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rigging lulled him. He slept finally, unaware that two additional vessels bore
down upon the harbor where
Callinde took shelter. One was Corley's command, Moonless, bearing a
battle-trained crew of eighty. In the other, a black vessel seen only in
dreams, eight Thienz licked their teeth, driven onward by Scait Demon Lord's
directive to kill.
Tierl Enneth
Mist rolled across the harbor of Tierl Enneth and cloaked the ruined city in
gray. The drizzle which began at dawn still fell in the early afternoon when,
like a phantom haunting waters where moored ships once swung with the tide,
Moonless ghosted in under the whispered flap of her staysails. Her deckhands
sang no chanteys. In somber silence, they dropped anchor, furled canvas, and
swayed two longboats out. The first craft they loaded with empty casks which
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bore recent marks of repair. Corley commandeered the second. Scowling, his
maroon tunic darkened with damp, he accepted the blanket-
wrapped weight of the Dreamweaver from the healer's anxious arms. Leaving
command of
Moonless to the first mate, the captain descended the side battens one-handed
and settled in the stern seat of the boat. He arranged Taen in his lap, and
paused a moment to look at her. Rain beaded her lashes like tears; pale as a
porcelain doll, the girl barely seemed to breathe.
The healer glared reproachfully down from the waist and tried one last time to
object. "She ought not to be moved."
Corley ignored him. With a curt jerk of his head, he ordered his sailhands to
proceed. The boat jostled under the added weight as four brawny men stepped
within. They positioned themselves on the benches and threaded oars through
rowlocks in subdued silence.
"Take her ashore, then," murmured Corley. His eyes never lifted from the girl
in his lap. Looms lapped into water. As the Dreamweaver's head rolled with the
pull of the first stroke, the Kielmark's most hardened captain bit his lip and
wondered whether he was right to trust the dream which urged him to convey the
failing girl to land. He had no fey skills; only a sure eye for weapons and a
knack for managing men. But when his sleep had been torn into visions four
nights in a row by an image of
Taen dying in screaming agony unless he car-
ried her with him into Tierl Enneth, Corley chose to act. He had nothing to
lose. Barring a miracle, the
Dreamweaver was already lost.
The oars dipped and lifted like clockwork; expertly handled, the longboat
hissed through the waters of the harbor. Surrounded by the smell of sweating
men and damp wool, Corley regarded the landing of Tierl
Enneth, once Keithland's most opulent trading port. Flotsam-snarled sands and
wrecked dwellings now sheltered no life but seabirds. Crabs picked at the
pilings of the emissary's dock, where past generations of
royalty had debarked to fanfares of trumpets. If Landfast was the seat of
government and antiquity, Tierl
Enneth had nourished the arts, until Anskiere's sorcery smashed city and
inhabitants without warning.
The oarsmen threaded a careful course between the shorn bollards of the
traders' wharf, and the boat grounded on the strand. Men leapt from the bow to
steady the craft against the curl of the breakers as Corley rose from the
stern. Bearing Taen, he stepped over the gunwale and, careless of the water
which swirled over his boot tops, waded shoreward while the crew beached the
longboat.
The ruins loomed ahead, gray stone tumbled like bones against the lighter gray
of the mist. Corley stood dripping on the seaweed at the tide mark. Uncertain
what to expect, he scanned the slivered ramparts which remained of the harbor
gate. The sculptures of eagles had been torn from their niches, and the great
arches rose gapped and broken against the sky, spoiled past memory of design.
Weeds presently grew where gilded four-in-hand coaches had thundered over
marble paving.
Despite the company of the men at his back, Corley shivered. He tightened his
fingers in the blankets which sheltered Taen, and suddenly realized Tierl
Enneth was not entirely deserted. A figure in a dark cloak walked amid the
looming mist of the ruins.
Corley tensed. Taen's helpless weight prevented a fast reach for his sword. On
the point of tossing her into the arms of the nearest oarsman, he saw the
approaching stranger throw his hood back. Sun-bleached hair tumbled in the
wind, and with a shock of surprise, the captain recognized the face.
"Jaric! Kor's Fires, boy, what are you doing here?" Corley strode briskly
forward, his uneasiness transformed to annoyance. "Brith was under orders to
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keep you safe at Landfast!"
Jaric paused by the crumbled breakwater, brows knotted with an anger all his
own.. "I owe no loyalty to the Kielmark, nor any of his hired henchmen. I came
here for Taen."
As the boy leaped down to the strand, Corley sensed changes; Jaric carried
himself with an unthinking self-command. If he had sailed to Tierl Enneth for
the sake of the Dreamweaver, how could he possibly have known
Moonless would make landfall there of all other ports in Keithland?
Jaric drew nearer; Corley noticed the scabs of a recent fight on his knuckles.
"Did you best Brith?"
he demanded in surprise.
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