“Hopeless,” was all he said, taking the claws back. “Can you at least climb a rope?”
Hadrian had just returned from his days in the arenas of Calis, where he had been respected and cheered by roaring crowds as the Tiger of Mandalin. He was less than pleased with this little twig of a man treating him as if he were the village idiot. So infuriated had he been by Royce’s smug tone that Hadrian had wanted to beat him unconscious, only Arcadius had warned him to be patient. “He’s like the pup of a renowned hunting dog who’s been beaten badly by every master he’s had,” the old wizard had told him. “He’s a gem worthy of a little work, but he’ll test you—he’ll test you a lot. Royce doesn’t make friends easily and he doesn’t make it easy to be his friend. Don’t get angry. That’s what he’s looking for. That’s what he expects. He’ll try to drive you away, but you’ll fool him. Listen to him. Trust him. That’s what he won’t expect. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to be very patient. But if you do, you’ll make a friend for life, the kind that will walk unarmed into the jaws of a dragon if you ask him to.”
Hadrian felt a light tug on the rope.
“Everything okay, pal?” he called down softly.
“Found it,” Royce replied. “Come on down.”
It was like a mine shaft, tight and deep. Hadrian had descended only a short distance when his eyes detected a faint light below. The pale blue-green light appeared to leak into the base of the shaft, which, he could now estimate, was no more than a hundred feet deep. As he reached the bottom, he felt a strong breeze and heard a sound. A very out-of-place sound—the crash of waves.
He stood in an enormous cavern so vast he could not see the far wall. At his feet were shells and black sand, and before him lay a great body of water with waves that rolled in white and frothy. Along the beach, he spotted clumps of seaweed and algae that glowed bright green and the ocean gave off an emerald light, which the ceiling reflected in such a way as to make it seem like they were not underground at all. He felt like he was standing on the beach at night under a cloudy, albeit green, sky. His nose filled with the pungent scent of salt, fish, and seaweed. To the right lay nothing but endless water, but straight out, just visible at the horizon, were structures—the outlines of buildings, pillars, towers, and walls.
Across the sea lay the city of Percepliquis.
Royce stood on the shore, staring across the water, and glanced over his shoulder when Hadrian touched down. “Not something you see every day, is it?”
“Wow,” he replied.
It did not take long before all of them stood on the black sand, gazing out at the sea and the city beyond. Myron looked as if he were in shock. Hadrian realized the monk had never seen an ocean, much less one that glowed bright green.
“Edmund Hall mentioned an underground sea,” Myron said at length. “But Mr. Hall is not terribly good at descriptions. This—this is truly amazing. I’ve never thought of myself as big in any sense, but standing here, I feel as small as a pebble.”
“Anyone lose an ocean? ’Cause I think we just found it,” Mauvin announced.
“It’s beautiful,” Arista said.
“Whoa,” Wyatt muttered.
“How are we going to get across it?” Gaunt asked.
They all looked to Myron. “Oh, right—sorry. Edmund Hall made a raft from stuff he found washed up on the beach. He said there was a lot of it. He lashed planking with a rope he had with him and formed a rudder out of one side of an old crate. His sail was a patchwork of sewn bags, his mast a tall log of driftwood.”
“How long did it take him?” Gaunt asked.
“Three weeks.”
“By Mar!” he exclaimed.
Alric scowled at him. “There’s ten of us and we have an expert sailor and better gear. Let’s get looking for our raw material.”
They all spread out like a group of beachcombers looking for shells and starfish on a lovely summer’s day.
There was a good deal of debris on the shore. Old bottles and broken crates, poles and nets, all amazingly well preserved after having been down there for a thousand years. Hadrian picked up a jug with writing on one side. He carefully turned it over, realizing he was holding an artifact that by its mere age was profoundly valuable. He did not expect to be able to read it. Everything from the ancient time of Percepliquis would be in Old Speech. He looked at the markings and was stunned to find he could understand them: BRIG’S RUM DISTILLERY. DAGASTAN, CALIS.
He blinked.
“Where’s Myron?” It was not so much the question as the voice that pulled Hadrian’s attention away from the jug.
Elden had spoken. The big man stood like a wave break on the sand, his head twisting around, searching. “I don’t see him.”
Hadrian glanced up and down the beach. Elden was right—the monk was gone.
“I’ll find him,” Royce said, annoyed, and trotted off.
“Elden?” Wyatt called. “Can you give me a hand here?” he said, trying to pull up a large weathered plank mostly buried in the sand. “We can use this as the keel, I think.”
Alric and Mauvin were dragging over what looked like the side of a wooden crate. “There’s another side to this back there among those rocks,” the king informed Wyatt.
“That’s great, but right now can the two of you help us dig this beam out?”
Gaunt wandered the beach halfheartedly, kicking over rocks, as if he might find a mast hiding under one. Magnus noticeably avoided the water, sticking to the high beach area and glancing over his shoulder at the waves as if they were barking dogs he needed to constantly assure himself were chained.
Arista came running down to where the four dug the beam out of the sand. “I found a huge piece of canvas!” she said, and did a little dance.
Hadrian noticed her feet were bare. She held her shoes in her hands, swinging them by the heels, her robe swaying. As he looked at her just then, she could have been any number of girls he had known from taverns or small towns—not a princess at all.
“Don’t you like my celebratory dance?” she asked him.
“Is that what that is?”
She rolled her eyes. “Com’on and help me get the canvas. It will make the perfect sail.”
She ran back down the beach and Hadrian followed. She stopped and, bending down, pulled on the corner of a buried piece of canvas. “We’ll have to dig it out, but I bet it is big. I think—” She stopped when she spotted Royce and Myron walking toward them.
“There you are,” Hadrian said in a reprimanding tone. “You had Elden worried, young man.”
“I saw a crab,” Myron said, embarrassed. “They have these huge claws and run sideways—they scurry very fast—like big spiders. I chased him down the beach, but he disappeared into a hole before I could get a good look. Have you ever seen a crab?”
“Yes, Myron. I’ve seen crabs before.”