Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [217]
How long did it last? Six days, mayhap seven. I lost count. Of our position on the face of the earth, I had no notion. I am no navigator, to reckon my place by the stars; even if I were, there were no stars to be seen during that terrible flight. Only waves and more waves, and the vast, wrath-filled skies, until at last the storm blew itself out and subsided into meekness, leaving us dazed and exhausted, clinging to our half-crippled ship floating on the bosom of a gentle sea.
It was bright morning when it happened, the sun dazzling silver on the water. I made my way to Tormos' side with exaggerated caution, unused to the bobbing steadiness of our craft. He looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, weary beyond words.
"Tormos," I said. My voice cracked on his name; I had lost it shouting above the pounding sea. I cleared my throat, addressing him in Illyrian. "Where are we, do you know?"
He merely looked dully at me and shook his head.
All around us, the sea sparkled in the sunlight. Dark blue, the water was, and deep. On deck, sailors moved slowly, straightening limbs cramped by long resistance to the storm. Glaukos' head and shoulders appeared in the opening of thehold as he hoisted our last cask of fresh water on deck. It seemed pitiably small. I felt light-headed, and could not remember when last I'd eaten.
"Look!"
It was Oltukh who shouted, pointing; Oltukh, who had made me necklaces of shells. We all looked and saw where he pointed, a pod of dolphins breaching the surface of the waves, sleek and grey, wearing their perpetual smiles. One spouted very near the ship, blowing a plume of spray into the air.
Asherat-of-the-Sea, I thought, loved dolphins.
"There." Glaukos' voice, for once quavering with age. He leaned over the railings, staring past the merry dolphins. "There, there! Don't you see it? Land!" His hand rose, trembling; I realized then that he had spoken in Hellene, reverting to the milk-tongue of his infancy, that his slave-mother had taught him. "Land!" he cried, pointing. "Land!"
Tormos frowned, shoving sailors out of his way. He had understood the urgency, if not the words. We all jostled for position then, gazing across the waters while our torn sails flapped mildly in the calm breeze.
There, on the horizon, lay a smudge of darkness.
Land.
We cheered, and we wept, and we set our sails for land. The rudder-bar had snapped and the rudder itself split in two under the dreadful force we had endured; still, we limped over the surface of the water, and the island before us loomed larger and larger. No Dobrek, this isle; no, it was vaster, its size deceptively diminished by distance. The nearer we got, the larger it grew, and what had seemed hills at its center became mountains, forest-shrouded and gilded in the bright sunlight.
I saw Glaukos' face, the moment he recognized it. He drew a sharp breath, and awe came over his features. He was Tiberian by rearing and Illyrian by choice, but his blood was Hellene, and what he knew, he had learnt at his mother's knee.
"It is Kriti," he said reverently. "We have come to Kriti.”
I measured our course in my head and thought, it may be so. Pure south had we been driven, down the coast of Illyria, of mainland Hellas. Had we truly come so far, that we had reached the isle of the House of Minos? I remembered Delaunay's study, maps spread on the table, awash in late afternoon sunlight. In truth, mayhap we had.
At Tormos' command, we followed the dolphins, and no one questioned it for superstition. Kazan came forth from the forecastle and watched with childlike interest, his face disturbingly blank. I took his arm, and steered him to a place of safety along the railing; he went unprotesting.
We drew near enough to make out the shape of the isle, measuring some thirty-odd leagues from tip to tip. The sides were sheer and rocky but, here and there, sandy beaches beckoned. A flock of gulls skirled above us, giving out their