before proceeded smoothly.
There was one thing, however, which their planning had not
taken into account. Khalad had ridden to the edge of the cliff to
look to the north, and he rode back with a slightly worried
frown.
‘Well?’ Sparhawk asked him.
‘There’s a pier north of the wall, right enough,’ Khalad
replied, dismounting, ‘but we’ve got a problem coming up from
the south. Bhelliom’s warm current is arriving.’
‘Why is that a problem?’
“I think Bhelliom got a little carried away. It looks as if the
leading edge of that current is boiling.’
‘So?’
‘What do you get when you pour boiling water on ice
Sparhawk?’
‘Steam, I suppose.’
‘Right. Bhelliom’s melting the ice out there, right enough, but
it’s raising a lot of steam in the process. What’s another word
for steam, my Lord?’
‘Please don’t do that, Khalad. It’s very offensive. just how big
is this fog-bank?’
“I couldn’t see the end of it, my Lord.”
‘Thick?’
‘You could probably walk on it.’
‘Could we possibly stay ahead of it?’
Khalad pointed out to sea. “I sort of doubt it, my Lord. I’d say
it’s already here.’
The fog was rolling across the water in a thick gray blanket,
its leading edge a solid wall obscuring everything in its
path.
Sparhawk started to swear.
‘You seem melancholy, my queen,’ Alcan said when the ladies
were alone.
Ehlana sighed. “I don’t like being separated from Sparhawk,’
she said. ‘There were too many years of that when he was in
exile.’
‘You’ve loved him for a long time, haven’t you, your Majesty?’
“I was born loving Sparhawk. It’s really more convenient that
way. You don’t have to waste time thinking about other possible
husbands. You can concentrate all your attention on the one
you’re going to marry and make sure you’ve closed all his escape
routes.”
There was a knock on the door, and Mirtai rose, put her hand
on her sword-hilt, and went to answer it.
Stragen entered. He was wearing rough clothes.
‘What on earth have you been up to, Milord?’ Melidere asked
him.
‘Pushing a wheelbarrow, Baroness.’ He shrugged. ‘i’m not
sure that it accomplishes all that much to disguise myself this
way, butt it’s good to maintain proper work habits. I’ve been
posing as an employee of the Ministry of Public Works. We’ve
been repairing the street outside the Cynesgan embassy.
Caalador and I rolled dice, and he won the right to sit on a
roof-top to keep watch. I get to trundle wheelbarrow-loads of
cobblestones to the pavers.’
“I gather that something’s happening at the embassy?’ Ehlana
guessed.
‘Yes, my Queen. Unfortunately, we can’t quite figure out
what. All the chimneys are spouting smoke that doesn’t look
like wood smoke. I think they’re burning documents. That’s
usually a sign of incipient flight.’
‘Don’t they know that they haven’t a chance of getting out of
town?’ Mirtai asked him.
“It appears that they’re going to make a try anyway. It’s just
a guess, but I’d say they’re planning something that’s going to
seriously offend the authorities, and then they’re going to try
to make a run for it.’ He looked at Ehlana. “I think we’d better
tighten our security arrangements, your Majesty. All these preparations
hint at something serious, and we don’t want to be
caught off-guard.’
‘I’ll have a talk with Sarabian,’ Ehlana decided. “It was useful
to have that embassy functioning as long as Xanetia was here
to eavesdrop. Now that she’s off with Sparhawk and the others,
the embassy’s just an irritation. I think it might be time to send
in some Atans to nullify it.’
“It’s an embassy, your Majesty,’ Melidere objected. ‘We can’t
just go in and round everybody up. That’s against all the rules
of civilized behavior.’
‘So?’
‘We don’t have much choice, Master Cluff,’ Sorgi said gravely.
‘When you’re out in deep water and this kind of fog comes up,
all you can do is put out your sea-anchor and hope you don’t’
run aground on some island. You’d never be able to pick your
way around the end of that reef with those rafts, and I’d rip the
bottoms out of half the ships in the fleet if I tried to slip through
the channel between the reef and the ice. We’re going to have
to wait until this lifts – or thins out at least. ‘
‘And how long will that be?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘There’s no way to tell.’
‘The air’s colder than the water, Sparhawk,’ Khalad explained.
‘That’s what’s causing the fog. I don’t think it’s going to lift until
the air warms up. We won’t be ready to leave here until
tomorrow anyway. We’re going to have to do something to raise
those rafts up out of the water a bit before we load men and
horses on them. If we try to use them the way they are, we’ll
be trying to move them half submerged.’
‘Why don’t you get started on that, Khalad?’ Vanion suggested.
‘Sparhawk and I’ll go have a talk with Sephrenia and
Aphrael. We might just need a bit of divine intervention here.
Coming, Sparhawk?’
The two of them went back on down the beach to the fire
Kalten had built for the ladies.
‘Well?’ Sephrenia asked. She was seated on a driftwood log
with her sister in her lap.
‘The fog’s creating some problems,’ Vanion replied. ‘We can’t
get around the end of the reef until it lifts, and we’re a little
crowded for time. We’d like to reach Tzada before the Trolls
start to march. Any ideas?’
‘A few,’ Aphrael replied, ‘but I’ll need to talk with Bhelliom
first. There are certain proprieties and courtesies involved, you
understand. ‘
‘No,’ Sparhawk replied. “I don’t, really, but that doesn’t matter
all that much. I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Oh, thank you, Sparhawk!’ she said with a certain false
ingenuousness. “I think Bhelliom and I should discuss this in
private. Open the box and give it to me.’
‘Whatever you say.’ He took out the cask and touched it with
his ring. ‘Open,’ he told it. Then he handed the box to the Child
Goddess.
She slid down off Sephrenia’s lap and went down the beach
a little way. Then she stood looking out at the fog-enveloped
sea. So far as Sparhawk could tell, she was not speaking aloud
to the Sapphire Rose.
It was about ten minutes later when she returned. She handed
the box back to Sparhawk. “It’s all taken care of,’ she told him
in an offhand way. ‘When do you want to leave?’
‘Tomorrow morning?’ Sparhawk asked Vanion.
Vanion nodded. ‘That should give Khalad time to modify the
rafts, and we can get the knights and their horses on board
Sorgi’s ships and ready to go by then.’
‘All right,’ Aphrael said. ‘Tomorrow, then. Now why don’t
you go find Ulath and ask him whose turn it is to do the cooking?
I’m absolutely famished.’
It was not much of a breeze, and it did not entirely dissipate
the fog, but they could at least see where they were going, and
the tattered remnants of mist would provide them with some
cover after they rounded the tip of the reef.
Khalad had decided that the quickest way to modify the rafts
was simply to double them, pulling one raft on top of another
so that the added buoyancy would provide a reasonable freeboard.
This made the rafts very cumbersome, of course. They
were heavy and hard to steer, and so their progress out along
the reef was painfully slow.
The skiff leading the way, however, cut through the water
ahead of the flotilla and faded into the remnants of the fog-bank.
Khalad and Berit had not really asked, but had simply
announced that they would scout on ahead.
After about an hour, the skiff returned. ‘We marked the channel,’
Khalad told them. ‘That boiling water really cut the ice
away, so there’ll be plenty of room to get the rafts round the
tip of the reef. ‘
‘We saw Captain Sorgie’s ships go by,’ Berit reported. ‘Apparently
he didn’t entirely trust the sails. This breeze is a little
erratic…’ He hesitated. ‘You don’t have to tell Aphrael I said
that, of course. Anyway, Sorgi’s put the knights to work rowing.
They’ll get to the beach north of the pier quite some time before
we make it to shore.’
‘Are those trees sticking up out of the water going to cause
us any problems?’ Kalten asked.
‘Not if we stick close to the face of the cliff, Sir Kalten,’ Khalad
replied. ‘The landslides Bhelliom’s earthquake set off knocked
down all the trees for about a hundred yards out from the wall.
The trees farther out will give us some additional cover. When
you add them to what’s left of the fog, I don’t think anybody
on shore will see us coming.’
“It’s working out fairly well, then,’ Ulath said, grunting as he
pushed his twenty-foot-long pole against the sea-bottom, ‘except