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King's war fleet at last neared its destination. It rolled gently, unmolested
by the surf which broke and creamed whitely over the coast of an islet never
marked on any chart. Drawn safely to the shallows by Anskiere's geas, the cask
grounded with scarcely a bump. The tern perched on the rim stretched slender
wings, and a wavelet arose, curling under its tail feathers. The cask lifted
on the crest, and was propelled shoreward, and the water receded, chuckling
over dampened sand, its burden delivered to firm soil.
None came to greet the Stormwarden's protege upon her arrival. Breezes rustled
through serried tufts of dune grass, and tossed the boughs of cedars whose
majestic growth had never known the bite of an axeblade, nor any other abuse
of man's invention. The tern hopped to the sand, head cocked to one side.
It pecked at the barnacles which crusted the side of the cask. Taen stirred
within, roused from her enchanted sleep.
The Stormwarden's spell released her gradually. Protective as a mother's
embrace, the warmth which cradled her limbs faded gently away. Wakened by the
light which leaked through the bunghole in the top of the barrel, Taen
stretched. Though she recalled taking refuge in the cask while Tathagres held
her captive in
Crow's dank hold, she felt no fear. She heard the boom of surf muffled by the
staves, and the solid stillness of the land beneath reassured her.
Taen shifted into a crouch. The bunghole let in a cloud-flecked view of sky,
and the smells of tide wrack and cedar. Intently she listened, yet heard no
sound but waves and the shrill cries of sand swallows; as far as she could
tell, the beach outside was deserted. The girl hammered her fists against the
top of the barrel. Barnacles grated, then yielded their grip on the seams.
Sunlight flared through a crack and the weathered boards loosened and fell
aside.
Blinking against the glare, Taen stood upright and clung to the rim of the
barrel. Except that her shift was speckled with mildew, she seemed little the
worse for her journey by sea. Anskiere had delivered her from Tathagres'
hands, she was certain; her acceptance of his stewardship went deeper than
childish faith. In a manner which had disturbed the villagers on Imrill Kand,
Taen often perceived things no
youngster should have known. She was fey, her peers had accused in whispers.
Their taunts had quickly taught her to value silence. Graced by recognition
that the Stormwarden had not taken her destiny in hand without reason, Taen
braced her elbows against the raw ends of the staves and gazed about.
A tern pecked the sand in the barrel's shadow, but there all sense of the
ordinary ended. The islet was as beautiful as a dreamer's paradise, uncanny in
its perfection. Daylight shone with transcendent clarity upon beaches
bejeweled with crystal reflections. Taen raised her eyes to the spear-tipped
ranks of the cedars beyond and felt her skin prickle with uneasiness. She had
landed on a northeast shore. Raised where life was tyrannized by the moods of
weather and sea, she knew the fury of storms from that quarter. Yet if the
trees on this shoreline had ever known the brunt of a winter gale, they
suffered no damage. Their symmetry was faultless. The place where they grew
seemed possessed by a presence older than man's origins, brooding, silent, and
eerily sentient.
Taen's fingers tightened on the barrel staves. She intruded upon territory
tenanted by powers which resented mortal tres-pass; this she understood by the
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same intuition which had shown her Anskiere's innocence the day Imrill Kand
had betrayed him. Now as then she did not strangle her gift with logic as her
brother would have done. Though to set foot on this beach was to challenge the
isle's strange guardians, Taen swung her good leg over the rim of the barrel
and leaped down. The Stormwarden had chosen this site. Confident of his
wisdom, Taen was unafraid.
Her movement startled the tern into flight. Light exploded from its wingtips,
blue-white and blinding. The energy which bound its form unravelled, whining
like a dead man's shade as it fled into the air. Overhead the sand swallows
wheeled and dove for cover.
Taen landed, stumbling to her knees in warm sand. A feather drifted where the
tern had vanished. Sorry the creature had left, the girl caught the quill in
her fingers as it fell. Someone had crumpled it once,; the delicate spine was
creased again and again along its snowy length. The resonant violence of the
act tingled through Taen's awareness; pressured by a sudden urge to weep, she
buried her face in her hands.
Imrill Kand lay uncounted leagues distant. Reft of all security, the girl
longed to be released from the fate
Anskiere had bequeathed her. Yet tears were a useless indulgence. Inured to
hardship, Taen drew upon the resilience of spirit which had seen her through
Tathagres' threats and the horrors of the
Crow's pes-tilent hold.
On Imrill Kand, she had felt inadequate, a clumsy child with a lame leg unfit
for work on a fishing boat's deck. Forced to remain ashore, she had resented
her place with the pregnant women, the arthritic and the elderly. Here at
least she could escape the widows in their musty wool skirts who had scolded
her often for hasty stitches and girlish pranks; here she did not have to sit
silent and straight on a hard wooden chair, knotting tedious acres of netting.
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