"I'm going to check the food and drink," Corylus said, removing a pin so that he could slide the wooden bolt that fastened the hatch cover. He had spoken to change the subject, but as soon as he formed the words he realized that he was very thirsty.
The shallow hold was empty except for a tank with a spigot and a net bag holding hard, fist-sized lumps that looked like plaster. He supposed they were rolls. The tank wasn't metal, wood, or pottery of any familiar sort. It had flowed like glass, but it didn't have the slick hardness of glass when Corylus tried it with his fingertip.
He turned the spigot and ran fluid into the mug of the same material chained to the tank. It was water and too tasteless to be really satisfying. He drained the cup regardless, then took one of the rolls back on deck.
"Do you need something to eat?" Corylus said to the sprite. "And there's a cask of water, too."
She brushed the thought away moodily. "I don't eat; I can't eat. And I no longer have a tree."
She caught his glance toward the creature in the stern and laughed. "No, not the Ancient either," she said. "What a thought, cousin!"
At least I've cheered her up, Corylus thought. He wondered what it would be like to be imprisoned for millennia-imprisoned forever, very likely-in a bead of glass with an inhuman sorcerer. Of course the sprite was inhuman also…
He took a bite of the roll as he leaned over the railing, looking down. He started to chew, then stopped and spat out the mouthful. It tasted like stiff wax.
"Mistress?" he said. "What is this stuff? I thought it was food."
"It's the food that the serfs eat on shipboard," the sprite said without much interest. "The Minoi have fresh food, but that's probably all gone now. The ships were cast up many seasons ago, you know."
"I see," said Corylus. He leaned on the railing again, eyeing the roll again. His teeth had left distinct impressions, just as they would have done in wax. He might become hungry enough to eat the stuff; but though he was very hungry, he wasn't to that point yet.
Swells moved slowly across the face of the water, occasionally marked by flotsam. Spurts of foam suddenly flecked the surface well off to starboard.
Corylus focused on the flickers of movement: flying fish were lifting from the sea and arrowing above it for several hundred feet, slanting slightly to one side or the other of their line in the water. Following them closely were the much larger shadows of porpoises, curving up from the surface and back. Their motion reminded Corylus of a tent maker's needle as he sewed leather panels together.
He looked at the roll. "Mistress," he said, "we don't have fishing gear or any way to make it that I can see, but I think if we get right down on the surface ahead of those fish, some of them will fly aboard. I've seen it happen before, on regular ships."
He grinned. "Flying fish are bony," he said, "and I don't suppose there's any way to cook them, but even fish would be better food than these rolls."
"It doesn't sound very good to me," Coryla said, "but if that's what you want…"
She called to the creature in the language they shared. He barked in obvious amusement.
Corylus didn't see him change what he was doing-he simply squatted in the stern, occasionally looking over one railing or the other-but the ship slid downward as smoothly as it had risen. They were bearing to the right as well, putting them into the path of the school of fish.
Feeling triumphant, Corylus tossed the roll he held over the side. He felt a catch as the ship's keel brushed through the top of the swells. Spray flew backward on the breeze. Droplets splashed the creature, who calmly licked his golden fur smooth again.
A fish slapped onto the deck, wriggled, and flung itself back through the railing as Corylus tried to grab it. Almost immediately, two more fish came aboard. He hadn't replaced the hatch cover-from laziness, not foresight-but that allowed him to scoop first one, then the other catch into the hold.
They were each the length of his forearm. Corylus was more pleased at having come up with a clever idea than he was at the prospect of eating them raw.
"Cousin?" the sprite said. "Have you looked into the water over the stern recently?"
Corylus grimaced to be interrupted: another fish had landed on the deck and there was one caught on top of the port sail as well.
She didn't sound concerned-but she never sounded concerned.
Corylus leaped past the Ancient, looking back while holding onto the inward-curving stern piece. There was only swelling water, a translucent green that darkened- "Take us up!" he shouted. "Higher, by Hercules!"
The Ancient laughed like a chattering monkey. The sails slammed the air back and downward, thrusting the ship upward and making it heel onto its port side. Corylus grabbed the starboard railing with both hands and kept his grip though his feet skidded out behind him.
The sails flapped again. The ship wasn't gaining height-the port rail barely skimmed the tops of the swells-but they had turned at almost right angles to their previous course. The golden-furred creature continued to laugh.
It was going to let us die without saying a word!
But then, it was already dead. Presumably nothing would change for the Ancient and Coryla if the glass amulet was in the belly of a- The sea exploded upward where the ship would have been if it had continued dawdling along catching flying fish. The head of the monster was ten or a dozen feet long in itself, and its gape was wider yet. The fangs were a foot long, back-slanting and pointed like spears.
The jaws clopped shut on spray and air. If the ship hadn't twisted to the side, they would have crushed the hull.
The monster curled to follow its prey's new course. Its head and body were a tawny bronze, with darker mottlings as though brown paint had been dripped over metal.
The eyes, prominent and well forward in the snout, glittered with what Corylus read as anger. He knew he was projecting his fear onto a beast whose small brain likely had room only for hunger. Hunger was quite enough of a threat.
The ship was rising at last, describing a slow curve which would bring it back on the course which Corylus had left to go fishing. He looked at the magician in the stern. His right hand trembled toward his sword hilt.
The anger flooded out of Corylus; he laughed also. He leaned over the railing to see the monster which had almost devoured them.
Coryla's friend had done what he told it to do. If Corylus stabbed in the dark and cut down the wrong person, would he be angry with his sword? In the future, he would be more careful, but- He turned to the creature and bowed. "Thank you, Master Magician," he said. "By turning the ship instead of just rising as I ordered, you saved us from the danger I put us in by my ignorance."
The Ancient very deliberately touched the tips of his long fingers together, then put his hands on his thighs as before. Corylus didn't know what the gesture meant, but it was clearly an acknowledgment.
Corylus looked down at the giant fish which now was swimming near the surface. It had a fin the whole length of its back, but nothing else marred the serpentine smoothness of the several hundred feet of its body. The ship was drawing ahead, but it was clearly following.
"Our magic drew it from the bottom," said the sprite. "The eel isn't a natural creature, you know. Well, most of what I've seen in this place you brought me to isn't natural, as we know it in the waking world."
Corylus cleared his throat. They were a hundred feet above the water and leveling out. He thought of going higher, but- He smiled grimly.
– -experience had taught him to trust the magician's judgment over his own.
"Will the eel chase us far, mistress?" he said to the sprite. His hands ached from their grip on the railing; he began to spread and clench the fingers, working circulation back into them.