The Starfollowers of Coramonde (25 page)

Landlorn’s
eyebrows rose. “Oh, but I, too, am a landsman by birth.”

“You? Then
how’d you end up here?” Gil saw immediately that it had been a gaffe. Gil had
answered the Prince’s questions though, and Landlorn’s etiquette compelled him
to do likewise.

“I come of
royalty; one of the lesser kingdoms whose name you would not know. My older
brother had the throne, and there was little liking between us. He proclaimed
it my duty to fetch him the bride he’d been promised by a neighboring king. I
was to bring her by sea, and was obliged to swear by oaths of honor and magic
that I would make no other landfall until I had brought her to him, do you see?

“Her name was
Serene. On that voyage she came to mean much to me. We were attacked by
corsairs and our ship burned, leaving us two adrift on a hatch cover for days.
Mariners picked us up at last, a rough-handed lot not much better than pirates
themselves, then.”

He broke off,
listening to men working to a long-haul chantey. Skewerskean’s clear voice
joined in, holding to the higher notes playfully.

“We might
have plead for ransoming, but I would not yield her up to my brother after all we
had gone through, and Serene did not wish it either. I was sufficiently the
swordsman that those nomads took me on. So you will understand, this royal
scion started out lowly on the backs of the oceans. I thought the day must soon
come when I should be free of my vow, and I would wait it out.

“But I had to
shun the shore, so my crewmates dubbed me Landlorn. I acquired the ways of the
sea, learned, mastered. I had been schooled, and so could resurrect lost lore
from old books that had survived the Great Blow, and
Osprey
is one
product of that. The Mariners put me at their head and I am content, though
there was more to it than that. My brother is dead now, and the bonds of my
vows eternal unless I become Oathbreaker and risk the magic that sealed them.
But I love the oceans; much rather would I be sentenced to life at sea than the
same on land exclusively. I have seen the waters in all their stations and
offices; the Wind-Roads are my realm and Serene is mine, and I am fulfilled.”

Landlorn was
speaking absently now, staring off over the sea. Gil said a fast good-bye and
rejoined the harpooner and the chanteyman at the quarterdeck ladder. He
marveled at the Prince’s story, wondering why it had left him with a deep,
unidentified sadness.

Wavewatcher
and Skewerskean gave him a hand in picking up what Mariner life was all about,
and became his friends. They replaced his torn and bloodied clothes with new
ones, a soft sealskin shirt and buckskin pants and jacket. The jacket had wing
epaulets, sewn with metal lamellae to protect the shoulders from sword cuts.

Then the
American was introduced to Mariner life. The Children of the Wind-Roads, under
the care and dominion of the currents of air and ocean, were intimates with
them. They had dozens of names for dawn, even more for sunset, cloud formations
and portents of weather. Gil would point to swells in the morning and ask the
Mariner name for them, but when he’d ask again at noon, the swells looking no
different to him, the two would have a new answer. The nuances escaped him
completely.

The sailors
defined the subtlest variations in clouds, their height, texture, luminosity
and drift. Weather predictions were extraordinarily accurate. Charts were
exhaustive, and the shorelines on maps, but interiors were largely ignored; the
Mariners merely called them “inlands.” When Gil mentioned it, Skewerskean
countered, “Does the landsman’s map tell of reef, channel and shoal?”

Wavewatcher
added, “And does the hawk concern himself with the rabbit’s warren?”

They had
their own estimations of worth. A man could be unexcelled with weapons or bare
hands, but if he lost equilibrium aloft or couldn’t steer by the stars, his
status was lowly. Wavewatcher, who’d hunted the whale whose every part was
valuable to the Mariners, was listened to with respect, but Skewerskean’s
chantey’s made work easier, whether he sang a hand-overhand to synchronize the
tautening of the braces, or a long-haul ditty for heavier work. The little man
was therefore the more welcome shipmate, with his gift for making drudgery
bearable. His repertoire was staggering, though he could improvise endlessly on
any subject, high or low.

“Mariners
would sooner swear than discourse,” he told Gil, “but they would sooner sing
than swear.” Tradition, law, philosophy and mythology were all bound up in
memorized verses and sagas, chanteys and hymns. Restless voices poured out
gratitude, humor, pride and pain.

Raised by one
parent or the other, Mariner boys might spend their youngest years at sea or
ashore. But early in life they began learning the lore of their peculiar tribe.
When a Mariner youth took his first ship as a man, he swam to it, from shore or
another ship. Naked, without one article from his former life, he made his rite
of passage. His survival depended solely on his new shipmates; he might not see
his loved ones for years or, in some cases, ever again. Among them he’d have to
earn, beg or otherwise obtain all that he needed or wanted in life. Subsequent
changes of berth would be more sedate, made as an adult. Yet, all Mariners were
fond of exchanging stories about their frightening Free Plunge, as they called
it, through menacing waters to an unknown world, their first ship.

Life in the
closeness of
Osprey
was rigidly codified. Each person had a right to as
much privacy as was feasible, under Ship’s Articles. The first things the two
partners taught Gil were the priorities for right-of-way on deck and in the
passageways and ladderwells. As supernumerary, the American classed among the
lowest groups, having to defer to officers, men on duty, and virtually anyone
else with anything useful to do. The pecking order was complicated: a junior
officer off watch would be expected to yield way to a crewman on duty if the
weather placed certain demands on the ship. There were dozens of individual
rules. Gil simply let anybody who wanted to pass him go right ahead.

Sleeping
accommodations, food, free time and shares of profit were governed by strict
laws of propriety. Over everything loomed the sanctity of the Ship, holy of
holies. Every thought and action must be considered in the context of its
effect on that common bond, shared habitat.

Osprey’s
crew was an elite. The barque was Landlorn’s greatest accomplishment, and there
was always more to learn from her. Gil lost himself in blue days and starry
nights, motionless gulls shedding air from their wings, the creaking and
snapping of rigging. He was making decent headway after Yardiff Bey. The Prince
wanted to go against the Isle of Keys, and the Southwastelanders were being
driven from the Crescent Lands. At times, he was very nearly content.

But other
sails began to appear in the sea around
Osprey,
a field of sailcloth
bearing for the Outer Hub, to hear the rede of war.

And seas, and rocks, and skies
rebound

 To arms, to arms, to arms!

Alexander Pope

“Ode for Music on St. Cecelia’s
Day”

OSPREY,
attended by her
smaller and slower escorts, arrived at her home port on a flawless morning. The
Outer Hub rested on a mountainous jut of island west of Veganá, its mammoth
walls and defenses commanding the only usable anchorage there. Gil had learned
that the citadels of the Mariners were called Hubs because all life and
commerce of the Children of the Wind-Roads revolved around them.

Fortifications
radiated from a complex perched on the slopes above the city proper. The
harbor’s gates were enormous, their timbers strapped and faced with iron, the
blunt heads of their rivets as wide as dinner platters. They were operated by
heavily geared machinery powered by teams of oxen laboring in roundhouses.
There were emplacements of mangonels, ballistas, fire-casters and
flame-sluices. Gil noticed most of those were pivot-mounted, and could be
brought to bear on the harbor if it came to that. The walls were of immense
stone blocks, and he wasn’t surprised to learn that, like most of the more
awesome constructions in the Crescent Lands, the Hub antedated the Great Blow.

The harbor
was crammed with the gathering of masts, assembled craft of a seafaring nation,
from bobbing gigs to a barque nearly the size of
Osprey,
riding stately
with sails clewed up, masts dominating the maritime forest. Every ship had her
emblem, a grasping kraken or sweet-faced mermaid, ram’s head or diadem,
pouncing black panther or four-winged gull.

Osprey
anchored at the harbor’s center. A longboat was put over the side for the first
parties to go ashore. Wavewatcher and Skewerskean were among the first to go.
The American promised to catch up later, saying Landlorn wished to see him.

The awning
had been removed from the quarterdeck. The Prince of the Waves was at the rail,
narwhale staff in hand, gazing distractedly at the Outer Hub. Gil pardoned
himself for interrupting; the man left off his woolgathering.

“The pursuit
of Yardiff Bey’s ship was fruitless; my captains never caught sight of him.
What thing is it, in your estimation, stolen by him from the library at
Ladentree?”

“Don’t I wish
I knew! Important enough for him to waste an army, is all I can tell you;
something he needs badly, or something he’s awfully afraid of.”

The Prince
accepted that. “His enterprises threaten us all. Have you heard tell of our
other citadel, the Inner Hub, that was destroyed? I have yet to envision what
force broke her sea wall, sank her picket ships, crushed her war engines and
the turrets that held them. Marry, Bey was responsible, but in what terrible
fashion he accomplished it, I cannot ken. We never observed his renowned flying
ship; many of our vessels mount heavy missile-throwers that he shuns.” His hand
swung the staff with its golden symbol. “If such destruction was loosed on the
sea, the Mariners may meet it yet. I fear that.”

He was
interrupted. A woman had come on deck, draped with a heavy cloak against the
ocean breeze. She looked younger than Landlorn, her graying hair caught back
from a heart-shaped face in a long plait, fastened with pearls. On her brow was
a circlet of polished coral set in platinum. Her countenance was happy but
careworn; ebullience made her appear more hardy than she was on closer
inspection. Landlorn went to her, preoccupations forgotten.

She hugged
him. “Well-come, husband.”

“And you,
wife.”

Gil witnessed
it with interest. So this was the woman who’d cost the Prince a lifetime exile
on the sea, or rather for whom he’d chosen one. Landlorn, remembering the
American was there, said, “This young ally we met up with on our voyage had a
bad time of it from Southwastelanders. He is called Gil.” Holding her hand up
proudly, he finished, “And this is my lady wife, Serene.”

Gil bowed,
something he’d almost never done, even in courtly Earthfast. Serene’s
good-humored dignity seemed to warrant it. The Prince recalled what he’d been
about to say.

“You
completed part of the riddle for me, Gil. I asked myself why, if Yardiff Bey
had the wherewithal to raze the Inner Hub, we saw none of it in our affrays
with the Occhlon. Now I know he was engaged in his act of theft, diverted by
more pressing matters.”

Gil
considered that. “Could be. Maybe he threw away men on the Inner Hub as he did
getting to Ladentree.” The thought struck sparks. “Was there a library at the
Inner Hub? Archives or something?”

“Certes; our
travels gather us much old doctrine, and many ancient books.”

“Then it’s a
good bet Bey was hunting a copy of
Arrivals Macabre
there; that’s why he
attacked your citadel. Let’s see, that would be, uh…” He calculated intervals,
talking to himself. “It would have been just before everything blew up in his
face in Earthfast. He masterminded the assault or whatever it was and netted a
copy of Rydolomo’s book. He brought it to Earthfast, the copy whose binder
Andre deCourteney found in his sanctum. When we took the palace-fortress, Bey
skipped with the pages, to Dulcet’s house. When he found out he had the wrong
copy, he got busy on the invasion of Veganá and Glyffa, so he could get to
Ladentree. So naturally you people haven’t seen any sign of the slam he used on
the Inner Hub; he’s been tied up with his main game, bagging
Arrivals
Macabre.
But he’s got it now, probably the right one this time.”

Serene was
watching worriedly, and Landlorn was scowling. He finished his reconstruction.
“If Bey’s latched onto whatever it was he wanted, we’ve got to get at him as
soon as we can. Put if off and there might be no stopping him.”

He regretted
having put it all out in front of them when he saw Serene’s face marred with
apprehension. Landlorn said, “I will be speaking to the Mariners tonight, here
in the harbor. That will decide the question of the Isle of Keys.”

Gil shied
from asking the obvious question because Serene was present. She pursued it
herself. “Will they affirm your plan?”

The Prince
Who Sails Forever admitted, “It is moot. They are weary of war, and with every
reason. It would be a costly battle, I trow, but if we do not go to the Isle,
it will put forth its grasp to find us. Best confront it now.”

His wife
agreed dolorously, and Landlorn slipped an arm through hers, twirling his
staff, jollying her unavailingly. Gil left them to their reunion.

Going ashore
in the next boat, the salt spray putting its taste on his lips, he caught sight
of Landlorn pacing the quarterdeck, Serene evidently having gone below. The
last view the American had of him was the Prince’s silhouette against the sky,
with the wind stirring his hair, watching his people and their land, on which
he had never set foot, and never would.