Captain Wiggam looked at Quentin and then at Toli. Noting Quentin’s troubled look he asked, “Is there something else?”

“We have no money to pay our passage.”

“Oh, I see. Well, think no more on it. The Marribo is a cargo ship-though we sometimes carry passengers.”

“And we have horses.” Quentin attempted to diminish their size and number with a small, pensive gesture in their direction.

Wiggam winked an eye and appraised the two horses from where they stood tethered to a mooring ring a few paces down the sea wall. “That is a problem,” he said. His solemn tone pricked Quentin with doubt. Then came another wink. “But no more serious than seaweed in your scupper. We have carried horses before. We are a freighter after all.” He laughed and Quentin laughed, too, in grateful relief.

The captain turned and started away. “I must see to the repair work now, my lads. Starkle will see you aboard. Tell him I said so.”

“When do we leave?” called Quentin as the seaman hurried aft along the hull.

“We leave as soon as ever we can-as soon as the rudder is seaworthy. Get your things aboard. We leave tonight.”

THIRTY-FOUR

DURWIN awoke with a cough, spitting sand. His face lay upon a prickly bed of seaweed rank with the fetid odor of fish. He felt a sharp, stinging pain on, of all places, his scalp. Perhaps it was the pain which had brought him to.

Another prick, and another pain. Durwin raised an arm to his head and dislodged a gull which flapped off along the beach squawking its displeasure. “Not food for the birds yet,” mumbled Durwin under his breath.

He shoved himself up on his elbows and waited for the throbbing in his head to subside. He wiped the sand out of his eyes with a sandy hand and peeped around. He lay alone on the beach by a rock which poked up out of the sand like an old fang from the gums of an aging dragon. The rock was draped in stinking seaweed, as was Durwin.

The sun had not yet risen, but the rosy glow spreading over the horizon promised a new day very soon. The waves of the storm had deposited Durwin high up on the strand, and as he sat taking in his surroundings he felt strange eyes upon him. Glancing around he saw a host of crabs scuttling closer, their eyes wavering in the new light. “Go pick the bones of some other poor fish,” he yelled at them. “This one needs his skin a little longer.”

Durwin pulled himself to his staggering and unsteady legs. He placed a hand on the rock and looked both ways along the jagged, rock-strewn shoreline. “Ah, this is an evil place,” he muttered. He lurched down to the water which now lapped calm and undisturbed, as if nothing could ever perturb its placid surface. He dipped his hands in and washed his face and gritty neck. He shook the sand out of his hair and beard, then started along the water’s edge in search of the others, dreading what he might find.

He had not tottered more than ten paces when he spied a shapely foot sticking out from behind a low, moss-encrusted rock. “Alinea!” He rushed to the lady’s side and her eyelids fluttered open.

“Durwin? Oh, what has happened? I feel sick,” she frowned.

“You probably drank your weight in seawater. As did I.”

Then coming to herself more fully, “The others… Theido, Trenn, Ronsard. Where are they? Have you found them? Are they…?”

“Shh… in time, in time,” he soothed. “You are the first I have discovered. The others cannot be far away. We shall look for them together.” He hesitated and added after a moment, “Or I will seek them alone, if you would rather. You may rest here.”

“No. We will go together. I can face what we may find; the waiting would be worse.”

Durwin helped his sodden, sand-covered Queen to her feet.

“Sit on this rock for a moment. Breathe the air. Deeply. It will make you feel better.”

“I must look like Orphe’s daughter-more fit for the fishes than for human company.”

“We will all require some careful grooming, I’ll warrant. But to be alive-there is nothing more beautiful than that. After last night.”

“Oh, Durwin…” the Queen gasped. Her hand found his arm and squeezed it.

Durwin turned to look where her eyes were fixed to see what he had taken to be a pile of kelp and seaweed lumped upon the beach. Now he saw that it had a human form, and then what Alinea had regarded with horror. Dozens of crabs were feeding upon the body, gathered around an open wound. Their pinchers scissored tiny chunks of red flesh from the body’s flank.

“Ack!” cried Durwin, rushing to his comrade, sending the blue and green crabs scuttling in sideways retreat.

“It is Trenn!” he shouted as he rolled the body over. He placed his ear to the man’s chest. “He is alive, thank the god!” Then the hermit bent to finger the wound in Trenn’s side-a long, ragged gash, deep though not bleeding; the flow of blood had been stanched by the salt water.

“Will he be all right?” Alinea crept close to Durwin.

“I think so. The wound is deep, but not severe, I think. He may have other injuries we cannot see.”

Alinea shivered at the memory of the crabs. “I saw them snatching at him… I thought…”

“And so did I. But look. The crabs have done a service after all. The wound is clean now; it will heal the quicker.” Durwin spoke with assurance, but cast a doubtful eye upon Trenn’s insensate features.

Suddenly a crash sounded in the undergrowth of the thick wooded land that fringed the shoreline. Durwin glanced up and met a ring of sullen eyes set in dull, unfeeling faces. There were perhaps twenty soldiers dressed in hauberk and helm, leveling spears upon them. Each helmet carried a crest with the insignia of the soldier’s cruel master: the black croaking raven of Nimrood the Necromancer.

A rider on a spotted black horse leaped through the tangle and onto the strand. He eyed the humble survivors with a malicious glare. A purple scar cleft his face from forehead to jaw, bending the nose aside as it swept across the cheek.

“Seize them!” the rider cried. The voice was a sneer.

The impassive soldiers leapt at once to the task of jerking Durwin and Alinea to their feet and roughly binding them. The prisoners were marched, with much prodding and poking, into the woods above the beach.

“He alive?” asked the rider, jerking his head to the body of Trenn reposed upon the sand.

“Yes, he is alive,” affirmed Durwin. “Be careful with him. He is injured.”

“Teh, a pity. ‘Twere better he were dead.” The rider spurred the skittish horse past Durwin and the Queen and shouted, “Take the other one.”

The three were bundled into a high-sided cart. Alinea and Durwin edged Trenn carefully to the bottom of the cart and settled, as best they could, beside him.

“Not a word about the others,” Durwin warned in a whisper.

“Take them away!” yelled the rider with the wicked scar, who seemed to be the commander of the company on the shore.

The cart bumped off into the woods, rocking as if to overturn. Neither the driver of the cart nor the four accompanying soldiers paid the slightest attention. The cart passed through a thin, unhealthy wood made up of wiry trees and straggles of vines. Rocks with sharp edges thrust out of the ground making the going exceedingly strenuous. And though it was sunrise, the dire wood seemed to banish the light, steeped instead in perpetual gloom.

“This is a cheerless place,” noted the Queen.

“So it is. Any place the necromancer calls his own is cheerless; and, I fear, a good deal worse.”

The cart and its contents bumped and rumbled over rock and root. Eventually they reached a feeble trail scratched into the stony soil. The surrounding wood thinned as they proceeded along.

It soon became apparent that they followed a struggling brook; the splash of its churning water could be heard close by. Rude hills rose on either side covered with dense, though sickly, vegetation of unpleasant sorts. An air of quiet doom hung over the valley which they trod. Only the forlorn call of an occasional bird and the groan and whine of the wagon’s ungreased wheels broke the oppressive silence.