The Edge of the World

by Kevin J. Anderson

  One of the markers bore the name of Telha Vora. The sight of 1 it hit him like a physical blow to his stomach, and his shoulders sagged. He found it hard to breathe, and words would not come out of his mouth. His mother was among the dead. After losing all of his crewmates on the Luminara, and Captain Shay, and Prester Jerard... he had come home to this.

  His heart began to pound in panic. He looked around frantically, scanning the additional markers and dreading what he would find. Name after name, some of them scrawled with paint, some lovingly chiseled into the rock. The graves were staggered

  and haphazard, as if the burials had been rushed, the diggers overwhelmed. Too many bodies.

  Then, at the edge of the cemetery he saw a group of wooden posts set too closely together, without enough room between them to bury a body. A fishhook had been carved into each wooden post, letters scratched but not deeply, as if the carver had grown too weary of a seemingly endless task.

  On one post, the letters spelled out Adrea's name.

  He stopped there in the dirt, his legs as stiff as old masts, and after what felt like hours, he crumpled to his knees. Though tears washed in like the tide, even his blurred vision did not change her name on the marker.

  Other people noticed him now, and several came up from the town to see him. The cemetery held many mourners who walked among the markers, reciting the names of the fallen as if afraid to forget them.

  After his own ordeal, Criston had changed as much as they had. His expression was drawn, his face etched with many lines. He had trimmed but not shaved his beard. Even so, several people recognized him; his return from the long voyage seemed no more impossible than the events that had already taken place around them. "What happened?" he finally brought himself to ask. He raised his voice to a shout and demanded answers. And they told him of the Urecari raid in scattered recollections, disjointed snippets.

  "Ciarlo is alive," said an old woman who had been a friend of his mother's. "Up at the new kirk. He can tell you more."

  Leaving the graveyard, Griston ran up the hill toward the foundations of the ruined kirk, to where a small new building had been erected. A man limped out, wearing the robes of a prester, though they fit him poorly. He looked up--a young man with very old eyes--without recognition.

  1

  "Giarlo, it's Criston." He stood there, his knees locked, but still swaying. "The Luminara was shipwrecked, but I made it home." When Ciarlo merely blinked at him, Criston could not hold his questions inside any longer. "Where's Adrea? What happened to her? What happened toyou?"

  The young man took a deep breath. "I'm Prester Ciarlo now. Prester Fennan was killed in the raid. He made me hide in the root cellar, and now I'm the only one who knows the services. I do the best I can." He absently touched the patched loose robes. "These were Prester Fennan's old robes that he had stored in the cellar. I didn't have any of my own. Windcatch had nobody else. So I became the new prester. I had to."

  Griston seized Ciarlo by the shoulders. "Tell me." He felt his voice grow dead, afraid to hear the answer. "Tell me, Ciarlo--what happened to Adrea?" Her brother nearly collapsed, but Criston held him up, hugging him. "Tell me," he said again in a hoarse whisper. Ciarlo began to sob.

  50

  Uraba

  The caravan made slow progress as they left the port of Khenara and followed a track up into the hills, passing across the isthmus from Outer Wahilir to Inner Wahilir. The younger children were placed on pack animals or in carts that jostled along the well-traveled road; the older ones had to walk. The few women and all of the children had been fed, but Adrea's pregnancy often made her feel ill, sluggish, and clumsy.

  As they moved onward, day after day, she maintained her silence whenever the captors could hear her. She would not give

  them the satisfaction of hearing her beg... or hearing her speak at all. While other women moaned in fear and despair, Adrea just felt angry. These raiders had destroyed or taken everything she knew. She would never see her husband again, nor her brother, nor her home. Even if she survived long enough for the baby to be born, Criston would never see his child.

  Twice more, the gruff Uraban sailor tried to talk with her on the zarifs behalf, but she gave no response, further infuriating him. The sailor asked other prisoners about her, but apart from the young captive children, Adrea was the only female prisoner from Windcatch in their group. Because she had not shared her name or background with her fellow captives, no one could tell him who she was, and Adrea hoped the rude man would receive punishment for his failure to learn more. Before long, though, Zarif Omra apparently lost interest in her.

  As they traveled overland, she listened intently and learned what she could. When she could safely whisper to the other women without being observed, she tried to make a connection, but most of them were paralyzed with despair. The children, having lost everything, huddled in shock. Adrea turned her attention to her captors, watching them, gleaning information. She quickly picked up words in their strange language, though she gave no outward sign of understanding.

  After journeying inland for five days, the track began to wind downward, and the terrain opened up. Looking ahead, Adrea saw a broad blue expanse of water that had a different color and character than the Oceansea. The Middlesea.

  The shoreline was white and sandy, the water turquoise. At another port town--Sioara, she heard someone call it--the Urecari soldiers herded their captives into a large enclosure that had obviously been built for horses. When strangely garbed people from Sioara came to stare at the Tierrans--cursing, spitting,

  throwing things--Adrea ignored them. The prisoners slept out B in the open, without shade, and she forced herself to rest.

  Next morning, when faint colors of dawn tinged the sky, guttural-voiced soldiers rousted the prisoners out of the corral enclosure and led them down to the harbor, herding them toward another group of ships, single-masted galleys that looked entirely different from the normal sea vessels with which she was so familiar. The Middlesea ships had a shallower draft and a broader deck made to carry people out in the open rather than heavy cargo in the hold.

  Their captors marched them double file up the gangplanks, filling first one galley, then two more, mingling the children and women. Adrea followed without speaking and found herself on the same ship as Omra. The zarif had bathed and obtained fresh garments in Sioara; she still felt filthy, her dress torn and stained. Whenever he looked at her, she glanced away so he would not see the poison in her blue eyes.

  Uraban men took their places on benches, each grasping an oar, and rowed the galleys away from Sioara. Once they reached open water, they unfurled the sails, the center of each showing the Eye of Urec. Gentle easterly breezes pushed them onward. When she looked over the side into the Middlesea, Adrea saw fish darting alongside the hull.

  They never left sight of the coast. With each stroke of the oars, each gust of wind, they were propelled farther and farther from Windcatch, and from Criston

  After three days' voyage, they reached a large and beautiful city boasting tall towers and white buildings constructed of limestone and marble, rooftops that were tiled instead of thatched. The sunshine was so bright that the foreign skyline seemed to sparkle with haze.

  The galleys slid toward the docks and tied up against wait

  ing wharves. The prisoners were herded out, destined for a slave market, Adrea was sure. But Zarif Omra separated her from the rest, keeping her on deck after the others had left. He stood at her side and pointed to the city and the tall palace in the center. "Olabar," he said. "Olabar. Your home now." She comprehended what he said, but didn't respond to him, refused to break that bargain with herself.

  "You will work in the palace. Do you understand? In the palace." He searched her face, but Adrea averted her eyes. She flinched with a twinge of surprise as the baby kicked inside her. Omra saw it, and showed a glint of something that seemed almost like compassion. "You are home now," he repeated.

  Adrea would not acknowl
edge him.;

  51

  Windcatch

  Criston felt as hollow as an abandoned ship.

  He stayed in Windcatch and tried to sleep in his own home, but nightmares haunted him. After surviving the Leviathan attack and being preyed upon by sea serpents, the silence and shadows and ghosts inside his house were too much to bear. Ciarlo had explained what he remembered, what he knew. The Urecari had attacked the village without warning or mercy, burning buildings, cutting down men and women with their scimitars. Telha's body had been found in the house, alone, without Adrea. "We never found her, not for sure, but there were so many burned ones in the streets and inside buildings, we didn't always know who..." Ciarlo hung his head. "Many people ran into

  the hills and escaped, but Adrea never came back. So we put her name on a post and said the evening prayers for her. The worst part is all the missing children, dragged off to the Urecari warships." "Why would they take children?" Criston asked, but all of the horrors now blended together, sounding like thunder rumbling in the distance. "Nobody knows, but they're gone. Maybe the Urecari cap1 tured some of our women, too, but... I don't know."

  Criston caught his breath. "Could Adrea have been one of them? Could she still be a prisoner?" He knew how achingly i beautiful she was. The thought of those monstrous men taking her--

  1 "Idon't know! "darlo's ragged cry showed he had been haunted by that question for a long time. "I don't know... And would that have been better? It's more merciful to think that she's not alive. At the time of the raid, her pregnancy was showing. Maybe they wanted the baby." "Baby?" Criston lurched to his feet. "She was with child?"

  Ciarlo began to sob again.

  Windcatch was empty for Criston. His home was no longer home. How could he make a life in this place again? He wished I he Leviathan had simply swallowed him as well. He heard that the predatory war galleys had ventured up the coast, and several other fishing towns had been ruined. In Calay, King Korastine was using Tierra's resources to build his navy and arm his soldiers, launching patrols to stop further Urecari raids. The stricken villages scrambled to rebuild. By now, Criston knew that the Soeland whalers would have delivered his letter, telling King Korastine of the Luminam's fate, hut he felt no desire to go to the capital city. The king would

  be preoccupied by the war, and Captain Shay's voyage seemed irrelevant now. All of Criston's dreams to see exotic far-off lands had turned to ash.

  As a seasoned sailor, he considered enlisting in the Tierran navy, to fight against the Urecari, but he wasn't driven by vengeance or bloodlust. The people of Windcatch were trying to rebuild, struggling to recover from their shock and grief in the smoky wake of the raid. They tried to put the nightmares behind them, to erase the scars of the attack, and move forward. They wanted him to do the same. He looked at the once-familiar faces, now all stricken.

  While Ciarlo toiled daily to finish the small kirk, Criston helped him, though neither man spoke much. A third of the town's population had been lost in the massacre. Most of their supplies were gone, and they had little with which to pay visiting traders. Eleven fishing boats had vanished that day, presumably sunk by the Urecari, and the daily catch was drastically reduced. Windcatch was on its own, and the people required his help. They needed the extra set of strong arms. He had to stay here, at least for a little while.

  When the villagers offered him a boat free and clear and asked him to take up his old trade, Criston realized how much had changed inside him. He had gone to the edge of the world and back; he had survived by clinging to his love for Adrea--all for nothing. He didn't dare to imagine that Adrea could still be alive.. .but it was the only hope he had left. The call of the sea that had once been so strong, the tug that made him look out to the water, had vanished within him. Criston was no longer a man of the ocean; he was immune to it.

  Nevertheless, he and a small crew went out fishing each day, bringing back a catch to be distributed to the villagers. On land, workers tore down the wrecked shops and dock buildings, then

  reconstructed them. Whitewashed walls were repainted; roofs were rethatched. His boat returned each sunset, and men hauled out the nets. He always had enough to eat. He remembered his courtship, when he had brought fish to feed Adrea, Ciarlo, and their mother.

  B How could he ever have thought that sailing the uncharted sea was more important than staying with his beloved wife? He had gone away for adventure, to secure his future with Adrea... only to lose her entirely.

  He lay awake at night, staring into the darkness, dead to the sea. He felt like a piece of driftwood that had once floated on the waves and now lay discarded by a high tide, cast up on a shore.

  Day after day, he did the same thing, beginning to fall into a routine. After several months of hard work, the villagers managed to rebuild Windcatch. To a casual observer, the town looked the same as it always had. Life was getting back to normal. The people--his friends and acquaintances--had an aversion to talking about the raid, as if they wanted to forget it all.

  Criston found himself falling into the same trap, and one night he woke in a cold sweat, shouting into the empty house. Never! He would never forget!

  The next morning, packing only a few possessions, he trudged off to the kirk to say goodbye to Ciarlo. "I'm going inland. The ocean has nothing for me anymore. Windcatch doesn't need me."

  Ciarlo was shocked. "But this is your home!"

  "No... not anymore. Give the fishing boat to the crew. They know how to use it."

  He needed solid ground under his feet, not a swaying deck. I Ie needed to be far from the waves, from the smell of salt, from the cold winds and storm clouds that blew in from the ocean. He did not care if he ever looked upon the waves again. The sea had

  lured him away and taken everything from him--his home, his hope, his love

  Criston shouldered his pack and looked eastward to the hills that extended as far as he could see, knowing that he could find open land there, unexplored mountains, a place where he could be by himself, to heal... or at least to survive.

  The rutted road out of town was dotted with puddles from a thunderstorm that had passed two days earlier. He stopped once to look back at the harbor and ocean for the last time, but he felt no glimmer of regret, no need to reconsider. He was still a young man, with his whole life ahead of him, but his heart felt incredibly old.

  Woodcutters and farmers brought laden carts down to the Windcatch markets. Word had spread inland, and producers brought supplies to the coast, hoping to help. On the lonely, winding track Criston encountered a man riding a cart full of apples, pulled by a shaggy horse. Criston felt obligated to stop and talk with him, though he was in no mood for conversation. He answered the man's questions, told him that Windcatch did indeed need the food. "But I am leaving," he said. "I'm going far into the mountains, to find a place somewhere for myself."

  The farmer seemed sad to hear this. "All alone?"

  "Yes... I'm all alone."

  Brightening, the man reached behind him to pull aside a woolen blanket that covered a basket in which four puppies had curled up together. Exposed to the light, they blinked and lifted their heads curiously. One gave an extraordinarily large yawn.

  "If you're a man alone, you need companionship. I was planning to give away these puppies in town, but you need one. I can see it in your eyes."

  "No. I have a long way to go."

  "You said you didn't know where you're going."

  I

  THE EDGE OF THE WORLD 251

  The puppy that had yawned got to its feet and wobbled, leaning forward to sniff Criston's hand. Then it began to wag not just its tail, but its entire body.

  "No man should be alone," the farmer reiterated. "Trust me. This puppy will make all the difference now, and the dog he grows into will be a more faithful companion than you've ever had. They're fully weaned--you won't regret it." The farmer scooped up the puppy and thrust it into Criston's arms, refusing to hear any protestations.

  Cristo
n reluctantly held it, and the puppy licked his face. He tried to hand it back, but the dog seemed to call to him. With his life spent on boats, going out to sea every day, he'd never owned a pet, and now he didn't know quite what to do.

  "He is obviously yours," the farmer said with a nod. "You just don't realize it yet."

  For some reason, this observation made perfect sense to Criston, and he found himself agreeing. "I'll take him." Criston thanked the man, who clucked at the shaggy horse, and the cart rolled slowly down the path toward Windcatch.

  Holding the puppy in one arm and his satchel of belongings over his shoulder, Criston walked on, turning his back on the village, on the shore, and the sea.

  1 I

  part III

  Four Years Later

  Five Years After the Burning oflshalem

  52

  Ondun's Lightning

  Four years after his return from Gorag Reach, fully accepted as a Saedran chartsman, Aldo na-Curic set off on another sea voyage--his twelfth. The young man had proven himself to be a reliable navigator; he understood the workings of complex astronomical instruments, and his mind held a detailed map of all known ocean currents. Once he knew the captain's desired destination, Aldo could plot the best course far from shore where the ship would find favorable winds and swift currents, trimming days off their expected travel time. Merchants bid for his services, and he guided their ships to far-off ports.

  He would always return home to his parents, his brother, and his sister. By tradition, Saedran chartsmen remained unmarried until later in life. It was their duty to serve aboard ships for many years, guiding numerous voyages and adding wealth to the treasury. Given the respect Aldo earned with his wide travels, many young women had taken an interest in him, flashing flirtatious glances in his direction, though they'd never looked twice at him before. Someday, he supposed he would choose a wife and have a family, but for now, he wanted to see the world.