“Your optimism is as far beyond belief as your claims of knowledge,” Sagorn said. “Why would the wardens support such a falsehood? Tell me what you learned in Milflor.” He was tortured by curiosity, and trying not to show it.
Taking pity on him, Rap began to tell him of the night he had met Bright Water and Warlock Zinixo, and the strange events in the Gazebo in Milflor. Talking was a welcome distraction. He told it all—how the two wardens had foreseen Little Chicken, how they had plotted against Olybino, how he had observed Inos in the occult mirror, and how he had tried to warn her.
By the time he had done, the officers and a handful of passengers were into their third course in the dining room, shadows were squirreling madly around the cabin, and he was shouting over the noise of the storm. Sagorn was a most unlikely jotunn, but he ignored the fearsome weather in true jotunn fashion, listening enraptly.
“You think she heeded your admonition and escaped?” he demanded doubtfully at the end.
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“It seems unlikely she would have succeeded. And I find your touching beliefs even harder to swallow now. I should prefer to surmise that there was a struggle over her, and she was a casualty in the dispute. Or she tried to escape as you suggested and met with misfortune. The wardens told the imperor.”
Rap’s heart sank.
“We do not have enough information,” Sagorn conceded. ”Whatever we conclude must be a cobweb of speculation.” Rap sadly agreed with that. His hope sounded like a very thin whistling beside a very large graveyard. And yet his premonition was insisting that Inos was not dead.
“Lith’rian will certainly know.”
“Let us hope you live to see him!” Sagorn was holding the side of his bunk now to avoid being tipped out as the ship pitched. “Does your farsight detect land anywhere?”
“None,” Rap said soothingly. “Lots of sea out there.”
The masts were almost bare of canvas, every rib and beam was creaking under the strain. Head to the wind, Allena was holding her station so far as he could tell, but the old man was right to be scared. Rap let him ramble, not listening to the nervous chitchat, idly nagging at himself to go and eat while there was still food to be had, yet letting his mind pursue its own researches . . .
Suddenly he had it. The picture he wanted flashed up from his memory, fresh-painted, clear in every detail as if he were again staring over an elf’s shoulder.
He jumped up, and lurched across to the door. “What’s the matter?” Sagorn demanded.
Rap grabbed the handle with injured fingers, and a hot jab of pain distracted him. But his farsight was far out ahead of him, searching . . . He met resistance, insisted, was repulsed . . .
He stumbled back and slithered awkwardly to his knees. Nauseated, he put his face in his hands.
“Seasick, Master Rap? Not enough jotunn in you?”
It was a moment before Rap could reply. He licked his lips, swallowed twice. Then he lied, “Just a twinge.”
“Eschew the pork, I suggest.”
But Rap had recognized the familiar touch of an aversion spell. If he told the old man the truth about the storm, the news would only frighten him more. This weather had been summoned.
Inos was still alive!
Or else Little Chicken was.
2
When Rap awoke to a chill gray dawn, he found Allena still hove to in an unrelenting gale. As he set off in search of breakfast, his farsight was detecting sharp edges to the south, decorated with foam and spray. He concluded that he would have to do something about those.
An hour or two later, Gathmor went reeling aft in search of his companions. He had spent the entire night with the officers, joyfully swapping yarns and summing up potential partners for recreational mayhem at a later date. He threw open the door and lurched into Rap’s cabin.
Jalon was stretched out on the bed, idly tuning a lute he’d borrowed from an unconscious elf. Since eating a hearty dinner the previous night, Jalon had shown no impatience to call back Sagorn, or Andor. Although he was unassertive toward people, he had treated wind and waves with total contempt. Either the fury of the storm left him unmoved, or he had not really noticed it.
Rap was sitting in one of the two well-padded chairs, with his feet up on the other. He removed those feet and waved for Gathmor to sit down.
“You know what that crazy skipper’s doing?” Gathmor snarled.
“Hoisting more sail?”
“How’d you know?”
“Oh, I suggested it to him,” Rap said, smirking. Not yet knowing how effective his mastery was, he had not been sure how long the compulsion would hold after he parted from the captain, but apparently it had held long enough. Andor’s range was about an hour, he recalled.
Gathmor collapsed on the chair. “God of Storms! Why? We’ll be dismasted or laid on our beam ends.”
Rap waved a thumb. “Rocks thataway.”
The sailor scowled. “I mean, why would he listen to you, a prissy landlubber elf?”
Rap shrugged. “We were having breakfast, and Captain Prakker happened to remark he’d never seen an elf on his feet in anything other than dead calm. One thing led to another.”
“More canvas in this weather?”
“I persuaded him it was worth a try.”
The sailor scowled blackly, recognizing that he was in the presence of the occult.
“She’ll make good time in this, won’t she?” Rap said. “If she stays afloat, that is. Skipper says Malfin’s straight upwind, but we can tack. And if you’d care for a wager, Cap’n, I’ll lay odds we won’t see Malfin on this trip.”
Gathmor scowled. “I don’t bet against you, not ever. But Prakker’ll just heave to again as soon as he’s clear of Noom Bay.”
“Sure you don’t want to bet?” Rap said cheerfully.
He glanced over at the minstrel, who was quietly fingering out a tune and frowning.
“You’ve been to Ilrane, haven’t you?”
Jalon shrugged without looking up. “Andor mostly. I was just there a few hours.”
“Tell me about the sky trees.”
“Andor told you once,” Jalon said, still twanging quietly.
“But you’ve got the artist’s eye and the poet’s tongue.” Even Darad might have seen through such thick-buttered flat tery, but Jalon didn’t. He laid the lute beside him, put his hands under his flaxen head, and stared up at the beams. For a long minute he was silent, then he sighed. “They’re glorious, utterly breathtaking. Like crystal artichokes.”
Gathmor rolled his eyes at Rap and made a scornful noise. Jalon had once admitted to Rap that he was part elf, and this seemed a logical time to mention the fact again, but he didn’t. He might have forgotten having done so already, or he might be reluctant to inform Gathmor. “No, truly. They’re not really trees, they’re some sort of mineral growth.”
“How big?” Rap asked.
“Huge. Lots are a league high, some of them more than that, with their tops all covered in snow. Valdobyt Prime was said to be so high there wasn’t enough air at the top of it to breathe. It got knocked down by some sorcerer or other thousands of years ago. I’d give you a ballad or two about it if I could fix this E string.”
“Artichokes?” Rap said. “A league high? Come on, be serious! ”
“Should have been able to see ‘em from Kith,” Gathmor snorted, equally disbelieving. But Jalon was lost in remembered bliss.
“Oftentimes the clouds hide them. It can take days to climb up from the ground to where you want to be.. That’s how I got called—Andor was exhausted. I would never’ve left, I think, except that his hosts knew him and not me; never mind that tale . . . Each leaf is sort of like a hand. Think of hundreds of crystalline hands all sprouting from a common trunk, except you can’t see much of the trunk itself. There’s usually a little lake in the palm, and the fingers feather ‘way out and up, into branches of crystals, and they branch more, and finally make petals like a mist of stained glass and butterfly wings in the distance. All day the sun strikes through them in all the colors you can imagine and a few you can’t, and the clouds float by in pearly fires.”
“Where do the people live?” Gathmor said, always practical. ”They build houses around the lakes, or higher on the slopes, in among the trees. There’s real trees and grass, and flowers of course. Can’t have elves without flowers around! Little fields. Each leaf is a separate village. You go from one to the other up long ladders or in tunnels winding up through the rock. The sky trees are the most beautiful thing in the world,” Jalon said with unusual firmness. “No wonder elves love beauty so much.”