“No, not an island,” Ehomba replied as softly as he could, given the need to be heard above the wind. “Something else.” Turning, he addressed the stalwart redhead. “Captain, I think if you head your ship fifteen degrees to port you may find the respite you are looking for!”
Squinting into the squall, she tried to descry what her singular passenger was pointing out. “I don’t see anything, Mr. Ehomba.”
“Please, call me Etjole. If you do not see anything, then you are seeing it.”
Her expression contorted and she barked at the tall southerner’s companion. “Simna! What nonsense is he talking?”
The swordsman could only shrug. “Sorcerers speak a language unto themselves, but I’ve learned these past many weeks to heed his advice. If he says to sail toward nothing, I’d be the first man to set my helm for it.”
Stanager mulled over this second suggested absurdity in succession. “I see no harm in sailing toward nothing.” Her gaze drifted upward. “The storm holds steady behind us. A little to port or starboard will not strain the stays any more than they already are. Helm to port!” she ordered Priget. Working in concert, the two women forced the wheel over.
It was late afternoon before they arrived at the place Ehomba had espied through the depths of the tempest. It was not, as he had told Simna, an island. Nor was it land of any kind. But it was a place of calm, and rest, in the midst of raging windblown chaos. That did not mean it was a haven for the exhausted crew of the Grömsketter and their battered ship. What the herdsman had seen and what they were about to enter into proffered an entirely unnatural and potentially perilous tranquillity. It was a valley.