“Caelum, get up!” Rikus demanded.
Neeva came to the mul’s side. “It’s no use, Rikus,” she said, pulling him away. “Until the sun has completely risen, my husband’s devotion is to it, not us. His own child could be standing on those ships, and still he would not stand.”
Caelum resisted the urge to refute his wife. Even if he had not been in the middle of his devotions, there would have been no point to it. She had not greeted the sun since Rkard’s abduction, and that fact alone proved that she lacked the faith to understand the depth of the sun communion.
The dwarf continued his intonation, “Wonderful Fire of Life, watch over my absent son and do not let the flame of his spirit darken. Warm his heart, so he will know his father remembers him and searches for him with a fidelity as fervid as your light.”
Rikus and Neeva left the bow, each slipping around a different side of the Dark Lens.
At the same time, Tithian called, “Pull in the boom!” The king still sat in the stern of the dhow, for he and Sadira had not yet changed places for the day. “They can’t follow us down there!”
Tithian gave the tiller a shove. The dhow tilted to starboard as it changed directions, then abruptly slowed and returned to an even keel as the sail went slack. Ahead lay a dust channel so narrow that the trees flanking it actually touched fronds over the passage. As Sadira pulled the boom in and caught the wind, the dhow tipped to starboard and started forward again. Caelum dutifully returned his gaze to the sun, scrambling around so that he could watch it over the starboard side of their little craft.
The dwarf tried to still his thoughts, to empty his mind so that it would be refilled with the dawn’s radiance. In spite of his efforts, he noticed the cutters’ gossamer sails twisting on their masts. He tried to forget them and focus on the sun’s crimson rays. If he allowed the impending battle to impinge on his meditations, he would absorb fewer spells than normal, and they would be less powerful.
The dhow’s hull began to scrape along the mud crusts ringing the shoals, adding to the difficulty of the dwarf’s meditations. He began to hum a single note, as he had taught Rkard to do when the boy was learning to meditate.
At the same time, the ghostly fleet began to move forward. Caelum found himself puzzling over its path. The cutters were trying to cut them off-but their course would take the ships straight through the middle of a shoal.
As the dhow moved deeper into the channel, the fleet’s gossamer sails disappeared behind the dense foliage to the dhow’s starboard. Sighing in relief, Caelum concentrated on his devotions. This thicket seemed heavier than that rising from the last shoal, so the dwarf had trouble seeing the sun itself. Nevertheless, by the halo of red-tinged leaves in the center of the copse, he knew where to look. He opened himself to the orb and breathed in slow, steady whispers.
This time, the dwarf’s meditations were more successful. He barely heard the shrill whistles and eerie cackles erupting from the shoals as the dhow sliced through the narrow channel between them. Soon, he felt the sun-mark on his forehead burning hot and red, then the halo shining through the forest became round and whole. A crimson flame flared over his brow, and he knew the sun had risen.
Caelum stood and turned toward his wife. “It seems I had time to finish my devotions, after all,” he said. “For which we’ll all be glad when those cutters return.”
“Let’s hope so,” she retorted.
Neeva stood with Rikus, both of them holding their weapons in their hands and looking past him down the channel. Behind them, Sadira fished through her robe pocket with one ebony hand and effortlessly held the boom line with the other. Tithian sat upon the floater’s dome, his beady eyes darting back and forth between the shore and the Dark Lens.
The shoal suddenly fell silent. Nothing happened for a moment, then a cloud of birds erupted from the tangled thicket. Their beating wings filled the air with a tremendous throbbing as they passed overhead.
Caelum saw a cluster of gossamer sails approaching through the boughs over the shoal. The diaphanous sheets passed through the tangled fronds as though immaterial, not disturbing so much as a leaf. In contrast to the sails, the cutters’ black prows drove through the muddy shoal like farmers’ plows, cutting great harrows and uprooting every plant they passed. The majestic trees fell away almost silently, their heavy boles becoming snarled in a nest of vines and boughs long before they could crash to the ground.
Neeva and Rikus came forward. Caelum’s wife hefted her battle-axe and asked, “Well, husband, can you sink those ships?”
Caelum raised a hand toward the sun. He waited until his flesh glowed with a brilliant crimson light, then pointed back at the dhow’s mast. He cast his spell. A globe of scarlet light formed around the base of the pole and slowly rose upward. When the shining ball reached the top, Sacha shrieked, shooting off his perch as though someone had kicked him. The head fell, trailing wisps of red smoke, and struck the shoal’s sun-baked beach with a hollow thump. The red sphere took his place on top of the mast and shone down on the dhow with a warm, rosy light.
“Stupid dwarf!” cursed Sacha, wobbling into the air. “You could have warned me!”
“What’d you do?” asked Rikus.
“Protected the ship from the undead,” Caelum replied. “Now the animated corpses on the cutters can’t board us.”
The dwarf had barely finished his sentence before the clack-clack of firing catapults sounded from ahead. He spun around to see a barrage of small boulders arcing toward them. Rikus and Neeva ducked. When Caelum did not instantly do the same, his wife kicked his feet from beneath him. The dwarf dropped unceremoniously into the bilge.
Most of the volley went wide. The stones crashed through the sun-crusted beaches to either side of the channel, shooting plumes of mud high into the air. Unfortunately, a number of rocks did find their targets. Two boulders glanced off the Dark Lens and bounced over the gunnel. Though the impact caused no apparent damage to the Lens, it drew an alarmed squeal from Tithian. Three more stones landed amidst the cargo casks, spraying chadnuts and precious water in all directions. One rock even struck Sadira in the chest. The impact drove her down on her seat but seemed to cause her no harm. She pitched the stone over the side, then stood up again.
Caelum stuck his head up and looked over the gunnel. Two cutters had sailed into the shoal off the port bow and were turning to approach the dhow on a parallel route. The third ship was positioning itself broadside across the channel. The last two vessels remained in the starboard shoal and were turning their bows toward the dhow. On all five cutters, the ungainly corpses were slowly cranking the catapult spoons back into firing position.
“They’re trying to catch us in a crossfire,” growled Rikus.
“They won’t have a chance,” said Sadira. “By the time they’re ready to fire again, their missiles won’t be able to reach us.”
With that, the sorceress took Tithian’s place at the tiller and cast her flying spell. The dhow rose out of the channel at such a steep angle that Caelum had to grab the gunnel to keep from sliding. The Dark Lens slipped back against the water casks, pushing them toward the stern. Sadira braced her feet against the last two barrels and held the entire load in place.
“Now, this is magic!” exclaimed Neeva.
“Magic that will betray us to the sorcerer-kings, if they’re still near,” Tithian complained.
“If they’re that close, the battle would alert them anyway,” said Rikus, peering over the gunnel. “I doubt we could sink five ships without creating a lot of smoke and thunder.”