* * *
Shortly after the Silver Dawn set sail, leading the convoy of four ships into the Sea of Dread, Ieleen became ill. She refused to go below and would not budge from her seat behind the tiller. She sat all day leaning forward, knuckles white on her walking stick, her head bowed, pressing against her hands.
The times Jute had come to urge her to go below and lie down she’d snarled tersely and he’d backed away. They’d been under sail for six days now, although for the majority of the last day the description ‘under sail’ had no longer been accurate. The canvas hung limp. Only the barest of chill breaths brushed Jute’s neck. He ordered the crew to the rowing benches and they carried on.
But he was worried. He’d never seen Ieleen like this. It was as though she was being crushed beneath a terrible weight. Towards evening he went to her once more. He bent over her, but dared not touch her – she didn’t like to be touched when she was casting ahead. ‘Lass …’ he whispered. ‘Where away?’ She seemed to flinch. Her body beneath its layers of shawls shuddered as if in the grip of an ague. ‘What is it, lass?’
‘I can’t …’ she whispered. Her voice was thick with sorrow. Leaning closer, he saw that the planking of the deck beneath her head was wet. A teardrop fell even as he watched.
‘Rest, dearest,’ he urged. ‘Gather your strength.’
‘I haven’t the strength,’ she answered all in a gasp. ‘I can’t see us through!’
‘It’s all right, lass. Tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll feel better.’
‘No!’ She drew a great shuddering breath. ‘Makes no difference. It’s too late. I can’t see ahead. And … I’m afraid … I can’t …’ She choked then on her words, collected herself, and continued, huskily, ‘I can’t see behind.’
Jute straightened. He studied the southern horizon out past the following three vessels. Then he glanced to the north. The flat horizons appeared identical. A thickening sea mist obscured both. The waters were uniformly calm. Not even the winds gave any hint of which direction was which. If they were to be turned round in the night, how was anyone to know? Other than studying the night sky, of course. But should this fog close in about them …
He knelt to her once more. ‘What am I to do, love?’
‘Just keep going,’ she answered curtly. ‘Try to chart us a course tonight.’
‘Aye. Tonight. You just hold on then, dearest. Hold on till then.’
He paced to the bows. He might have reassured Ieleen but he held little hope. How could they escape if they had no heading? They’d oar in circles until they ran out of water and provisions and that would be the end of them.
Later that afternoon a launch came aside the Dawn and Cartheron himself climbed aboard. The old man peered about the deck and nodded to himself, evidently approving of what he saw. Jute greeted him. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’
‘A word, captain, if I may,’ and he lifted his chin to indicate the cabin.
Jute swept an arm to invite him onward. ‘This way.’
Inside, the Malazan captain glanced about the cabin as if searching for something. ‘You wouldn’t still have that bottle I handed over, or such like, would you?’
‘In fact I do.’ Jute produced the bottle and two tiny glasses.
Cartheron frowned at the small glass but shrugged and held it out.
‘And what can I do for you, captain?’
Cartheron tossed back the liquor and held out the glass again. ‘I was just hoping that you knew where you were headed. Because we sure as Mael’s own bowels don’t.’
Jute studied the clear fluid in his glass. ‘I won’t dissemble. My … pilot … has been having trouble in that regard. But tonight we hope to get a heading from the stars.’
Cartheron threw back his drink, sucked his teeth. ‘Hunh. The stars.’ He squinted at Jute. ‘Have you been studying them these last few nights? No? Well, I tell you – they’ve not been of much help. But …’ he drew a steadying breath and set down the glass, ‘I leave it to you.’ He slapped Jute on the shoulder and opened the cabin door. ‘Because, other than you, we’ve no damn hope of ever finding our way out of here.’
Jute laughed, a touch uneasily. He walked Cartheron back to the side and saw him off.
Tonight then. They had to make some progress through the night. Some measurable progress.
He waved Buen over. ‘Have the crew take a rest. We’ll resume at the evening watch.’
The first mate frowned, not liking loss of motion, but nodded and went to give the orders. Jute turned to Ieleen, meaning to give her the news, but one glance at her rigid back, her hands bloodless upon the walking stick as if it were a lifeline, and he decided not to disturb her.
If they made any headway this night, then she could rest. He’d see to it.
He ordered a general rest. The crew took turns napping. He would’ve himself, but Ieleen wasn’t getting any sleep so he couldn’t bear to lie down. He knew it would be useless.
Behind, the following three vessels slowed as well. Jute ordered the smallest launch lowered, a tiny skiff used for repairs, to be taken across to the others to let them know to be ready this night. Then he sat to await the dusk.
When twilight thickened, Buen came to him. ‘Permission to resume rowing?’
‘No. Wait for a bearing. No sense running off chasing our own shadow.’
The first mate appeared dubious, his brows rising. ‘As you say, captain. But I really think …’
Jute gave him a sharp look. ‘You think what?’
The man ducked his head. ‘Nothing, captain.’ He marched off.
Jute watched him go. That had been a strange outburst. Be-calmings can be hard on the nerves – was the man feeling it already? Damned soon for that.
He stared out across the rippling waters. Calm. Too calm for a body like this. The winds should kick up larger waves over all these leagues of water. Strange. He was not a man given to brooding, but something about this sea troubled him. He drew a hand down his face, rubbed his gritty eyes: perhaps he was just reacting to Ieleen’s troubles.
Gradually, the stars emerged. Jute’s mood darkened with the night as he realized that he couldn’t recognize any of the constellations. It was as if he was staring up at someone else’s night sky. Yet how could that be? Must be a trick of the night and the mists here on the sea. Even so, none of that would matter if he could just identify a pole star: a star that did not move.
Yet which was it? Amid all this panoply of glimmering infinity … which?
He hunched, defeated. The only explanation that he could think of was sorcery. They’d been ensorcelled. In which case, as well as Ieleen, they now had a further authority to turn to.
He called to Buen. ‘Ready the launch!’
Four oarsmen took him across to the side of Lady Orosenn’s intimidatingly tall galleon. No watch or officer hailed him from the darkened vessel. As they’d approached he’d seen a single brazier burning towards the bow. Now, from so low next to the side, it was only visible as a faint glow above.
‘Ahoy! Lady Orosenn! It is Captain Jute, come to talk. May I come aboard?’
They waited in silence for a long time. Jute was finally driven to bash an oar against the thick planks of the side. A bump appeared above: a head peering down.
‘Who is that?’ Jute recognized the voice of the old man who’d accompanied the sorceress. He’d quite forgotten his name, if it had been given at all.
‘It’s Captain Jute, come to speak to Lady Orosenn.’
‘A moment,’ the man called. Shortly afterwards a rope and wood ladder came clattering down. Jute stared up. ‘Wait here,’ he told his oarsmen, who all nodded, quite happy to remain.
He found the deck empty but for the old man. Jute peered about, a touch confused; normally such a huge vessel would require an equally large crew. Yet the vessel was unnaturally quiet but for the normal creaking and stretching of cordage and planks. Indeed, the old man appeared quite put out by his presence. It occurred to him that very possibly the only reason he now stood upon the deck was the fact that he had been raising a ruckus below.
‘What do you want?’ the scrawny old fellow growled, his voice low.
‘To speak to Lady Orosenn,’ he replied loudly.
The old man winced. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he hissed.
‘Why?’
‘You may disturb the Primogenitrix!’ the man shouted, angered, then ducked, glaring his rage.
‘I see. Well, won’t you go and see if she may be disturbed?’
The old fellow chewed on that for a time, his expression sour. Then he gave a curt jerk of his head and scuttled off. Jute waited. Alone now, in the quiet, he cast about for some hint of the crew’s presence, but all he noticed was the smell. The ship fairly reeked of foreign spices, and unpalatably so, too. He held a hand to his nose. Beneath the cloying scents he believed he also detected a faint whiff of rot. Perhaps even of decomposition.
The old man returned. He waved Jute off. ‘She won’t see you. Now go away.’
‘Go away?’ He peered past the scarecrow fellow to the stern cabin. ‘She seemed very approachable before …’
‘Well, she’s busy now.’
‘Doing what?’
The fellow frowned even more darkly, knotting his brows. ‘Sorcerous things. Now go – you are in great danger.’
‘Danger of what?’
The fellow drew breath to shout or argue, but caught himself and clamped his mouth shut. He leaned close, conspiratorially, and lowered his voice: ‘Perhaps you would care for a tour of this curious vessel, yes? I think you would find the lower decks of particular interest …’
‘Velmar,’ the rich contralto of Lady Orosenn called, ‘who is that you are speaking to?’
The old man jerked upright, still glaring his rage. ‘Captain Jute, m’lady.’
‘Is that so?’ The woman emerged from the murk. She loomed just as impressively tall as before, still wrapped in her loose robes, her head hidden in a headscarf, her veil in place.
Jute bowed. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, madam.’
‘Not at all. You are concerned, no doubt, about the choking wardings that have settled upon us.’
Wardings? Jute wondered. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We seem to have lost our way.’
‘Such is one of their purposes.’
‘My, ah, pilot is attempting to find the way. But I fear the task is beyond her.’
The woman tilted her head, regarded him with her large, almost luminescent, golden-hazel eyes. ‘And you are concerned for her.’
‘Indeed.’
The woman nodded her great head, and Jute thought he heard a sigh. She turned away to the ship’s side, resting a hand atop the railing. ‘Your feelings do you credit, Jute of Delanss. I must admit I have been selfish. I had hoped to remain anonymous. To not have to … exert myself … as yet. But I see now that in doing so I have allowed a terrible burden to fall to another. A burden that should rightfully be mine.’
Velmar raised a hand. ‘My lady! This is none of your affair.’
She regarded her attendant then offered Jute what he thought a dry chuckle. ‘We work at cross purposes, my priestly guardian and I. You must forgive him. His only concern is my safety. Whereas the safety of others concerns me.’
She turned back to the railing, gazing off towards the Silver Dawn. ‘I sense your pilot’s struggle, Jute. She is drowning. The Sea of Dread will swallow her … as it would you all. Unless I finally choose to announce myself.’ She raised a hand, gesturing. ‘So be it. It is done.’
‘My lady!’ Velmar hissed, uneasy. ‘We are not yet far enough north.’
She looked back at him. ‘We are now, Velmar. ‘The Dread Sea is far enough. Do you not feel it?’ She spread her arms, expanding her robes like sails. ‘Never have I sensed it so strongly.’ She shifted her attention to Jute. ‘I am a child of exile, Falaran. Yet I am returning home.’ She extended a long-fingered hand, inviting Jute to the side. ‘Return to your ship. You will find your pilot at ease. I shall take the lead in the Supplicant. You must secure your vessels to mine. On no account must you become separated. Spread the word, Jute of Delanss.’
Jute could not help it: he bowed to the sorceress. ‘I will. My thanks – our thanks.’ He climbed down the ladder, stepped into the rocking skiff. ‘Head across to the Ragstopper,’ he told the men at the oars.
After the Ragstopper, they crossed to Tyvar in the Resolute. Chase launches were lowered, lines were unwound, and the coming dawn saw them arranged in line: the Supplicant leading, followed by the Silver Dawn, the Ragstopper, and the Resolute.
When Jute, exhausted, finally climbed aboard the Dawn he found the stool next to the tiller arm empty and he peered about frantically. The steersman, Lurjen, pointed him to his cabin. He lurched within. Ieleen lay in bed. He sat gently and laid a hand to her cheek.
She was asleep, breathing gently. He let out a long breath of ease and rose from the bed. Good. Let her rest. She is in need of a long rest. He exited the cabin and eased the door shut. He needed a rest as well; everything was blurry. He looked to Lurjen, pressed his fingers to his sore eyes. ‘I’m going to find a hammock.’ He went below.
*
Three days later they encountered the first drifting vessel. It was a broad-beamed merchant caravel, dead in the water. Its sails hung limp. Jute hailed it from the Dawn’s side, but no one answered. A launch was sent across from the Resolute. It carried some ten Blue Shield mercenaries; more than enough to meet any danger. Word came back that they’d found the ship empty of all life, as if the crew had just up and abandoned it mid-voyage. Meals lay half eaten, ropes half coiled. All without signs of any violence. No corpses, no evidence of any struggle.
It made even Jute uneasy and he was the least superstitious person he knew. The crew began muttering of curses and becalmings, haunts and murder. Everyone was on edge. Buen reported to him the bizarre rumour that accused the sorceress, Lady Orosenn, of dragging them all to their doom.
He’d laughed out loud when Buen repeated it to him, yet the strange thing was that the man had actually appeared hurt, as if he’d half believed it himself.
Ieleen had been bedridden since Lady Orosenn’s intervention, and when he’d told her of the rumours she hadn’t laughed. She’d looked very worried, and murmured, ‘We have to get through here as quickly as we can.’
Every day they sighted more of the drifting, abandoned vessels. Seventeen so far. They stopped bothering to send out launches to investigate. That was until they came abreast of a two-masted galley that Jute recognized as a Genabackan vessel, a craft the pirates of the south preferred. And there, standing amidships, was a man.
Jute hailed him, waving. The man did not wave back. He stood immobile, as if staring in disbelief. Jute looked at his own crew and was unnerved to see that they, too, we’re not waving or hailing. Why in the name of Mael not?
‘Buen,’ he called, ‘lower a launch.’
The first mate stared back up at him, rubbed a hand over his jaws. ‘Why, sir?’
‘Why? How can you ask that? There’s a man on board that vessel, that’s why.’
Buen peered about among his fellow crewmen. ‘We saw no one, captain.’
‘No one? You saw no one?’ He snapped his gaze back to the vessel. The figure was gone. Had he been there at all? Had it been … a ghost?
Jute slammed a hand to the railing. No! No damned ghosts! A man. Nothing more.
‘Ship’s boat coming alongside!’ the watch announced. Jute hurried down to the side. It was the dilapidated launch from the Ragstopper. Half the oarsmen rowed while the other half bailed furiously. Cartheron sat within, his legs stretched out, his leather shoes wet in the swilling water. He hailed Jute: ‘Going to take a look. Interested?’
‘Yes I am!’ He turned to Dulat. ‘Lower the ladder.’
The rope ladder was thrown over the side and he climbed down to the launch. It took a while to settle down into the battered rowboat, as it was so low in the water he was afraid his added weight would swamp the thing. But it took him, although the freeboard was a bare hand’s breadth. The Malazan sailors, in their tattered shirts and trousers, scarves tied over their heads, looked more piratical than any pirate crew Jute had ever seen. They pushed off and started rowing.
‘Thought I saw someone,’ Cartheron said from the bow.
‘As did I. The crew claimed they didn’t, though.’
Cartheron sagely nodded his grey-bristled chin. ‘Beginning to think you see or don’t see what you want on this sea.’
Jute shook his head. All part of the curse. Tricks of the mind. Delusions became real while reality itself drifted away.
They came up beside the dead vessel, which they saw was called the Sea Strike. No one answered their hail; Jute hadn’t expected them to. Cartheron ordered one of his sailors to climb the side and the man impressed Jute mightily by clambering up the planking as agile and sure as a monkey. Shortly afterwards a rope ladder came clattering down.
The deck was empty and abandoned, just like all the others. This one was far worse for wear, however; bird-droppings covered the deck, and the lines and sails were faded and frayed. Still, like the others, there were no obvious signs of violence.
‘Hello!’ Cartheron called. No one answered. The Malazan captain went to the cabin door. ‘Let’s have a look.’
Jute had turned away, meaning to investigate the bows, when a shriek spun him round. A shrill voice, hardly recognizable as human, had screeched: ‘At last!’
Cartheron stood impaled on a sword that a man, lunging from the cabin, had thrust straight out.
The Malazan had his hands pressed to his stomach around the blade. While everyone stared, stunned, the sword’s owner shrank from them, hands raised, his face white and his eyes rolling in mad terror.
‘Ghosts!’ the man yelled, and charged the side, toppling straight over.
‘No!’ Jute yelled. He lunged, but there was no sign of the fellow. It was as if he’d simply allowed himself to sink.
A wet cough brought his attention back to Cartheron. The Malazan had yanked the blade free and fallen to his knees. Jute and the sailors blinked away their stunned confusion and went to him. Jute gathered up folds of the captain’s shirt and pressed it to the wound. ‘Make a seat,’ he shouted to the gathered crewmen. ‘We have to lower him.’
Cartheron actually laughed, albeit without breath. ‘Ain’t this just the funniest comeuppance, hey? You drop your guard for a moment and … there you go. Damnedest thing.’
Jute wrapped the wound as tightly as he could. ‘Quiet, now. We’ll take you to the sorceress. Maybe she can heal you.’
‘Don’t you bother, lad. Bound to happen sooner or later. Long past time, in my case.’
‘Don’t even think of it.’
They tied him into a makeshift rope seat and lowered him into the launch. From the Sea Strike they oared straight across to the Supplicant.
This time the sorceress herself appeared at the side. Jute shouted up that Cartheron was wounded. She gestured for a rope to be thrown up, and after a moment the seat, with the unconscious man secured within, began rising steadily up the tall ship’s side. A rope ladder came banging down. Jute climbed alongside the rope seat, attempting to steady it. On deck, he and Velmar struggled to raise Cartheron over the side until the lady herself took a hand and easily lifted him across.
‘I will take him to my cabin,’ she told Jute, and carried him within.
‘You should all just turn round,’ Velmar grumbled, and he glared as if all their troubles were Jute’s fault. Jute ignored him.
They stood silently for some time. The launch from the Rag-stopper bumped the side below. The lines creaked and stretched. Velmar glowered sullenly, as if the very heat of his disapproval could drive Jute from the deck.
The captain sat on the edge of a raised hatch leading to the cargo hold. Curious, he glanced down through the wood grating. It may have been a trick of the shifting light, but he thought he glimpsed figures below, standing crowded together, motionless. He turned to the priest to ask him about them but the wolfish mocking grin that now climbed the man’s lips somehow stilled his tongue.
‘You’re sure you wouldn’t care to have a look below?’ the man asked, and the downturned smile widened.
Jute had no idea what the priest was hinting at, but didn’t think it sounded healthy. ‘No, thank you.’
‘Aren’t you curious?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Later perhaps,’ Velmar said, thoughtfully tapping a finger to his lips.
‘Certainly – later.’
The priest was nodding now. ‘Yes, I think so. Definitely later.’
Jute merely bunched his brow. Such games were of no interest to him.
Movement among the shadows of the stern brought him to his feet. The sorceress emerged. She still wore her headdress and veil. Jute peered up at her; all he could see were her eyes, and these appeared worried and saddened.
‘I have done what I can. He will not die. But neither is he certain to recover. Many organs were damaged. And he is old, and very tired.’ She glanced back to the stern. ‘Then again … he is an extraordinary fellow. He may just recover.’
Jute bowed to her. ‘Our thanks, Lady Orosenn.’
‘It is nothing. I am glad to be of help.’
Jute crossed to the side. ‘I’ll tell the crew. He is to remain here, then?’
‘Yes. He mustn’t be moved.’
‘Very well.’ He took hold of the rope ladder, swung his legs out over the side and climbed down.
Velmar’s shaggy head appeared above him at the side. ‘Later, Captain Jute,’ the man called down in his enigmatic tone. Jute just shook his head, while below the rowers from the Ragstopper steadied the launch.
In the days that followed they met fewer and fewer abandoned becalmed ships until the outlook was again clear of all other vessels. The sea was improbably calm, as was the wind. No breeze ruffled the air; no ripple disturbed the iron-grey surface. To Jute it was as if they sailed a sheet of misty glass.
Yet they were not entirely alone. Now and then crew members shouted their surprise and dismay, pointing down at the astonishingly clear water. Rotting vessels lay beneath them, in various stages of decomposition. And all, it seemed to Jute, from differing epochs or periods of history. Older-style galleys lay stacked upon even more archaic open-hulled longboats, which in turn appeared to rest upon even cruder hulls, some perhaps nothing more than dugouts. It was as if the Sea of Dread were one great graveyard of vessels, all heaped upon one another, each slowly settling into, and adding to, the mud and mire of the sea floor.
So too would they have ended, he imagined, were it not for the guidance, and shielding, of the sorceress with them.
For the next few days a dense mist enshrouded them. It clung to the masts in scarves and tatters. Jute found it almost hard to breathe the stuff. The noises of their passage returned to them distorted, even unrecognizable. It was almost as if the sounds were from other vessels hidden in the miasma, calling to them.
Then, slowly, the light ahead began to brighten ever so slightly. Took on a pale sapphire glint. The vapours thinned and they emerged as if through parting veils to find themselves once more behind the Supplicant, only now approaching a forested rocky coast bearing the last patches of winter’s snow. Great jagged spires of ice floated in the waters between them and the coast.
The fog thinned even more, revealing that beyond the shore the land climbed to rocky jagged ridges. Behind these, distant and tall, reared the white gleaming peaks of mountains. Jute gazed, entranced. Could those be their destination? The near-mythical Salt range?
A breath caught behind him and he turned, surprised. There stood Ieleen, gripping the doorway, walking stick in hand. He went to her. ‘Lass! You’re up!’
‘Aye.’ She sounded deathly hoarse. He guided her to her stool and she sat heavily, sighing her gratitude. ‘Aye. At last.’ Her sightless clouded eyes darted about. ‘I dreamed … troubled dreams. Someone shielded me from their worst.’ Somehow, the eyes found him. ‘We know who, hey?’
He nodded, then remembered. ‘Ah, yes. So, what do you smell?’
‘The scent that has been tormenting me for days now,’ she growled, displeased. She closed both hands atop the walking stick and set her chin there. ‘The stink of ancient rotting ice.’