The Riddle - Alison Croggon [64]
They ate for a while without speaking, all of them realizing suddenly how hungry they were. The cheese was good Thoroldian goat’s cheese, but it had an extra edge this morning, Maerad thought, or perhaps it was simply that she paid more attention to its taste. Despite her weariness, all her senses seemed sharpened.
Maerad scanned the sea as she chewed, and saw a long, low smudge on the horizon. “Is that Ileadh?” she asked, pointing with her bread.
Owan squinted. “Yes, it is. And that’s the west coast of Annar there, to the east. We weren’t blown off course as much as we might have been. We’ll be there by eventide, I guess.”
There was a short silence, interrupted only by munching.
“I was right glad you Bards were here last night,” he added.
“Well, if you hadn’t had us Bards onboard, you might not have met such a peril,” said Cadvan dryly. “So we’re a mixed blessing. Have you ever heard of stormdogs this far south?”
Owan paused for thought before he answered. “There was tell of stormdogs during the Great Silence,” he said. “But never since. And I hear that farther north, up around the coast of Zmarkan, they do appear, at least recently. But this far south, no.”
“It seems like a bad sign to me,” Maerad said. “As if it were pursuing us.”
“That’s how I read it,” Cadvan answered. “They will have guessed we are heading for Ileadh. I think, Owan, we should not put in at Genthaven.”
“I was not planning to, at any rate,” said Owan. “For that reason. There is a hamlet not far from Gent, up the Argent River, called Ossin. We are expected there.”
Cadvan nodded, pleased with the arrangement, and turned to Maerad.
“Stormdogs are Elemental spirits. I suppose that’s why you had that idea of singing to it, Maerad.” He smiled at her tiredly. “Only an Elidhu would be crazy enough to think of something like that. The stormdog could have been sent only by Arkan, the Winterking. They are his creatures; he used them in the Elemental Wars, and also during the Great Silence. I have long suspected there is league between the Nameless One and the Winterking, and that Arkan wakes from his long sleep, but this is close indeed.”
“It means that they know where we are,” said Maerad, shivering. “And they’re not far behind.”
They reached Ossin at nightfall, after Cadvan agreed to Owan’s entreaty for a charmed wind. They had sailed up the long bay of the Nathe of Gent, and Maerad gazed at the green-purple hills sloping gently up on either side in the distance. In a hollow at the far end of the Nathe, she caught a glimpse of Gent itself: white walls overtopped by a cluster of onion-domed towers gleaming silver and gold and copper in the lowering sun. She inwardly sighed that she would not be visiting the School; even from a distance it looked beautiful.
Instead, they sailed a league or so west and turned into the wide mouth of the Argent River. A deep channel ran through its middle, but otherwise it sprawled its shallow waters, which flashed dazzlingly silver, over gravelly shoals. A blustery, cold wind sprang up, blowing inland, and under sail they pushed upstream past steep, deeply forested banks, the treetops gilded with the last rays of the sun, their shadows falling on the surface of the water. The gentle scents of leaf and grass and flower floated over them, and they could hear the hubbub of birds settling to their roosts, and the occasional quarrels of ducks. When the sun had set and a waning moon swung high in the sky, they pulled in to a stone jetty that jutted out into the river, enclosing a tiny stone harbor built around a kind of natural lagoon. It was big enough to hold half a dozen boats at most.
All three left the White Owl, Maerad giving the railing a farewell pat as she stepped over the gangplank. She would never be, she knew, any sort of seawoman,