Voyage of the Fox Rider

by Dennis L McKiernan

  As the ship whelmed down in the water, “Aye, Cap’n,” replied Tivir and slid down the ladder. Bokar followed, the Dwarf slamming the trap to.

  “Bah!” snarled Alamar. “Durlok can no more see in this blizzard than can we.”

  Without turning around, Farrix asked, “Don’t you have some kind of magery that will allow you to look through the storm?”

  “Magesight is all I have, Pysk. In some things it serves me well; in others it is no better than your own.”

  “And in the blizzard…?”

  “In the blizzard, Pysk, your eyes see better than mine.”

  Again the Elvenship thundered down in the waves.

  Jatu stepped from the wheelhouse and into the howl, and after a while he returned, snow and wind whirling in after.

  “Captain,” said the black Man, “we are now but barely faster than the following seas. Should the wind fall the slightest, these greybeards will get behind us and swing us about until we are rolled and founder.”

  “I know, Jatu,” replied the Elf, his features grim, and again the hull slammed down.

  “If we don’t get some sight, we’re likely to run into more ice,” snapped Alamar. “Only Dame Fortune guides us now.”

  “Well why don’t you use your magic?” called out Jinnarin, entering the wheelhouse once more, Artus at her side.

  “Argh!” growled the elder, but saying no more.

  Artus said to Jatu, “Your metal box was filled with ashes; nought else in your sea chest was harmed.”

  Jinnarin clambered up beside Farrix. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She answered his unspoken question: “The pages burned, but nothing else, although some of the wall was scorched. Rux is all right, though he was upset by the fire and whatever hit the ship. I found him outside in the passageway, coming after me.”

  Jinnarin turned. “Aylis is in your cabin, Aravan. The ship’s log was smoldering when she and Artus got there. Durlok’s page was destroyed, and a number of pages in the log were charred beyond recognition. Aylis cast a spell, and she is now copying all that was lost while it’s still fresh, she says, though I don’t know how she can tell what used to be there.”

  “Magic,” muttered Farrix.

  “Pah!” snorted Alamar.

  Jinnarin turned to the eld Mage. “Speaking of magic, Alamar, why not cast a spell that allows you to see through the snow?”

  “I already asked him that,” hissed Farrix. “He says he doesn’t know how.”

  “What I said, Pysk,” growled Alamar, “was that magesight made my eyes no better than yours.”

  “Oh,” said Jinnarin. “But wait, if you could—”

  Again the Eroean slammed down into the sea, and at the very same moment the trap popped open and Tivir stuck his head through. “Cap’n, Frizian says th’ mizzen ’n’ main ’r’ gone. Th’ fore yet stands, though th’ foremain ’n’ fore lower top ’r’ ripped down. Th’ jibs ’n’ forestay ’r’ worthy, as is th’ fore upper ’n’ all above, ’n’ those ’r’ th’ sails wot yet carry us. Th’ mizzen is shattered f’r more’n half her length; th’ main f’r a quarter. ‘E says it looks loike th’ mizzen failed ’n’ carried th’ main adown wi’ it. ’N’ Finch says that ‘e’s got below a timber wot’ll fix th’ main, but nothin’ f’r fixin’ th’ mizzen. But ‘e says there’s nary no way t’ fix ’er in these seas, ’n’ that y’ve got t’ find shelter or flat water afore repairs c’n begin.”

  “Damn!” spat Jatu. “Where in Hèl are we to find flat water in the middle of the South Polar Ocean?”

  “‘N’, Cap’n,” added the cabin boy, “there’s smash everywhere ’n’ Frizian ’n’ Bokar has all hands trying t’ lash it adown so as t’ keep it from crashing th’ ship apart.”

  “By your leave, Captain,” rumbled Jatu, “I’ll go and help.”

  Aravan nodded, then said, “Jatu, I’ll run a course straight with the waves until all is lashed securely, turning only as needs to avoid ice, can we see it in time. But hurry, for we must find relief ‘round the horn and up the coast in the shelter of the cape ere the foremast, too, gives way.”

  “Aye, Captain.” The black Man then disappeared down the ladder to make his way forward below deck and then up and out, Tivir going with him.

  Aravan turned to Rico. “Bo’s’n, we need more headway; choose some of the Men and see if you can replace the top and main on the foremast. Artus, thou goest as well.”

  As Rico and Artus slid down the trap ladder, Alamar growled, “Look here, Elf, we’re blind! More sail will just make us run faster into the danger ahead. Are you trying to drive us into the storm-hidden ice all that much quicker? Or instead do you merely seek to break our last mast?”

  “Nay, Mage Alamar, I seek to do neither. Yet heed, wouldst thou rather we miscarry on a wave and founder?”

  Alamar growled under his breath but said no more.

  Farrix turned to Jinnarin. “Love, you were about to say something when Tivir interrupted.”

  The ship juddered down as Jinnarin searched her mind for the elusive idea but could not find it. Yet even as she turned to peer out at the storm, of a sudden it popped back into her thoughts. “I know what it was. Alamar, why don’t you give Farrix your magesight? I mean, he can’t give you his Pysk eyes, but surely you can cast a spell to let him see astral fire, neh? Perhaps together—Pysk sight and magesight, I mean—they will penetrate the storm.”

  Alamar was taken aback, his eyes widening.

  Grinning a great grin, Farrix squeezed Jinnarin’s hand. “Burn me, but that’s clever!” Then he turned to Alamar. “Whether or not it succeeds or fails, it is worth a try. Anything is better than running through these waters blind. Can you do it?”

  “I can try, Pysk. I can try.”

  Alamar held out his palsied hands and tried to control the trembling, the elder muttering “Damn!” under his breath. Gently he cupped his fingers ‘round Farrix and placed his quavering thumbs feather-lightly against the Pysk’s eyes. “I think I will have to change it slightly, the casting, that is. Let’s hope it doesn’t instill blindness instead.”

  Jinnarin gasped and called out, “Blindness? Wait!”

  But at the very same moment, Alamar muttered, “Transfer visum.”

  Alamar took his hands from the Pysk.

  Whoom! the ship whelmed down.

  Farrix opened his eyes.

  The irises were no longer ice-blue, but utter black instead.

  Farrix’s mouth dropped open, and slowly he shifted his gaze about the wheelhouse, pausing at each person there, finally stopping on Jinnarin. “Adon,” he breathed, “everything glows.”

  “Ha!” wheezed Alamar. “It worked!”

  “Everything glows,” repeated Farrix.

  “Of course it does, Pysk,” quavered the elder, the snap gone from his voice, “but can you see through the storm?”

  Farrix whirled about and peered through the glass. “Lor, everything’s strange; different colors. But wait, yes, I can see! Ha! Rico is up the foremast with a crew. They are trying to get the fore lower topsail rigged. Some are working on the foremain. —And wait! There’s a tall thing—a mountain—to the right; probably ice, though it’s not white but instead it is…it is a color I have no word for. We’ll miss it.”

  Farrix turned his black gaze to Alamar. “How long will this vision last?”

  “Eh? Why, till you will it gone, Psyk,” hissed the elder. “But the important thing is, what do you see ahead? You’ve got to guide the ship, you know.”

  As the Eroean rode up to a crest, Farrix moved to a place where he could see past part of the downed wreckage. “It seems to be clear for the moment,” he said at last.

  “Canst thou see the black galley?”

  The Eroean hammered down in the waves.

  Farrix ran to the larboard window and then to the starboard, staring out each side as the waves lifted the Eroean up. “Not from here, Aravan. If Durlok is about, he’s not where I can see him.”

  �
�Directly aft, Cap’n?” suggested Boder.

  “Mayhap,” acknowledged Aravan.

  “Lor, the strange colors,” breathed Farrix. “Even the waves.”

  Whoom! down thundered the Eroean.

  Time passed, with Boder occasionally adjusting the wheel at Farrix’s beck, the Pysk guiding the ship to avoid mountainous ice in their line. Each time, though, the ship rolled dangerously as the following seas tried to overturn this intruder in its violent domain. At last the trapdoor popped open and Rico climbed up and out. He cast back his parka hood, his face burning red with cold. “Kapitan, she now bear all silk but stud. But she groan somet’ing fierce. I be afraid she break, too.

  “And, Kapitan,” added the bo’s’n, “Frizian, he say most wreck be lashed down.”

  “Well and good, Rico.” Aravan stepped to the doorway and out into the brawling storm. Clutching a safety line, he made his way to the rail and peered through the blizzard and over the side and held on tightly as the ship rode up to curling crests and whelmed down into the frigid sea, the Elf gauging the speed of the ship with respect to the towering waves. When he returned he said, “Boder, steer a point larboard. Rico, trim the foremast. We will run for the shelter of the cape. Farrix, keep an eye out for ice and the black galley.”

  Two hours they hurtled among looming waves, driven by a thundering wind, the ship rolling and the foremast groaning under the strain as they ran northeast in the blinding blizzard through the long, dark polar night. Channeled by the stricture of the Silver Straits, wind and water and hurling snow rounded northerly. And into the ice-laden maw they plunged, Farrix guiding them past the monstrous floes. And just as they came to the crux of the throat—

  “Bloody Hèl!” cried Farrix, his eyes wide and staring. “What is that?”

  Whoom! crashed the Eroean into the howling sea, the ship slowly uprighting as it slid down the face of the wave and into the deep churning trough.

  Jinnarin looked starboard to where he pointed, but all she saw was a hurtling wall of snow. “What? What did you see?”

  Farrix turned his utter black gaze upon her and she shivered in apprehension, his eyes so alien, so strange. “I thought I saw…” His words ceased altogether.

  “Saw what?”

  Farrix shook his head. “Another ship.”

  Aravan stepped forward. “Durlok?”

  “No, it was a galleon, I think. Her sails were tattered and blowing in the wind, her rigging burning with witchfire.”

  At the wheel, Boder gasped. “The Grey Lady.”

  “What?” asked Farrix.

  Boder looked at Jinnarin. “Didn’t you tell him, Lady Jinnarin?”

  “No,” answered Jinnarin, shaking her head. “I hadn’t got around to it.”

  “Got around to what?” asked Farrix, his eyes now fixed to starboard as the Eroean climbed up the face of the next towering wave.

  “A sailor’s legend,” replied Jinnarin, “the Grey Lady—a ghost ship.”

  “Aye,” added Boder. “A cursed ship sailing endlessly through the night ‘round the Silver Cape, her masts and rigging glowing with green witchfire, her ghostly crew forever trapped aboard, searching for the lost lad of a sorceress dire.”

  Farrix glanced at Jinnarin. “A sorceress?”

  “A kind of a Black Mage,” answered Jinnarin.

  “Bah!” snorted Alamar. “Most are not Black Mages at all.”

  “Well this one was one, Mage Alamar,” protested Boder. “From Alkabar in Hyree, she was, and as Black a Mage as they come. Cursed the Grey Lady to sail the seas till they found her son who washed overboard in the Silver Straits.

  “But that’s not the total of it. They say that as the Grey Lady sails about, trying to find the lost passenger, the ghost captain calls the lost one’s name out over the waters. They also say that if you hear what that name be, then you will suddenly find yourself trapped aboard the Grey Lady herself, sailing the seas forever…or till the lost one’s found.”

  “Humbug!” muttered Alamar.

  But Farrix said, “I doubt if we’d hear anything above the shriek of this storm.”

  “Well if she comes near, stuff up your ears,” advised Boder, “just in case. Better safe than sorry.”

  With the wind screaming in fury and the rigging of the foremast howling in kind, the canted Eroean topped the crest of the wave and Farrix peered intently starboard.

  Boom! the Elvenship hull slammed down to the face of the slope beyond.

  “Well?” asked Jinnarin, her heart hammering.

  Farrix shook his head. “Nothing. If it was ever there, it’s gone now. Though I could have sworn—”

  “Poppycock!” muttered Alamar.

  Farrix glanced toward Boder, then looked at Jinnarin. “Perhaps instead it was an oddly shaped greybeard.”

  “What about the witchfire and tattered sails and all?” asked Boder.

  “With magesight, Boder, everything glows,” answered Farrix. “And the tattered sails…perhaps it was merely spray.…”

  Slowly Boder shook his head, unconvinced, yet remaining silent.

  Troubled, Farrix turned and peered again forward, and as the Eroean rode up to the towering crest of the next hurtling wave, the ship rolling to starboard as all sails rose up into the quartering larboard wind aft, “Floe ahead,” he called and pointed. “Starboard.”

  At Aravan’s command, Boder turned the wheel a bit.

  Ten hours later due north they ran, dodging among gigantic floes, the wind now gradually diminishing though air and wave yet raged. Borne on the sails of the foremast alone—squares and jibs and a stay—they had finally passed beyond the shoulder of the cape, where the shelter of the stark mountains thereon began abating the blow. Farrix, Aravan, Hegen, and Reydeau now stood in the wheelhouse, the others having gone to their quarters to collapse in bed. A crew remained at standby forward below decks, ready to hale the silks about should steering be called for in the blow.

  Five more hours they sailed, the snow diminishing as well, until at last it stopped altogether. Rico and Boder came back to the wheelhouse, and Reydeau and Hegen retired. Jatu and Artus entered the cabin, and the black Man reported their speed as nine knots—“A long way from thirty,” he added.

  Another hour passed, and the overcast began to break as they ran out from under, and a star glimmered here and there, and now Aravan could see the waters far ahead.

  “To bed, Farrix,” the Elf told the weary Pysk.

  “But Aravan,” Farrix protested, “you have not rested either.”

  “Nevertheless, Farrix, thou take to thy bed. I will remain here. Eyes are needed to pilot the ship, eyes that can see by starlight.”

  In that moment Aylis stepped into the wheelhouse. “I can see by starlight. I will stand watch while you both take to your beds.”

  As Aravan looked at her, Jatu rumbled, “Lady Aylis is right, Captain. She and I will command the Eroean while both of you get some sleep.”

  Aravan kissed his lady’s hand then turned to Jatu. “Sail due north. We make for Inigo Bay. There we will lay up and harvest the tall timbers for repairs.”

  When Farrix came to the door of the under-bunk quarters, Jinnarin called to Tivir, who bore to the Pysks a tin lid on which was bread and honey and tiny pot of hot tea. “They say as y’ saved th’ ship from th’ ice,” declared the cabin boy, bobbing his head to Farrix, “’n’ saved us all from th’ Griay Laidy, too. For both y’ ‘ave me ’n’ me mates’ sincerest thanks.”

  “Oh, Tivir, it was Jinnarin’s idea and Alamar’s magic that let me see the ice. And as to the Grey Lady, well, it is not certain that she was out there at all. —But if she was, well, they were sailing dead against the wind while we ran the other way. And so, if any ought to receive your thanks, then ‘tis Jinnarin and Alamar and the crew entire, for all worked to keep the ship afloat, when surely any other ship in like circumstance would have gone down.”

  A great smile flashed over Tivir’s face and again he bobbed his head then turn
ed and sped away.

  Carrying the largess, Jinnarin stepped into their quarters, Farrix behind. As she set down the tray, she said, “Oh, Farrix, if it was the Grey Lady then I’m glad you didn’t hear the captain call out the lost passenger’s name. I do not wish to chase after you again, this time with you sailing through endless nights aboard a ghost ship. I especially wouldn’t wish to hunt for you in these deadly seas.”

  Farrix smiled at her. “But you would come seeking…wouldn’t you?”

  She smiled back at him, then inspected her fingernails and nonchalantly said, “Perhaps.”

  “Oh, you,” growled Farrix, taking her up and swinging her about.

  As he set her down she kissed him then said, “Can’t you get back your own eyes? I miss them.”

  Farrix closed his eyes and concentrated as Alamar had told him to do. When he opened them again, the utter black was gone, replaced by ice-blue. Gone, too, for Farrix was a wondrous world of light and fire, replaced by one dull and drab.

  Eight days later on the thirtieth of June, they limped into Inigo Bay. And deep in the bight they came to a narrow cove, shadowed by tall evergreens high on the snowy slopes above. It was mid of day when they anchored, the low-hanging Sun hidden behind the northern hills—they had run out from the polar night some seven days past, the Sun rising in the north-northeast to cut a shallow arc low across the northern skies and set in the north-northwest, each day but a few hours long. And in this twilight ’scape, Aravan sailed the Elvenship into the firth and dropped anchor.

  As Jatu and Finch and a crew of Men and Dwarves haled a great timber out from the main hold, Aravan and another crew gathered cutting tools and debarked for the hillsides. Farrix and Jinnarin and Rux accompanied the landing party, as well as Aylis and Alamar, the eld Mage insisting over the objections of his daughter that he needed to “get off this wet pitching rollabout and onto dry, stable land.”

  They landed along the eastern rocky shore of the tree-laden narrows.

  Jinnarin set Rux free to hunt, the fox barking and bounding with joy to be on land as up through the trees he ran, lunging across the deep snow. Alamar watched as Rux disappeared among the Inigo pines. “Ha! At least someone else shares my need to be aland,” he muttered, then turned and hobbled to a large boulder by the water’s edge, where he sat overlooking the sea.