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anything he could have imagined; the demands of his boat increased to a
succession of critical disasters, each one of which threatened survival. The
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wind increased and buffeted his ears near to deafness. Seas heaped up in
green, towering mountains whose heights wore spray like snow blizzards. To
leave the helm under such conditions invited disaster. Yet as fittings tore
loose, and lines frayed, Jaric had no choice. He lashed the oar, and relied
on luck to keep his craft from broaching. Through a maelstrom of boiling foam,
Callinde corkscrewed and thrashed, trounced like a chip in a millrace. Her
mast whipped violently against her stays, stretching stout cable like taffy.
Jaric looped belaying pins through and twisted up the slack in a terrified,
stop-gap attempt to keep his spars aloft where they belonged. And he bailed,
miserably, until his back muscles quivered with the weakness of exhaustion. If
he paused, even for a minute, the weight of shipped water might founder his
tiny craft.
Still the storm came on. Rain lashed down and lightning ripped the sky.
Mathieson's stout planks flexed and sprung, and
Callinde's caulking loosened like wisps of dirty hair. Submerged to his elbows
in bilge, Jaric labored on his knees to slow the leaks with oakum, then
patched with old canvas when his earlier remedies failed. Above him, the
compass spun like a drunk. The steering oar banged until the fittings
threatened to crack, and to preserve those parts he could not replace, Jaric
was forced to draw the pin and lash his rudder inboard. Tillerless now before
the might of Anskiere's tempest, Callinde reeled her hapless way west.
Once Jaric saw a length of dark timber adrift in a snarl of cord. Through
bruises and misery, and weariness that ached him to the bone, he managed a
ragged laugh. At least one demon boat fared worse than he; yet if Mathieson's
handiwork escaped ruin, the Dark-dreamer also might survive. Taen's brother
was a sailor born; on board the pinnace from
Crow, he had weathered this tempest once before. If Jaric were to reach the
Isle of the Vaere to gain his mastery, he would still have to win past
Maelgrim.
The eye of the storm passed over on the second morning, bringing a sickly,
yellow-tinged sky, and a lull that left the seas sloshing and confused as the
tilted contents of a witch's cauldron. Jaric seized the interval to whip
Callinde's sloppy stays; then he bailed, endlessly, his torn hands bound with
wisps of frayed sail. He ached for sleep as the dying r light plead for light.
Instead he worked like a madman; by the nature of great gales, he could expect
to be hammerer with redoubled violence on the west side of the storm. Then the
winds would reverse direction, against his desired course.. Now, if the watery
disc of the sun glimpsed through the clouds at noon could be trusted, the
storm had driven him all but aground on the Isle of the Vaere.
A chill roughened Jaric's skin. He looked up, perturbed, and through tangles
of his own hair peered at the horizon. There, after days of brute suffering
and struggle against the elements, lay a sight to strike him to the heart: a
black sloop sailed against a dirty drift of storm cloud. Her course bore
directly for
Callinde.
Stripped by the storm of his mists and illusions, Maelgrim Dark-dreamer closed
in for his conquest.
Jaric cast down his bailing scoop. Screaming denial, he lunged to unfurl the
main. Yet even as his fingers pried the halyards from the cleat, he understood
that such effort was hopeless. The winds had already shifted west. With her
head-sail in shreds, Callinde could make no headway to weather. Cornered now
without alternative, Jaric abandoned the sail. Left no time for
recriminations, he reached with stinging fingers and jerked off the thong
which hung Anskiere's wards from his neck.
The pouch was sodden, the knotted ties swollen impossibly with damp. Jaric
cursed. The little air pocketed within might prevent the Keys from sinking if
he cast them into the sea still wrapped. Dreading the attack which might rip
his mind at any moment, Jaric reached for his rigging knife. Too frantic to
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agonize over failure, he slashed; and the cube of dark basalt tumbled out into
his palm.
The surface of the stone was unnaturally warm to the touch. Jaric turned the
Keys over, and light rinsed his face, sudden, blue-white, and blinding. The
falcon device set into the face of the cube glowed with a fierce energy that
waxed brighter by the second. Terrified such change might be provoked by the
meddling of demons, Jaric smothered the brilliance with his hands. Contact
blistered his flesh. He fell back with a cry, but the resonance in the ward
stone died away, keyed to response by a force entirely separate. A flash like
I
lightning split the air. Mast and yard and rigging jumped out, inked lines
against light. The ocean gleamed bright as molten metal, and
Callinde became consumed by a scintillating explosion of rainbows that
spiraled
Jaric downward into dark.
Blackness suffused the boy's senses for an unknown interval, then tore asunder
as a crackling burst of energy rent the air. Sparks pocked his vision,
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