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Khalad shook his head. ‘I think the keel’s touching the water, but that’s about all.’
‘I really don’t want to know about this,’ Kalten said plaintively.
‘He’s right, Khalad,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I think this is one of the things Aphrael told us was none of our business. Leave those curtains closed from now on.’
‘Aren’t you the least bit curious, my Lord?’
‘I can live with it.’
‘You don’t mind if I speculate just a bit, do you, Sparhawk?’
‘Go right ahead, but keep your speculations to yourself.’ He sat down on his bunk and began to pull off his boots. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to follow orders and go to bed. This is a good chance to catch up on our sleep, and we’ve all been running a little short on that for quite some time now. We’ll want to be alert when we get to Jorsan.’
‘Which only happens to be about a quarter of the way around the world,’ Khalad added moodily, ‘and which we’re going to reach in just five days. I don’t think I’m put together right for this kind of thing. Do I have to be a Pandion Knight, Sparhawk?’
‘Yes,’ Sparhawk told him, dropping his boots on the deck. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to know before I go to sleep?’
They all slept a great deal during the next five days. Sparhawk strongly suspected that Aphrael might have had a hand in that, since sleeping people don’t wander around making discoveries.
Their meals were served on strange oblong trays which were made of some substance none of them could identify. The food consisted entirely of uncooked vegetables, and they were given only water to drink. Kalten complained about the food at every meal, but, since there was nothing else available, he ate it anyway.
On the afternoon before they were scheduled to arrive, they gathered together in the cramped central compartment. ‘Are you sure?’ Kalten dubiously asked Flute when she told them that they were no more than ten hours from their destination.
She sighed. ‘Yes, Kalten, I’m sure.’
‘How do you know? You haven’t been up on deck, and you haven’t talked to any of the sailors. We could have been …’ His words sort of faded off. She was looking at him with a long-suffering expression as he floundered on. ‘Oh,’ he said then. ‘I wasn’t thinking, I guess. Sorry.’
‘I do love you, Kalten – in spite of everything.’
Khalad cleared his throat. ‘Didn’t Dolmant tell you that the Edomish have some strong feelings about the Church?’ he asked Sparhawk.
Sparhawk nodded. ‘As I understand it, they look at our Holy Mother in almost the same way that the Rendors do.’
‘Church Knights wouldn’t really be welcome then, I gather.’
‘Hardly.’
‘We’ll need to disguise ourselves as ordinary travelers, then.’
‘More than likely,’ Sparhawk agreed.
Vanion had been looking at his map. ‘Exactly where are we going from Jorsan, Aphrael?’ he asked Flute.
‘Up the coast a ways,’ she replied vaguely.
‘That’s not very specific.’
‘Yes, I know.’
He sighed. ‘Is there any real need for us to go on up the Gulf of Jorsan to the city itself? If we were to land on the north shore of the gulf, we could avoid the city entirely. Since the Edomish have these prejudices, shouldn’t we stay away from them as much as possible?’
‘We have to go to Jorsan,’ she told him. ‘Well,’ she amended, ‘Jorsan itself isn’t that important, but we’re going to see something along the way that will be.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘You get used to that,’ Sparhawk told his friend. ‘Our little Goddess here gets hunches from time to time – no details at all, just hunches.’
‘What time will we make our landfall?’ Ulath asked.
‘About midnight,’ she replied.
‘Landing on a strange shore at night can be a little tricky,’ he said doubtfully.
‘There won’t be any problems.’ She said it with absolute confidence.
‘I’m not supposed to worry about it. Is that it?’
‘You can worry if you want to, Ulath,’ she smiled. ‘It’s not necessary, but you can worry all you like, if it makes you feel better.’
It was foggy when they came up on deck again – a dense, obscuring fog – and this time the strange ship showed no lights. Their horses, already saddled, were waiting, and they led them down the ramp to a pebbly beach.
When they looked back out toward the water, their ship was gone.
‘Where did she go?’ Ulath exclaimed.
‘She’s still there,’ Aphrael smiled.
‘Why can’t I see her, then?’
‘Because I don’t want people to see her. We passed a number of ordinary ships on our way here. If anybody’d seen her, there’d be wild talk in every sailors’ tavern in every port in the world.’
‘It’s all in the shape of the keel, isn’t it?’ Khalad mused.
‘Khalad!’ she said sharply. ‘You stop that immediately!’
‘I’m not going to do anything about it, Flute. I couldn’t if I wanted to, but it’s that keel that accounts for her speed. I’m only mentioning it so that you won’t make the mistake of thinking I’m so stupid that I can’t put it together.’
She glared at him.
He bent slightly and kissed her cheek. ‘That’s all right, Flute,’ he smiled. ‘I love you anyway – even if you do underestimate me at times.’
‘He’s going to work out just fine,’ Kalten said to Vanion.
The hillside rising from the gravel strand was covered with thick, rank grass, and by the time they had reached the top of the hill, the fog had entirely dissipated. A broad highway of reflected moonlight stretched out across the calm waters of the gulf.
‘My map shows a kind of track a mile or so inland,’ Vanion told them. ‘It seems to run up the gulf in the general direction of Jorsan.’ He looked at Flute, who was still glaring darkly at Khalad. ‘Pending instructions to the contrary from higher authority, I suppose we can follow that track.’ He looked inquiringly at the Child Goddess again.
She sank a little lower in Sephrenia’s arms and began to suck her thumb.
‘You’ll make your teeth crooked.’
She pulled her thumb out of her mouth and stuck her tongue out at him.
‘Shall we press on, then?’ Vanion suggested.
They rode on across a broad, rolling meadow covered with the rank salt-grass. The moon washed out all color, making the grass whipping at the horses’ legs seem gray and the forest beyond the meadow a formless black blot. They rode slowly, their eyes and ears alert and their hands never far from their sword-hilts. Nothing untoward had happened yet, but these were trained knights, and for them the world was always filled with danger.
After they rode in under the trees, Vanion called a halt.
‘Why are we stopping?’ Flute demanded a little crossly.
‘The moon’s very bright tonight,’ Vanion explained, ‘and our eyes need a little time to adjust to the shadows here under the trees. We don’t want to blunder into anything.’
‘Oh.’
‘Her night isn’t going too well, is it?’ Berit murmured to Sparhawk. ‘She seemed to be very upset with Khalad.’
‘It’s good for her. She gets over-confident sometimes, and a little too much impressed with her own cleverness.’
‘I heard that, Sparhawk,’ Flute snapped.
‘I rather thought you might have,’ he replied blandly.
‘Why is everyone mistreating me tonight?’ she complained.
’They’re only teasing you, Aphrael,’ Sephrenia assured the little girl, ‘clumsily, of course, but they’re Elenes, after all, so you can’t really expect too much from them.’
‘Shall we move on before things start to turn ugly?’ Vanion said.
They rode at a walk through the shadows, and after about half an hour they reached a narrow, rutted track. They turned eastward and moved on, riding a little faster now.
‘How far is it to Jorsan, my Lord?’ Bevier asked Vanion after they had gone a ways.
‘About fifty leagues,’ Vanion replied.
‘A goodly ways, then.’ Bevier looked inquiringly at Flute.
‘What?’ she said crossly.
‘Nothing, really.’
‘Say it, Bevier.’
‘I wouldn’t offend you for the world, Divine Aphrael, but could you speed the journey the way you did when we were traveling across Deira with King Wargun’s army?’
‘No, I can’t. You’ve forgotten that we’re waiting for something important to happen, Bevier, and I’m not going to fly past it just because you’re in a hurry to get to the taverns of Jorsan.’
‘That will do,’ Sephrenia told her.
Since it was still early autumn, they had not brought tents with them, and after about another hour’s travel they rode back into the forest and spread their blankets on beds of fallen leaves to get a few hours’ sleep.
The sun was well up when they set out again, and they travelled through the forest until late afternoon without encountering any local people.
Once again they moved back into the forest about a quarter of a mile, and set up for the night in a narrow ravine where an overhanging bank and the thick foliage would conceal the light from their small cooking fire. Rather surprisingly, Ulath did the cooking without any of his usual subterfuge. ‘It’s not as much fun when Tynian isn’t along,’ he explained.
‘I miss him too,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘It seems strange to be travelling without all those suggestions of his.’
‘This cooking business has come up before,’ Vanion observed. ‘Am I missing something?’
‘Sir Ulath normally keeps track of it, my Lord,’ Talen replied. ‘It’s a very complicated system, so none of the rest of us really understands how it works.’
‘Wouldn’t a simple roster do just as well?’ Vanion asked.
‘I’m sure it would, but Sir Ulath prefers his own method. It has a few drawbacks, though. Once Kalten cooked every single meal for an entire week.’
Vanion shuddered.
They had smoked mutton-chops that evening, and Ulath received some hard looks from his companions about that. Flute and Sephrenia, however, complimented him on his choice. After they had eaten, they sought their makeshift beds.
It must have been well past midnight when Talen shook Sparhawk awake, laying a cautious hand across his mouth to prevent his crying out. ‘There are some people back near the road,’ the boy whispered. They’ve built a big fire.’
‘What are they doing?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘Just standing around waiting for somebody, it seems – unless you want to count the drinking.’
‘You’d better rouse the others,’ Sparhawk told him, throwing off his blankets and reaching for his sword.
They crept through the forest in the darkness and stopped at the edge of a stump-dotted clearing. There was a large bonfire in the center of the clearing and nearly a hundred men – peasants, for the most part, judging from their clothing – sitting on the ground near the blaze. Their faces were ruddy from the reflected light and from the contents of the earthenware jars they were passing around.
‘Strange place to be holding a drinking-party,’ Ulath murmured. I wouldn’t come out this far into the woods for something as ordinary as that.’
‘Is this it?’ Vanion asked Flute, who was nestled in Sephrenia’s arms, concealed by her sister’s dark cloak.
‘Is this what?’
‘You know what I mean. Is this what we’re supposed to see?’
‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘I’ll know better when they all get here.’
‘Are there more coming?’
She nodded. ‘One, at least. The ones who are already here don’t matter.’
They waited as the peasants in the clearing grew progressively more and more rowdy.
Then a lone horseman appeared at the far edge of the clearing, near the road. The newcomer wore a dark cloak and a slouch hat pulled low over his face.
