II
“A Landsman’s ship,” Kilwar repeated thoughtfully. “I know you must have searched her well each time.”
Pihuys nodded. “Lord, any place a man could go within, that we sought. And the cargo hatch was sealed with an unbroken seal.”
“Yet somehow, Captain, there is an answer to your mystery!”
The voice was high pitched and so unpleasant was its tone that Tarn-sis looked over her shoulder to where another man had come out upon the cave dock. He walked clumsily, with a sidewise lurch, and his face had a petulant twist. Under that there lay a resemblance to Kilwar. And Tam-sin, with the part memories of this time, knew him, Rhuys, Kilwar’s brother, whose injuries during the winter hunting of two seasons ago left him sour and sharp of tongue.
There was another stir of knowledge within her mind. In the craig castle Rhuys was her enemy. Not openly, but with such an ill will as any sensitive (and above all a dreamer had to cultivate such sensitivity) could read. He did not even glance in her direction now, rather limped on to stand with Kilwar facing the Captain.
“Lord Rhuys,” Pihuys’s voice was far more formal in tone, “I can only tell of what I saw. We searched the vessel from bow to stem; the small boats hung in their lashings, there was naught living aboard.”
“Naught living?” Kilwar echoed those words. “That is said, Pihuys, as if you have some explanation which is not of the living world.”
The Captain shrugged. “Lord, we have lived in, by, and of the sea for all our generations. Yet do we not still come upon mysteries none of us, nor our records, can explain? There are great depths into which our species cannot venture. What may lurk there: who knows?”
“But this,” persisted Rhuys, “is not a tale of the Great Depths, but rather of the surface, and of a Landsman’s ship. They do not deal in any of our mysteries; they fear us.” Tam-sin thought there was a thread of pride in that statement. Perhaps, because he had lost so much in his life, Rhuys clung to the thought that their race was feared by others.
“I tell only what I saw, what I heard, what happened,” Pihuys repeated stolidly. And he did not look in Rhuys’s direction at all, rather made a point of speaking directly to Kilwar. Rhuys was not greatly cherished within the hold of LockNar; his peevish temper too often flashed to life.
“I would have your chart, Pihuys,” Kilwar said. “Perhaps the ship still floats free. You say the rope was cut, could it have been the work of a spallen?”
Pihuys half turned, gestured to one of his seamen. The man leaped back to the deck of the anchored vessel, returned with a coil of heavy rope slung over his shoulder. The Captain caught at the dangling end and held it out for their inspection. Even Tam-sin, knowing little of the ship’s equipment, could see that end was cleanly cut, and it must have taken a sharp knife or hatchet to accomplish that so easily.
Kilwar ran his finger over the severed end. “This took strength,” he commented, “as well as a sharp edge. Was it cut on board the ship, or when the rope lay between you and it?”
“Close on the ship, Lord, by the measurement,” Pihuys answered at once. “There is no roughage as one would find at a saw-through. No, it was done by a single blow.”
Rhuys laughed spitefully. “It could have been cut by a man who determined that the cargo was worth the risk of losing his comrades. If the Landsmen’s ship was as intact as you say, it could easily be sailed to Insigal which, as all men know, is inhabited by those who are not too honest.”
Pihuys, for the first time, faced Rhuys squarely. “Lord, if there had been any man hidden on board, him we would have flushed out. We know ships and on that one we even sniffed into the bilges. And if it is suggested that my men thought of playing such a trick . . .” The glare he turned now on Kilwar’s brother was one verging on the murderous.
“Not so, Pihuys.” Kilwar broke in. “No one would suggest that you or your men might be responsible for a ship taken to Insigal so that the salvage came not into our hands.” He was frowning, but he did not glance at his brother.
Tam-sin sighed inwardly. Some time Kilwar would have to see Rhuys for what he was: a soured man, a troublemaker who stirred up many fires and depended upon Kilwar to see that he was not scorched when those burst into open flame. She could urge nothing on her Lord, that she knew. Rhuys was persuasive with Kilwar when he wished, and he hated her. She must allow no wedge to be driven between them.
“Bring me your chart,” Kilwar was continuing. “Also I shall ask of the Lord of Lockriss and him of Lochack, what they might have seen or had reported. For if you came across this derelict off the Reefs, that territory is well patrolled by their forces.”
The chart of the reef territory was spread out on the table in the council chamber and Kilwar made a point of assembling there those Elders whose knowledge of the strange tales of the sea outrivaled the many accounts in their archives. He had Pihuys relate his version of the mist-concealed ship and then looked to the Elders.
“Has there been a like happening known?” the Lord of LockNar asked, when the silence fell after Pihuys’ detailed report.
For a long moment no one answered. Then Follan, who all men knew, had made the eastern voyage a dozen times, arose and went to the map, using his forefinger to trace the line Pihuys had indicated.
“Lord, this has happened before, but not in these waters.”
“Where and when?” Kilwar’s question was brief.
“There is a place off Quinquare in the east in which ships have been sighted, yes, even boarded, to be found deserted. Nor has any Captain been able to bring in those ships. At one time this was so great a danger that men would no longer sail for Quinquare and that city’s trade died, its people fled inland or overseas, and it became a shadowed ruin. But years passed and the ghost ships were not seen. So Quinquare arose again, yet never was it the great city it had once been.”
“Quinquare,” Kilwar mused. “That is a full sea away. But such ships have not been seen on this coast?”
“That is so,” Follan replied. “Lord, I do not like it. Just so acting were the ghost ships of Quinquare. If some power holds them that now lies on our lee, then it is trouble indeed.”
“Lord, the message hawks . . .” He who had charge of those swift flying birds moved to the table, one on either wrist. The birds looked about them with bright and fierce eyes, moving their feet uneasily on the heavy gauntlets covering the Hawkmaster’s wrists. They were sea eagles, able to wing tirelessly over the waves, bred for intelligence, and trained to carry the messages from one craig-island castle to the next for the Sea Kings.
Kilwar drew a small piece of cured sea snake skin and inked on it coded words. When he had done he took each bird in turn to fasten his message in the tube bound to one leg.
“Release them now,” he ordered. “And be alert for any quick return.”
“Lord, it is done.”
“Meanwhile,” Kflwar said, “let our battleship be made ready. We shall seek out this ghost vessel for ourselves, if it still floats and seeks men as a bait lies within a trap. Pihuys, what manner of seal lay upon the cargo hatch? Did you know it?”
“Lord, it was of this design,” the Captain had picked up another square of snakeskin and the writing stick Kilwar had dropped. He sketched in some lines. “I have not seen it before,” he added as he put aside the pen and pushed the sketch over to his Lord.
Tam-sin moved forward a pace or so, in spite of Rhuys’s glare, to peer down over Kilwar’s shoulder. She drew a gasping breath when the significance of those lines became clear. Tam-sin of LockNar would not have recognized it, but Tamisan of Ty-Kry knew . . . And she saw, almost felt, the sudden tensing of Kilwar’s body as he made the same identification.
“It would seem, brother,” Rhuys said, “even if the brave Captain knows not this symbol, she who shares your bed does.”
The six-point star with a jaggered bolt of lightning through it, Starrex’s own badge out of Ty-Kry, the real Ty-Kry from which they had come, no, there was no mistaking that!