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Authors: Stephen R. Donaldson
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second time.
But long sleep had brought her back to herself, and the gaze she turned toward him was capable of knowledge. She seemed to see without effort that his irritation was not directed at her. She placed a brief touch on his forearm like a promise that she would not forsake him. Then she went out to look at the wind.
After a moment’s assessment, she declared that this blow was not unnatural or ill, not something which the Despiser had whipped up for his own ends. Instead it was a reaction to the fundamental convulsion which had pulled down the Isle of the One Tree. By that violence, the balances of the weather had been disturbed, outraged.
It was conceivable that Lord Foul had known this would happen. But she felt no evidence of his influence on the wind.
When Covenant relayed her verdict to Honninscrave, the Master shrugged, his thoughts hidden behind the buttress of his brows. “No matter,” he muttered as if he were not listening to himself. “Should it worsen, Starfare’s Gem must run before it. Part-masted as we are, I will not hazard resistance to the wind’s path. There is no need. At present, we are borne but a scant span from our true way.”
That should have satisfied Covenant His experience of the sea was trivial compared to Honninscrave’s. Yet the alarm in his guts refused to be eased. Like Galewrath, the Master conveyed an impression of concealed worry.
During the next two days, the wind became more serious.
Blowing with incessant vehemence a few points west of north, it cut into the sea like the share of a plow, whined across the decks of the
dromond
like the ache of its own chill. In spite of its speed, Starfare’s Gem no longer appeared to be moving swiftly: the wind bore the water itself northward, and what little bowwave the prow raised was torn away at once. Clouds hugged the world from horizon to horizon. The sails looked gray and brittle as they heaved the heavy stone along.
And that night the cold began in earnest
When Covenant scrambled shivering out of his hammock the next morning, he found a scum of ice in the washbasin which Cail had set out for him. Faint patches of frost licked the moire-granite as if they had soaked in through the walls. Passing Vain on his way to the warmth of the galley, he saw that the Demondim-spawn’s black form was mottled with rime like leprosy.
Yet the Giants were busy about their tasks as always. Impervious to fire if not to pain, they were also proof against cold. Most of them labored in the rigging, fighting the frozen stiffness of the lines. For a moment while his eyes teared, Covenant saw them imprecisely and thought they were furling the sails. But then he saw clouds blowing off the canvas like steam, and he realized that the Giants were beating the sails to prevent the frost on them from building into ice. Ice might have torn the canvas from the spars, crippling Starfare’s Gem when the
dromond
’s life depended upon its headway.
His breathing crusted in his beard as he let the wind thrust him forward. Without Cail’s help, he would have been unable to wrestle open the galley door. Slivers of ice sprang from the cracks and vanished inward as the
Haruchai
broke the seal caused by the moisture of cooking. Riding a gust that swirled stiffly through the galley, Covenant jumped the storm-sill and nearly staggered at the concussion as the door slammed behind him.
“Stone and Sea!” Hearthcoal barked in red-faced and harmless ire. “Are you fools, that you enter aft rather than forward in this gale?” With a dripping ladle, she gestured fiercely at the other seadoor. Behind her, Seasauce clanged shut his stove’s firebox indignantly. But a moment later, all vexation forgotten, he handed Covenant a steaming flagon of diluted
diamondraught
, and Hearthcoal scooped out a bowl of broth for him from the immense stone pot she tended. Awkward with self-consciousness, he sat down beside Linden against one wall out of the way of the cooks and
But long sleep had brought her back to herself, and the gaze she turned toward him was capable of knowledge. She seemed to see without effort that his irritation was not directed at her. She placed a brief touch on his forearm like a promise that she would not forsake him. Then she went out to look at the wind.
After a moment’s assessment, she declared that this blow was not unnatural or ill, not something which the Despiser had whipped up for his own ends. Instead it was a reaction to the fundamental convulsion which had pulled down the Isle of the One Tree. By that violence, the balances of the weather had been disturbed, outraged.
It was conceivable that Lord Foul had known this would happen. But she felt no evidence of his influence on the wind.
When Covenant relayed her verdict to Honninscrave, the Master shrugged, his thoughts hidden behind the buttress of his brows. “No matter,” he muttered as if he were not listening to himself. “Should it worsen, Starfare’s Gem must run before it. Part-masted as we are, I will not hazard resistance to the wind’s path. There is no need. At present, we are borne but a scant span from our true way.”
That should have satisfied Covenant His experience of the sea was trivial compared to Honninscrave’s. Yet the alarm in his guts refused to be eased. Like Galewrath, the Master conveyed an impression of concealed worry.
During the next two days, the wind became more serious.
Blowing with incessant vehemence a few points west of north, it cut into the sea like the share of a plow, whined across the decks of the
dromond
like the ache of its own chill. In spite of its speed, Starfare’s Gem no longer appeared to be moving swiftly: the wind bore the water itself northward, and what little bowwave the prow raised was torn away at once. Clouds hugged the world from horizon to horizon. The sails looked gray and brittle as they heaved the heavy stone along.
And that night the cold began in earnest
When Covenant scrambled shivering out of his hammock the next morning, he found a scum of ice in the washbasin which Cail had set out for him. Faint patches of frost licked the moire-granite as if they had soaked in through the walls. Passing Vain on his way to the warmth of the galley, he saw that the Demondim-spawn’s black form was mottled with rime like leprosy.
Yet the Giants were busy about their tasks as always. Impervious to fire if not to pain, they were also proof against cold. Most of them labored in the rigging, fighting the frozen stiffness of the lines. For a moment while his eyes teared, Covenant saw them imprecisely and thought they were furling the sails. But then he saw clouds blowing off the canvas like steam, and he realized that the Giants were beating the sails to prevent the frost on them from building into ice. Ice might have torn the canvas from the spars, crippling Starfare’s Gem when the
dromond
’s life depended upon its headway.
His breathing crusted in his beard as he let the wind thrust him forward. Without Cail’s help, he would have been unable to wrestle open the galley door. Slivers of ice sprang from the cracks and vanished inward as the
Haruchai
broke the seal caused by the moisture of cooking. Riding a gust that swirled stiffly through the galley, Covenant jumped the storm-sill and nearly staggered at the concussion as the door slammed behind him.
“Stone and Sea!” Hearthcoal barked in red-faced and harmless ire. “Are you fools, that you enter aft rather than forward in this gale?” With a dripping ladle, she gestured fiercely at the other seadoor. Behind her, Seasauce clanged shut his stove’s firebox indignantly. But a moment later, all vexation forgotten, he handed Covenant a steaming flagon of diluted
diamondraught
, and Hearthcoal scooped out a bowl of broth for him from the immense stone pot she tended. Awkward with self-consciousness, he sat down beside Linden against one wall out of the way of the cooks and
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