PART ONE: THOROLD
Do not twine garlands of myrtle for my forehead
Nor pluck sweet roses to adorn me
Make me a crown of sombre violets
For I am dyingThe white arms of the maidens of Busk
And the flashing feet of dancing goatherds
Will never again quicken my desire
For I am dyingCome to me merciful Meripon
In your ebony chariot drawn by swallows
From the dim halls beyond the Gates
For I am dyingI kiss the peaks of Lamedon with my eyes
And the white arms of the passionate sea
Which loves this beautiful island that I love
For I am dyingThe Song of Theokas, Library of Busk
1: PURSUIT
IT was the foredreaming.
A chill swept through her and she was filled with a preternatural, foreboding clarity, as if her soul was suddenly made of ice. Her sleeping self stirred.
She was a being of the upper regions of air, bodiless and free, without self or memory or name. She gazed at the landscape beneath her, fascinated. For a long time she didn't even recognise it as a landscape; it looked like a strange and awesome painting. For as far as she could see, there stretched a huge red expanse covered with ripples, like sand under water, but these ripples, she began to understand, must be enormous. She was very high up and she could see very far, and there were no clouds at all, only a tiny shadow moving over the earth, which she realised after a while was her own. She seemed to be flying with some purpose in a particular direction, although she couldn't remember what the purpose was.
After a while the land changed: the red ripples ran up against a ridge of purple rock and stopped, and she was passing over mountains whose shadows stretched long and sharp behind them. On the other side of the range ran tracks like rivers, lighter veins spreading in delicate fans, but she could see no water in them. The colours of the earth changed to subtle purples and dull greens which signalled vegetation. In the far distance she could see a whiteness which seemed to gather light to itself: it looked like a lake. But like a lake of salt, she thought with surprise, not water…
Then everything shifted. She was no longer in the sky, but standing on what seemed to be the spine of a high ridge of bare rock which dropped sheer before her feet down at least five hundred feet. She looked over a wide plain which stretched to the horizon before her. The soil was still a strange red orange, but this land was nothing like the one she had flown over: it seemed blasted, poisoned somehow, although she could not say how. As far as the eye could see there were rows and rows of tents, interspersed with large open spaces where what seemed to be masses of soldiers performed some kind of drill. A red sun sent low, level rays over the plain, casting black shadows back from the tents and soldiers.
There was a menacing purpose in those disciplined movements, a promise of destruction and death. She had never seen an army before, and the sight shocked her: so many thousands, uncountable thousands, anonymous as ants, gathered together for the sole aim of injury. She turned away, suddenly sickened with a strange dread, and saw behind her, on the other side of the ridge, a white, bare expanse. The sun struck up from it, hurting her eyes as savagely as if someone stabbed her. She cried out, clutching her face, and stumbled and fell. Her body, now heavy and corporeal, fell with the ominous slowness of dream: down, down, down, towards the cruel rocks hundreds of feet below.
Maerad woke, gasping for breath, and sat bolt upright. This was an unwise thing to do, as she was sleeping in a hammock slung below the deck of a small fishing smack called The White Owl. The hammock swung dangerously and then, as she flailed for balance in the pitch dark, tipped her out onto the floor. Still trapped in her dream, Maerad screamed, putting out her hands to break her fall, and hit the wooden floorboards.
She lay still, breathing hard, as above her a trapdoor flung open and someone came stumbling down the steps. Maerad could see his form silhouetted against a patch of stars, and then a soft light bloomed in the darkness, illuminating a tall, dark haired man who moved easily with the motion of the boat.
"Maerad? Are you all right?"
Maerad sat up, rubbing her head. "Cadvan," she said with relief. "Oh, I had a terrible dream. I'm sorry, did I cry out?"
"Cry out? It sounded as if a Hull were in here, at least."
Maerad managed a wan smile. "No Hulls," she said. "Not yet."
Cadvan helped her up, and Maerad groped her way to a bench along the walls of the tiny cabin and sat down. Her hands were trembling.
"Bad dreams?" said Cadvan, looking at her intently. "It is little wonder you should have nightmares, after what we've been through."
Maerad felt his unasked question. "I think it was a foredream," she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "But I don't know what it was of. It was - horrible." Foredreams, in Maerad's experience, were always horrible.
"Tell me, then." Cadvan sat next to her on the bench.
Maerad haltingly told him of the dream. Put into words, it didn't sound so awful: the worst thing about it was the feeling of despair and horror it had inspired within her. Cadvan listened gravely, without interrupting, and when she finished there was a short pause.
"I think perhaps you might have seen the armies of the Dark, massing in the south for an attack on Turbansk, on their way to Annar," he said. "What you describe sound to me like the deserts south of Dén Raven. And perhaps your dreaming semblance stood on the peaks of the Kulkilhirien, the Cruel Mountains above the Plains of Dust, where the Nameless One was said to have marshalled his forces in the days before the Great Silence."
Maerad thought of her brother Hem, now riding to Turbansk with their friend Saliman, and felt sick.
"If so, it is a very great army," she said at last. "Turbansk will be hard pressed."
"It will be a vast force," said Cadvan. "But even so, it is only one piece in the great stratagem the Nameless One is now unleashing. And you, Maerad, are as significant to him as that huge army. Maybe more so. Everything turns on you."
Maerad bowed her head, oppressed beyond measure by Cadvan's words. On me? she thought. How can it be so? What could I do against so great an army?
And yet she knew it was true.
She pressed her hands together, to stop their trembling, and Cadvan stood up and took a brown stoppered bottle and a glass from a cupboard nearby. "Have some of this," he said.
It was a strong spirit Maerad hadn't tasted before, a drink designed to ward out chills on cold nights at sea, and she gulped it gratefully, feeling the liquor sear a path down her gullet. It made her feel a little more substantial.
Maerad glanced at Cadvan as he sat down again beside her, his face sombre and abstracted with thought, and their first meeting came vividly into her mind. It had been a mere three months before, but to Maerad it felt like a lifetime ago. The first time she had seen him, she had been milking a cow in Gilman's Cot, the grim northern settlement where, for most of her short life, she had been a slave. He had stood silently before her, amazed and disconcerted that she could see through his charm of invisibility.
It had been a morning like any other, notable only for being the Springturn when winter, in theory at least, began to retreat from the mountains. Then, as now, his face had been shadowed with exhaustion and anxiety and - Maerad thought - an indefinable sadness. Despite everything - despite his being a stranger, despite her fear of men, learned from the violent men of the cot - she had trusted him at once. She still didn't really know why.
It was Cadvan who had revealed to her who she was, and who had helped to unriddle some of the history of her family. With her mother Milana, Maerad had been captured and sold as a very small child after the sack of Pellinor, the School where she had been born. It was Cadvan who helped her escape from the misery of slavery, who had told her of her Gift and opened up to her the world of Bards. He had taken her to the northern School of Innail, and for the first time in her conscious life she had found a place where she felt at home. Maerad felt a sudden sharp ache in her throat as she thought of Silvia, who had almost become a mother to her in the short time they had known each other; and then of Dernhil, who had told her that he loved her, and whom she had spurned out of her own fears. Dernhil had been killed by Hulls, the Black Bards who were servants of the Nameless One, in part because of that love, leaving behind him a vanished possibility that she would always regret.
She wished fiercely that she had been able to stay in Innail, loved as you should be, as Dernhil had once said to her; that she could have spent a quiet life learning the Bardic Arts of Reading, Tending and Making. She would have liked nothing better in the world than to learn the scripts of Annar and to decipher its immense riches of poetry and history and thought, or to study herblore and healing and the ways of animals, to observe the rites of the seasons and keep the Knowing of the Light, as Bards had done for centuries before her. Instead, she was on a tiny boat in the middle of a dark sea, hundreds of leagues from the gentle haven of Innail, fleeing from darkness into darkness, her future more uncertain than it had ever been.
It wasn't fair. Her whole tale since leaving Gilman's Cot had been of finding what she loved, and almost at once losing it. Closely pursued by the Dark, she and Cadvan had fled Innail, heading for Norloch, the chief centre of the Light in Innail. During their journey across Annar, Maerad had found out much about herself, and had at last come into the Speech, the inborn language of the Bards, and her full powers. And it seemed her abilities were much greater and stranger than those of a normal Bard: she had vanquished a Wight, the malign spirit of a dead king returned from the days of the Great Silence, which even the greatest Bards said was beyond their magery. And she had found that part of her strangeness was her Elemental blood, her Elidhu ancestry which led back to Ardina, Queen of the golden realm of Rachida which lay hidden in the centre of the Great Forest. There was so much she didn't understand, and she was nowhere near being able to control the powers she had so recently discovered within herself. When they had at least reached Norloch…
Maerad flinched, thinking of the burning citadel they had left behind them two days earlier, riven by civil war, corrupted by evil. It was in Norloch that she had met Nelac, Cadvan's old teacher, a wise and gentle man who had instated her as a full Bard of the White Flame. That simple, mysterious ceremony revealed her Bardic Name, the secret Name that was an aspect of her deepest self, and it had confirmed that she was, as Cadvan had suspected, the Fated One, prophesied to bring about the downfall of the Nameless One in his darkest rising. Elednor Edil-Amarandh na: the starspeech echoed in her mind, with its cold, inhumanly beautiful music. Yet Maerad knew that for all her innate potencies she was but a young girl, unschooled and vulnerable: it was a mystery to her how she was to defeat the Nameless One, and it seemed more likely to her than not that she would fail. Prophecies, as Cadvan had once told her, often went awry: her birth was foreseen, but not her choices, and it was through her choices that her destiny would unfold.
And it was in Norloch that she had last seen her brother. She had, by the strangest of chances - although Cadvan said it was not chance at all - found her brother Cai, who called himself Hem, in the middle of the wilderness. She had long thought him dead, slaughtered as a baby with everyone else in the sack of Pellinor. He was now a gangly twelve year old boy, dark skinned like their father, and unlike Maerad, whose skin was very white; but they both shared the same dark hair and intense blue eyes. Maerad had loved him even before she knew he was her brother, pitying the shadows in his eyes which betrayed a childhood even more nightmarish than her own had been. She loved him fiercely, protectively: Hem was her own brother, and she had so little to call her own. When they had fled Norloch, it had been safer to split their paths: Cadvan and Maerad's path lay north, and Saliman took Hem south to his home in Turbansk, there to learn the ways of Barding.
The loss of Hem seemed the cruellest of all. She had found, in Hem, a missing part of herself, and losing him was the old grief all over again, multiplied by new anxieties. The thought of the army she had seen in her dream marching on Turbansk, marching on her brother, filled her with dismay. And even if Turbansk did not fall, even if Hem survived, there was no certainty that she would live to see him again. She was pursued by the Dark, and now perhaps by the Light as well: Enkir, the First Bard of Norloch, had no doubt put a price on both their heads.
Involuntarily, Maerad's lip curled. Enkir was perhaps the first person she had ever hated with all her heart. Enkir, cruel, thin lipped, predatory, had a decade ago sold Maerad and her mother Milana into slavery. He had betrayed the School of Pellinor, and because of him it was burned to the ground, its people slain without mercy, its learning and music smashed beyond recall, its beauty quenched forever. Because of Enkir, Maerad had seen her father murdered before her eyes, and had watched her mother wither away in Gilman's Cot, her power broken. But Enkir was cunning, and very few people knew or suspected his treachery. He was the First Bard in Norloch, the most important in all Annar. Who, not knowing what Maerad knew, would believe that such a man was a traitor? Or would trust the word of a young untutored girl against the word of a First Bard?
It was two days since they had fled Norloch, rescued by Owan d'Aroki in his humble fishing smack. They had slipped unseen out of the harbour even as the citadel's high towers collapsed in flame and a terrible battle was fought on the quays. Now they ran north west on a charmed wind, scudding over the swell. Two days of the sea's deep solitude had done much to clear Maerad's mind, although she found it hard to sleep on the boat, and suffered recurring bouts of seasickness, which distressed her almost as much as everything else… but the weather was fair, and Owan said they should reach Busk, the main town of Thorold, within another two days. And perhaps, at the end of this brief, uncomfortable voyage, they would be able to rest. She longed for rest, for a still place, as a thirsty man longs for water; every cell of her being cried out for it. But underneath, Maerad knew that even if they found a haven, it would be temporary at best: nowhere was safe.
All this passed through Maerad's mind quicker than it takes to tell, and she sighed heavily, prompting Cadvan to turn and look at her, his eyes suddenly clear and present. Around his left cheek and eyesocket curled the marks of three cruel whiplashes, injuries from their battle with the Wight. The wounds were still criss-crossed with tiny herringbone stitches, and when Cadvan smiled, as he did now, he winced slightly.
"Well, Maerad," he said gently. "I suppose you should try to go back to sleep. I doubt you would have another foredream, if that is what is was. It's deep night yet, and we still have some hard sailing to do."
"As if I know anything about sailing," said Maerad ironically. "You know I just get in the way."
"We need a lookout," said Cadvan. "It is wearing, I tell you, sailing so hard with just me and Owan. But the sooner we reach Busk, the sooner we can stop."
The sun rose the following day in a very nearly perfectly blue sky. Owan gravely professed himself satisfied with the weather, and said they were well on track for Thorold.
With his olive skin, lively face and grey eyes, Owan looked typically Thoroldian, but he was uncharacteristically taciturn for those loquacious islanders; although it could have been sheer exhaustion. Both he and Cadvan were grey with tiredness. The White Owl was Owan's pride; she might have been only a small fishing vessel, but she was a beauty of her kind, every spar and plank lovingly laid. In her making each part of her had been embedded with charms, to keep her from upset or to ward away hostile creatures of the deep; and she had also a steering spell so she could, if necessary, sail herself. Unfortunately, under the stiff wind Cadvan summoned to the sails this was too risky, and Owan and Cadvan took turns day and night on the tiller. When Cadvan was too tired to keep the wind, The White Owl sailed on the sea's winds; but he never slept for more than a couple of hours at a time. Maerad had already witnessed Cadvan's powers of endurance, but his stubborn will impressed her anew: his face was haggard and his mouth grim, but he moved with the alertness of a well rested man.
Maerad sat in the bows, trying to stay out of the way. She was still disconcerted by how tiny the boat was, a mote in the vastness of the ocean. And she was miserable with seasickness. Cadvan had managed to stay it a little, but he was so busy she felt hesitant to bother him again, and had decided to suffer it, unless it became unbearable. She hadn't been able to eat for the past day and night, and her emptiness made her feel light-headed.
Trying to feel less useless, and to distract herself from her physical misery, Maerad kept watch, although she had no idea what she was watching for. There was, she thought, nothing to see except water: water, water and more water, and on the northern horizon a darkish blur which might be land, or might be a bank of cloud. It frightened her a little: she had spent her childhood among mountains, and had never imagined that space could behave so limitlessly. The White Owl was pitching strangely with the wind, bumping across the tops of the swell, which probably accounted for her nausea, and she gazed with an empty mind across the blue-green backs of the waves, endlessly different and endlessly the same.
After several hours she had entered an almost trance-like state, but towards mid-afternoon something captured her attention. At first she followed it idly with her eyes: a darker current rippling cross-ways through the larger patterns of the waves, just where the path of their wake spread and dispersed over the surface of the sea. As she watched, it seemed to draw a little nearer. She sat up straighter and leaned forward, squinting, and stared at it for a few minutes. It was hard to be sure, but it did seem to her that it was a definite trail, and she had an uneasy feeling that it was following the boat. It had something about it, even at that distance, of a hunting dog on a trail.
She called Cadvan, and he nodded towards Owan and came over to Maerad. Wordlessly, she pointed down The White Owl's wake, and he leaned forward shading his eyes."Can you see something?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"There's a sort of - trail in the water," said Maerad. "I've got a feeling it's following us. Just there, by the wake."
Cadvan finally saw what she was pointing at, and studied it for a few seconds. "Have you been watching it long, Maerad?" he asked."About ten minutes. It's hard to tell, but I think it's drawing closer."
Cadvan nodded and called Owan over. He lashed the tiller and came back to them, and when he saw the dark line in the water his face tightened.
"Do you know what it is?" asked Cadvan.
"No," said Owan. "But I can guess." He looked at Cadvan. "And if it is what I'm thinking, then it would be best to outrun it. Can you whistle any stronger wind, do you think?"
Cadvan grimaced up at the sails. "Perhaps," he said. "How strong is the Owl, Owan? I fear her breaking if the wind blows too hard…"
"Strong enough," said Owan shortly, and went back to the tiller. Almost imperceptibly, Cadvan's shoulders sagged; and then he sighed, as if he were mentally preparing himself for an effort beyond his strength. He went back to his post near the prow of the boat and lifted his arms, speaking words that were tossed away by the wind so Maerad could not hear them. She knew he was using the Speech, and she felt a prickle in her skin, a resonance of magery. At once the sails bulged with a new, stiff blast of wind, and The White Owl sprang willingly forward, like a horse urged to a gallop which it had, until that moment, restrained within itself. Maerad's neck snapped back with the speed, and she put out her hand to steady herself, and looked down the wake towards the ominous track in the sea behind them.
For a few minutes it seemed to vanish, and she relaxed; but with the new motion of the ship her sickness came back, worse than before. She battled for a few minutes, trying to find a stillness within her body which could counterbalance the nausea, and after a while it almost worked. Finally she looked out over the bows again, and her nausea returned threefold. Whatever it was had more than matched their new speed; it was now cutting through The White Owl's wake, gaining on them every moment, and two white waves, like wings, fanned out behind a dark form she could now see breaking the surface of the water.
She cried out, and Cadvan and Owan looked back over their wake. Owan shrugged his shoulders at Cadvan.
"You can't whistle up more?" he asked flatly.
Cadvan shook his head.
"Well, then." Owan stared over the bows, scratching his head. "I'm pretty sure it's an ondril. I've never seen one so fast, though. And it's behaving strange, for an ondril."
"What's an ondril?" asked Maerad, trying to sound as casual as Cadvan and Owan. They could have been discussing a slight problem with that evening's meal.
"A kind of snake, a serpent of the sea," said Cadvan. "I mislike this."
"It's a mighty big one, if it is," said Owan. "They usually leave fishing craft well alone, unless you're unlucky enough to venture into their territory. But we're going so fast now, we'd have long gone past its borders. Normally it would just have turned round by now and gone back to its place."
"It has the stink of Enkir about it," said Cadvan.
"Aye," said Owan. "I'd believe anything, after what I saw in Norloch. Didn't know Enkir was a seamage, all the same."
"He is many things, alas, and few of them good," said Cadvan. "And he draws on powers far beyond his own native abilities. I think perhaps some creature of the Abyss has been summoned, out of the shadows. Perhaps we did not escape the harbour as unnoticed as we hoped."
"Well, what can we do?" Maerad stood up, suddenly impatient.
"I guess we'll have to fight it," said Cadvan. "It's obviously following us. And we're clearly not going to outrun it."
Maerad looked back. The creature, whatever it was, was now less than half a mile away, and gaining fast. Its head, the only part of it which was visible, was a massive black wedge which drove through the water like a spear; even at that distance it looked unimaginably huge. At the thought of being attacked in their flimsy boat in the middle of a great desert of water Maerad's stomach lurched with fright.
"What if it just smashes the boat to bits?" she demanded. "It looks big enough… And we'll just be thrown into the sea, to be drowned or eaten…" Her voice trailed away, and neither Owan nor Cadvan answered her, which she took as a bad sign.
"I'd let the wind drop, if I were you, Cadvan," said Owan, breaking the heavy silence. "No point in using up that energy now."
"Yes, it's no use having it snapping at our tail," answered Cadvan.
Instantly the sails slackened, and The White Owl slowed and then almost halted completely. Without the charmed wind, only the lightest of breezes ruffled the waves. Owan spun the boat around, and they looked back towards the creature driving inexorably towards them. It was now less than a quarter mile away.
"Do you think you could sail towards it?" Cadvan asked suddenly.
Owan cocked his head and thought for a second or two. "Aye, easily enough, if you put a breeze in the sails," he said. "Think you that a good idea?"
"I don't," said Maerad violently. "I think it's mad."
"We may be able to wrest the initiative," said Cadvan. He looked at Maerad and smiled with a sudden sweetness which illuminated and transformed his sombre face. "Come, Maerad. It is better far to put away fear, than to be driven by it. You know that."
Yes, I know that, Maerad thought sardonically. But I'm tired of having to be brave when really I'm so terrified I scarce know what to do… She swallowed hard, and then stood and drew her sword.
Cadvan nodded, and lifted his arms and spoke. Il sammachel Estarë de… I summon you, Wind of the West… Hearing the Speech used in its full power always sent a thrill down Maerad's spine, as if she had stepped into a fresh spring from the mountains of the morning of the world. For a moment she forgot their peril, feeling only the irresistible tug of Cadvan's command, and turned to face him. He glimmered faintly with a silvery light. The sails bulged, and The White Owl creaked as she leaned into the wind, and Owan guided her back down her wake, towards the black thing which made now its own huge wake as it swept towards them. The speed with which they rushed towards each other was dizzying.
Cadvan turned to Maerad, his face stern. "Look to your Gift, Maerad," he said. She held up Irigan, her sword, and an answering light blazed up from its hilt. "I think this beast will not expect us to rush it. Owan, I'll make a fastening charm so you are not thrown out if the monster hits the Owl. Stay your course until the last moment, then turn north, sharp as you are able. Maerad and I will attempt the rest."
Owan nodded, his face unreadable.
"You do the fastening, too, Maerad," Cadvan continued. "Be alert. I have not encountered one of these creatures before. The eyes are vulnerable; hit there first. And it is said that under the carapace of the head there is a soft spot, just where the skullbone meets the neck. Watch for it! And may the Light protect us!"
Maerad nodded fiercely, clutching her blade. There was no time now for fear: the monster was so close that she could now see its head scything through the waves, a fearsome wedge-shaped thing, bigger than their boat, greenish-black and spotted with yellow and green weeds and parasites, with two huge pale unblinking eyes and a wide lipless mouth. It stank like brackish, stagnant water. As their tiny craft neared it, the mouth opened to reveal a nightmare of fangs, rows behind rows of snaggled yellowish teeth, like a cave of knives.
Maerad thought they were going to plunge into that dark gullet, to be shredded and crushed. For a crucial second she was too terrified to move. Beside her, Cadvan lashed forward with his sword, and a bolt of white light sprang from the blade and hit the fearsome head. Maerad saw one eye go out, like a quenched lamp, suddenly clouded with black blood, and then, at the last moment, the sail swung around and The White Owl darted past the horrific mouth, which snapped shut on nothing with a huge crash, drenching them with seawater.The boat was bobbing wildly, but Cadvan was leaning forward, his sword raised, and Maerad came out out of her frozen terror and scanned the side of the monster with furious concentration. Suddenly she saw it, where the carapace of the skull left a gap, revealing a darker, unscaled skin, and she struck out with her blade, crying aloud words which seemed to come into her mind beyond her volition: Takarmernë, nachadam kul de! Be cursed, monster of the Dark!
Two bolts of fire arced from the boat: one bounced off the hard scales of its long body and vanished sizzling into the waves, but the other clove deep into the unmailed skin. The sea boiled as the seamonster thrashed violently and roared, a deafening noise which raised all the hairs on Maerad's skin, and for a while she saw nothing but a white chaos of spray. She heard Cadvan shouting "Back!", fearing they would be swamped, and felt the boat move under Owan's sure handling.
When she could see again, they were a few hundred yards from the ondril. For the first time Maerad could really see how big it was: it had a thick, scaled body which stretched back for hundreds of feet, coiling and uncoiling in spasms of fury and agony which sent up geysers of spray. A black cloud of blood boiled out into the sea, reaching even to their boat, and Cadvan called Owan to draw back still further.
"Will it leave us alone now?" Maerad asked.
"Perhaps," said Cadvan. "It may simply give up and go to lick its wounds. But I think we dare not count on it; I think it more likely that it will come for us now with a fury of revenge, and we would be most imperilled if it dived and came up from beneath. I think we need to blind it, at least."
He turned to Owan, and Owan simply nodded. "Best be quick, I reckon," he said. "Before it's worked out where we are."
"I fear the Owl might be swamped," said Cadvan.
"My beauty won't sink," said Owan with certainty. "Not unless she's broken to bits." He began to steer steadily back to the eye of the maelstrom, where the ondril was beating the ocean into a tumult.Maerad shared none of Owan's confidence, but said nothing. She took a long breath and then took her place by Cadvan on the prow of the boat, her sword raised in readiness.
They were tossed wildly as they neared it, and but for the fastening charms would surely have been thrown into the sea. It was much more difficult now to see where to strike; all Maerad could see was a seething chaos of scales and water. She did not see how they could avoid being smashed to pieces, but for the moment fear had left her, to be replaced with a steely resolve. She squinted fiercely, scanning her side of the boat. Suddenly, no more than ten feet from the rail, the head broke the surface of the water, rearing up before them, the mouth opening wider and wider and wider. Time seemed to slow almost to a halt as the ondril reared high on its endless neck, towering monstrously above them. Maerad cried out, and she and Cadvan struck out for its one remaining eye. Both bolts hit their mark, and a black torrent of blood burst out and splattered smoking onto the deck, and the monster roared and fell back, drenching them all with a huge rush of seawater which washed over the deck and fell in streaming torrents down the sides, and Owan was guiding the tiny Owl so it darted away, slipping as nimbly as a minnow evading the rush of a pike.
This time they kept running. Cadvan put a swift wind in the sails, and they scudded westward over the waves. Owan lashed the tiller and silently disappeared belowdecks, and Cadvan and Maerad both sat down heavily, looking behind them to where the sea still boiled with the ondril's fury, which now dwindled fast behind them. It did not seem as if it would follow.
Owan shortly reappeared with the small brown bottle of liquor, and they all took a swig. Maerad studied the deck; there was no sign of their ordeal anywhere. The ondril's blood had all been swept away by the water, and around them was a calm, blue sea, in which it seemed impossible such monsters should exist.
Cadvan toasted Owan and Maerad tiredly. "A brave bit of sailing, Owan," he said. "And well marked, Maerad! That was a great stroke, behind the head; I missed that one. I should not have liked to have gone down that gullet."
"By the Light, I think not," said Owan. "And a rare piece of fighting, if I might say so. It was quite a sight, to see you both in action. I'd have a think or two before taking you on."
Maerad looked down at her toes, feeling nothing except a vast emptiness. Inside her was no sense of triumph, nor even relief. All she was aware of was a returning wisp of nausea in her stomach. The only good thing about being frightened half to death, she thought, was that it made her forget all about being seasick.