‘Well, then, when you”re rearranging a cupboard, you take
everything out and spread it on the floor. Then you put all the
things you want in the top drawer in one pile, the things you
want in the second drawer in another, and so on. Couldn’t we
do that with these files?’
“It’s a nice i-dee, little dorlin’,’ Caalador drawled, ‘but they
ain’t e-muff floors in the hull buildin’ fer spreadin’ out all them
there files.’
‘There nne lots of lawns around the outside, though, aren’t
we just take all the files from every government building outside there?’ Alcan kept her eyes downcast as she spoke. ‘Couldn’t
and spread them around on the lawns. We could tell the people
who work in the buildings that we want to sort through them
and put them in the proper order. They couldn’t really object,
and you can’t lock the door to a lawn at night, or move things
around when there are seven-foot-tall Atans standing guard
over them. I know I’m just a silly servant girl, but that’s the way
I’d do it.’
Oscagne was staring at her in absolute horror.
CHAPTER 4
The soil on the western side of the Isle of Tega was thin and
rocky, and since there was plenty of fertile ground farther
inland, the citizens of the Republic had made no effort to cultivate
here. Tough, scrubby bushes rustled stiffly in the onshore
breeze as Sparhawk and his friends rode along a rocky trail
leading to the coast.
‘The breeze helps,’ Talen observed gratefully. ‘At least it blows
away that stink.’
‘You complain too much,’ Flute told him. The little girl rode
with Sephrenia as she had since they had first encountered her.
She nestled in her older sister’s arms with her dark eyes brooding.
She straightened suddenly as the sound of surf pounding
on the western shore of the Isle reached them. ‘This is far enough
for right now, gentlemen,’ she told them. ‘Let’s have some supper
and wait for it to get dark.’
‘is that a good idea?’ Bevier asked her. ‘The ground’s been
getting rougher the farther west we come, and the sound of that
surf seems to have rocks mixed up in it. This might not be a
good place to be blundering around in the dark.’
‘I can lead you safely to the beach, Bevier,’ she told him. ‘I
don’t want you gentlemen to get too good a look at our ship.
There are certain ideas involved in her construction that you
don’t need to know. That’s one of the promises I had to make
during those negotiations I was telling you about.’ She pointed
to the lee-side of a rocky hillock. ‘Let’s go over there out of this
wind and build a fire. I have some instructions for you.’
They rode away from the ill-defined trail and dismounted in
the shelter of the hill. ‘Whose turn is it to do the cooking?’ Berit
asked Sir Ulath.
‘Yours,’ Ulath told him with no hint of a smile.
‘You knew he was going to do that, Berit,’ Talen said. ‘What
you just did was almost the same thing as volunteering.’
Berit shrugged. ‘My turn will come up eventually anyway,’
he said. ‘I thought I’d get it out of the way for a while.’
‘All right, gentlemen,’ Vanion said, ‘let’s look around and see
what we can find in the way of firewood.’
Sparhawk concealed a smile. Vanion could maintain that he
was no longer the Preceptor as much as he wished, but the habit
of command was deeply ingrained in him.
They built a fire, and Berit stirred up an acceptable stew. After
supper, they sat by the fire watching as evening slowly settled
in.
‘Now then,’ Flute said to them, ‘we’re going to ride down to
a cove. I want you all to stay close behind me, because it’s going
to be very foggy.’
‘it’s a perfectly clear evening, Flute,’ Kalten objected.
“It won’t be when we reach the cove,’ she told him. ‘i’m going
to make sure that you don’t get too much chance to examine
that ship. I’m not really supposed to do this, so don’t get me
into trouble.’ She looked sternly at Khalad. ‘And I want you in
particular to keep a very tight rein on your curiosity.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. You’re too practical and too clever by half for my
comfort. Your noble friends here aren’t imaginative enough to
make any educated guesses about the ship. You’re a different
matter. Don’t be digging at the decks with your knife, and don’t
try to sneak off to examine things. I don’t want to drop by
Cimmura someday and find a duplicate of the ship anchored in
the river. We’ll go down to the cove, board the ship, and go
directly below. You will not go up on deck until we get to where
we’re going. A certain part of the ship has been set aside for us,
and we’ll all stay there for the duration of the voyage. I want
your word on that, gentlemen.’
Sparhawk could see some differences between Flute and
Danae. Flute was more authoritarian, for one thing, and she
didn’t seem to have Danae’s whimsical sense of humor.
Although the Child Goddess had a definite personality, each of
her incarnations seemed to have its own idiosyncrasies.
Flute looked up at the slowly darkening sky. ‘We’ll wait
another hour,’ she decided. ‘The crew of the ship has been told
to stay away from us. Our meals will be put just outside the
door, and we won’t see the one who puts them there. It won’t
do you any good to try to catch her, so don’t even try.’
‘Her?’ Ulath exclaimed. ‘Are you trying to say that there are
women in the crew?’
‘They’re all females. There aren’t very many males where they
come from.’
‘Women aren’t strong enough to raise and lower the sails,’ he
objected.
‘These females are ten times stronger than you are, Ulath, and
it wouldn’t matter anyway, because the ship doesn’t have sails.
Please stop asking questions, gentlemen. Oh, one other thing.
There’ll be a sort of humming sound when we get under way
It’s normal, so don’t let it alarm you.’
‘How…’ Ulath began.
She held up her hand. ‘No more questions, Ulath,’ she told
him quite firmly. ‘You don’t need to know the answers. The
ship’s here to take us from one place to another in a hurry.
That’s all you need to know.’
‘That brings us to something we really should know,’ Sparhawk
said. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To Jorsan on the west coast of Edam,’ she replied. ‘Well,
almost, anyway. There’s a long gulf leading inland to Jorsan
We’ll put ashore at the mouth of the gulf and go inland on
horseback. Now, why don’t we talk about something else?’
The fog seemed almost thick enough to walk on, and the knights
were obliged to blindly follow the misty light of the torch
Sephrenia held aloft as they rode down a steep bank toward the
sound of unseen surf.
They reached a sandy beach and groped their way down
toward the water. Then they saw other lights out in the fog filmy,
mist-shrouded lights which stretched out for what seemed
an impossible distance. The lights did not flicker, and they were
the wrong color for torchlight.
‘Good God.’ Ulath choked. ‘No shiP could be that big!’
‘Ulath.’ Flute said sharply from out of the fog ahead.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
When they reached the water’s edge, all they could see was
a dark, looming shape lying low in the water several yards out, a
shape outlined by those unwinking white lights. A ramp reached
from the ship to the beach, and Ch’iel, Sephrenia’s white palfrey,
stepped confidently onto that ramp and clattered across to
the ship.
There were dim, shrouded shapes on the deck, cloaked and
hooded figures that were all no more than shoulder high, but
strangely squat and blocky.
‘What do we do with the horses?’ Vanion asked as they all
dismounted.
“just leave them here,’ Flute replied. ‘They’ll be taken care of.
Let’s go below. We can’t start until everybody’s off the deck.’
‘The crew stays up here, don’t they?’ Ulath asked her.
‘No. It’s too dangerous.’
They went to a rectangular hatchway in the deck and followed
an inclined ramp leading down.
‘Stairs would take up less space,’ Khalad said critically.
‘The crew couldn’t use stairs, Khalad,’ Flute told him. ‘They
don’t have legs.’
He stared at her in horror.
“I told you that they’re not human,’ she shrugged.
The companionway they reached at the bottom of the ramp
was low, and the knights had to half stoop as they followed the
Child Goddess aft. The area below decks was illuminated by
pale glowing spots of light recessed into the ceiling and covered
over by what appeared to be glass. The light was steady,
unwinking, and it definitely did not come from any kind of fire.