A wave of shouting came down the road. Torches were being waved about even more enthusiastically. Hero, seemingly oblivious to John’s strange actions, pointed toward the dark mirror of the sea.
Out there a gray phantom moved and a translucent pillar rose into the night.
It was the whale Porphyrio, blowing water into the air. Beyond this ghostly vision an inky blotch was outlined against the sky: the goats’ island, crowned with jagged peaks etched in faint moonlight.
John’s thoughts took another leap forward. He dropped from the swaying cart and began running back down the road, setting his teeth against the pain it caused him. The death of the boy Gadaric had been preceded by the spouting of a mechanical whale. The superstitious might predict that the real whale had just heralded another death.
But though the superstitious might make such a claim, John had realized that if Sunilda indeed came to harm he would have only himself to blame.
Hadn’t her letter been perfectly clear? Hadn’t she said she would throw herself into the sea from a point where nothing lay between herself and the rising sun? Why had he so foolishly gone with the procession accompanying the sacrificial straw man?
There was something else that lay between the headland and the sun. The island inhabited by the goats. And now that it was almost certainly too late, he had to find some way to reach it before sunrise.
Chapter Thirty-two
The two men dragged the tiny boat down to the beach. Although he had been prepared to take it out alone if necessary, John had found Paul lingering beside the shore road, idly watching the tail end of the procession as it passed brightly and loudly by.
Paul was eager to assist with the launch but his aging body was reluctant. When they reached the water’s edge, he came to a halt, grimacing, his gnarled hands painfully grasping the small vessel’s gunwale. Lowering his head he muttered a brief prayer to his god. Or perhaps, John thought, it was addressed to the sea.
He glanced up at the procession, now marked by a fiery line bobbing slowly along the headland. Here and there he could make out an indistinct figure enveloped in a nimbus of smoke. Looking seaward, he saw thickening pre-dawn fog was rolling in, forming a low, faintly luminous wall rising against the sky.
The susurration of the sea against the beach whispered its eternal threat as he waded into the shallows.
“No need to hesitate, excellency,” Paul said. “My little boat doesn’t look much but it’s a lot sounder than I am. I built it myself. It will carry us faithfully where you want to go.”
John made no reply. It wasn’t the boat. There was no boat, or ship, however large and seaworthy, that could allay John’s fear of water, the terrible element that had taken the life of a comrade so many years before. John forced himself to take another step forward, concentrating on the task at hand in an attempt to shut out all thought of the hungry, deep stretch of water waiting.
As they waded further into the shallows, he tried to imagine he was simply stepping into the pool at the baths, although he in fact avoided cold water even there. A pause to steady the craft and then they had clambered into it.
Paul began rowing, working the oars as smoothly and mechanically as one of Hero’s automatons.
Waves sloshed and gurgled against the sides of the little boat as they moved across the water surrounding them with an undulating floor of polished ebony marble. Tendrils of fog came slithering across its glassy surface to meet them. Before long the men were engulfed in a chilly blanket that seemed to draw a cold luminescence from the stars.
“The island?”
“It’s straight ahead,” Paul replied. “There’s a strong current towards it and we’re already in it. Can’t you tell?” His voice sounded strained.
John shook his head, wishing he had insisted that he row rather than the older man. It was too late now to change places, so he was forced to sit rigidly, hand clenched on the gunwales, staring into the blank face of the drifting fog. His fear of deep water was drawing time out as the dead of winter draws out the hours of the night. But there was nothing he could do but endure the endless journey.
A breeze was beginning to blow landward now, just strong enough to stir the fog into swirling, ghostly shapes without dispersing it. As it shifted, snatches of the faint, discordant music made by Zeno’s metallic players and the lusty singing of the villagers were carried to them from the headland.
John muttered a prayer of thanks to Mithra that the festival was still in progress, had not yet been ended by the rising of the sun that might also end Sunilda’s life.
The oars continued their regular dipping into the water. The boat groaned and creaked as if ready to burst apart. John was suddenly aware of his weight pressing down perilously on the thin wooden floor, all that lay between him and the waiting water. Visions of shadowy horrors moving through the blackness below filled his thoughts.
The boat abruptly rolled sideways.
“Only a swell,” Paul assured him quickly.
Another sickening lurch. This time Paul offered no reassurance. John peered into the mist, straining his eyes to see something, anything.
The small vessel shuddered and spun around, throwing John sideways. For a sickening instant his upper body hung over the edge of the boat before he could pull himself back to safety, scrabbling at the wet planks, one hand slipping into the water, so horribly close, that waited patiently for him.
Something huge was moving out there in the fog, but rather than dissipating into swirling coils of mist it solidified into a half-seen massive shape that slid by them some way off.
It was Porphyrio.
Perhaps, John thought, the beast really had come to meet Sunilda.
Swift on the heels of his thought the fog roiled around the gigantic shadow that could now be seen rising toward the unseen sky.
There was an explosive slap in the rolling bank of whiteness and John glimpsed the beast’s powerful tail sliding back into the water as Paul said swiftly in a strangely calm voice, “The whale’s closer to land than I’ve ever seen it. When we capsize, try to cling to the hull, excellency.”
John had seen elephants brought to Constantinople to entertain at the Hippodrome on several occasions. They would have been dwarfed by any part of the whale. The tail alone could have knocked one of those enormous animals off its feet.
Yet again came the sound of rushing water. A huge wave slammed into the boat, accelerating it forward. Spray stung their faces. All around their small craft the dark water boiled. Paul grimly clung to the oars, his eyes tight shut and his face drained of color.
Then their craft gave one last shudder and burst through the wall of fog. They were facing the dark bulk of the island. The gray light that precedes dawn revealed jagged rocks jutting from the surf on all sides. The boat’s momentum carried it toward the shore until it finally hit an underwater rock and capsized.
The men fell into the cold water.
John had no time to think before all the sounds of the world were replaced by a muffled roar. His mouth opened in an involuntary gasp and the sea choked him as he fell, rigid with horror, into its obscene embrace.
Downward he floated, hair and clothing spreading out under the touch of the sea’s watery fingers. Trying desperately not to gasp for air, John kicked his legs, praying fervently that he would not die this terrible death. His arms flailed. He did not know whether he was moving upward toward life or deeper toward his death. The roaring in his ears sounded louder, a droning dirge. His lungs were burning. He felt as if they would surely burst.
Over and over he slowly tumbled through the freezing, dark water in a seemingly endless fall towards oblivion.