'Velindre?' Alarmed, Kheda couldn't help himself.
'I told you, I can gauge the depth of the water beneath us,' she reminded him. 'And whatever happened here happened long since.'
Kheda surveyed the desolation. 'Did magic do this?'
Naldeth shook his head. 'I've no idea.'
Something dropped into the water with a plop that echoed around the valley.
'There.' Risala pointed at ripples in the murky water.
A blunt scaly snout caught the light. A lizard as long as Kheda's arm was swimming across the drowned valley. It reached a dead tree and climbed rapidly up it. Pot-bellied and short-tailed with sprawling legs, its stubby toes were tipped with needle claws that dug deep into the lifeless wood. A ridged red crest ran down its back.
'That's no beast I know,' said Kheda.
'There's no magic to it.' Naldeth sounded disappointed.
Odd angularities among the stubs of a handful of storm blasted trees caught Kheda's eye. 'What's over there?'
The air shone oddly around Velindre's eyes. 'Something was built in the trees,' she said slowly.
'So there were people here.' Kheda searched the shore with new intensity, his hand going to his belt knife. He remembered his weapons stowed unheeded down below. 'Risala, fetch my swords for me, please.'
'Are these people still here?' She didn't wait for an answer, dropping down the ladder and disappearing into the stern cabin.
'You won't need those.' Naldeth turned in a slow circle, one hand raised with a scarlet flame dancing on his palm.
'These wild mages can sense some new wizard working his magic in their territory,' Kheda rebuked him.
'Then they can learn who they're dealing with,' retorted Naldeth, his flame flaring.
'If there was anyone here to be drawn by magic, we'd have seen them by now.' Velindre waved at the sapphire magelight glistening on the Zaise's rails. 'All I'm sensing is the echo of old enchantments among the elemental chaos.'
'Do you remember how fast a dragon can appear?' Kheda challenged.
The boat's blunt prow nosed through the clouded water. As they drew nearer to the muddy shore, they saw that a platform of lashed logs had been fixed into notches gouged deep into the trunks of the stricken trees. Walls of woven twigs were broken and splintered, any roofing long since torn away.
Kheda looked beyond the makeshift building to piles of debris cast up by successive storms. 'Those are the hollowed logs the savages use for boats.'
'The wild men who came to plague the Archipelago lived here?' Risala climbed up the stern ladder and handed Kheda his swords. 'They fled this disaster and came to steal our lands and we killed them.'
'Did we kill them all?' Irresistible hope rose in Kheda's chest. All the same, he doubled his sword belt around his
hips and thrust the scabbarded blades securely between the overlapping loops.
The Zaise slid sideways through the water to brush up against a mottled grey trunk with a few remaining scabs of black bark. They could all see the ragged marks where the heartwood had been gouged out of the log with crude tools and rough points had been shaped at each end.
'What were they fleeing?' Naldeth sounded disappointed. 'The dragon? Do you think it pursued them?'
'As best we can tell, they were expecting it to follow them,' Velindre reminded him.
'It was only the wizards and their warriors who came to attack us.' Risala gazed around the eerie valley. 'We never saw any women or children or elders. Perhaps they stayed behind.'
Kheda joined her in scanning the barren slopes. 'To die here, without their men or magic to sustain them.'
Have we come all this way for nothing?
Somewhere a bird screeched and drilled into a tree with a resonant burr that shattered the silence.
'But what happened?' Naldeth persisted. 'What about the dragon? Did it live here before it followed the wild men to Chazen?'
'I think we should investigate a little further,' Velindre concurred and the Zaise obediently eased away from the dead trees. The ship retreated slowly back along the bright reflection of the cloud-strewn sky between the dark waters mirroring the sombre heights on either side.
Kheda looked up. 'Dusk comes later and more slowly in these reaches but we don't have much daylight left.'
'I can give you all the light you want,' Naldeth saidscornfully.
'Setting a beacon to draw anyone or anything that might be curious about us?' challenged Kheda.
'Let's just see what we can before dark.' Velindre guided the Zaise deftly down a different channel, the barest suggestion of a summoned breeze stirring her hair.
Naldeth watched the muted ripples of the ship's wake spreading behind them. 'Your studies with Azazir certainly paid off.'
'I wouldn't call it studying with him.' Velindre gave the young wizard a mordant look. 'And he's an object lesson to us all as to what can happen when you become entranced by your own affinity.'
Kheda saw Naldeth acknowledge that caution with a meek nod.
Velindre isn 't going to discuss this Azazir with you, boy, accept it. Dev said he had been banished by the other wizards as a danger to any who came near him. Yet she went to find him because he was the only one who knew the secret of weaving a false dragon out of summoned magic. How many wizards die in their quests for learning?
'This place isn't quite as dead as it looks.' Risala came to stand beside Kheda and pointed to the edge of the cliff looming above them.
As Kheda looked up to see a tracery of twisted stems tufted with leaves outlined against the sky, a cloud of pink and grey birds erupted from niches in the rocks. Their whistling cries filled the air as an eagle, or something akin, soared overhead, claws splayed. Circling, it stooped and dived to snatch something from the water in a flurry of spray. It climbed into the sky with powerful strokes of black-and-white-banded wings, pointed tail feathers sharp as shears. A long fish, brown as the decaying leaves, writhed in its grip, trailing silver drops of water.
'That would be an omen,' Risala said with a shiver. 'If we were looking for such things,' she added quietly with a hint of foreboding.
'We're looking for any sign of savages who were left
behind.' Kheda peered keenly around as the Zaise emerged into a wider channel. 'Or some clue as to what became of them.'
'Velindre, over there.' Naldeth suddenly pointed to a larger lump of land some way off rising steeply out of the water to a peak high enough to snare a skein of mist. 'There's something . . .' His words trailed away into uncertainty.
'Was this land or sea?' Kheda studied the black waters on either side of the boat.
'Does it matter?' Velindre was peering at the peak ahead, eyes narrowed. 'Naldeth, what do you sense in that cloud?'
'Ash and steam,' the youthful wizard said slowly as they drifted closer. 'That's a fire mountain.'
'We're safe enough as long as it's breathing white smoke.' Kheda searched the plume for any hint of the grey that presaged catastrophe. He caught Naldeth's slight surprise. 'There are plenty of records of the omens seen around fire mountains erupting in the Archipelago.'
'I shall have to look them up when we get back.' The wizard grinned.
'Is it safe to go any closer?' Risala was looking at the strange seas ahead. Ridges of greenish water were surging up from the depths, breaking in ragged trails of white foam.
'For the present.' Velindre was unconcerned as the Zaise rocked erratically in the confused seas. 'This is just the currents fighting their way through new paths in the deep.'
'There's fire in the deep as well,' Naldeth said suddenly, 'in the rocks underneath the sea.'
They crossed the uneasy channel and the waters abruptly stilled. Now they were close enough to see the full strangeness of the island ahead. The peak was riven from top to bottom, with a wide central cleft belching