Muttering to himself, the ape-man resumed stroking the boat forward. Onward, at any rate.
Hedia crouched, well back from the edge. She wanted to apologize, but she didn't know how to. At least she could avoid repeating her mistakes.
Though the sky wasn't visibly brighter, Hedia no longer saw the stars as clearly as she had when she emerged from the sewer inlet. She wondered what would happen if they remained on open water during daylight.
Under other circumstances she might have suggested to Lann that they climb into the water and kick their way along, using the leaf for flotation. The only value she could see in that now is that she would wind up feeding Atlantean sea life instead of becoming bait for an even larger monster as the Minoi planned for her.
Hedia looked forward again and to her surprise saw trees. We're going to make it! she thought, delighted that the shore hadn't been as far as she thought when last she strained her eyes to see ahead.
Lann rumbled a challenge from deep in his chest. The sound rose and fell as though its jaggedness caught his throat when it tumbled out. Hedia jerked around, wondering what she had done wrong this time; but the ape-man was looking beyond her.
She turned again. What she had thought were trees were walking off. The trunks leaned to the side and the roots-or dangling branches?-bent and lifted and set down again well forward of where they had been. She supposed they had to be walking on the bottom, but in the doubtful light it really looked as though they were skimming the surface of the water.
"I thought they were trees," she repeated, this time in a whisper. And perhaps they were trees…
Lann resumed paddling. Hedia watched him; in part because she was afraid to look at anything else in this terrible place, but also because she was beginning to appreciate the economy of the ape-man's movements.
She had thought he was clumsy, but she now realized his seeming awkwardness was a result of the sheer mass of his muscles and the skeleton that anchored them. She had seen warships carrying out combat maneuvers. Their long, slender hulls resisted turning, but even so a trained crew could send its ram crushing through the center of a target or could slip between pillars with only a hand's breadth of clearance to either side for the oar tips.
The boat jerked violently again: something was scraping along its underside. Hedia wailed, but she jumped up with the spear in her hands. If she plunged it straight down between her feet, whatever was under the lily pad would- Lann closed his hand over the spear shaft, preventing her from thrusting. He hooted in question. Hedia looked over her shoulder: they had grounded on the other side of the sea. The pad had been rubbing the sloped edge of the land.
"Oh," she said. "I'm very sorry."
Lann strode past her into the lowering jungle. Hedia, still carrying the spear, followed.
I'm almost back to where I started, she thought. Which meant she was was a great deal better off than she'd been a few hours earlier.
The sun remained above the horizon, but its ball had flattened and its light was deepening to red. Corylus pressed his hands together, wishing there was something he could do.
The sails continued to beat, but it seemed to Corylus that the strokes were slower and becoming flaccid. The ship was certainly descending, though the keel was still a hundred feet in the air. Almost a hundred feet.
Something thrust up from the sea about three miles ahead, or it looked like something did. Corylus grasped the sprite's shoulder and said, "There, isn't that an island, Coryla? Or anyway a rock. Is it big enough to land on?"
"Am I a sailor?" the sprite said. "Or a magician? I don't know what this ship can do."
Corylus turned toward the Ancient and bowed. The wizard didn't acknowledge his presence except by the focus of his golden eyes.
"Master," Corylus said. "Would you please take us toward that island-"
He pointed.
"-so that I can take a look at it. We're going to need to land, soon."
Corylus looked beyond the magician, back over the course they had travelled since leaving the Cyclops' island. They had outdistanced the great eel, but he didn't doubt the sprite's warning that it would follow until it died or it caught them. A night spent rolling on the surface would be long enough for the latter-and he didn't see any reason why the monster should courteously manage to die before that happened.
Corylus had taken his hand from the sprite's shoulder when he turned. She nuzzled close to him again. He eased back, though he didn't break contact. He said, "Is there anything alive on the island? It looks pretty barren to me."
He couldn't decipher the look that Coryla gave him. "It's barren," she said. "But there is life, of sorts."
The island was a square-sided vertical pillar that rose out of the sea to the level of the ship's keel. The top was about twenty feet on a side and slightly domed rather than flat. Grass grew in patches and there were occasional bushes, but it was mostly bare rock.
Because of the island's shape, Corylus wondered if it might be artificial. As they drew closer, he could see that the striations which he'd taken for masonry were actually natural rock layers. Some were reddish, darkened further by the setting sun. Iron had bled from them and draped rusty banners down the paler rocks beneath.
He estimated how difficult it would be to climb the rock face. He could still do it, he was pretty sure; but he'd been in Carce for long enough that he'd like to have a few days to train on lesser slopes first. He grinned.
The Ancient made a sound that started low but climbed in pitch and volume. Corylus had his sword out by the time he had faced completely around, expecting to see the eel or something worse rising toward them from the sea.
He almost didn't recognize the Ancient. The golden fur was fluffed out, making him look more like an angry bear than the starving cat Corylus would previously have used as a comparison. His mouth was slightly open: irregular teeth gave his jaws the contours of saw blades. He extended one long arm toward the island.
Corylus followed the gesture. A man with wild hair and a dark tunic climbed to the center of the dome. Could he have been hiding in the vegetation? That would seem impossible to a civilian, but Corylus had twice seen a hulking blond German lunge from a bush that shouldn't have been able to hide a coney.
A dozen more men appeared; they must have come out of the rock or condensed from the air itself. They were gesturing and speaking among themselves. Corylus could hear the sounds, but he couldn't make out words if they even were words.
The ship wallowed from side to side and lost way. They were sinking as well, though slowly. That wasn't what most concerned Corylus. This savage outbreak on the part of the magician he depended on mattered more than mere details of the ship's course.
The Ancient extended both arms and shrieked, still louder than before. His hands bent toward one another as though he were holding an invisible globe. Blue-white flashes glittered between his palms; then a line of sparks curved raggedly from them toward the island.
Scores of men stood now on the rock, impossible numbers to exist on so small an island. Several dropped to all fours and began to howl. Their companions took up the sound.
As swiftly as images change when a mirror tilts, human forms became wolves and as swiftly changed back to human. The top of the island seethed like water coming to a boil, and the howls seemed to Corylus to echo from the roof of heaven.
"Sheer off!" he shouted. He stepped between the Ancient and the wolfmen who had driven him to frothing rage. "Take us away! We can't land here, no matter what the choice is!"
For a moment, Corylus thought that the magician was going to ignore him-or worse, strike with the power which allowed him to lift this ship and drive it hundreds of miles in a day. The armor might protect me, but- The Ancient hunched back to the stern where he had been standing until the wolfmen called him forward. His fur began to settle, though hints lasted like the flush on the face of a man who had controlled his anger.