The Riddle - Alison Croggon [60]
She woke up suddenly. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep. It was pitch black, and she sat up in sudden alarm, knocking her head on the wooden panels. Something had woken her, but she couldn’t, in the first moments of consciousness, work out what it was. Then she realized: everything had gone quiet. The storm must have blown out, she thought, but her heart was hammering with anxiety and she did not lie down again.
She set a floating magelight near her ear and looked around the small, neat cabin. All seemed to be as it should be, but a mounting tension sent the blood thrumming through her body. She felt all the hairs on her neck standing on end. Her breath hung in front of her face; even down here, it was freezing. She swung herself out of the hammock, dragged on her boots, and reached for one of Owan’s oilskins, which hung near the table. She had to get outside, to see what was happening.
Just as she shrugged the oilskin over her cloak, there was a massive crash, like a huge crack of thunder, and the whole boat lurched violently as if it were tipping over, and then just as violently righted itself. Maerad was flung over to the table, narrowly missing the edge of it with her head, and her magelight went out. She scrambled to her feet, breathing hard, and relit the light. Now the strange silence that had woken her was broken: the boat was creaking and groaning again, but in such a way that it sounded as if its timbers might fly to pieces at any moment, and the wind suddenly increased to an ear-piercing howl. Not howling, Maerad thought: it’s screaming. It sounded as if a thousand dogs were being roasted alive. She covered her ears, shuddering, until the scream died back to storm.
Had they hit a reef? Maerad panicked at the thought of being trapped in this tiny space as the White Owl spiraled down into the chill depths of the sea. She staggered to the gangway, and had just reached it when there came another crash, just as loud, and the boat lurched again. This time, she was holding on to the ladder and wasn’t flung down. She waited until the craft righted itself, and then scrambled up the ladder as fast as she could, flinging up the trapdoor just as a huge wave broke over the deck, drenching her instantly and pouring down the gangway behind her. She gasped, stunned by the cold, and swallowed a mouthful of seawater.
The wave had the effect, at least, of shocking her out of panic. When she had recovered from the dousing, she crawled through the gangway and, clinging to the railings, kicked the trapdoor shut behind her. She squinted through the chaotic darkness, trying to see what was happening.
It was a black, starless night, and the White Owl pitched on a huge sea. As her eyes adjusted, Maerad almost lost courage: maybe it would feel safer in the cabin, where she could not see anything at all. But at the thought of crouching alone in that suffocating darkness, she steeled her nerves. The boat was now hurtling down into what seemed like a bottomless abyss, and Maerad’s stomach lurched. When at last they reached the trough, the boat twirled sideways until frantically corrected by Owan; then they were lifted with a heart-stopping suddenness to the top of the next wave, where they paused for a brief dizzying moment before tipping down again, the deck as steep as the side of a mountain, into the boiling blackness.
The noise was almost deafening, and the sky was a strange color, the clouds infused with a greenish blue glow. The sails were furled to the mizzenmast, the ropes that lashed them standing out horizontally in the gale, and Owan was at the tiller. Maerad looked around wildly for Cadvan, fearing that he had been swept overboard, and saw him at the prow of the boat. Around him was a strange stillness; it seemed as if the wind did not affect him. Maerad clutched the railing, her heart in her mouth, and then remembered a charm of fastening that would stop her being swept off the deck. She muttered it frantically,