looking in tree hollows and under snow-laden bushes and behind waterfalls and across wooded, moonlit dells. I did not outgrow that curiosity, that search for the edge of Faery when I outgrew childhood—not when I was in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, nor in college, nor in graduate school, nor in the thirty-one years I spent in research and development at Bell Telephone Laboratories as an engineer and manager on ballistic missile defense systems and then telephone systems and in think-tank activities. In fact I am still at it, still searching for glimmers and glimpses of wonder in the twilights and the dawns. I am abetted in this curious behavior by Martha Lee, my helpmate, lover, and, as of this writing, my wife of over fifty years.
City of Jade: A Novel of Mithgar Page 42