Nightfall (Book 1) (15 page)

That day, after an early supper, we boarded
Wavewing
(the ship Garaile had lent us) and prepared for departure. Harkaitz, the ship’s captain, stood at the fore—or front—of the ship, ordering, and occasionally helping, fourteen of the fifteen men who were his personal crew. The single mast rose from the center of the deck and fore of it was the hatch that led into the vessel. Koldobika, the four guards, my sister, and I had been sent aft, or to the back of the ship, to keep us out of the way of the busy crew members. Between us and the rest of the crew, the last crewman sat behind a large drum, which he would beat while the other fourteen were rowing. Harkaitz joined us, aft of the ship, as the piercing sound of a horn interrupted my observations of the crew hands at work and I looked toward the storm gates, the direction from which the horn had been blown. The storm gates looked like a solid, seamless wall of grey stone and it seemed unlikely that they could part to let us through. Garaile stood on a rock ledge over the dock to the right of the gates, quickly surveying the situation below. He gave an order to the crew of men in a hidden compartment built into the cliff face.

Harkaitz held his hand up for silence on the ship and then he whispered, “Watch,” though he could have been yelling it because there was only the momentarily calmed sound of waves still crashing on the rocks. Everyone looked to the storm gates, and after a few seconds of suspense, a deafening boom rang through the fjord, though nothing had visibly happened. Then the sound of stone grinding on stone preceded a perfect crack splitting right down the center of the massive gates, and then the separated sections slid away from one another, receding into the cliff faces. As the gates parted, the water from the sea gripped the two ships in the small harbor and tried to push them onto the stone ramp, but they had been tied up well enough that they would not move from their berths. With the sea water came a fresh, crisp breeze, the smell of which I could not help but love. After the first rush of water the waves washed repeatedly in and out of the pen.

Harkaitz blew a single, clear note on a small whistle he wore on a leather cord around his neck. The sound was a signal for his men to prepare for castoff and two of them jumped from the ship, one on either side. Harkaitz knew better than anyone else near the docks what should be done, so the two men awaited his command. Since the rowers faced aft, I could watch their silent faces as they also waited for the command from their captain. Just before it happened, I sensed a subtle change in the air and in the ocean water, lapping at the surrounding stone and the wood of
Wavewing
. Suddenly Harkaitz yelled out the order to untie the ship and, in the small amount of time it took for the two crewmen to untie the vessel and leap onto the deck, the waves changed direction, headed home to the vastness of the sea.

“Row,” Harkaitz yelled, though not angrily, and his deep voice sounded loudly through the ravine; he was used to being heard above the crashing of waves. The two men who had untied the ship got to their stations just in time to help their comrades in paddling the ship on her course out of the potentially hazardous fjord. As the ship began to move seaward the drummer started a loud, booming beat, perfectly in rhythm with the swoops of the oars. He would swing one huge drumstick down onto the taught hide, while his other arm swung up, poised to fall and continue the rhythm.

Harkaitz stood just ahead of us, raising his right hand in farewell to Garaile and everyone else who would remain. Those of us who were not busy followed the Captain’s example. Just before the part of the gates that protruded from the stone wall hid Garaile, I saw him return the sign of farewell, and then he turned to give a command to the crew in charge of the gates.

I watched attentively as my first real view of the sea became closer by the second; ahead of us was a bend in the fjord, so it seemed that I had to wait forever. I did not notice it, but Koldobika began watching me carefully—I was too intent on getting to the sea to notice the glances. Suddenly the sea was calling too strongly for me to resist, and I meant to leap from the ship into the swell of water that would carry me out to sea—my mind seemed unable to realize that I would only dash myself against the rough rocks of the peninsula and, after falling from them, I would only drown for I had never learned to swim. At the last moment, something stronger than me caught hold of my shoulders, restraining me; I turned around and saw that it was Sendoa, keeping me from the sea. Something finally broke through to my senses, telling me that something was wrong and I suddenly realized that I had no clue what I was doing.

My gaze met Koldobika’s eyes and I snapped completely out of my daze and fell to my knees. Sendoa slowly released his death-grip on my left shoulder. “What happened?” I croaked. After a second or two my gaze met Koldobika’s again.

“Sirens,” the guard replied.

Izar came and sat by me, the grim look in her eyes startled me; I had never seen her so worried before. “Did you see what happened?” My sister nodded. “What?”

She sighed quietly. “Your eyes lost focus and it looked as if you were in a daze.” Izar paused for a moment. “Then you started walking toward the edge of the ship and as you got closer you sped up. Sendoa grabbed you just before you leapt from the deck.”

“And I would have been beaten against the rocks,” I mumbled, looking toward the side of the fjord. I was angry with myself for the loss of self-control, and disturbed by the fact that I had nearly committed suicide. What were these sirens that they could so easily sway my mind?

I stopped reprimanding myself just in time to hear Koldobika quietly say to Sendoa, “We will both have to keep a closer eye on him from now on.”
Oh, splendid,
 I thought in mild annoyance. I knew it was for my safety, but it made me feel as if they could not trust me.

Izar nudged me in the ribs. “We are almost out of the fjord,” she said, her face less grim. We stood and looked beyond the front of the ship. As we came around the bend, the towering stone walls dropped steeply off and we were suddenly surrounded by the endless seas. The color of the sea was a vivid, and deep, blue-green. The salty smell washed strongly over me again as
Wavewing
 slid through the top of a small wave; the white, briny spray splattered the entire deck of the ship. Two oarsmen rose from their seats as soon as we were out of the fjord, ready for Harkaitz’ command to unfurl the single, huge sail.

Harkaitz relaxed his grip on the long, wooden pole that controlled the steering of the ship and waited until there was some distance between us and the mainland before he gave the next command. “Unfurl the sail.” It was mere seconds after the two waiting men had let down the sail and slid down a rope hung from where the spar and mast were attached, that the breeze caught in the sail, filled it and pulled us further out to sea. “Cease rowing.” One final boom of the drum accentuated his command and the oars were pulled in and stowed away.

I looked back at the cliffs rising from the ocean. Combined with the vastness of the sea they made me feel as small even as the Wall of Caernadvall had. Waves crashed at the feet of the cliffs, turned back on themselves, and washed back out to sea. Now that the towering land mass was no longer there to block it, the strong wind had filled the single square sail and was pushing us along at a hearty speed.

“Izotz.”

I turned to face Koldobika, who had just addressed me. “Yes?” Sendoa turned an attentive ear to our conversation, taking seriously his mandate to watch me.

“What you told me this morning, about sensing magic in the ocean, can you explain?”

I shrugged. “I also sensed it before Sendoa saved me from jumping ship, though it was not nearly as strong,” I said as I contemplated how to explain my sixth sense.

“How do you know that there was magic in what happened?”

“I told you that I can sense magic,” I reminded him. “I do not know how I can, but I have always been able to.”

“Even before you were an elf?”

I glared at my sister halfheartedly—I had always been an elf, I just had not been complete. “Yes.”

“Cool.” I shrugged, I had originally thought that it was a common ability and so it had never seemed much of a specialty to me. Koldobika pointed out that we were getting off topic.

“I can just
feel
its presence, somehow,” I said. “Do you know more about it?” I asked him. He thought about it for a moment and then shook his head.

“No.”

~ ~ ~

My homeland, which had only just been beginning to hold any real meaning or purpose for me, disappeared over the horizon not long before the hot sun set, letting the air cool to an almost perfect temperature. The moon slipped up over the horizon; the waves mirrored the dim light in the East and the stars far above twinkled to life, one at a time, guiding our way across the trackless ocean.

Even though the days were sometimes blistering hot and the nights were often the exact opposite, I enjoyed the majority of our journey across the wide ocean as we neared the land of the Eguzki desert. Lucky for me elves have a natural affinity for the ocean and rarely is there ever an elf born who will get seasick. This came in handy our second day out to sea when we were overtaken by a powerful storm; the waves reached higher than the cliff faces of Garaile’s fjord and a few of them came full circle and nearly engulfed our ship.

At one point I thought that the ship was going to roll completely over because we managed to catch the wave wrong, but other than that it was a thrilling experience.
Wavewing
 would slide up one side of an oncoming wave and slice through its peak, sending ocean spray a hundred feet into the air to be swirled forcefully down into the last wave she had gone over. At the wave’s zenith, everything seemed to freeze for a second and then the ship would be flying down the far side of the wave—it felt as if the deck were vertical and
Wavewing
 might topple completely over, spilling the crew into the tumultuous waters. Just as it seemed the ship was going to capsize, she would reach the almost flat space of the sea’s boiling surface between monstrous waves, and then the ascent would begin anew.

Being a captain, Harkaitz knew enough magic to be able to get his crew as safely as possible across the ocean. One of the bits of magic he knew gave him the ability to see through the storm clouds and to the stars above so that he would not lose direction even in the worst of storms—even if he was unable to control where the vessel went, he would know where he was headed. The captain had consulted with Koldobika regarding whether or not he should keep us going through the storm, or let it take us where it would until it blew itself out. Harkaitz knew that
Wavewing
 could easily withstand the storm, but he did not want his passengers thinking that he was trying to get them all killed. Koldobika decided that we would stay on course, which pleased me because I found it exhilarating flying up and down the waves. Also, the more rational part of me knew that we needed to hurry and reach Alaia, which we would not be doing if we skirted around the storm.

~ ~ ~

“Land to starboard,” one of the crewmen on lookout shouted. I looked up from a small map Koldobika had brought and sure enough, ahead of us and to the starboard of the ship, a thin strip of land made up of a golden-hued purple, blurred by the distance between it and us, could be seen on the horizon.

“Is that the Eguzki desert?” I asked of the wizard.

“That is the land of Eguzki and yes, the Eguzki desert is located there, just beyond a strip of fertile land bordering the seashore.” While he spoke Koldobika concentrated his gaze on the land before us. I wondered absently what was playing out in the mind behind that calculating gaze; curious of what he saw that I could not, though my eyes were the sharper pair.

~ ~ ~

The sun was almost an hour from setting when
Wavewing
 sailed into harbor. I had not expected that there would be any kind of settlement—since Eguzki was a land reserved for betrayers of overlords and those who had committed treason but had not been sentenced to death—yet settlement there was. Nearly all of the other ships had two floors below the main deck and the ones that did had multiple masts and many sails more than
Wavewing
.

“Why is this city here?” I asked Izar as the crewmen secured
Wavewing
 in her berth and Harkaitz paid the dock owner for the space we were using. To the far left of the docks I had seen people in chains standing on wooden platforms before small crowds. When one or more of the people were taken from the platform, to be replaced by others, one amongst the crowd would order a group of three or so men to lead them off to one or another of the many ships at port.

“There are many people on this land who do not belong to any King or leader and so are unprotected and thought of as below even the street urchins of Caernadvall. Men greedy for money and power, and not concerned with freedom, come here and turn them into slaves and while they are here doing their bloody business they need somewhere to stay—other than their ships.” There was a tone of steely hatred in Izar’s voice, which she did not even try to hide.

“So they just ban people from the land and then bring them back as slaves?” I asked.

She nodded. “If the slaves were to run away and then be found they would be tortured to death for returning to the land they had been outlawed from.”

“Whether or not they had returned of their own free will,” I mumbled, part question, but mostly stating the cruel irony of it all.

“So the majority of them choose to stay in the false security of slavery.” The green of Izar’s eyes had darkened like a storm, in her anger, as she glared at the four slave ships tied into their own berths to the left of our ship.

“Have the elves or anyone else ever tried to do anything about it?” I asked.

“Yes. Some tribes of different peoples and species have gone on raids for the mere sake of freeing the slaves and those who escape on their own are usually found and taken under the protection of someone, or taken somewhere safe. Unless their crimes truly were evil—then they are judged for them.”

~ ~ ~

That night we stayed at a small inn and though it was the cleanest building in the small settlement, I was positive I had never before been anywhere with more fleas. After a restless night the party who had originally set out from Baso Argi got a week’s worth of supplies and we left on our horses, headed for the heart of the desert of Eguzki. While we were gone, Harkaitz and his crew resupplied our provisions for the return trip to our homeland; though the inns were the worst ever, the food supplies of the settlement were quite the opposite.

~ ~ ~

It took just over an hour of traveling on horseback before the ring of lush vegetation bordering the seaside disappeared and a golden desert stretched out across the land for as far as the eye could see. “And this is the desert,” I stated.

“Yes,” Izar said. “Now you must show us where we can find Alaia.”

I replayed in my mind what Alaia had scried to me. “We just keep going straight until we get to some black mountains.” Everyone just looked at me. “What?”

“That is all?”

“We are not yet at the mountains so what does it matter?” The instructions seemed to be good enough for the guards because Alesander headed away in the direction I had indicated and everyone else followed.

~ ~ ~

I fell asleep while we were still traveling and fell from Aitor's back, jolting awake as gravity caught hold of me. The moment I slipped from the saddle my horse stopped and waited for me to resume my position as his rider. While waiting he even moved into the direct rays of the sun so that I would be in the shade. I was amazed that the horse did not fall over dead, with his black coat in the simmering glare of the sun, but I was assured that the elven horses were bred from stock able to withstand the
most bitter cold and even hotter temperatures than a human could.

I heard Alesander call a halt and give a few orders as I groaned and sat up. Aitor nudged my back with his nose and whinnied at me; I blew a lock of dark hair from my face and stood, leaning against the horse. “Are you okay?” Izar asked as she led her horse toward me.

I rubbed my horse’s neck and eventually said, “It is scorching out here.” Izar was silent so I turned my head to look at her, she was scowling. “I am fine, just a little tired.” She grunted. Sendoa walked around Aitor and into my view and opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “I am fine, I am fine,” I said.

He snorted in disbelief. “I was going to tell you that we put up some tents and that you can get Aitor and yourself in the shade.” I grabbed Aitor’s reins and started leading him toward the shade. As I turned to go I heard Sendoa tell my sister to take the opportunity and rest too. I gave my horse a drink, unsaddled him and then lay down with my head and shoulders propped against the saddle, in the hopes of actually falling asleep.
“How long ‘til we leave?” I asked of whomever chose to answer first.

“We will leave when the air starts to cool, so around sundown,” Alesander replied. I barely had time to mumble ‘oh’ before I was asleep. Whoever had pitched the tents had only put up the top and one side, which was moved, as needed, to block the sun. There was a hot breeze running through the tent most of the time, but the shade was the main thing keeping all of us from shriveling up and dying in the blistering heat of the sun.

~ ~ ~

“Wake up, Izotz.”

I flung the hood of my cloak, which had just been dropped on top of me, from off my face to glare at my sister for waking me. “What?” Then I noticed that it was dark and recalled that we were to be leaving in the cool of night. “Oh,” I mumbled, no longer requiring an answer. The tent had already been taken down and everyone else was almost done readying their steeds for the night’s trekking.

The pale, silvery moonlight gave the desert a soft, glowing accent and even the distant air had a misty look to it as we slowly made our way across the windblown sands. We traveled all through that night, pitching the tent just before the sun came up and the majority of the day we spent dozing in the barely subdued heat of the sun. A couple of hours after we had started on our second night of traveling, we saw a black row of jagged mountains, shining in the pale moonlight, far in the distance and slightly to the left of our present course.

The next night, as we traveled in the shadow of the forbidding mountain range, Sendoa—who was riding alongside me—asked, “Where do we go after we get away from these cursed mountains?”

“We continue along the line created by the foothills of those,” I pointed toward the mountains, which my companions had dubbed evil, then I pointed forward into the unseen distance where I knew Alaia was awaiting our arrival. “Once they have gone from sight our destination will appear amongst the dunes.”

“What is this place we are searching for?” Alesander asked quietly.

“An archway made of three enormous stones.” That was all I knew about them and so they held no real importance for me. Everyone else in the group stopped their conversations, as if in reverence to what I had mentioned, though I guessed it must have been something else—I mean, if the archway held any importance, would I not already have been told? It was a couple of minutes before Izar interrupted the silence, making sure I was saying that Alaia would be found somewhere near the arch.

I shrugged. “That is where her directions came to an end, so as far as I know, that is where she is now.” Everyone fell silent again, which was unusual for that night, because the others had kept up a conversation of some kind—even if it was simple as musing about how long it would take us to get to where Alaia was. We could all feel the dark, depressing feelings that crept upon us while in the shadow of the strange mountains, trying to overwhelm any hope within us when the silence was permitted. It seemed a shroud, emitting from the mountains themselves, for none of us had felt like that without a league of the stony piles of black earth that thrust up toward the sky.

We continued an hour longer into the morning than we had done the mornings previous, so that we could be safely without the range of the mountains’ influence while we slept. That day, while the others of our company slept, the four guards took turns keeping a lookout. While still in sight, the mountains left an echoed sense of trepidation which kept us all anxious to be out of the area. That night also passed
 uneventfully, with the moonlight reflected off of smooth, black rock slowly growing smaller as we steadily gained a larger amount of distance between us and the mountains. The day after, the sense of foreboding was almost gone and we knew that the mountains would be completely out of sight somewhere around midnight, after we resumed our traveling.

~ ~ ~

The day had been passing quietly while we slept and it was Aitor’s soft nickering in his sleep that woke me from a dream of cool streams running through a forest’s shade. I stood and walked over to the horse; I sat down next to him, leaned against his strong back and began stroking his neck to quiet him. When the other horses also began to nicker—a sound I had realized, when it came from more than one of them, was a warning of approaching danger—I poked my head above Aitor’s back to survey the surrounding dunes.

At first I could see nothing unusual in the landscape before me, but just before I was going to give up and dub the horses’ nickering as being produced by their dreams, I thought for a moment that my eyes were smarting from the sun, because a small section of the sand had risen and was stalking slowly toward the shelter. I looked again and still saw the slowly moving section of sand; I turned to Erlantz who was currently on lookout duty and asked him if he had seen anything.