His lantern showed little more than a cloud of streaking white and a tiny vague patch of ground around his horse. The snow was coating the shingle, even deadening the sound of the hooves and the rumble of the wagons. He had no qualms over this first stretch—he could hear the waves off to his right, so all he need do was keep the snow coming from that direction, also, caking ever deeper on that side of his horse and his parka. This way he was leading the wagons along the beach and there was no danger. Eventually he must make a turn. No sooner had he started to think about that than he felt urgency—now! So soon? He wavered in his mind and the urgency grew. He turned Mustard slightly, edging Walrus and the stranger over until they were facing into the wind. The muffled wagon noise followed them. The shingle rose, then sank again, and the snow lay thicker. Another slight ridge, then blackness—water.
“You two wait here!” he said, yelling against the storm. Then he forced a reluctant and ill-named Mustard forward, into the water. There were no waves, so it was the lagoon, but had he blundered into the deep part? The sound of the wagons had stopped behind him and all he could hear was waves, somewhere. A few creepy minutes of splashing ended and he saw the vague lightness of snow again below his horse’s feet. So far, so good. He began to breathe more easily. He had found the ford. He turned around and through the black fog he could just barely detect the lights he had left behind. He waved his lantern up and down, and they began advancing to meet him. Mustard was a little happier standing with the wind on his tail, but he was shivering violently.
Now Rap must find the end of the causeway. He left the others to follow at the wagons’ creaking pace and pushed forward alone into the blizzard. Snow covered his face and dribbled down his neck. His headache was getting worse. It was hard to keep Mustard moving. The lights were growing faint behind him . . . he must not lose his followers. More important, though, he must find that causeway before the wagons rumbled down to the water’s edge in the wrong place. Turning them would be bad enough; backing them up if they got between rocks might be close to impossible. He strained his memory to recall the exact direction and adjusted it for the way he thought the wind was coming . . . and he was too far to the right. How did he know that? He hesitated, then trusted his instinct and not his memory.
In a few moments Mustard’s hoof struck rock. That was it! He’d done it again.
He was a seer and his flesh crawled at the thought. He cringed.
Why me?
Now things ought to be simple for a while, and he became aware that his body was knotted with the strain, running sweat inside his shirt.
Lin and the stranger reached their places on either side of him and they could follow the edges of the made road—the snow had not buried it yet. He kept position between them. The wagons followed the three bright blurs.
Seer: one who sees. But he did not see, he just knew. He gained knowledge without using his senses—hateful! Then he remembered the minstrel’s strange belief that the horses had not been able to hear him that day. Could he speak without using his voice, at least to horses? He tried a silent word of comfort to Mustard and thought he felt it received. Imagination? Hateful! Detestable! Freak! He had not tried calling the mares away from Firedragon since that day with the minstrel and now he knew why—he had been afraid of what he might learn about himself. They had crossed Tallow Rocks already. Waves were splashing against the side of the road, sending up salt spray. There was no snow on the ground anymore, and the lanterns’ faint glow was an uncertain reflection. Black ice—the deadliest stuff to try to walk a horse on, or drive a wagon. It was Lin and the stranger who were bearing the load now. Rap half expected one or other of them to vanish without warning, plunging off the edge into darkness and quick, cold death.
Walrus started to panic and slither. Stop that! Rap thought, and Walrus stopped. Coincidence.
They crawled along, and the waves were throwing water over the road, running off in glinting black sheets. Better than ice. This was the main causeway and the tide would be over it now. Not so deep as last time, but much rougher. This was important . . . think of famine.
“Lin!” he snapped. “Watch where you’re going!” They were coming into the turn.
“I can’t see, Rap.” It was a boy’s sob. Lin’s voice had changed back under the strain.
“I can’t, either,” the stranger said calmly.
Rap muttered a silent prayer to any God who might be listening. He was all knotted up again now. This was it. “Close in a bit and follow me, then.”
He advanced alone, feeling by some means he did not understand that the others were near behind. He forced old Mustard down the center of the wave-swept causeway. It must be the exact center, else either Lin or the stranger would slide off. They must be sweating with the strain of staying out to the sides, resisting the temptation to creep in directly behind Rap himself, but the wagon drivers had to know where the road was, how much was safe.
The center! Stay in the center. He did not try to think what the causeway would look like underwater this time. It would be utterly black down there. He groped somehow for its weight, its mass, its hard solid edges in the cold water surging around it.
Stay in the center!
He heard and felt the first team beginning to panic and he sent reassuring thoughts back to them; realized that he had been doing the same to Mustard and Walrus and Dancer for some time. His head was bursting, as if someone had pushed fingers down inside and was trying to pull it apart. This was important! There might be famine in the spring—babies dying, children starving. The water was not deep. The waves were rolling up over the causeway and pouring off again. It would be easy to see the edges if there was light, but all he had to look at was flying snow, a bright cloud around his lantern, and he could not even see the spray splashed up by his horse’s feet.
The waves grew deeper.
The second bend . . . He shouted a warning to his companions, knew that they were safely far from those deadly edges, checked the wagon also behind him without looking round, kept talking to the horses in his mind.
He opened his eyes and wondered how long he’d had them shut.
Shallower . . .
Then the waves were not flowing all the way across. He was coming up on Big Island. Big Damp and Little Damp were still ahead, but the worst was over.
The rest was a blur.
He stood on the dock road, clutching reins and weeping. Lin and the stranger were beside him, he knew, in a mob of shivering, trembling horses and shouting people . . . and some idiot was holding up a lantern and Rap wished to all the Gods that they’d take the damn thing away. Men were running down from the town, coming to help, asking questions, disbelieving the answers. There were tears pouring down his face and he was shaking with sobs. Shameful, but he could not stop. He was shivering more violently than the horses and he could hear himself weeping—having some sort of stupid fit, but the drivers were coming to him and pumping his free hand and thumping his back and he wanted them to stop and go away. He would not listen to what they were saying.
Someone took Mustard’s reins from him. An arm was laid over his shoulders and at last that damned lantern was taken away and there was darkness. “Let’s get the man to bed!” a voice said angrily. “He’s beat, can’t you see?”
Not a man, sir, just a weak, sniveling boy.
Then came blessed relief, as that so-comforting arm was holding him, leading him away from the crowd and the voices and the faces, taking him away. Vaguely he knew that it was the stranger, the man from the Impire, and that stranger had done a fair job himself that night.
“Thank you, sir,” Rap mumbled.
“You don’t need to call me `sir,’” the voice said.
“I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Andor,” said the stranger, “but after what I’ve seen tonight, Master Rap, I’d be very proud if you would just call me `friend.’ ”