“I would say—that is, I’d tell them—I guess you have a point,” Alfred conceded lamely. “But what do we gain by landing over there?” He gestured vaguely. “Whoever lives in this dreadful place”—the Sartan couldn’t resist a shudder—”will ask the same questions.”
“Maybe.” Haplo cast a sharp, scrutinizing gaze at their landing site. “Maybe not. Take a good look at it.”
Alfred started to walk to the window. The dog growled, ears pricked, teeth bared. The Sartan froze.
“It’s all right. Let him go. Just watch him,” Haplo told the dog, who settled back down onto the deck, keeping its intelligent eyes on the Sartan.
Alfred, with a backward glance at the animal, awkwardly crossed the deck; its slight rocking motion sent the Sartan staggering. Haplo shook his head and wondered what the devil he was going to do with Alfred while exploring. Alfred arrived at the window without major mishap and, leaning against the glass, peered through it.
The ship spiraled down out of the air, landed gently on the magma, floated on sluggish, molten waves.
A pier had been shaped out of what had once been a natural grain of obsidian, extending out into the magma sea. Several other man-made structures, built out of the same black rock, faced the pier across a crude street.
“You see any signs of life?” Haplo asked.
“I don’t see anyone moving around,” Alfred said, staring hard. “Either in the town or on the docks. We’re the only ship in sight. The place is deserted.”
“Yeah, maybe. You can never tell. This might be their version of night, and everyone’s asleep. But at least it’s not guarded. If I’m lucky, I can be the one asking the questions.”
Haplo steered the dragonship into the harbor, his gaze scrutinizing the small town. Probably not so much a town, he decided, as a dockside loading area. The buildings looked, for the most part, like warehouses, although here and there he thought he saw what might be a shop or a tavern.
Who would sail this deadly ocean, deadly to all but those protected by powerful magic—such as Alfred and himself? Haplo was intensely curious about this strange and forbidding world, more curious than he’d been about those worlds whose composition closely resembled his own. But he still didn’t know what to do about Alfred.
Apparently the Sartan was following the line of Haplo’s thoughts. “What should I do?” Alfred asked meekly.
“I’m thinking about it,” Haplo muttered, affecting to be absorbed in the tricky docking maneuver, although that, in reality, was being handled by the magic of the runes of the steering stone.
“I don’t want to be left behind. I’m going with you.”
“It’s not your decision. You’ll do what I say, Sartan, and like it. And if I say you’ll stay here with the dog to keep an eye on you, you’ll stay here. Or you won’t like it.”
Alfred shook his balding head slowly, with quiet dignity. “You can’t threaten me, Haplo. Sartan magic is different from Patryn magic, but it has the same roots and is just as powerful. I haven’t used my magic as much as you’ve been forced by circumstances to use yours. But I am older than you. And you must concede that magic of any type is strengthened by age and by wisdom.”
“I must, must I?” Haplo sneered, although his mind went almost immediately to his lord, a man whose years were numberless, and to the vast power he had amassed.
The Patryn eyed his opposite, eyed the representative of a race who had been the only force in the universe who could have halted the Patryn’s vaulting ambition, their rightful quest for complete and absolute control over the weak-minded Sartan and the squabbling, chaos-driven mensch.
Alfred didn’t look very formidable. His soft face indicated to the Patryn a soft and weak nature. His stoop-shouldered stance implied a cringing, sheepish attitude. Haplo already knew the Sartan was a coward. Worse, Alfred was clad in clothes suited only to a royal drawing room—a shabby frock coat, right breeches tied at the knee with scraggly black velvet ribbons, lace-trimmed neckerchief, a coat with floppy sleeves, buckle-adorned shoes. But Haplo had seen this man, this weak specimen of a Sartan, charm a marauding dragon with nothing more than a few movements from that clumsy body.