Goldenhand (7 page)

At Sea, near the Mouth of the Greenwash

T
he raft of reeds slowed as the river lost its frantic pace, the spinning and rocking giving way to a gentler movement as the makeshift vessel moved out into the mouth of the Greenwash and began to simply ride up and down with the long ocean swell. It was relatively calm, the sky clear with the promise of a fine spring day ahead, once the sun deigned to lift itself above the horizon. Though still very cold, it had stopped snowing hours before as the clouds departed.

The unnatural fire in the small pot continued to burn, and the black smoke continued to climb and drift. It would be visible from some distance now, a dark wavering line drawn vertically against the pale predawn sky.

Ferin slept on. Worn out from her journey, pursued and hunted most of the way, she would have been hard to wake even before she was wounded as well. With the shock from that on top of her general exhaustion, her body had retreated into a very deep sleep indeed, almost a coma. The transition from swirling river currents to the slow rise and fall of the sea had not impinged in the slightest upon her, though in the mountains she prided herself on being alert at all times, and it was true she would usually wake at the slightest noise or a change of light or sensation.

But now she didn't even wake when a fishing boat came up carefully alongside, and two pairs of strong arms hauled her up and over the gunwale, while others pushed the raft away with oars, in order
to part company as quickly as possible with the unnatural burning pot, its all-too-visible trail of black smoke and the faint but persistent reek of Free Magic.

There were four fisher-folk on the boat, all from one family. Two sons and a daughter, under the command of their mother and captain, a woman named Karrilke. They were all of middle height, but broad-shouldered and with mighty forearms from drawing heavy nets, their skin cured by sun, wind, and sea to a shade that matched the timber of their boat, which, as was the fisher-folk's custom, had no name.

Karrilke bore the Charter mark on her brow and knew a few spells. Most were simple charms, to find the way at night or in fog, to locate the bigger shoals of fish, to gain warning of storms. But the captain also knew a healing spell, one employed many a time to quell the bleeding from a knife cut or to soothe a bad rope burn.

She cast that spell upon Ferin's wounded ankle, or tried to. Though she was sure she had found the right marks in the great swim of the Charter, and joined them just so, the bright symbols skittered from the nomad's skin and broke apart into nothingness.

The spell did, however, wake Ferin up with a fierce and very sudden pain which stabbed her in the navel, sharper even than the pain when the crossbow bolt had creased her leg. It was as if a sharp blade had punctured her right in the stomach, pushed all the way through and out her back.

Ferin came up with a jerk, hands fumbling for her knife, a fumble that turned into a wild flailing action as she realized she was wrapped not in her cloak, but in several dry blankets of scratchy wool. The flailing lasted only a few moments before she was held fast by two fisher-folk gripping her limbs, the one who held her injured leg careful of the wound, collecting a kick for her pains.

“Steady there, steady,” called Karrilke. “We mean you no harm. We are fisher-folk, pure and simple. We sell our catch both sides of
the Greenwash, to your people as well as our own.”

Ferin flexed against her captors one more time, but finding their grip impossible to loosen, and with the pain in her navel going away and so clearly not the result of
actually
being stabbed with a spear or knife, she let herself relax. Hopefully they would too, and give her a chance to escape a little later, when they were off guard. Though with four of them, all strong and wiry, she figured she would probably have a better chance of talking her way out of trouble. They all had knives, she saw. Not fighting knives, but a fish-gutting knife could end a life as easily as any other blade.

“Not my people,” she said. There was a trace of bitterness in that. The other tribes should have respected her as a messenger, but they did not.

“Not yours?” asked Karrilke. “You have the look of the Twenty Tribes, though your clothes are unfamiliar.”

“I'm of the Athask; we are of the mountains, not the steppe,” said Ferin slowly. She was coming fully conscious, eyes slowly moving to take in her situation, to gauge the strength of her enemies. If they were enemies. “Though it is true we usually count ourselves kin to the horse-lovers. Cousins, not sisters.”

“So, cousin of the horse people, my name is Karrilke. What do we call you?”

Ferin was silent for a moment. She wondered if she should simply adopt a name to make it easier to go among strangers. But what name? It was easier again to simply give them what her little not-sister Lilioth called her.

“Ferin,” she said.

“Ferin from the far mountains,” said Karrilke. “What brings you to the mouth of the Greenwash, in a raft of reeds, with a burning pot that reeked of Free Magic?”

“I am a messenger,” said Ferin. “I am taking a message to the other side of the great river, to the witches who live in the ice mountain.”

“There is a bridge upstream,” said Karrilke. “Easier to walk across that than take to a raft of reeds.”

“I tried the bridge,” said Ferin slowly. She was looking at Karrilke's eyes, trying to gauge who this fisherwoman was, how she would react. “Enemies were watching; I was wounded in the fight. They will be watching still, it being the only bridge. I had to take to the water. And it has worked out, has it not? If you take me to the southern shore, I will give you gold.”

“You don't think we will just steal whatever valuables you have?” asked Karrilke.

“No,” said Ferin. “I do not think so. Your eyes do not slink about when you talk. Besides, you have the magic mark on your forehead, like the witch in the cave whose message I bear. That is an omen that you will help me.”

“Is it?” asked Karrilke, but she smiled. “A witch in a cave? In your mountains? Who bore the Charter mark?”

“Yes,” said Ferin. “She came from the witches in the ice.”

“You mean the Clayr?” asked Karrilke.

“Yes,” said Ferin. “But I do not say so, because names may call the named, or others who listen for the name, on the wind. Already I know there are many who do not want my message to arrive.”

“The strange fire in the pot, that is the work of what we would call a Free Magic sorcerer,” said Karrilke slowly, as she tried to puzzle out this strange catch from the sea. “But you do not seem to be one yourself. They do not readily take to the water and, among your people, are chained at the neck, are they not?”

“I am no witch,” said Ferin. “The fire . . . it came from a spirit-glass arrow. I would have died of the chill else.”

“I have heard of those arrows,” said Karrilke. “Treasures, are they not?”

“My message is very important, both for my people and your own,” said Ferin. “I carried three spirit-glass arrows when I set
out. Now, tell me. Will you take me to the southern side of the Greenwash?”

Karrilke did not answer immediately. She looked away from Ferin, huddled in the blankets on the swaying deck, and out over the sea. The shore could be seen in the distance as a dark smudge on the horizon; they were now north of the Greenwash, so that land was at least notionally claimed by one of the clans. Drifting near this shore, but still too close for Karrilke's liking, a thin line of very dark smoke rose from the raft.

“We should have sunk it,” she said, half to herself.

“What?” asked Ferin, as the captain grabbed a stay and stood up on the gunwale, to look in all directions.

“We should have sunk your raft and that fire with it,” said Karrilke. “That smoke may invite interest from those it is better to avoid. Now tell me, will you swear upon . . . what do you mountain-folk swear upon?”

“We do not swear upon anything,” said Ferin. “We simply keep our word.”

“Then if you will agree to keep the peace, and follow my orders, we will release you.”

“Will you take me to the southern shore?” asked Ferin. “I will pay.”

“Our home port is Yellowsands, twenty leagues south of the Greenwash mouth. We will take you there. But not until our hold is full of salted batith.”

Ferin looked puzzled.

“Batith are fish,” whispered one of the crew who held her.

“But . . . but I have said I will pay!” exclaimed Ferin. She began to struggle again, and found the grip of the sons and daughter had not relaxed. “I have gold. Enough to pay for any cargo of fish.”

“I have never sailed home to Yellowsands without a full hold,” said Karrilke. “The fishing has been good; it should take only three,
perhaps four more days before we can strike for home.”

“My message is very important!” cried Ferin. “I cannot waste
any
time! Let me show you the gold!”

“Time is never wasted, fishing,” said Karrilke. “Money is only money.”

“Can you sell me one of your . . . your little boats?” asked Ferin desperately, seeing two dinghies lashed down on the other side of the deck.

“Do you know how to sail one?” asked Karrilke.

“No,” said Ferin. “I would work it out.”

“In any case, we use them for fishing,” said Karrilke. “Now, will you agree to be peaceable and follow orders, and work with us, and in three or four days you will most likely be landed alive and un-drowned at Yellowsands.”

“Most likely?”

“Nothing can ever be entirely certain at sea,” said Karrilke. “Perhaps I should say we will all do our best to see you safe ashore, south of the Greenwash, once we have caught our fill of fish.”

“I see no choice,” said Ferin slowly. “But I tell you, even the delay of three days may mean the deaths of many of my people, and perhaps of yours too. My message is truly important.”

“You are young, and a long way from home,” said Karrilke. “I expect they told you your message is more important than it really is. Otherwise they would have sent an older messenger—”

“I am the best messenger!” interrupted Ferin. “I have been trained since I could walk to be the best at everything. Let me stand and I will show you!”

Karrilke smiled.

“In any case, if it is anything of great significance, the Clayr will have Seen it. Now we are wasting time. Will you swear, and in three days be landed safe to take your message onward?”

“I must,” said Ferin despondently. “I swear to be peaceable, and
obey, in return for being taken ashore to the south, when you are ready.”

“Good,” said Karrilke. She signaled to her son and daughter, who readily let go and backed away. “Your first task is to lie there, to sleep if you can. The wound in your leg would not take a healing spell, but it should improve with rest. Lie still, I mean it!”

She added that last because Ferin was struggling to sit up, to see more than the bottom of the boat and the sky above.

“I would like to see,” said Ferin respectfully, her eyes cast down, as she would address an elder of the tribe.

“Tolther, Huire, lift her carefully and put her back against the mast,” said Karrilke. “But you, Ferin, keep your legs straight out, and do not fidget. Hurry, there is fishing to be done!”

“I'm Tolther,” said the young man as he helped lift Ferin. “Mother is strict, but she's fair. We'll sail at all speed for home once the hold is full.”

“And I'm Huire,” said the young woman. “What did your white fur come from? It's so soft and warm.”

“A big hunting cat,” said Ferin. Now that she had given her word and so could not dive over the side and swim for the distant land or make some other stupidly desperate effort to continue her mission, she felt very weary again and her leg was extremely painful. The fisher-folk set her down very gently, but even so, she had difficulty not showing how much the wound hurt. Though she was sure they could not tell. She did not want to be the first of the Athask people to show pain in front of strangers, being certain none ever had.

“I thank you for your kindness,” she managed to get out, and then through hooded eyes caught a brief glimpse of the sea about them, a huge blue-grey wave lifting the boat for a few seconds before they slid down its side into the trough, with the white spray flying up, all of it strange to Ferin, who had never left the mountains before.

Then she passed out again, and slept, as Karrilke shouted commands and the mainsail was hoisted and trimmed to a useful, arching billow. The slap of the waves on the hull became louder as the vessel drew closer to the wind and moved faster, heading to the northeast and farther away from land. Aiming for the banks, the uprising of the seabed fifty or sixty leagues distant, where the great shoals of batith swarmed, waiting to be caught.