Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [7]
Hope segued quickly into disappointment. At least the harbor pilots were understanding of their request and sympathetic to their situation. But they were no more encouraging than the ship mates and masters. Among the latter, the kindest were those who brusquely ordered the visitors off their ships. Sadly, they were outnumbered by colleagues who laughed openly in the faces of the supplicants. These were fewer than they might have been, for those who caught sight of Ahlitah lurking behind the two humans wisely decided it might be impolitic to make fun of the inquiry, no matter how outrageous its content.
The last captain to whom they presented the request Ehomba mistook for one of the lesser mates. He was a strapping redhead, freckled of face and taut of sinew, with a broad chest on which curly hairs posed like tiny frozen flames and a mustache that would have been the envy of an emperor tamarin. But when questioned, his bluff good humor and kindly nature proved no substitute for reality.
Letting go of the line he had been holding, the young shipmaster rested hands on hips as he confronted Ehomba. As he preferred to do at such moments, Simna remained in the background. By now the swordsman was thoroughly bored with the endlessly negative responses to their inquiries, which had taken most of the day, and predictive of the response they were likely to receive. In this the young Captain did not disappoint him.
“Take passage across the Semordria? Are ye daft?” A soft growl caused him to glance behind the tall, dark southerner to see the slit-eyed mass of muscle and claw lying supine on the deck behind him. He immediately softened his tone, if not his opinion. “No one sails across the Semordria. At least no ship that I be aware of.”
“Are you afraid?” Simna piped up. It was late, and he no longer much cared if he happened to offend some local mariner stinking of fish oil and barnacle scrapings.
The young Captain bristled but, perhaps mindful of the lolling but very much alert Ahlitah, swallowed his instinctive response like a spoonful of sour medicine. “I fear only what is unknown, and no one knows the reaches of the Semordria. Some say that the stories of lands far to the west are nothing more than that: the imaginative ramblings of besotted seamen and inventive minstrels. From the crews of the few ships that venture out one of the Three Throats of the Aboqua to sail up and down the legendary western coasts come tales of creatures monstrous enough to swallow whole ships, and of underwater terrors most foul.” He turned back to his work.
“I command this ship at the behest of my two uncles. They have given it unto my care, and as such I have responsibilities to discharge to them. Even if I were so inclined, or sufficiently crazy, I would not contemplate such an undertaking. Best you not do so, either.”
“I can understand what you say about a responsibility to others.” Ehomba spoke quietly, having heard the same narrative from the captains of more than two dozen other vessels. “I am traveling under similar conditions.” His gaze drifted southward. Toward home, and as importantly, toward the grave of a noble man of far distant shores whose dying request had implored the herdsman to save a mysterious woman he had called the Visioness Themaryl.
Pulling hard on the line, the Captain spoke without turning to look at them. “Then you’d best get it through your head that the Semordria is not for crossing. Leastwise, not by any ship or captain or crew that sails the Aboqua.” And that was the last he would say on the subject.
“Now what?” Simna stretched as they descended the boarding ramp to the wooden quay.
“We find a place to sleep.” Already Ehomba was scanning the inns and taverns that fronted the main harbor. “Tomorrow we try once more.”
“Hoy, not again!”
A grim-faced Ehomba whirled on his friend. “What would you have me do, Simna? We cannot walk across the Semordria. Nor can we fly.”
“Pour drink enough down me, bruther, and I’ll show you who can fly!