“How is he?” called Sadira.
Neeva shook her head. “Alive, but that’s about all,” she reported. “Any sign of Magnus or Rkard?”
The sorceress shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
Neeva cursed. “I want to know where my son is,” she said. “Why doesn’t Magnus send a wind-whisper to tell us where they are?”
“He may have,” Sadira replied. “But if he did it after the battle began to drift eastward, we wouldn’t have been there to hear it.”
“Or maybe he didn’t have time,” Rikus suggested. “If it came down to a choice of protecting Rkard or warning us, I’ve no doubts that he’d defend the boy.”
“As long as he was able-which may not have been that long,” Neeva said. She picked her husband up and carried him a safe distance away from the well. “But what happened isn’t as important as how we’re going to find my son again.”
“Maybe Jo’orsh will be able to tell us something,” Sadira suggested. She glanced toward the banshee, who had reassembled his complete torso, both legs, and an arm. “He must have seen what happened.”
Rikus nodded. “Until then, maybe this can tell us something.” The mul kneeled at the side of the well. He pointed at the dark streak marking the path along which Caelum had been pulled. “Could Rkard have been the one who dragged his father over here?”
Neeva shook her head. “He’d just carry Caelum,” she said. “You know how strong he is.”
“Unless he was hurt and looking for a place to hide,” Rikus said. He grabbed the well rope and handed the end to Neeva. “I’ll go see.”
Neeva barely had time to loop the line around her back and sit before the mul stepped into the dark pit. The rope bit into her waist, and she waited in tense silence while the mul descended. The warrior did not know what she wanted him to find. If Rkard had been injured and had dropped into the well, he might well have drowned. On the other hand, she could not bear the alternative-that Borys had taken him and disappeared. She found herself placing all her hope in Magnus, praying that the windsinger had taken her son and had hidden where neither Sadira nor the Dragon could find them.
The rope slackened as Rikus took his weight off it. The mul groaned in disgust, then cried, “You!”
A muffled thump echoed up from the well, then a bloated head came flying out of the pit. He had coarse hair pulled into a tight topknot, with puffy cheeks, eyes swollen to narrow dark slits, and a mouthful of broken teeth. His leathery lips were caked with fresh blood-no doubt licked from Caelum’s head wound.
“Sacha!” Sadira cried.
The head regained his equilibrium and hovered in the air, regarding them with a malevolent sneer. “It’s high time you arrived,” he said. “Your king has nearly starved to death!”
Neeva ignored the head and leaned over the pit. “What’d you find down there, Rikus?”
“Our scouts-dead,” came the reply. Neeva heard the mul grunt, then there were several splashes as he pushed their bodies aside. “And Tithian-at least I think it’s him-with something that could be the Dark Lens.”
Although this news should have delighted her, Neeva could not rejoice yet. “Anyone else?”
“Rkard’s not down here,” answered the mul.
“Of course not,” Sacha sneered, drifting over in front of Neeva. “If you want to see Rkard again, you’d better hurry and get Tithian out of that hole.”
Neeva lashed out, catching the head by his topknot.
“Why?”
The head slowly spun around, facing the Sea of Silt. “Because the Dragon is taking Rkard to Ur Draxa, and I don’t think Jo’orsh is going to wait very long for you to follow.”
Neeva followed his gaze. Having returned his gnarled head to his lumpy shoulders, Jo’orsh was moving toward Samarah’s harbor in long, silent strides.
ELEVEN
THE DHOW
As the dhow left Samarah’s harbor, a gust of wind skipped across the swells ahead. Silvery columns of dust swirled skyward, forming a chain of featherlike silhouettes against the yellow horizon. For a moment, they hung like clouds above the pearly sea, then the bluster died. The plumes slowly melted back toward the surface, forming a low-hanging dust curtain that shrouded Jo’orsh’s distant figure in a mantle of gray.
Tithian braced his arm on the tiller and pulled himself upright, sitting squarely on the floater’s dome. He peered out toward the open sea and cursed his lack of a king’s eye. With Jo’orsh wading through chest-deep silt, it had been difficult enough to see him before the gust came up. Now, keeping the banshee’s lumpy head in sight would be impossible.
The effort of sitting upright was almost too much for the king. His time in the well had reduced him to something of a skeleton. The pallid skin dangled from his sticklike arms in loose folds, and each time he exhaled, his breath filled the air with the stench of starvation. He had little desire for solid food, and the few morsels his former slaves had forced him to eat sat in his distended stomach like rocks. The king thought that Sacha’s approach to helping him recover, trickling warm blood down his throat, had been much more sensible.
After a few moments of peering into the dust haze, the king let his elbow slip over the tiller and slumped back down. He was careful to keep his bare foot pressed against the Dark Lens, which lay in the open bilge in front of him. He was drawing the Lens’s energy through his body, using it to feed the dome and keep the ship afloat.
Tithian looked toward the top of the mast, where Sacha had positioned himself to serve as a lookout. “I’ve lost sight of the banshee,” he called. “Can you see him?” “Through this haze?” the head scoffed.
As Sacha replied, Neeva ducked under the low-hanging boom of the lateen sail and stepped back toward him. Since her days in the gladiator pits, her skin had grown darker and less sensitive to the sun, as demonstrated by the fact that she wore nothing but a leather breechcloth and halter to protect her from its blistering rays. To Tithian’s eye, she also seemed more beautiful. Motherhood had given her a fuller figure, while her muscles were more sinuous and less manlike. Her emerald eyes, however, remained as fiery and angry as they had been when the king had owned her-especially when they were looking at him.
Tithian met her glare. “What are you staring at?”
Without answering, Neeva picked her way toward the stern. It was not an easy task. They had just entered the open sea, and the dhow was pitching badly as it rode across the dust swells. To complicate matters, the small boat was crowded to overflowing. In the open bilge lay Caelum, crammed in next to a dozen kegs filled with chadnuts and water. His head had been bandaged, but he had not yet regained consciousness. To Tithian’s way of thinking, he was just taking up limited cargo space. Sadira stood along the port side, braced between a barrel and the gunnel, holding the line that controlled the set of the sail. On the opposite side of the boat sat Rikus, his bald head and pointed ears barely visible over the cask tops.
As Neeva came abreast of the mast, she stopped to grab her battle-axe from between two water barrels.
Tithian raised a brow. “I’d advise you to remember that without me, this boat will sink,” the king said. “And with it, all hope of rescuing your child.”
“I don’t care if we sink,” countered Neeva. “We’ve hardly left the harbor and already we’ve lost sight of Jo’orsh. We’ll never catch up to him-or my son.”
“The dhow is a sensitive craft,” Tithian replied. “We’d be traveling faster if Sadira had left Caelum in Samarah with the other dwarves-as I suggested.”
“I doubt Caelum’s weight is slowing us down that much.” Neeva raised her axe. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. We may have lost Rkard, but I want you to die before he does.”
“Don’t be foolish, Neeva.” Sadira laid a restraining hand on the warrior’s arm.