Aylis laughed, but then grew sober, thoughtful. Finally she said. “Perhaps that is what we are—nought but dreaming dreamers, fast asleep in some far Realm, dreaming our lives away as we live here in this existence.”
Aravan smiled. “‘Mayhap, chieran, but if so I would not wish ever to awaken unless thou wert there as well.” He raised up on one elbow and leaned down and kissed her on the lips. Then he reached down and took her hand and kissed her fingers as well. Finally he looked into her eyes, sapphires gazing into emeralds. “Although I have no way of proving it, this I deem is the reality, chieran, though for me it is a dream come true.”
Aylis pulled him to her and kissed him long. Then holding hands they lay once again side by side. After a while she murmured, “She is ready, love; Jinnarin is as ready as I can make her, and so am I. When next she enters the sending, then will I follow her, and together we will venture to discover whatever we can.”
Aravan said nothing, though he gripped her hand tightly. They lay and listened to wind and wave and creaking rope as the Eroean fared westward along the briny track. Time passed, and there came a faint cry from above decks. Aravan swung his feet over the flank of the bed and sat listening, his head cocked to one side. Again came the cry. Moments later a knock sounded on the door. “Land, Cap’n” came Tivir’s voice, “land ho off th’ starboard bow.”
CHAPTER 23
Web
Winter, 1E9574–75
[The Present]
Jatu’s dreams—all but one—well, they were strange and wonderful and wild and often rather bawdy,” said Jinnarin. “It was quite an experience. I laughed and was amazed and at times embarrassed.”
“Hmph,” snorted Alamar, “I’ll wager.”
“Sometime, Alamar. I’d like to walk your dreams. Why, there’s no telling what I might find in there.”
“Oh no you don’t, Pysk,” snapped Alamar. “I won’t have anyone walking about in my head, stepping all over my brains, poking about in my dreams. No thank you. Especially not a Pysk.”
“Why not, Alamar? I mean, it’s not as if it would do damage.”
“Ha!” barked the elder. “No damage? Why, you—particularly you—would be looking for all my secrets, stealing every bit of privy lore hidden in my mind, to say nothing of prying into my private affairs to see what you could find to hold over me.”
Jinnarin leapt to her feet infuriated, her hands clenched into fists on her hips, her cheeks puffing and blowing with outraged dignity. “Steal your secrets?” she shrieked. “Pry into your affairs? Alamar, you old fossil, now even if you invited me, I wouldn’t go into that creaky shut-up mind of yours. Why, why. I’d get squashed to death in those narrow confines. Besides—”
A knock sounded on the door and, snarling, Alamar jerked it open, shouting, “What?”
Startled, Tivir quailed backwards. “It’s land, sir, that’s all, land.” His message delivered, the lad fled down the passageway.
Grumpily, Alamar and Jinnarin made their way to the deck, where they found Jatu and Bokar standing along the starboard rail. Five miles or so in the fore distance they could see the high cliffs of a long, curving shoreline creeping up over the horizon. Atop the bluffs they could make out greenery—a pineland running along the edge of the precipice.
“Where are we?” asked Jinnarin. “What Land?”
“‘Tis the western continent again, Lady Jinnarin,” answered Jatu, “though farther south and west than where we were before. East and a bit north lies Tarquin’s Realm, and north beyond that is where last we saw this continent ere turning east for Thol.”
“Oh.” Jinnarin sighed.
“Well what’d you expect, Pysk?” growled Alamar. “I mean, given the direction we were sailing, where else could we have gone?”
“I—I don’t know, Alamar. I was just expecting…expecting…” Dejectedly, Jinnarin slumped to the deck.
In that moment, Aylis and Aravan arrived, and the seeress shot a look of reproach at her father and knelt by the Pysk.
Alamar threw his hands up to the sky and stormed off, muttering to himself.
“Yaaaahhh!” shouted Bokar, slamming the butts of his fists down on the wale, startling Jinnarin and Aylis, Alamar at a distance whirling about, Aravan and Jatu looking on in consternation. “Kruk! I know just how you feel, Lady Jinnarin. Nothing! No one! Empty sea! Dark land!” The Dwarf turned and bellowed out over the ocean, “Where are you, Durlok, you skut?”
Now Jinnarin leapt to her feet, and turned and kicked the starboard railboard and shrieked out through a runoff hole, her tiny voice piping, “Where are you. Durlok, you skut?”
Of a sudden, Jatu began laughing, immediately joined by Aravan and then Aylis. Bokar doubled over roaring, and finally Jinnarin, her birdlike trills ringing. Alamar, glaring, came stomping back and demanded, “All right, you bunch of jackfools, just what’s so funny?” which started them on a roar again.
“Where now, Captain?”
Aravan looked at Jatu. “Bring her in close and drop anchor. We’ll lay up in this bight for a while. Send a landing party ashore to fetch water to replenish what we have used. In fact, rotate the crew through this water duty—give them a stretch ashore. In the meanwhile we will wait for Lady Aylis and Lady Jinnarin to walk the sending and see what they can see. Then shall we determine our course.”
As Jatu and Bokar turned to carry out the orders—Jatu to bring the ship to safe anchorage, Bokar to form up mixed teams to go ashore afterward—Aravan turned to Aylis and Jinnarin. “Now it is up to ye twain,” he said quietly, his eyes full of desperate concern.
Four nights later, on the tenth of March, during the third dream of the darktide, Brightwing found herself once again flying through dark roiling clouds above a pale green sea. Rain lashed down, while far below a black ship sailed, her masts stroked by lightning. In the remote distance stood the dark shape of a storm-lashed island, and other dim shapes were scattered widely across the raging sea.
Just ahead, she saw Jinnarin. Flying swiftly, she caught the Pysk and took her by the hand, Jinnarin and the seeress of a matching size. “Sparrow! Sparrow!” she called above the sound of thunder and rain and wind and lightning. “Sparrow! Wake up! It is the sending!”
Jinnarin looked over at her, the Pysk’s eyes mazed. But then her gaze filled with awareness, and Sparrow called out, “Brightwing!”
Brightwing laughed. “Come, my Sparrow, let us fly down to see the sea. I would inspect these pale green waters.” But even as she said it, a thin tendril of fear snaked up her spine.
“Do you feel it, Brightwing?” called out Sparrow. “The evil, I mean.”
“Yes. Be wary. Be ready to flee. Watch close for the dissolution of this dream, for I would not be trapped within.”
Sparrow shuddered. “Oh my no. Neither would I.”
Even as they sped down toward the heaving waters below, the fear grew.
“My bow and arrows!” cried Sparrow, and suddenly they appeared, the bow in her hand, the quiver strapped to her hip.
Now they came down nigh the ocean, and in the distance the black ship thundered toward them, capturing their eyes. Down they settled to the surface of the sea, yet lo! they landed not on water, but instead on a great green web!
“Oh, Brightwing, I’m stuck! I’m stuck!” cried Sparrow, the Pysk trapped, her foot caught by the monstrous snare.
Yet even as Aylis turned to help her, the great dark ship shimmered and changed, becoming an immense black spider, fangs adrip and long legs scuttling as it rushed toward them, the web shuddering as onward it came.
Fear hammered upon them as Brightwing tried to haul Sparrow upward, the spider hurtling at them.
“I can’t—!” gritted Brightwing through clenched teeth, her straining arms about Sparrow. “It’s too—I need a—
“—Sword!”
Suddenly a sword appeared in Brightwing’s grip.
Now the web bounced and bounded, the horrendous spider rushing down on them, dread whelming throug
h their veins.
Brightwing slashed the sword down on the great strand holding Sparrow, but the blade rebounded and did not cut.
And the hideous monster now was but steps away, its many eyes glittering as onward it came.
“Incende!” shouted Brightwing, and the blade burst into flame. Again she slashed at the web, the green strand giving way before the fire!
Once more she slashed, and Sparrow was free!
And the huge dark spider now loomed above, rearing upward and lunging down.
“Up and away,” shrieked Brightwing.
But even as they tried to fly, great green ropy tentacles lashed up from the sea, clutching at them.
“Bridge out!” cried Sparrow, a black hole forming before her, and she dived through, a virescent tentacle whipping through the breach after, lashing about and groping for her even though she was back in the cabin.
Ducking and dodging, “Brightwing! Brightwing!” she called, for the Lady Mage had not come through with her.
Of a sudden, another gap appeared, and Brightwing dove through, rolling, grass-green tentacles grasping after. She leapt to her feet, shouting, “Close the bridge, Sparrow! Close the bridge!”
With a
Hearts hammering, they looked at one another, Sparrow trembling, Brightwing gasping. Still quaking, they sat beside their physical selves and uttered the
…and opened their eyes in the candlelit room.
And in that very moment, Aravan came crashing into the cabin, his sword in hand, his eyes sweeping the chamber, the Elf ready to slay whatever it was that had caused his blue stone amulet to run icy chill.
“The thing that puzzles me,” inserted Frizian, “are the giant tentacles. Only the Krakens are known to have such hideous arms, and although they live in the deeps, the only place where the Krakens are known to congregate—”
“Is the Great Maelstrom!” blurted out Tink, serving tea, the lad clapping a hand over his own mouth for butting in.
Aravan looked at the cabin boy and smiled. “Quite right, Tink.” Then Aravan turned to the others. “Yet heed: though the Seabane Isles lie nearby, the Great Maelstrom is not a pale green sea”—he glanced at Alamar—“yet as thou sayest, Mage Alamar, things in dreams are not always what they seem.”
Alamar jerked his head up and down. “Quite right, Elf: nothing may be as it seems, and that includes the ship, the spider, the pale green sea, the storm, the island, the crystal castle, or whatever else this blasted sending shows us!”
Jatu turned to Aylis and Jinnarin. “The fear, did it come from the spider?”
Aylis glanced at Jinnarin, and the Pysk said, “Oh, Jatu I was terrified of the spider, yet I don’t think that the fear we first felt came from it. Instead I would say…well, I just don’t know.” She looked at the seeress.
Aylis turned up her palms. “Jinnarin is right. Though terrifying, the spider is not the source of the dread. I believe instead that it comes from the island.”
A silence fell on the group, broken only by the clink of pottery as Tink stepped ‘round the gathering and served tea. At last Aravan said, “Let us list all. Mayhap by seeing it written down in one place we will be inspired.”
He pulled open a drawer in the table and took pen and parchment from it. “In order now, there was—?” He looked at Aylis.
“Clouds. Jinnarin flying. A storm. The black ship below, lightning stroking the masts. The pale green sea. The island. Other shapes—”
Aravan paused, holding up a hand. “These other shapes, what deem thee they were?”
Aylis shrugged. “They are too vague, distant.”
“Make a guess, Daughter,” directed Alamar.
Aylis looked at Jinnarin. “Perhaps islands. Small islands. I simply don’t know, Father. They are too distant, too vague in the storm to see well.”
Alamar turned to Jinnarin. The Pysk shook her head. “I don’t know either.”
Aravan took up his pen. “Let us continue.”
Aylis glanced at the list. “Um, let me see, oh yes—I wakened Sparrow. We flew down to look at the pale green sea. It was a vast green web. Jinnarin trapped. The ship became a great black spider. I cut Jinnarin free with a conjured, flaming sword—”
“But, Daughter,” interrupted Alamar, “you don’t know how to conjure flames.”
“I do in my dreams, Father. I merely said the word that I’ve heard you use a thousand times: Incende.”
“It cast?”
“Yes, Father. —How? I do not know. Yet had it not, then we would not have survived.”
“Hmph!” grunted Alamar, turning his bracelet ‘round his wrist.
Aravan took up his pen once again, signifying for Aylis to continue.
“There’s not that much more. The great black spider was upon us. Green tentacles clutching. Bridging out, the tentacles following. We slammed the holes to, which cut off the tentacles, which vanished in yellow-green smoke.”
“Ooo,” breathed Frizian, peering around at the shadows in the salon. “They followed you right into the cabin?”
Jinnarin nodded.
Aravan fingered the amulet at his throat. “I deem the tentacles in the cabin is what caused this stone to run chill.”
Bokar cocked an eyebrow. “A dream creature?”
Aylis slowly nodded. “A dream creature it was. Bokar, yet forget not, it was no ordinary phantasm, but instead was one we brought from the dream shadowland and into the ship’s cabin…into the reality of the world.”
Frizian shuddered. “Rather frightening.”
“That’s spooky, all right,” said Tink, “but, Lor! even worse is thinking of a great big green web in the sea, trapping all wot sails into her.”
At Tink’s remark, Aravan’s eyes flew wide, and he glanced at Jatu, and by the look on the black Man’s face he saw that Jatu’s thoughts followed the same track as his own. He leapt up and pulled a map from the chart cabinet and spread it out, his finger stabbing to a shaded area in the south Sindhu Sea. “Here, my friends, here may lie the pale green sea.”
All looked, and Frizian said, “But, Captain, that’s the Great Swirl.”
“Aye Frizian, but Tink I ween is right; here is a great green web trapping all within.”
Jinnarin looked at Aravan. “What is this Great Swirl?”
It was Jatu who answered. “Ah, tiny one, it is a vast area of clinging weed, more than a thousand miles across, slowly turning ‘round about with the surrounding currents. Many a ship has been storm driven into that monstrous clutching whirl to be caught forever, never to be seen nor heard from again.”
Jatu fell silent but Frizian added, “Ships trapped within are drawn to the center, or so they say, ever changing position in the slow churn.”
Bokar growled, “Is it true that salvage and treasure expeditions have been lost as well?”
Frizian nodded. “So it is said. It is told that something evil lies within.”
Bokar slammed his fist to the table. “If it is evil, then it might be the Black Mage! It could be a place where he gets his victims, eh? Sailors trapped by the weed?”
A ripple of conversation muttered around the table.
Aylis held up a hand for silence. When it came, she asked, “Can this be where we should search for Durlok? For the crystal castle? For the pale green sea? For Farrix? Have we facts to support this thesis—that the Great Swirl is the seat of the mystery—or is it but mere speculation?”
Alamar shrugged. “All we have to go on is the sending, Daughter, and dreams are deceiving and not what they seem.”
“Yet Tink may be right, Mage Alamar,” said Aravan. “The green web could symbolize the clutching weed of the Swirl.”
“Wot about its color, Cap’n?” asked Tink. “
Is it pale green?”
Aravan nodded. “Aye, Tink, I have seen it up close, and pale green, grass green, they both apply.”
“And the tentacles of the dream,” asked Jinnarin, “what are they?”
Now Jatu spoke up. “Green tentacles? Perhaps they, too, are the clutching weed, Lady Jinnarin.”
Aylis slowly nodded. “Perhaps. But the spider, it is no weed in the water. What might it represent?”
Silence fell ‘round the table, each looking at one another in puzzlement. Suddenly Tink blurted out, “The galley! The Black Mage’s galley! The legs are—”
“—The oars!” exclaimed Jatu. “Ah, Tink, m’lad, you have the right of it!”
“Ha!” exclaimed Bokar. “It all fits. The green is the weed. The spider is the galley of the Black Mage!”
“Pah, Dwarf,” declared Alamar, “how many times do I have to repeat myself? Things in dreams are not necessarily what they seem. These things may be something else altogether. Take Tink’s conjecture—the spider doesn’t have to be a galley.”
Bokar glared at the Mage. “What else can it be?”
Before Alamar could reply, Aravan said, “Bokar has a point, Mage Alamar. Thou sayest thyself that dreams are not what they seem. A giant spider, especially one as large as a ship, seems unlikely. Instead, I think Tink’s posit is apt: the spider is but a symbol for the galley, legs representing oars.” Aravan glanced across the table at Aylis. “It began as one kind of ship and ended as perhaps another, the spider but a dream token—”
Voyage of the Fox Rider Page 33