“How?” she demanded. His interpretation did not comfort her. She would never be able to forget the implications of Gibbon's touch. “I don't have any power.”
He grimaced crookedly. “You've got the health-sense. Maybe you can keep me alive.”
Alive, she rasped to herself. She had expressed the same idea to Pitchwife, and it had not eased her. But how else could she hope to alter the course of her life? She had an acute memory of the venom in Covenant, the accumulating extremity of his need. Perhaps by dedicating herself to that one task-a responsibility fit for a doctor-she would be able to appease her hunger and hold the darkness back.
The Roveheartswind blew as steadily as stone for five days. Since the sails required so little care, the crew busied itself with the manifold other tasks of the ship: cleaning away every hint of encrusted salt; replacing worn ratlines and gear; oiling unused cable and canvas to preserve them against the weather. These smaller chores the Giants performed with the same abiding enthusiasm that they gave to the more strenuous work of the dromond. Yet Honninscrave watched them and the ship, scanned the Sea, consulted his astrolabe, studied his parchment charts as if he expected danger at any moment. Or, Linden thought when she looked at him closely, as if he needed to keep himself busy.
She rarely saw him leave the wheeldeck, though surely neither Sevinhand nor Galewrath would have warded Starfare's Gem less vigilantly than he did. At times when his gaze passed, unseeing, through her, she read a clinch of hope or dread in his cavernous orbs. It left her with the impression that he was caught up in an idea which had not yet occurred to anyone else.
For five days, the Roveheartswind blew; and as the fifth day relaxed into late afternoon, a shout from Horizonscan snatched every eye on deck toward the east: “Bareisle!” And there off the port bow stood the black burned rock of the island.
From a distance, it appeared to be no more than a dark eyot amid the sun-burnished blue of the Sea. But as the wind swept Starfare's Gem forward on the south, Bareisle's true size became manifest. With its towering igneous peaks and sheer valleys, its barren stone scarcely fringed by the stubborn clutch of vegetation, the island looked like a tremendous cairn or marker, erected toward the sky in warning. Birds cycled above it as if it were a dead thing. As she studied the craggy rock, Linden felt a quiver of foreboding.
At the same time, Honninscrave lifted his voice over the Giantship. “Hear me!” he cried-a shout of yearning and trepidation, as lorn and resonant as the wind. “Here we pass from the safe Sea into the demesne and ken of the Elohim. Be warned! They are lovely and perilous, and none can foretell them. If they so desire, the very Sea will rise against us.” Then he barked his commands, turning Starfare's Gem so that it passed around Bareisle with its stern braced on the wind, running now straight into the northeast.
Linden's foreboding tightened. The Elohim, she murmured. What kind of people marked the verge of their territory with so much black stone? As her view of the island changed from south to east, Bareisle came between her and the sunset and was silhouetted in red glory. Then the rock appeared to take on life, so that it looked like the stark straining fist of a drowner, upraised against the fatal Sea. But as the sun slipped past the horizon, Bareisle was lost in dusk.
That night, the Questsimoon faded into a succession of crosswinds which kept each watch in turn almost constantly aloft, fighting the sails from tack to tack. But the next day the breezes clarified, allowing Starfare's Gem to make steady progress. And the following dawn, when Linden hurried from her cabin to learn why the dromond was riding at rest, she found that the Giants had dropped anchor off a jutting coast of mountains.
The ship stood with its prow aimed squarely toward a channel which lay like a fiord between rugged peaks. Bifurcated only by the inlet, these mountains spread away to the north and south as far as Linden could see, forming an impassable coast. In the distance on both sides, the littoral curved as if it were receding from the Sea. As a result, the cliffs directly facing the dromond appeared to be out-thrust like jaws to grab whatever approached their gullet.
The dawn was crisp; behind the salt breeze and the sunlight glittering along the channel, the air tasted like late fall. But the mountains looked too cold for autumn. Their dour cols and tors were cloaked with evergreens which seemed to take a gray hue from the granite around them, as if this land passed without transition and almost without change from summer into winter. Yet only the highest peaks cast any hints of snow.
The Giants had begun to gather near the wheeldeck. Linden went to join them. Honninscrave's words, Lovely and perilous, were still with her. And she had heard other hints of strangeness concerning the Elohim.
Covenant and Brinn, Pitchwife and the First had preceded her, and Seadreamer followed her up to the wheeldeck almost on Cail's heels. On the afterdeck, Sevinhand and the Storesmaster stood with the other Giants and Haruchai, all waiting to hear what would be said. Only Vain seemed oblivious to the imminence in the air. He remained motionless near Foodfendhall, with his back to the coast as if it meant nothing to him.
Linden expected the First to speak, but it was Honninscrave who addressed the gathering. “My friends,” he said with a wide gesture, "behold the land of the Elohim. Before us lies our path. This inlet is named the Raw. It arises from the River Callowwail, and the River Callowwail in turn arises from the place which the Elohim name their clachan — from the spring and fountainhead of Elemesnedene itself. These mountains are the Rawedge Rim, warding Elemesnedene from intrusion. Thus are the Elohim preserved in their peace, for no way lies inward except the way of the Raw. And from the Raw no being or vessel returns without the goodwill of those who hold the Raw and the Callowwail and Woodenwold in their mastery.
“I have spoken of the Elohim. They are gay and subtle, warm and cunning. If they are at all limited in lore or power, that limit is unknown. None who have emerged from the Raw have gained such knowledge. And of those who have not emerged, no tale remains. They have passed out of life, leaving no trace.”
Honninscrave paused. Into the silence, Covenant protested, “That's not the way Foamfollower talked about them.” His tone was sharp with memory. “He called them 'the sylvan faery Elohim. A laughing people.' Before the Unhomed got to Seareach, a hundred of them decided to stay and live with the Elohim. How perilous can they be? Or have they changed too-?” His voice trailed off into uncertainty.
The Master faced Covenant squarely. "The Elohim are what they are. They do not alter. And Saltheart Foamfollower bespoke them truly.
"Those of our people whom you have named the Unhomed were known to us as the Lost. In their proud ships they ventured the Earth and did not return. In the generations which followed, search was made for them. The Lost we did not find, but signs of their sojourn were found. Among the Bhrathair still lived a handful of our people, descendants of those few Giants who remained to give aid against the Sandgorgons of the Great Desert. And among the Elohim were found tales of those fivescore Lost who chose to take their rest in Elemesnedene.