It happens faster than one imagines. One minute, the ship is turning slowly, inching through its own backwater, oars beating the sea into a seemingly futile roil. And then, suddenly, the waves are slipping past, lapping at the sides with ever-increasing speed.
A cheer arose from the sailors, and Quintilius Rousse breached a keg of wine for toasts all around; it is tradition, I learned later, at the start of each voyage.
In this, we shared. Hyacinthe tossed his down, gazing about him exuberantly. I sipped mine, finding it warming against the chilly wind. Joscelin stared into his mug and looked rather green.
"I don’t think I’m a sailor," he murmured.
Quintilius Rousse, strolling past, clapped him on the shoulder. "Drink it, lad," he said heartily. "If it comes back up, so be it. Just bend over the side, and give your toll to the Lord of the Deeps."
It proved to be prophetic advice. I winced with sympathy as Joscelin clutched the railing and leaned over, retching. Hyacinthe grinned.
"Cassilines aren’t fit for the Long Road," he said. "Not when it extends over sea!"
"He can start a fire with damp tinder in the middle of a blizzard," I said, feeling an obscure need to defend him. "I didn’t see any Tsingani in the heart of the Skaldic wilderness, Prince of Travellers."
"We’re not that stupid." Hyacinthe laughed, and wandered off to watch the sailors at work, already taking on a rolling sea-man’s gait. I watched him sourly, left to tend to the heaving Cassiline. There is something innately pitiful about a man in vambraces spewing up his breakfast.
It was Rousse’s plan to sail due west, running ahead of the wind that blows through the Straits. If we got a good-enough lead, he reckoned, we might outrun Elder Brother’s reach, gaining the open sea and rounding the southern tip of Alba.
It was a good plan, and from what I understood, we took a good run at it. A full half a day we sailed, until we were well and truly betwixt shores, neither visible, not Terre d’Ange that we had left, nor Alba that we sought. The weather held clear, and the wind blew true. As we headed west, nothing lay before us but open sea that made my blood run cold with its endless horizon, and made the sailors sing. Truly, they are a different breed, seafarers. I fixed my inner compass by the points around me, even in direst straits, knowing where I was. It is different for them. The unknown, the empty vastness of the sea, beckons with a lure I can but imagine.
Outermost west, the Tsingani had called the far shores of Kusheth. I understood then that it was only the place where the outermost west began, for the sea stretched endlessly, onward and onward, toward where the sun dies each night. Outermost west is beyond our ken. It is there, somewhere, the priests say, that Mother Earth and the One God created a realm where the sun never dies, but only rests; the true Terre d’Ange, where Elua walks smiling, naked feet treading upon the soil, and green things grow in his wake.
So it may be; I can only believe, and trust that it was true. Our journey was but a day’s, and even that met its end.
It came, as such things ever do, when we believed that we had passed the point of crisis, and our way lay clear before us. No one knows, for a surety, how far the reach of the Master of the Straits extends. Without a doubt, it was farther than Quintilius Rousse reckoned, for it came when he began at last to relax, swaying comfortably at the wheel of his mighty ship, ordering his sailors to take the soundings and gauging whether or not it was time to turn his prow toward the north.
It began as a wind ruffling the waves.
Such a thing, one might think, is normal at sea, where the wind is one’s mistress, and dictates one’s course. This is true. But this wind…I cannot explain. It ran contrary to the westerly breeze that blew us true, lower than that wind, blowing the waves backward, creating a cauldron of distress.
"Ah, no," Quintilius Rousse breathed, taking a firmer grip upon the wheel and casting his gaze skyward. "Ah, no, Elder Brother, have mercy!"
I looked up, then, at the sky, which had bid fair for our journey, as clear as the day before. No longer. Clouds roiled above us, gathering with purpose and darkness, a roiling mix, blotting out the sun.
"What is it?" I asked the Queen’s Admiral, dreading the answer.
Questions are dangerous, for they have answers. I had said as much to the Duc de Morhban. Quintilius Rousse looked at me with fear in his bright blue eyes, the old trawler-line scar dragging down one side of his mouth.
"It is him," he said.
And that is when the skies opened upon us.
For those who have never survived a storm at sea, I do not wish it upon anyone. Our ship, which had seemed such a safe haven on the vast breast of the waters, was pitched and tossed about like a child’s toy. The contrary winds, one moment ago a mild phenomenon, turned to forces of destruction, boiling the sea into crests and troughs higher than our tallest mast. Night or day, there was no telling, the skies turned a horrid bruised color, split only by lightning.
"Drop sails!" Quintilius Rousse shouted, his powerful voice battered and lost in the winds and the lashing rain that followed. "Drop sails!"
Somehow, his men heard; I saw them, as I clung helplessly to the foremast, their silhouettes against the lightning-struck sky, high overhead, obeying the Admiral’s orders. The sails dropped like stones, and I saw one man at least swept over, as the ship listed to starboard. Rain blew like veils across my sight; through it, incredibly, I saw Joscelin making his way to the foredeck, from grip to grip, a dim figure inching along with sheer determination. I prayed Hyacinthe had gained the safety of our cabin, though I doubted it; I remembered him last amid a group of sailors, too interested to go below. And it had come upon us too fast.
Gaining the mast, Joscelin took hold and crouched over me, sheltering me with his body from the buffeting winds. Drenched and sodden, I peered out from under him, my own rain-lashed hair obscuring my vision. "Do we turn back?" Joscelin asked the Admiral, shouting the question. "My lord Admiral! Do we turn back?"
"Here he comes!" Quintilius Rousse roared his answer, pointing with one shaking finger across the water. He came.
The Master of the Straits.
Those who have not made this passage say I lie; I swear, it is true. Huddled under Joscelin’s sheltering form, I saw him, a face upon the waters, moving toward us. Of waves was his flesh wrought, of thunderclouds, his hair; lightning, his eyes and, I swear, he spoke. His voice burst upon us like thunder, drumming at our ears, until we could but cower beneath it.
"WHO DARES CROSS?"
Like calls to like. Lashing himself to the wheel, the Queen’s Admiral dared to reply, roaring like fury into the winds, shaking his fist. "I do, you old bastard! And if you want your precious Black Boar to rule in Alba, you’ll let me go!"
There was laughter, then, and the face of the waters reared up three times the height of our mid-mast, dwarfing Rousse’s defiance. A vast, watery face, laughing like thunder, until I clapped my hands over my drowning ears.
"THAT IS NOT YOUR DREAM, SEAFARER! WHAT TOLL WILL YOU PAY?"