For Shimmer, it did come to seem as if they moved within a dream as the changeless days of travel upon the river slipped from one on to the next until all became one. The unruffled earthen-brown waters flowed beneath the ship as smoothly as if they traversed a slide of mud. Not a breath stirred the leaden air between the walls of verdant green where flowers blazed bright as flames. The sails hung limp, damp and rotting. Yet the vessel moved upriver against the sluggish current. As the days passed, the crew came to huddle listless and dozing in the heat on the deck. They watched with fever-glazed eyes the vine-burdened branches brushing overhead. All came to speak in hushed whispers as if afraid of breaking the spell of stillness that hung upon the river.
As evening came on, clouds gathered as predictably as the sun’s own setting and a torrential downpour would hammer them through the night. So dense was the warm rain that it seemed that they had sunk into the river. Nothing of either shore could be seen through the solid sheets. To be heard one had to press one’s mouth to another’s ear. Figures would appear suddenly from the roaring downpour, emerging like ghosts. Come the dawn the clouds would be gone as if they’d thrown themselves to the ground and the day’s heat would gather like a sticky tar. Heavy mist arose to smother the river. To Shimmer it appeared so dense it could actually snag and catch at passing branches and hanging vines. Her sodden clothes gave off a vapour as if she were boiling — and she had long given up her armour as a useless rusted heap.
Throughout, she kept a wary eye on the vessel itself. At times it appeared terrifyingly derelict, as if everyone had been snatched away, or become ghosts. Its shrouds hung in loose tatters. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d glimpsed a sailor among the spars or in the rigging. Yet it continued to move, silently gliding. In the dawn and dusk it resembled to her nothing more than a mist-cast shadow, or their own ghost.
One dawn she emerged from below to find the crew sprawled asleep and no one at the tiller. Of the Avowed, Cole was on watch and she spotted him standing near the bow. ‘Cole,’ she called. The man did not answer. ‘Cole!’ Still he did not respond. She crossed to his side and leaned close; he was staring down over the side at the passing blood-hued water. She reached out and gently touched his shoulder. The man slowly blinked. ‘Cole? Can you hear me?’ He frowned now and his gaze rose to her; for a moment he stared as if not recognizing her, then he drew a sudden breath, as if broaching a great depth.
‘There are things in the water, Shimmer,’ he pronounced as if imparting a profound secret.
‘Where’s the pilot — what’s his name? Gods, I can’t even remember his name …’
Blinking heavily, Cole peered about, frowning. ‘I’m sorry, Shimmer — it’s morning already?’
She squeezed his arm. ‘It’s all right. I feel it too.’ She headed for the afterdeck. ‘Captain! You are needed! Captain!’
The men and women of the crew stirred yet none moved to set to work. Shimmer took hold of the tiller arm. The captain arrived, unshaven, in a stained shirt that hung to his knees. He was followed by Rutana and K’azz. ‘Where is the pilot, Captain?’
The man rubbed his jowls, his brows rising. ‘We’ll have a look for him,’ and he lumbered off.
‘Shimmer,’ K’azz said, ‘what happened?’
‘I found the tiller unmanned.’
Rutana snorted at that, as if scornful.
‘You have something to say?’ Shimmer asked.
The woman nodded, her gaze defiant. ‘We may have had a pilot, Isturé, but another has been in control of the vessel for some time.’
‘Another? Who?’
Rutana smiled as she squeezed the bands indenting her upper arms. ‘Ardata, of course.’
The captain reappeared. ‘He’s not on the ship. Must’ve fallen overboard. We’ll have to go back to look for him.’
‘We are not going back, Captain,’ Rutana announced without breaking gaze with Shimmer.
‘Yes, we are,’ K’azz said. He motioned to Shimmer. ‘Turn us round.’
She clasped both hands on the long arm of battered wood and pushed. The broad tiller swung but somehow the ship did not respond. It continued its slow sluggish advance.
Rutana’s contemptuous smile climbed even higher. ‘There is no turning back now, Isturé.’ And she walked off.
Shimmer’s gaze found K’azz, who was eyeing the tiller arm, his mouth sour and tight. ‘What now?’ she asked.
He drew breath to answer but a shout went up from the crow’s nest. ‘A village ahead! People!’ The crew surged to the larboard rail. Even the crewman from the crow’s nest came swinging hand over hand down the ropes. The Avowed gathered at the stern with K’azz. Banners of mist painted the river’s surface and coiled along the jungle shore. Through them, Shimmer glimpsed a clearing dotted by leaf-topped huts standing on tall stilts. Figures lined the shore. Most were in loincloths and bright feathers decorated their hair and hung at arms and legs. The crewmen and women waved, shouting. ‘Hello! Help! Help us! We are ensorcelled!’
‘Back to work, damn you all!’ the captain bellowed in answer.
‘We’re cursed!’ one shouted and jumped overboard.
‘Not a good idea …’ Rutana warned.
The rest of the crew followed in a surge, as if terrified they would be held back. They jumped, arms waving, and splashed into the murky water to emerge blowing and gasping. The captain managed to catch one woman by the arm only to be smacked down for his trouble. He lay holding his head and groaning. The entire crew swam for the shore. Shimmer shot a questioning look to K’azz who motioned a negative. ‘Let them go,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps they will find their way to the coast.’
‘Or perhaps they will all be eaten,’ Rutana offered, laughing her harsh cackle.
K’azz faced her. ‘Then see that they are not …’
Her hands, closed about her neck, seemed to squeeze off her laugh in a hiss. She jerked her head to Nagal at the bow. The big man climbed up among the loose rotten rigging and yelled to the shore in a language Shimmer had never heard before. A banner of mist wafted across the river and the bank and when it had passed the figures were gone, disappearing as if they had never been.
‘Thank you,’ K’azz said.
But Rutana only sneered and turned away.
Through the scarves of fog Shimmer caught glimpses of the crew dragging themselves up the muddy shore and running into the jungle. Then a curve in the river’s course carried them from sight. She turned to K’azz. Their commander had a hand on the tiller arm, which jerked this way and that, yet to no apparent shift in the vessel’s course. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
He shook his head as if awakening from a reverie and his gaze jerked from hers — as if terrified, she thought. Terrified of what? Our situation? Or of what he may reveal?
‘A lesson here, Shimmer,’ he murmured, his mouth tight. ‘One can squirm and fight against it, but everyone is drawn inexorably along to the fate awaiting them.’
‘I don’t believe in that self-serving predestiny justification that religions flog.’
He nodded his understanding and she was struck by how skull-like his features appeared. ‘Well, let us call it a natural proclivity then,’ and he offered a smile that struck her as heart-achingly sad. ‘No one’s alone from now on,’ he called, raising his voice. ‘Watches at all times. A mage on each watch.’
Shimmer saluted. ‘Yes, Commander.’
Yet the spell that clung over the river and surrounding impenetrable walls of forest somehow made the distinction of being on or off watch irrelevant. Shimmer, and, as it seemed, the rest of them, found it increasingly difficult to sleep. She would lie only to stare at the damp mouldering wood unable to slip into any dreams. And so she would arise and go above and here she would find the majority of the party, eyes on the river or passing shores, silent and watchful, like a standing troop of mist-shrouded statues.