I knelt on the bunk to examine the surface. It was paneled as was most of the cabin, but when I ran my fingers across the wood I felt what I was sure was difference in the depth of one of the joinings. If there was some compartment there it was clearly meant to be secret and the trick of opening certainly was not mine. However, with the point of my belt knife, I was able to force a small door which splintered under my gouging to show me a very shallow recess in which there were two boxes covered by material very soft to the fingers.
Still kneeling on the bunk I used the knife point most delicately, this time to raise the lids, taking care, as warned, not to handle the boxes more than I could help. What had been so carefully hidden by its owner must certainly be of value and thus even more closely tied personally to the one who had vanished.
There was a necklace in the form of fragile flowers of gold, each given leaves of small green gems which glittered, even though the light was not very bright. The heart of each flower was also a gemstone but of a deep golden shade. While between two of those flowers there had been set a pendant as a curling stem of gold, more of the green leaves, and a single much larger flower, the petals of which were not gold as the others in that chain but rather a stone which was both blue and green.
I have seen cherished jewels worn by Keep Ladies in High Hallack, some very ancient heirlooms treasured by Old Ones of high birth, even pieces found by those who dare to loot ruins of the Waste in Arvon. But the like of this never. The second of the hidden boxes revealed a bracelet, or so I thought it, as the chain was too short for a necklet, a ring, and a pair of matching pieces which, by the hooks on their backs, were meant, I believed, to swing from pierced earlobes.
This was indeed a treasure hord and I hunkered down to study it. I knew what would become of the things we gathered from the dismantled cabins. They were to be poked deep as they would go into a cliff crevice and left where no taint from former ownership could reach us. But to let this vanish so—there was protest ready on my tongue.
For as long as I could remember I had worn coarse clothing, mainly the castoffs of more prosperous and less unlucky Sulcars. The few new things I had ever managed to purchase had been the very cheapest I had been able to find, for most of my scant earnings had always to be saved for food to carry me through periods of lack of one kind of work until I could find more. There had been Sulcar kin who had allowed me passage for one reason or another, or because my story was not common to the port where I tried to sign on. I had also labored in the fields with the peasant farmers of High Hallack, and helped with harvests in Estcarp, where, since the wars, there was a dearth of steady hands and stout backs. I had also ridden guard for a convoy of merchants or two—men who had not been wealthy enough to hire blank shields or Falconers, but who had heard of the fighting ability of Sulcars and were willing to take a chance on one, even a woman—all knew that the Sulcar women stood ever ready to lend their strength on any ship or to the fore of a raiding party when their people had harried Karsten and Alizon in the old days.
Also I had seen rich loot rift from the coffers of pirates and wreckers, yet never had I seen anything to equal this. While to pitch it into a rock-walled pocket of the sea—
Though I had listened to all the warnings, and knew for a fact that there was good sense behind such, still, at this moment, I could not even close the boxes to conceal what I had found. Unconscious of having willed it my hand went put to pick up the ring. It lay in the hollow of my palm and when I raised it so that more of the light of the port touched it, there followed flashing rainbows of light. Truly if this was meant for bait it was such as would pull any eyes, hold the finder with desire.
I turned the ring about with fingertip. It slipped up and on my finger. The circlet might have been made to my measure so easily did it go into place. Against my tanned skin where small scars left by field labor still were to be seen, where the nail of the finger which it encircled was broken down and roughened, it was not where its beauty entitled it to be.
Nor did I seek mind touch. However, that came upon me. I saw another hand in place of my own, smooth of skin—the nail long and oval, unbroken, and even painted a deep rose. Happiness flooded in upon me as just beyond my sight stood the one who had given these treasures to me. And between that one and me there was a binding—They wed in Estcarp with words, and in High Hallack by cup and flame, among the Sulcar by naming of kin-clan. She who had worn this was wedded. Not to garner treasure or higher-born kin but because there was that of herself which reached and touched another. Together they had been so bound that in many ways they were one.
The jewels were treasure, yes, but what their owner had to hold to her was even a greater gift. I knew envy, hot for metal and polished stones, but for the fact that there were some who were able to find this happiness which lay beyond the tangible.
There had been no cloud to shadow that happiness. I saw my own hand wearing that ring reach out into the air of the cabin and I waited to feel my flesh grasped by the firm fingers of another. Then—
Even as happiness had crowned me without my seeking, so did there follow the shadow. There are many beliefs within the world. Some swear by the Flame which dances on the altars in High Hallack, some by the teaching of even earlier gods and goddesses. We come into life and we leave it—some early and some later, some in illness, some by the cruelties of war—some even by assault of the Dark, and those be the truly unfortunate. Because we are what we are we have to make for ourselves hope—we must believe that there are things—or personages—greater, wiser, more honest and just, than we can be, and that, when we make an ending, it is in truth a beginning of an existence we cannot, because of the flaws which lie within us, really understand.
She who had worn this ring as a symbol of happiness, who in her joy and contentment had dared to believe for a while that there could not be any end to what she held—the fate which is with us all came to her and ties were broken, the light was overcome by dark. So did her pain and sorrow swell within me that I found I was weeping, and that I have not done since I was a small child forced to face what I was and what I must expect—loneliness, hatred, and perhaps even lying down with evil as its handmaid, though that I would fight.
I drew the ring from my finger and put it within its box. Yet I also knew that I could not give to the sea this I had found. The sealed niche which I had pried at to open was plain for the seeing. I knelt on the bunk and rammed it home again as best I might. It still showed the marks left by my knife and there might well be need for explanations. I looked down to the mattress on the bunk. Chief had moved forward and was crouched, with his forepaws on the larger of the two boxes. He might have brought some prey to prove his prowess and now dared me to take it from him.
It was easy to pull up the mattress and with my knife point rip stitches there until there was a space. The cat moved a little, allowed me to take the boxes and those I pushed as far into the opening as I could.
This was folly—already my obsession with the jewels was fading, with them out of sight. Still the stubbornness in me was not argued down by any foreseeing. These I would trust to fate. If any found them in their new hiding place and took them to destroy—I hoped only that I would not be near when that happened. For I knew my protest would be quick.
Looking around the stripped cabin I could see nothing else of its late occupant which. I had left. So I took the bags I had filled and carried them up on deck where I found a small mound of similar well-filled containers. None of the Sulcar would touch them. It was left to Orsya, Kemoc, and me to drop them down into one of the ship's boats. The Lady Jaelithe, she who alone I feared might pluck out of my mind that which I wanted now to conceal, was not there. I gave a sigh of relief as we were rowed shoreward and pointed to the crevice which had been selected to hide it all, perhaps forever. Hide it we did, making several trips back and forth across the small strip of shingle the outgoing tide had uncovered, to see the possessions of the lost into that which must lose them even
further.
I slept that night on deck. Chief was not with me, which was strange, as, after my return from Varn, it seemed he had taken liege oath, or perhaps kin-oath, with me and never strayed far from my side. Still, even with his warmth gone from beside my shoulder, where it had lain before, I went easily into slumber, nor did I dream as I half expected to do.
It was Sigmun himself who made the last inspection of the ship, Lord Simon and the Lady Jaelithe sharing his search, that no vestige of personal belongings of those who had once voyaged in her remained. I waited to be asked concerning the knife-gouged panel but there were no questions. Thus I Was left a little uneasy. Not having the jewels before me to bedazzle, I began to think they might have been used in some fashion by that which wished us ill and perhaps I had opened more than a wooden panel. I strove to quiet my misgivings with the thought that if aught did occur in die way of sighting of the Dark it would be easy enough to pitch those boxes into the sea.
That I wanted the treasure for myself, as a fighter might conceal a better piece of loot from his comrades, that I was sure was not what ruled me. There was something else, a feeling that I could not cast aside such beauty on a mere guess that it could bring trouble. I looked once that day at myself in the burnished surface of a shield one of the Falconers had been polishing.
There was certainly nothing reflected there to awaken vanity in me. I was sure that if I decked myself with that which I had found I would speedily resemble a wild pony striving to wear the saddle of a prized Torgian stallion.
There did come to me now and then so strong a desire to look again on my find that I had to battle with it. I muttered, or thought out, scraps of the learning which I had picked up during my wanderings, and even took surreptitiously to sniffing some old and brittle leaves from Orsya's store of healing materials, those meant to clear the head and mind.
It was certain, I decided after the fourth attack of that need to seek what I had hidden, that it came the strongest at those intervals when Chief was by me. Though I dared not attempt to grasp any thought from him. However, I became very sure that the cat had some link with what I had found through his pointing the way.
The weather cleared and the days were fair. We had no more warnings out of the sea of trouble to come. It was on the twentieth day after we had set to work to prepare our oddly assorted fleet that we at last set sail for the south.
Once again, even as it had when we left the bay of Gorm, the wind was in our favor, filling the sails of both the salvaged vessel and the newly prepared fishing smacks. Falcons were sent above at intervals, only to relay the reports that there were no other vessels a-sea.
If Scalgah had followed us south perhaps the rage of the sea had been too much for him. I knew that Orsya kept watch oil what lay under-wave but she reported nothing but the passage of regular inhabitants there—only saying that there were fewer of these than she would expect. Considering the masses of dead fish through which we had fought a way in the first days after the disaster, that was not to be considered strange.
We did not go too far off coast in our voyaging. The wall of cliffs continued to stretch a dark rope along the horizon to the east. To the west there was nothing but open sea. The one strange thing which the crew began to comment upon was the absence of seabirds. Perhaps they, too, had been drawn away by the abundance of dead fish. I was Sulcar enough to understand the uneasiness caused by their absence. The hardy fishers in the ocean have, from remote times, been a part of all voyaging, and certain types of them—a snow-white, wide-winged one, for instance—were considered to be lucky. We had legends of such birds guiding storm-warped vessels towards land. I knew many ships that carried paintings of that breed on the main sail.
It was on the fourth day out that the falcon sent on scout duty came with a report of land ahead. Whether that could be an island or if the shore took a wide outward pointing here we did not know.
Well before sundown we could see a dark line ahead of us, as well as still to the east. Sigmun ordered sail taken in to slow our advance. Two more falcons went aloft. This time they returned with the report that we were bearing down upon islands. As darkness closed in, a lookout on the main mast announced there was light ahead but veering more to the west.
It only required the stench which the shifting wind brought us to tell that we were not too far from a volcano. Though there was no spouting of wild fire into the night air, as most of us expected to see.
Sigmun had all sails in, those captaining each of the fishing boats following his example. The moon did not break through gathering clouds that night and our content of the past three days was gone.
Chief hissed when I would stroke him, and padded towards the bow of the boat as if he would stand lookout there. I followed him, coughing at times when the breath of the distant eruption reached us. There was uneasiness in the very air and I think that all of us were on guard, though exactly against what I believe no one could say.
12
Perhaps all of us spent that night uneasily. From where I made myself a place at the bow of the ship with Chief I saw people pass beneath the lantern glow on deck, and I had only drowsed a little when I was joined by another, and then a second—Kemoc and Orsya. The latter made plain her presence by the herb scent about her which even the acrid odor of the air could not banish. It was she who spoke first:
“What have you seen?”
I replied with the truth. “Nothing, for here I do not reach ahead.” Nor had I even been aware of my talent since I had put the jewels into hiding, striving to make sure that I could not be trapped into using that which might bring upon us such notice as we wished most to avoid. That there lay more before us that night—hidden by dark—I had only to look to Chief to see, for he was crouched, staring outward as if, with the infinite patience of his kind, he did sentry duty by some den opening in which crouched prey he intended to seize upon.
Orsya dropped her cloak on deck. I had to guess more at what she did than what I saw, for the lantern light did not reach so far. She was upon the rail and then she slipped over, seeking that water she must have or she would die. Kemoc leaned well across the rail but he did not attempt to follow her down. She was entering an element she well knew, one where he could follow with the difficulty of those who breathed, only air. Still I knew that if they were not joined in body they were in mind, and he stood sentry for her protection.
I had laid a hand on Chief's hindquarters and now I felt him quiver as if he prepared to spring. Though it was perilous I opened mind. I was on my feet, the rising wind whipping back my hair, hand on knife hilt. No stroke had come to me from a mind send, an attempted invasion upon that level of contact. Rather there was that which I sensed otherwise. Even as Chief might creep upon his chosen prey, so did there steal out of the dark south a feeling which was like unto a tendril, perhaps testing for some point of weakness. Yet it was not of a living thing!
That dark shadow which was Kemoc stood straight, his shoulder near touching mine. His hand had sought steel. We waited; after the scout might come the attack. However, there was none. That thing which had made my flesh tingle along the backbone had vanished.
I had heard tales of the undead—those which the Kolders had slain in spirit and yet still used in body. There were other stories, as grim, of certain sites to be found in places where the Old Race was once young and powerful. Yet what had stolen upon us that night was not even so allied with our own species or could share our thought or feelings. If it possessed life, and I was sure that it did—or at least purpose which moved it—then that life was such I did not know.
Kemoc had ridden against the Dark in Escore. His deeds there had already become the stuff of bard ballads. My own journeying had not been so far into the country half alive still with nigh-forgotten perils. So it was to him turned my question:
“What is that, warrior?”
“Something I cannot give name to,” he answered as promptly. “Yet it is such that I would hot have watching along any
trail I take.”
“Yet so does it watch, I think.”
It was too shadowed where we stood for me to see his war-broken hand move. On the air gleamed for a moment a sign, which first burned blue and then appeared to fold together into a blot, that showed first yellow and then red about its edge, before it snapped out of existence.
“So we know,” lie said quietly, but with the tone of one who had expected no less. It could be that in Escore he had made such tests before and been so answered. For his gesture was of that Light, and that which closed in upon it was clearly Dark.
At that moment I wondered for the first time at the folly which had brought us here. We had, all of us, from the first prepared for this journey as if we marched to an engagement from which none of us would stand back. Even the Sulcars, who fought clear of the use of talent, seemed to have agreed that there was naught else to be done but to hunt out what might be a long-held lair of evil: I had heard ho voice raised in argument against what we did then, or a few days ago when we had put together this small and perilously weak squadron to go a-hunting the unknown. Had something reached all the way into the Council chamber in Estcarp marking us down and enslaving us without our knowledge?
I had faith in the Lady Jaelithe, perhaps the strongest of Power among us. They said of Kemoc that he had been long enough at Lormt to learn even older lore, though he was reputed to depend more upon his sword than such learning. While of the talents of Orsya I could not assess what she might know and be able to do for she was of another kin. Now I broke forth with a second question: