To Armantaro, she confided, “I fear for Ambassador Quenavalen. Our absence may cost him and his party their lives. How long do you think it will take us to get back to the Greenthorn?”
The colonel put this question to the captain, who replied, “With fair wind and no ill magic, we should enter the Gulf of Ergoth in eleven days.”
“By Astra! That long?” Vixa exclaimed.
“Lady, three hundred leagues is nine hundred land miles,” Esquelamar explained. “Evenstar cannot cover such a stretch overnight.”
“And yet she just did,” Armantaro observed dryly.
Solinari, the white moon, rose from the sea and shone brightly on the lonely ship. The brisk westward wind continued.
Vixa, Armantaro, and Captain Esquelamar were alone on the quarterdeck. The old colonel, his white hair shining in the moonlight, was swapping stories with the captain, nearest of all aboard to his own age. Vixa listened with interest for a time, but the gentle rocking of the ship and the rushing of water by the hull soon conspired to make her eyelids heavy. She sat down on deck, leaning against the starboard rail. Once the drawstrings at the throat of her mail shirt were untied, she luxuriated in the feel of the warm breeze washing over her. She slept, her sheathed sword lying across her knees.
Perhaps it was the sound of the rushing water or the motion of the ship, but in her dreams, Vixa found herself swimming in a black ocean. Silver shapes darted around her. They were fish. Enchanted, Vixa tried to reach out and touch them, but they managed to elude her and were swallowed by the darkness. Then she heard the faraway skirling of pipes. It was strange, remote music, tuneless yet lyrical. The black water coursed by her face, as if she were hurtling at great speed through the dark sea. A roar of crashing waves filled her ears.
“Your Highness! Lady Vixa!” Armantaro was calling. Vixa’s eyes opened, and she sat up, blinking in confusion.
“What?” she said. “What is it, Colonel?”
“Look at the sea, lady!”
Unsteadily, she hoisted herself to her feet. The strong wind of the night before had diminished. Though the sun had not yet risen, the predawn light was sufficient to show a marvelous sight. The sea surrounding Evenstar was alive with fish. Fingerlings, cod, perch, mackerel, and hundreds Vixa could not name leapt and swam across the ocean’s surface, heading away from the Qualinesti ship. They scrambled up from the depths and kept going, swimming over each other. Fish that normally would have feasted on each other ignored each other in their mad haste.
Now dolphins appeared, arcing in and out of the water. They raced ahead of the sailing ship, zigzagging across Evenstar’s bow. Vixa was amazed at their speed and grace. She ran forward along the railing, trying to keep the dolphins in sight. After them came pilot whales and black-fish-dark-skinned animals twice the size of the dolphins. Then, most astonishing of all, several whales breached. Huge gray backs broke the surface, water and other fish cascading over the smooth hides. The whales were mottled with barnacles. Flukes as wide as the ship’s waist waved in the air and plunged down again, sending surges of water against the hull. Vixa braced herself as Evenstar rolled in the whales’ wake.
The tumult brought all the sailors up from their hammocks. Some of them seized the opportunity to drop nets over the side. Laughing, they hauled nets full of bluegill and sea trout aboard, spilling the flopping fish over the deck. The noise also roused the Qualinesti soldiers. Rubbing their eyes, the warriors joined the others on deck.
“Have you ever seen the like, Captain?” Vixa shouted over the splash of fish.
“No, lady, and I wish I weren’t seeing it now!”
“How so? It’s a splendid sight.”
“ ’Tis not natural. All those creatures do not commune together. Something has disturbed them-frightened them into flight.”
“What can frighten a whale?” she wondered, watching a massive gray head break the surface.
Esquelamar’s worried eyes scanned the teeming ocean. “I don’t know, my lady,” he replied, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
The furious activity lessened. The dolphins wheeled about the ship like cavalry and departed. Whales submerged and did not return. Within half an hour of Vixa’s awakening, all the commotion had ceased. On the main deck, sailors busied themselves with cleaning and salting their bounty.
Esquelamar leaned over the rail, staring at the empty waves. His high brow creased in a frown. “Bosun! Where’s that laggard of a bosun?”
A lean, barefoot elf with carroty hair ran to the captain’s side. “Aye, sir?” he said.
“There’s mud in the water. It could’ve been stirred up by the fish, or we could be in uncharted shallows. Take the lead line forward and sound. Be quick!”
The lead line was a length of twine with a lead weight tied to one end. At certain points along the line knots were made, indicating various depths. The bosun took the lead line and climbed out on the ship’s beak. He let the weight drop into the water, paying out line as it sank. When the weight hit bottom, his sharp eyes read the mark at the ocean’s surface below.
“Three fathoms and a half!” he sang out.
“Twenty-one feet,” Armantaro advised his princess.
“In the open sea? Sound again,” ordered the captain.
The bosun hauled in his lead and dropped it overboard again. “Two fathoms, even!”
“What! There should be more than forty fathoms under us,” Esquelamar insisted. “Reef in all sails!”
Sailors clambered aloft and gathered in the sails. The captain mounted the rigging. “Damn it,” he mumbled. “There’s mud everywhere. Sound again, bosun!”
In seconds the reply came back: “Ten fathoms and a quarter!”
“What?” roared the captain. He swung around to the elves at the capstan, who were preparing to heave the anchor overboard. “Belay the anchor, lads.”
“Captain!” The young bosun’s voice was full of astonishment. “Full forty fathoms!”
“This is madness,” Esquelamar said, shaking his head.
“Not so, good Captain,” Vixa called. She descended the steps from the quarterdeck and made her way to where the captain clung to the rigging.
“There are accounts of such upheavals happening all over Ansalon,” she continued. “The sages taught me that the skin of the world is not unyielding. It flexes every day, rising in some places and falling in others. Such are the circumstances of earthquakes.”
“I never heard this,” he said gruffly.
“Her Highness is correct.” Armantaro stated. “I myself have read of these earthquakes and volcanoes, where the gods shake the ground, great buildings topple, and people are swallowed by new fissures in the land.”
“Have the gods cursed us?” cried a sailor overhearing this exchange.
“Belay that! If the learned lady and the colonel say these things happen naturally, then we’re not the object of the gods’ disfavor,” declared the captain loudly. The light of the rising sun showed his lean face shiny with sweat, but he managed a smile. “Raise sail, lads! Let us begone from these strange waters!”
Evenstar wallowed westward under renewed sail.
Vixa shed the last of her armor and dressed herself in a plain leather jerkin, baggy cavalry pants, and boots. Despite her highborn status, she had little use for fine clothes, expensive jewelry, and courtly manners. Her father, Lord Kemian Ambrodel, despaired of her ever becoming a refined princess. He had to content himself with the fact that at least his youngest daughter had inherited his love of learning. In her rooms in the palace, books and scrolls vied for space with swords, armor, maces, and bows. Vixa’s mother, Lady Verhanna, commander of the armies of Qualinost, wholeheartedly endorsed Vixa’s military bent. “There are thousands of delicate elfmaidens,” she was fond of saying, “but shockingly few good warriors.”