He was in his ship, he recognized, lying in the captain’s berth-a mattress spread over a wooden bed frame built into the ship’s hull. The dog crouched on the bed near him, eyes bright, tongue lolling. Apparently, the animal had become bored and had decided that its master had been out long enough.
They had made it, seemingly. They had, once again, passed through Death’s Gate.
The Patryn didn’t move. He slowed his breathing, listening, feeling. He sensed nothing wrong, unlike the last time he’d come through Death’s Gate. The ship was on an even keel. He had no sensation of movement, but assumed it was flying because he had not made the alterations in the magic needed to land the craft. Certain runes on the inside of the hull were glowing, meaning they had activated. He studied them, saw that they were sigla having to do with air, pressure, and maintaining gravity. Odd- He wondered why.
Haplo relaxed, fondled the dog’s ears. Brilliant sunshine poured through the hatch above his bed. Turning over lazily, the Patryn stared curiously out a porthole into this new world he had entered.
He saw nothing except sky and, far distant, a circle of bright flame burning through the haze, the sun. At least the world had a sun-it had four, in fact. He remembered his lord’s questioning that particular point and wondered, briefly, why the Sartan hadn’t thought to include the suns on their charts. Perhaps because, as he had discovered, the Death’s Gate was located in the center of the solar cluster.
Haplo climbed out of bed and made his way to the bridge. The runes on the hull and wings would prevent his ship from crashing into anything, but it would be wise to make certain he was not hovering in front of a gigantic granite cliff.
He wasn’t. The view from the bridge provided another vast expanse of wide-open sky as far as he could see-up, down, sideways.
Haplo crouched down on his haunches, absently scratching the dog’s head to keep the animal quiet. He had not reckoned on this and wasn’t certain what to do. In its own way, this slightly green-tinted blue, hazy emptiness was as frightening as the ferocious, perpetually raging storm into which he’d flown entering Arianus. The silence around him now echoed loudly as the booming thunder had then. Admittedly his ship wasn’t being tossed about like a toy in the hands of an obstreperous child, rain wasn’t lashing the hull-already damaged by his passage through Death’s Gate. Here the sky was cloudless, serene . . . and not a single object, except the blazing sun, in sight.
The cloudless sky had a sort of mesmerizing effect on Haplo. He tore his gaze from it, and moved over to the steering stone on the bridge. He placed his hands on it, one on either side, and the action completed the circle-his right hand on the stone, the stone between his hands, his left hand on the stone, his left hand attached to his arm, arm to body, body to arm, and back to his right hand again. Aloud, he spoke the runes. The stone began to gleam blue beneath his hands, light welled up from underneath his fingers; he could see the red veins of his own life. The light grew brighter so that he could barely stand to look at it, and he squinted his eyes. Brighter still and suddenly beams of radiant blue shot out from the stone, extending out in all directions.
Haplo was forced to avert his gaze, half-turning his head against the brilliance. He had to keep looking at the stone, keep watching. When one of the navigational beams encountered solid mass-hopefully land-it would bounce back, return to his ship, and light another rune on the stone, turning it red. Haplo could then steer in that direction.
Confidently, expectantly, he waited.
Nothing.
Patience was one virtue the Patryns had learned in the Labyrinth, learned by having it beaten and twisted and bashed into them. Lose your temper, act impulsively, irrationally and the Labyrinth would claim you. If you were lucky, you died. If not, if you survived, you carried with you a lesson that would haunt the rest of your days. But you learned. Yes, you learned.