They had shot past the southern tip of Great Kesh, catching the current that they had been told would carry them swiftly across the sea to Novindus. Days had passed and the dragon boat with its sixty-four passengers—Calis, de Loungville, Erik, Miranda, and sixty soldiers of Calis’s Eagles—sped across the ocean.
The rowers pulled in shifts all day and all night, adding their muscle to the current, and the boat raced across a seemingly empty expanse of ocean. Miranda used her magical ability from time to time to judge their position and claimed they were where they should be.
The weather had grown bitter cold and occasionally they would sight an iceberg floating northward. Miranda had told Erik one night that the southern pole of the world was captured by ice year round, a mass so large the mind couldn’t imagine, and from that massive shelf of ice pieces the size of cities would fall into the ocean, drifting northward to melt in the warm air of the Blue or Green Sea.
Erik had remained dubious until one day he had seen what he had thought to be a sail on the horizon, only to find later in the day it was one of those huge pieces of ice Miranda had warned about. From that point forward they had kept extra watches and set the rowers to shifts around the clock to keep moving.
They had found a peninsula of that ice-covered land, and unfortunately came upon it too quickly. They were now trying desperately to keep the ship from crashing against it. Calis had warned that if they were stranded there, they would die a cold, hungry death, and there was nothing that could be done to save them.
“Row, damn you!” shouted Bobby de Loungville over the roar of surf, wind, and the groaning of wood as the ship heaved and turned against every demand of nature.
Erik could feel them moving sideways, as the powerful current took them into the tug of the surf. “More to port!” he shouted, and the two men on the tiller pushed to obey. Calis stood at the rear of the ship and added his superhuman strength, and the tiller creaked alarmingly. They had been warned that the long tillers of these Brijaner dragon ships could snap off, and then the only possible way to steer would be by controlling the stroke of the rowers. They had also been warned that even an experienced crew of Brijaners could do this only with difficulty, and no man on this boat was either experienced or a Brijaner.
Miranda appeared upon the deck and with a large motion of both arms shouted a word that was nearly unheard at the bow where Erik watched. Suddenly a force pulled hard against the ship from the rear, and Erik had to grab at the rail to keep from going over into the water. The boat hesitated in its dash to destruction, and then stopped a moment in the water.
Then the ship obeyed the rowers and tiller, turning to break free of the pull of the tide, and started to move on a course parallel to the coastline. Miranda let her hands drop and took a deep breath. She made her way to the bow of the boat and Erik watched her with interest. She shared the tiny cabin in the rear with the Captain, and Erik had some idea that this was more than mere courtesy on Calis’s part. There was something between them, though Erik couldn’t begin to guess what it might be. De Loungville acted like the Captain’s personal guard dog when Calis and Miranda were inside, and only an event of the gravest consequence would cause a crewman to dare to try to get past him.
Miranda was certainly attractive enough, thought Erik, as she came near, but there was something about her that still disturbed him in a way that made any notion of being intimate almost impossible to imagine. Almost, because like the other men on the boat, Erik hadn’t been with a woman in months.
As she came to his side, she pointed dead ahead into the murk. “I dare not use another spell, certainly not one that powerful, for a few days, lest we call undue attention to ourselves. So pay heed: if you could see through this mess,” she said, “you would see a tiny grouping of three stars, almost a perfect equal triangle, two hands’ spans above the horizon, one hour after sundown. If you point toward that, you’ll eventually come to the coast of Novindus less than a day’s rowing from Ispar. Steer along the coastline, bearing to the northeast, and you’ll find the mouth of the river Dee. We need to use nonmagical means to find our destination.”