In fact, given the measurements he’s looking at, it’s almost as if the Great Western Current has completely vanished, or at the very least is in a considerable state of disruption.
His first mate runs in, breathless. “I checked again, sir—six knots.”
“All right?” says Skjelstad, suspicious. “Then why are we going so damnably slow?”
“You didn’t let me finish, sir,” says his first mate. “Six knots south-southeast.”
“Six knots south?” says Skjelstad, boggled. “That can’t be! I…I mean, it simply shitting can’t! They call it the damned Great Western because it runs west, you know!”
“I know, sir,” says the first mate. “I don’t know how it’s possible. But it…it seems like it is. It’s like…”
“Like what?” says Skjelstad.
“Like it’s…been diverted, sir.”
“Diverted?”
“Yes, sir. Blocked, sir. The whole of the Great Western. Like it’s hitting something.”
“Hitting what?” says Skjelstad, furious.
“I’ve checked the horizon, sir, but I haven’t seen an—”
The first mate’s answer is never heard, for at that moment the ship is shook from prow to stern as if they’ve just plowed into another vessel. Captain Skjelstad and his first mate are knocked off their feet and sent rolling over the floor of the bridge. Skjelstad can feel the ship moving under him, tipping to one side at a speed that should never, ever be achievable on even the roughest of waters. It’s like they’ve run ashore—but there is no shore around here, of course, out in the middle of the seas.
The juddering and rocking doesn’t stop, but it slows enough for Skjelstad to clamber over to the window and lift himself up to see.
At first glance it appears that the Heggelund has plowed into a white shard sticking out of the sea, one protruding about a hundred feet above the water line. “An iceberg?” he wonders aloud. “This far south?”
But as he watches, the shard is growing: it’s like some giant aquatic spear being shoved up through the surface of the ocean, rising into the air at an astonishing speed.
“What in all the worlds,” whispers his first mate.
As Skjelstad watches the shard he realizes that it is actually some kind of white tower, for a bit farther down on the far side he sees, impossibly, a window and balcony. As it rises the tower also widens, grating up against the port bow of the Heggelund with a roaring screech and doing enough damage that the ship will soon be unsailable. Skjelstad is initially terrified that the tower will saw right into the hull and the deck, but then a great bubble of water rises up and shoves the Heggelund back, just as the rest of the towers—and there are more, Skjelstad sees, many more—penetrate the waters around them.
“What in all the hells is that?” cries the first mate.
The ship groans, moans, bangs, and clangs, miserably protesting this turn of events.
“I am guessing,” Skjelstad shouts, “that that is what was blocking the Great Western!”
Then there’s a discomfiting crunch and the entire ship is shoved up. This blow is far more violent than when they struck the tower, so much so that Skjelstad and his mate fly up into the air high enough that they nearly strike the ceiling. Then they slam back down, Skjelstad cracking his head so hard he briefly passes out.
When the world obligingly congeals back into a comprehensible series of sights and sounds, Skjelstad blinks and sees his first mate is staring out the window, pale-faced. “Uh, Captain…You’ll want to take a look at this.”
Captain Skjelstad, groaning, slowly rises to his feet. Then he looks out the window and stares.
An island has appeared in the center of the ocean. Its beaches are bone white, and in its center is an ivory-colored citadel large enough to be a small city, with a tall ivory tower in its middle. The ocean is rushing back from it, the waters drawing back like curtains from a stage, and as they withdraw he sees things standing on the white shores….
Thousands upon thousands of…men? People? Are they people? To Skjelstad’s eyes they look more like monsters, swaying amalgamations of horns and teeth, with enormous blades in their hands, staring out at the moonlit sea….And there in the waters are thousands upon thousands of long, thin ships with pale, silvery sails. They glow very faintly, like a massive school of gigantic jellyfish, manifested here on the ocean waves as if they’ve always been here.
It’s a fleet, he sees. A war fleet, the biggest of its kind he’s ever seen.
“Where did it come from, sir?” says his first mate. “Surely all this wasn’t sitting on the bottom of the sea?”
The monstrous figures begin to wade into the sea, moving to board their spectral vessels and rigging them up to disembark.
Well, most of the figures do. Some of them are turning to face the Heggelund.
There is a quiet, low sound, like many voices exhaling at once: a sustained om.
The figures on the beach all move, and it appears as if a flock of birds rises up from them, only the birds are glittery and strange….
No, thinks Skjelstad as the shapes hurtle toward him. Not birds. Swords.
Then there is a crash and everything goes dark.
***
“Peace,” says a voice, “is but the absence of war.”
Mulaghesh jumps, sniffs, and realizes she’s passed out sitting up against the wall of the jail cell. She looks around. The lights in the prison ward are dim and low, casting coffee-stain luminescence over the grim, dark walls. A figure stands on the other side of the bars of her cell, lost in the shadows of the doorway. She can catch only a glimpse of a craggy forehead and the suggestion of thick, broad shoulders.
“Lalith?” she says groggily.
“The shtanis believe that,” he says. Biswal’s voice is low and husky. “Here in this polis they preached that for hundreds of years. I read it. ‘War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim,’ or so Saint Petrenko said. ‘Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum. War is natural. And war makes one strong.’?”
“Lalith…What the hells are you doing? Why did you kill Rada? Did you listen to anything I said?”
“I did,” says Biswal quietly. “I listened. I believe you.”
“And the swords? Did you destroy them?”
He shakes his head. The dull light catches a strange gleam in his eye. Mulaghesh is reminded of a ferocious animal watching sulkily from the shadows of its pen. “I’ve had them moved up to the fortress for protection.”
“You’ve what?”
“You say that if these swords exist then war is coming, Turyin,” says Biswal. “And I believe you. But I believe that war has always been coming. Saypur has benefited from a substantial imbalance of power over the past seventy years. Its power and hegemony have been uncontested. But that has made it soft and weak.”