“We’re flying!” Hamil said with a laugh of delight. He leaned by the rail, one hand knotted in the shrouds as he looked over the side.
“Lord Geran, I’ll give ye every gold coin I own if ye’ll only set us down again,” Andurth Galehand answered. “It’s no’ right for a ship to behave in such a way!”
“We’ve more flying ahead of us, so you might as well learn to like it,” Geran told the sailing master. “I’ll hold her steady for a bit. Have the crew take us down to half-sail or less. I don’t think we need much canvas at all right now.”
The dwarf looked pale, but he nodded. “Aye, m’lord.” He turned and started shouting orders at the crew.
Geran looked at the compass and said, “Level now, and steady as she goes,” he said. The bowsprit dropped a bit, and the deck slowly leveled in front of him. Now they might be sailing along on a smooth, calm day-but the Moonsea was hundreds of feet below their keel. He realized that he could see quite a distance from their height. Off his port bow he could make out the distant peaks of the Galena Mountains, glimmering orange with the sunset above a mantle of clouds that blanketed their lower slopes. And on his starboard beam he could faintly make out the snowy slopes of the high Earthspurs, rising in the wild lands south of Mulmaster-the better part of a hundred and fifty miles off, if he was right in his reckoning.
“Amazing,” he murmured. He watched the crewhands taking in sail. When he was satisfied, he turned gently to run across the wind again. The ship heeled over, but much less than before; it was about the same as running across a stiff breeze in a waterborne vessel. “Ascend normally,” he said aloud. This time the bowsprit came up even higher, and the ship seemed to soar upward as she climbed. A glance over his shoulder at the Moonsea dropping away below convinced Geran that he wouldn’t ever need to order the ship to ascend at its best rate; he already felt as if he’d better hang on to the helm to make sure he didn’t fall over the sternrail. He was surprised to see a small wisp of cloud pass by beneath them.
“How high can we go?” he wondered. “The air grows thin and cold atop the highest mountains. If we sail into the high reaches of the sky, wouldn’t we encounter the same conditions?”
“What little I have read of voyaging in the Sea of Night suggests that we will,” Sarth said. “The aether above the world is too rare to breathe, but artifacts such as the compass or magical helms gather it closely about the vessel-or so I have read. I recommend a cautious ascent, so that we can turn back if I am mistaken.”
“A wise suggestion,” Geran agreed. He glanced again at the compass and saw that the symbols along its equator were glowing brightly. The skies were darkening overhead, and he could make out the first dim stars glittering in the sky. Symbols and stars … he smiled at his own thickheadedness. “The compass symbols are constellations!” he said to Sarth and Hamil. “Look, that one right in front of us, that’s the Swordsman,” he said, pointing at the compass. “And look where our bow is pointed-the Swordsman is rising right in front of us. And that one to the left of it, that must be the Phoenix.”
Sarth leaned close to inspect the compass. “I think you are right, Geran,” he said. “Terrestrial directions must become meaningless in the Sea of Night. With no north, no south, a voyager must find some other way to mark his course. The constellations keep their places in the sky as Toril turns beneath them.”
Seadrake continued to climb up through the twilight. Gale-hand peeked over the rail and quickly retreated with a sick look on his face. “Where are we bound?” he asked Geran. “Just how high d’you mean to sail?”
“That’s a good question,” Hamil said. “Where are we bound? I’d sort of hoped it might be obvious once we got aloft, but now I’m not so sure. Kraken Queen could be anywhere!”
Geran pondered the question for a moment. Narsk might have had some instruction from the Red Wizards in Mulmaster, but he doubted that Kamoth would have entrusted them with the location of his hidden isle. It was more likely that he’d told Narsk how to find his retreat beforehand. “Kamoth’s letters,” he murmured. He frowned and brought them to mind again. In the second letter there’d been a strange phrase, something he hadn’t understood at the time: Neshuldaar, the eleventh tear.
He focused on the starry compass, with its slowly turning constellations and bright pinpricks of light. “Show me the course to Neshuldaar,” he said to the device.
The small pinpoint of white light at the top of the compass abruptly moved and disappeared. It returned a moment later at the side of the compass, but this time it was a bright, six-pointed star, the brightest symbol visible in the device. Geran grinned and slowly turned the helm in that direction; the six-pointed star swung around like the needle of a lodestone until it rested in the center of the device, and there Geran steadied the helm. Their course seemed to lead a little to the right of the Swordsman.
“Look there,” Geran said to Hamil. He pointed at the flickering star. “That’s where we’re bound. Neshuldaar, whatever or wherever it might be.”
They were higher than the tallest mountain peaks now, and the world was passing into night below them. Geran thought he could make out the lights of Mulmaster far below their keel, but it was possible that it was some other city altogether; their speed was increasing as they rose, and they were sailing far faster than the wind could ever have carried them. The air grew thin, and frost glittered on the decks and rails, but Sarth’s prediction seemed accurate-conditions remained tolerable, if not particularly pleasant, even as the blue haze of the world began to give way to the pure dark of the Sea of Night. The ship’s crew began to break out heavy cloaks for all hands on deck.
Geran relinquished the ship’s wheel to the helmsman of the evening watch after careful instructions about the ship’s handling. He stepped over to the rail to join Hamil and Sarth in admiring the night sky, now brighter and clearer than anything he’d ever imagined possible. Selune and her Tears seemed as bright as silver suns as they rose over the port bow, and Geran noted that their course seemed to be taking them swiftly in the moon’s direction. Was that the meaning of the Black Moon’s name? A reference not to the Moonsea, but to Selune itself?
They kept to the destination indicated in Narsk’s letter, and the world fell farther away under the keel. After several hours, Geran came to realize that they might be at sea-so to speak-for what might amount to a day or two of voyaging, perhaps more. He told Andurth to set the normal sailing watch and arranged a rotation of trusted helmsmen. He wanted Sarth, Hamil, or himself on deck at all times, just in case the journey took some unexpected turn. Then he went below to rest for a while.
When Geran came back up on deck after sleeping a few hours, Selune filled half the sky. A quarter crescent of the moon’s silver-white surface glowed with such brilliance that Seadrake’s deck was almost as bright as it would have been at twilight on a clear day, despite the black skies around them. Most of the moon’s surface was in shadow, but Geran could still make out its warm gray outline against the blackness of the sky. Behind the moon a long, disorderly line of lesser bodies trailed behind the great orb, slowly tumbling and drifting against the starry dark-the Tears of Selune. From the world below they were a crown of gems sparkling to the west of the moon, but from his new vantage Geran could see that they were tiny island-worlds that formed a great archipelago across the dark sky.