His strength restored somewhat, Haplo went back to the bridge, dressed himself in his leather breeches, white long-sleeved shirt, and leather vest and boots, covering every sign of the telltale runes that marked him as a Patryn to those who remembered their history lessons. He left only his hands free, for the moment, for he would need to steer the vessel, using the magical runes of the steering stone.
At least, he assumed he’d need to steer the vessel. Haplo stared into the aqua-blue whatever-it-was that surrounded him and tried to make sense of it, but he might have been sailing into a dome of air that spanned all the vistas of his vision or about to fly smack into a wall covered with blue paint.
“We’ll walk onto the top deck and take a look around, eh, boy?” he said. Not hearing the usual excited bark that always greeted this statement, Haplo glanced about.
The dog was gone.
It occurred to Haplo, then, that he hadn’t seen the animal since . . . since . . . well, it had been a long time.
“Here, boy!” Haplo whistled. No response.
Irritated, thinking the dog was indulging in a raid on the sausages, as happened from time to time, Haplo stomped back down to the hold, prepared to find the animal looking as innocent of wrongdoing as was possible with sausage grease smeared over its nose.
The dog was not there. No sausages were missing.
Haplo called, whistled. No response. He knew then, with a sudden pang of loneliness and unhappiness, that the dog was gone. But almost as soon as he experienced the aching pain, which was in some ways almost harder to bear than the burning pain of his torture, Haplo felt it ease, then disappear.
It was as if his being were opened like a door. A cold, sharp wind blew in and coated with ice every troubling doubt and feeling he’d been experiencing.
Haplo felt renewed, refreshed, empty. And the emptiness, he discovered, was far preferable to the raging turmoil and confusion that had previously churned inside him.
The dog. A crutch, as his lord had always said. The lucky and the strong were generally lonely. The dog had served Haplo’s purpose.
“It’s gone.” He shrugged and forgot it.
Alfred. That miserable Sartan.
“I see it now. I was duped, tricked by his magic. Just as my people were duped and tricked before the Sundering. But not now. We will meet again, Sartan, and when we do, you won’t escape me this time.”
Haplo, looking back, was appalled to see how weak he’d grown, appalled to think he’d actually doubted and attempted to deceive his lord.
His lord. He owed this new freedom from doubt, this new feeling of ease, to his lord.
“As my father punished me when I was small, so my lord has punished me now. I accept it. I am grateful for it. I have learned from it. I will not fail you, My Lord.”
He swore the oath, placing his hand upon the name rune over his heart. Then he walked out, alone, onto the upper deck of the elven ship called Dragon Wing.
Haplo paced the deck, looked up beyond the tall masts with the dragon-scaled wings, leaned over the rail to stare far below the ship’s keel, walked forward to study what lay beyond the snarling dragon’s head that was the prow. He caught sight of something in the distance. Not much, nothing more than a dark splotch against the blue, but from the tingling of the sigla on his skin and the creeping feelings of dread shriveling his bowels, he came to the conclusion that he was looking at Death’s Gate.
Obviously, then, he’d passed through the Gate, since he certainly wasn’t in the Nexus. His lord must have launched his ship on its way.
“And, since I was preparing to travel to the fourth world, to Chelestra, the world of water, this must be it,” Haplo said, talking to himself, comforted by hearing a voice break the silence that surrounded him like the endless aqua blue.
His ship was moving; he knew that much, now that he could fix his sight on a point—Death’s Gate—and see it dwindle and grow smaller behind him. And he could feel, standing out in the open on the deck, the wind created by their forward motion blow strong against his skin.