The sail! Again he forced himself to his feet, for the first time noting that there was a significant breeze pushing up from the south. If he could raise some canvas he could capture that wind, use it to slow or divert his course. Yet once more the agony seized him, twisted his insides, rendering him all but immobile.
Doubled over in pain, he thought about the weight of the sail, the lines he would need to hold, and he realized the effort was beyond his strength.
Stumbling toward the cabin, he pulled open the hatch and plunged into the small compartment, staying low as he moved past the cramped galley. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, as, again exhausted by the effort, he slumped onto a bench. It took all of his effort just to hold his eyes open against the pain thudding into his skull, rippling through his body.
His bunk occupied the forward quarter of the compartment. To his left was a table holding his charts and documents, but which was just as likely to be used as an eating place. He craved a steaming pot of his precious Istarian tea, but the stove was cold and he didn’t have the energy to start a fire.
Kerrick’s sword, in its light leather scabbard, hung on a rack above the table, next to his longbow and several quivers of arrows. On the right was the sea chest, his bins of coal, charcoal, and firewood, and several small cupboards containing all of his worldly possessions.
At least, all of those possession that he hadn’t left behind in his palace apartment. He snorted, thinking of the favorite things still ashore, of a particular red silk cape, doeskin boots, chains of silver locked in a box of cedar, feather caps and embroidered tunics. With regret he thought of the precious coins he had saved during his decades in the city: three gold pieces in a little pouch, hidden under a floorboard in his house-gone to him, now.
He also remembered the small collection of ladies’ gloves under his bed. All right-handed gloves, dainty and perfumed and freely bestowed upon him by his lovers. Gloryian’s glove was the prize of his collection, but when he thought about it now the smell of her perfume blurred almost indiscriminately with the fragrances worn by all of his other mistresses.
Oh, he had been quite the rake of Silvanost, at least for a while. He winced as he remembered that life, suddenly and forcibly confronting the fact that he might never be going back there.
Once more he shivered, and he realized that he was still wearing the clothes he had donned for his tryst with Gloryian Dirardar. They clung to him, scratching and chafing, smelling vaguely of fish entrails. Wrinkling his nose, he kicked off his moccasins, pulled off the silk hose, shrugged out of his woolen shirt and vest. Each movement hurt him, but he took almost a pleasure in the pain, in the shedding of these garments that were like a skin on an earlier body.
He opened his sea chest and laughed bitterly, spotting a red silk cap with its black and white eagle feather sitting carefully atop his practical clothes. He recalled that he had worn that cap recently, when he had brought Glory out to the boat. Afterward, her servant had returned her to shore in the dinghy while Kerrick had napped. When he was ready to go ashore himself, he had swum. Not wanting to damage the plumed hat, he had left it here.
As he dressed, Kerrick relished the comfort of sturdy, dry seafaring garb. He slipped into brown woolen trousers and supple boots, then encased his upper body with a loose cotton shirt. He eschewed the leather gloves and the woolen overshirt-such clothes were essential when he sailed the southern sea, but in the Silvanesti summer they would only be stifling and heavy.
At the bottom of his sea chest was a small strongbox, unlocked, with the key jutting from the latch. He popped it open and regarded the two objects within. One was the ring of gold left to him by his father, the only other legacy, besides Cutter, of Dimorian Fallabrine’s life. Kerrick touched the wreath of oak leaves emblazoned so meticulously into the curved surface. He had never donned the ring-his father’s warning still resonated in his memory-but he treasured it and saved it, and wondered. Someday, if Dimorian had spoken truly, that ring might save his life.
The other thing in the box was a small ivory tube, with a scroll of parchment inside-a scroll with writing he had committed to memory. Absentmindedly, he took the scroll tube and slipped it into his pocket. Still aching, he decided to brew some tea. An hour later, after nursing two mugs of the pungent, invigorating draught, he wondered if it might be possible to raise the sail.
He still felt pain, but it was manageable, no longer crippling. Once more he stepped through the hatchway onto the deck, shutting the portal tightly behind him.
He felt himself moving easily, was able to forget the fact that he was injured and bruised. With barely a grimace he lifted the lid of the sail locker and was rewarded with a sharp twinge from his broken rib. More carefully he reached inside and hooked the line to the top of the mainsail.
With practiced gestures he began to pull on the line. He enjoyed the sight of the blue canvas rising slowly from the locker, climbing up the tall mast. He paused to attach the base of the sail to the boom, then continued hoisting away. The sail snapped and fluttered in the breeze, and he began to feel some hope, some confidence in his own experience as a sailor, and in the remembered seaworthiness of this fast, dependable boat.
For now he let the boom trail over the water and the canvas flap loosely, and soon the sail was fully aloft. With a firm gesture, he pulled on the steering line, bringing the sail against the wind, waiting for the push that would show him the boat was firmly under his control.
Instead, the breeze came hard and Cutter, without veering from her down-river course, heeled sharply, lurching and almost pitching the elven sailor into the water. Kerrick let go of the rope and threw himself down, hands grasping the rail as the boat quickly righted herself, its sail flapping loosely off to the side. Gasping from the sudden pain, he looked around, and again that gray haze filled his eyes.
The spell! He understood it fully, then: He was trapped by the king’s will. His knuckles whitened on the gunwale and he stared wildly around him at the gray murk, comprehending beyond all doubt. The king’s sorcerers had surrounded the boat with a spell that kept him on a southward course, no matter how he steered or the wind blew.
With a glance over the stern, Kerrick saw that Silvanost had already vanished behind him around a bend. He felt heartsick-he had missed a last look at the most beautiful place in all Krynn. Anger swept over him, the sense of a great injustice that had been done to him and frustration in his inability to strike back at his tormentors. From somewhere in the depths of his memory Waykand’s taunting laugh echoed.
Then came despair. Would life be worth living if he had to live it away from Silvanesti? He gazed longingly at the verdant bluffs on the distant shore. A gleam of color, washed pale by the haze, arced over a deep, tributary canyon. This was the Rainbow Gorge, he knew, the shadowy vale where wizards maintained a permanent and brilliant pattern of rainbows, bright even in darkest night. When he sailed northward from the sea, he had always used the Rainbow Gorge as a sign that he was drawing near to home.
Now it seemed only a mocking reminder that he would never feast his eyes upon their pure beauty again. Slumping in the hull, he at last gave way to a hopelessness so deep and wounding that he could not even weep. He only sat numbly, watching as the gorge and its precious rainbows slowly receded in the distance.
A froth of water caught his eye, and he glimpsed a great trading galley churning northward through the river channel. Banners of silk, in red and blue and green, the colors muted by the magic haze, trailed from every mast and post. Double banks of great oars propelled the big ship upstream against the current. Kerrick drifted close enough that he could make out the faces of the elven captain and his mates, saw them leaning casually at the rail. It had been a successful voyage, to judge from the many pennants, and Kerrick wondered fleetingly how many times his father had made just such a return to this great land, had brought back cargoes of dwarven stone or Tarsian horses or-after the Istarian War-precious gold to make rich the coffers of the elven king.