The Riddle - Alison Croggon [6]
“Well, Maerad,” he said gently. “I suppose you should try to go back to sleep. It’s deep night yet, and we still have some hard sailing to do.”
“As if I know anything about sailing,” said Maerad. “You know I just get in the way. But maybe I could do some watching for you.”
“We need a lookout,” said Cadvan, nodding. “It is wearing, I tell you, sailing so hard with just me and Owan. The sooner we reach Busk, the sooner we can rest.”
The sun rose the following day in a perfectly blue sky. Owan gravely professed himself satisfied with the weather and said they were well on track for the Isle of Thorold.
With his olive skin, lively face, and gray eyes, Owan looked typically Thoroldian, but he was uncharacteristically taciturn for those loquacious islanders, although it could have been exhaustion. Both he and Cadvan were gray with tiredness. The White Owl was Owan’s pride; she might have been only a small fishing vessel, but she was a beauty of her kind, every spar and plank lovingly laid. In her making, each part of her had been embedded with charms, to keep her from upset or to ward away hostile creatures of the deep; she had also a steering spell placed on her so she could, in a limited way, sail herself. Unfortunately, under the stiff wind Cadvan had summoned to the sails, this was too risky, and Owan and Cadvan took turns day and night at the tiller. When Cadvan was too tired to keep the wind, the White Owl sailed on the sea’s weather, but he never slept for more than a couple of hours at a time. Maerad had already witnessed Cadvan’s powers of endurance, but his stubborn will impressed her anew: his face was haggard and his mouth grim, but he moved with the alertness of a well-rested man.
Maerad sat in the bow, trying to stay out of the way. She was still disconcerted by how tiny the boat was, a mote in the vastness of the ocean. And she was miserable with seasickness. Cadvan managed to stay it a little, but he was so busy, she felt hesitant to bother him and had decided to suffer it, unless it became unbearable. She hadn’t been able to eat for the past day and night, and her emptiness made her feel lightheaded.
There was, Maerad thought, nothing to see except water: water, water, and more water, and on the northern horizon a darkish blur that might be land or might be a bank of cloud. It frightened her a little: she had spent her childhood among mountains and had never imagined that space could seem so limitless. The White Owl was pitching strangely with the wind, bumping across the tops of the swells, which probably accounted for her nausea, and she gazed with an empty mind across the endless blue-green backs of the waves.
By midmorning she had entered an almost trancelike state, but toward midafternoon something captured her attention. At first she followed it idly with her eyes: a darker current rippling crossways through the larger patterns of the waves, beyond which the path of their wake spread and dispersed over the surface of the sea. As she watched, it seemed to draw a little nearer. She sat up straighter and leaned forward, squinting, and stared. It was hard to be sure, but it did seem to her that it was a definite trail, and she had an uneasy feeling that it was following their boat. It had something about it, even at that distance, of a hunting dog on a scent.
She called Cadvan, and nodding toward Owan, he came over to Maerad. Wordlessly, she pointed down the White Owl’s wake, and he leaned forward, shading his eyes.
“Can you see something?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“There’s a sort of . . . trail, in the water,” said Maerad. “I think it’s following us. Just there, by the wake.”
Cadvan finally saw what she was pointing