Master of Whitestorm Read online

  "The hoard of Sharkash alone is rich enough to build a stronghold from foundations to battlements, with wealth left over to fit out the armory," his friend had justified firmly. "The opportunity is too great to ignore."

  Annoyed by the memory, Haldeth shoved the anchor into the coals and hauled on the bellows. Korendir would go alone if need be. Hardship had touched the man's sanity to the point where the fortress he dreamed of building meant more than life and breath. Haldeth cursed and licked a blistered thumb. He hated the sea. But his friend would need someone to splint his silly, shattered bones, if by the grace of Neth he survived the venture at all.

  * * *

  Haldeth made himself scarce as work on the sloop continued. Her mast was stepped by late spring, and artisans fussed over her brightwork. Korendir spent his days reddened by the reflection of tanbark-treated canvas, while the sailmakers labored to sew a doubly reinforced storm jib.

  " 'Tis more an elephant sling than a sail," grumbled the master designer.

  Taut-lipped, Korendir silenced the craftsman's complaint with gold. The sloop was launched the next morning; named Carcadonn after the winged unicorn no man could hope to capture, she sailed in early summer. A crowd lined the wharf to see her off. Sathig stood with the rest, certain he had seen the last of his handiwork. The sloop would not be returning to Fairhaven, even in the baskets of a salvager's skiff.

  * * *

  Driven on a broad reach by the summer trades, Carcadonn made comfortable passage despite her short sheer line. Absorbed by charts and dividers, Korendir reverted to silence. Although sail changes and gear repair kept Haldeth busy, long hours at the tiller left his thoughts free to brood. Once, White Rock Head had been a favored harbor with safe anchorage. But since the weather elemental had claimed the territory, tempests raged unabated, savaging the shoreline until the cliffs lost all semblance of their charted contours. In Fairhaven's taverns, tales were told of Whitestorm's weather that caused Haldeth to shiver in full sunlight. No curse could ease his misgivings. He detested the cold.

  Carcadonn sailed through the Dragon's Eye and ran east. Though summer reached its height elsewhere, past Irgyre's Rocks, the temperature began remorselessly to fall. Standing watch one moonless night, Haldeth was first to notice that ocean phosphorescence no longer sparked in the wake. The waters foamed cold and dark beneath Carcadonn's keel, and blown spray bit his skin like sleet. When Korendir took the helm at midnight, Haldeth wrenched open a locker and tossed his companion a cloak of oiled wool.

  "You'll need it," he said crossly.

  Korendir's sole answer was a shrug.

  Seven days later, Carcadonn lost her weather. Wakened by a bang of canvas and the yawing pitch of an unplanned jibe, Korendir clawed out of his bunk. On deck, Haldeth wrestled the tiller, drenched and swearing. The gusts shrieked, rushing in like a boxer's punch across sixty degrees of change. Overcanvassed, Carcadonn reeled through steepening seas.

  "Heave to!" Korendir jammed his feet into seaboots. "We'll reef the main and switch to the smaller headsail. Which tack steers easiest?"

  "Neither!" Haldeth ducked an icy sheet of spray. "Mark me, we'll be under muscle by morning."

  Korendir vaulted the hatchboards and headed for the foredeck. Gently he said, "You're a pessimist."

  But the wind belied his outlook. By afternoon Carcadonn bucked over wavecrests blasted to spindrift. Pummeled by gusts, her gear rattled and crashed aloft. The tiller plowed against Haldeth's hands with the force of a gut-speared boar. Old Sathig's handiwork could assuredly stand up to punishment; but as Korendir took the helm at dusk, the smith wondered how long the sloop could stay seaworthy. Conditions hereafter would only get worse.

  * * *

  By morning the wind backed and blew from the northeast. Carcadonn beat to weather, clawing over swells half the height of her masthead. On starboard tack, Haldeth glimpsed land between the waves. The low dunes of Dunharra were replaced by rock-crowned crags which broke the slam of the incoming surf like an unending roll of thunder.

  Haldeth shook water from his hair and shoved the tiller hard alee. Carcadonn ducked, came about with a whip-crack of slack canvas, and turned the hazards of the coast astern. The cliffs were proof she made progress. But when Haldeth retired below and discovered the galley fire doused by the damp, he separately cursed every league he had sailed out of Fairhaven's harbor. Above-decks, a block squealed warning. He grabbed for the rail and missed.

  The boom lifted and crashed to the opposite tack. The mainsheet parted like thread. Carcadonn slewed, tossing Haldeth against a bulkhead. Cold oatmeal splattered his chest, and his oath brought Korendir in a bound from the helm to measure the scope of the disaster.

  Haldeth sat scraping porridge from his beard, while his companion hunkered on his heels and grinned with infuriating calm.

  "When you're wiped up," Korendir said, "we're going to take in sail."

  The smith glared, rose, and jammed his arms into oilskins. The wet patch left by the oatmeal settled like icy fingers against his chest as he emerged unwillingly for labor. While the sloop wallowed under bare poles, he helped Korendir slot rowlocks into her toerail and benches to the cockpit lockers. Much as Haldeth detested rowing, oars were preferable to riding a whirlwind under banging yards of canvas.

  Stripped of sail, Carcadonn made better headway, but her crew suffered for the improvement. Waves broke over the bow, and repeatedly flooded the cockpit. Worn by the drag at his ankles as the water sucked out through the scuppers, Haldeth found rowing a miserable contest of endurance. Cold and fatigue dulled his mind, until time itself seemed suspended.

  When the first icefloe reared above the wavecrests, dirty white in the currents which tumbled past the keel, Haldeth shipped oars in silence. He went below to brew hot tea and found no reassurance as the beat of Korendir's stroke continued unabated above decks. Every pull of the oars brought them closer to Whitestorm, where the elements would batter them beyond hope of survival.

  The next day dawned thick as unbleached wool. Fog swallowed the mast down to the spreaders, and gusts screamed through the rigging like the ribald laughter of hags. Carcadonn bucked, graceless as a death-wounded deer. Her crew jounced against the benches, their teamwork at the oars gone ragged. With his eyes streaming runnels of seawater, Haldeth waited for Korendir to admit his folly and turn back. Yet hour after weary hour the man leaned into his stroke. No word passed his lips, and no glimmer of reason relieved his expressionless face.

  That night, secured under double anchor, Haldeth stood first watch lest the moorings drag. He huddled in the cockpit and tried to remember what it felt like to be warm, while gusts played a song of endless winter through the stays. The hours crept. With no star overhead to reckon by, the dark seemed to freeze in place. Stiff and shivering, Haldeth retired at midnight. He found Korendir still awake, intently bent over the chart table.

  The smith cracked crusted ice from his oilskins. "You're a maniac, and very soon you'll be a frozen monument to stupidity. It's colder than the Mhurga's third version of hell out there."

  Korendir looked up, eyes impervious as mirror glass in the gimballed swing of the lanterns. "We're nearly there." His voice sounded bemused over the rush of wind and waves.

  Braced against the heave of the deck, Haldeth examined the chart. The inked line of Carcadonn's running fix ended almost under the shadow of White Rock Head. Less than two leagues to the north lay the lairs of the dead dragons, and the vortex of the elemental's force.

  "What we are is witless," muttered Haldeth. For one wild moment curiosity overrode sense; then his thrill of excitement died out at remembrance that his boots sloshed with seawater, and the galley fire was a mess of wet ashes. He cursed aloud at the chart, never noticing the tolerant amusement which touched Korendir's face as he swung himself up the companionway to finish his turn at watch.

  V. White Rock Head

  Morning dawned dim with cloud. Korendir labored on the foredeck, drenched to the skin by flying spray long b
efore the anchor broke free of the sea bed. Too miserable even to curse, Haldeth manned oars in the cockpit, his eyes squeezed shut against the sting of salt water. He pulled his looms by reflex. Years of ingrained habit allowed him to adjust to compensate as his companion joined stroke at the forward bench. Carcadonn shouldered clear of her anchorage into the teeth of the gale.

  Battered, pitched, tossed upon their benches until their flesh bruised, the two men labored for a league. Seas broke with hissing fury over the beleaguered sloop. The cockpit swirled with green water and seaboots chafed against shivering flesh with the abrasive irritation of sandpaper. Haldeth could spare no resource to fret over folly now.

  The weather worsened, its force more viciously concentrated than any concoction of nature. Wind frayed the mist to shreds like tattered spectres. Carcadonn shuddered with each pull of the oars, while contrary, spindrift-crowned waves slammed her time and again, a hairsbreadth shy of broaching. Whipped at last to exhaustion, Korendir and Haldeth dropped double anchor. Too chilled even to stand watch, they huddled over the galley stove while Carcadonn pitched against her lines like a pain-maddened bull.

  Storm brought early darkness. The mast whipped against the stays. Lines chafed and fittings rattled, and the rudder banged at her pins, despite stout lines of lashing. Toward midnight, drifting ice ground into the aft anchor rode. Chain snapped off at the hawse, and Carcadonn slewed in a bucking arc, dependent on her thinner second line. The yank as the slack caught short flexed every timber in the hull.

  By miracle, the bow hook held.

  The lurch upended lanterns in their brackets. Fortunately their reservoirs were emptied, an extreme precaution for rough weather. Haldeth took refuge in his bunk with his arms clamped over his head, and for once yielding to common sense, Korendir did not stir aloft. Conditions were too desperate to risk slacking off line to set the spare anchor. If Carcadonn broke loose in such current, no remedy might spare them from wreck on the reefs.

  The night passed; if Korendir managed sleep, Haldeth most assuredly did not.

  Daybreak arrived through louring layers of cloud. First to rise, Haldeth cracked the cockpit hatch and blessed luck that he still was alive. Everywhere the sloop showed punishment, from varnish and paintwork stripped down to wood, to lines snapped into tassels. Even Sathig's meticulous handiwork could never withstand another night like the last. Korendir seemed not to care. He hastened to raise anchor like a man set after by demons. Too worn to argue, Haldeth sat his bench and bent to the rhythm of the oars.

  Carcadonn heaved sideways. A wave slapped her thwarts, and spray showered over mast and deck and cockpit. Haldeth shook water from his eyes and shouted warning, just as the anchor cleared the sea. The sloop slewed like a cork in a millrace. Somehow Korendir kept his balance. He made fast the chain and swung aft with the agility of a monkey to take his place at the bench.

  Both men pulled to the limit of their strength, to no avail. Against the tumbling grip of the current, sinew and oars proved inadequate and the sloop ripped out of control.

  Haldeth saw the iceberg first. Glistening white, and sharp as trap jaws, it reared off the bow while the current sheared eddies on either side. Shouting, the smith heaved on his loom to deflect the sloop to leeward.

  Water resisted his pull like iron. Carcadonn spun sideways, married to her course like a suicide. Haldeth braced for the inevitable impact.

  "Keep rowing!" Korendir screamed.

  He slammed his oars clear of the rowlocks, then rose with the shafts in his hands. Braced against rail and cabin top, he leaned out to fend off like a madman.

  Beechwood met ice with a screech and dislodged a spray of flying chips. The oar blade ground into splinters. Korendir shouldered into the stub, his face a snarl of effort. The planking beneath his back and feet groaned as if the bulkhead would crack. Then the sloop bucked. Water sucked at her keel, and she shot clear with a lurch. The iceberg retreated dizzily behind.

  Korendir never looked back, but bounded in a stride for the foredeck. He freed a halyard, but his valiant effort to hoist sail ended in flogging defeat. The wind was impossibly strong. Whipped into retreat by a snarl of rigging and burst canvas, Carcadonn's master abandoned the mast. He dropped to his knees on the deck and slashed the ties which restrained the anchor. Hook and chain fell free, swallowed by boiling foam. The line burned out with a scream of friction. White-lipped, Korendir counted footage and belayed off to a cleat.

  At last able to help, Haldeth dragged hard on the oars. He strove against what seemed the unleashed fury of hell to ease the strain on the anchor. Still, the line snapped taut with a hum like the cock of a siege arbalest. Droplets smoked from stressed plies. But the cable held.

  Haldeth nearly wept with relief.

  Korendir straightened on splayed feet by the foredeck. He glared at the ruins of his trysail, then shouted, "That thing would've served better as an elephant sling!" He hacked the mess free of the shackle, slung himself aft, and thrust an armload of dripping canvas at Haldeth. "Stow the cussed thing in the forepeak, in case we have need of a hull patch."

  At a loss for comment, Haldeth obeyed. When he returned from below and found Korendir unlashing the tender from Carcadonn's cabin top, his nerve at last gave way.

  "Just how far do you expect you'll get in that?" Bent by the force of the gale, the smith clenched both hands on the lifeline just to maintain his footing.

  Korendir jerked his head toward the cliffs, where a spray-drenched islet arose, marked by geysers of spume as breakers thundered past toward the headland. He shouted over the tumult. "We'll want to mount bolt rings in the channel. Sathig would never forgive me if I left his boat hanging by one anchor, untended."

  "Neth!" Haldeth slapped ice from his collar. "You're mad! If you think to manhandle that eggshell in there, don't expect pity when you capsize."

  Korendir paused. He looked up, and his lips split with an expression that passed for amusement. "I'm not daft. Not when I know the weather elemental of Whitestorm by name."

  Haldeth sat heavily on the cabintop. "Where in Aerith's Eleven Kingdoms did you learn that? You had no enchanter's upbringing."

  Suddenly absorbed with his knots, Korendir said, "I won Anthei's library, didn't I? Her father left notes in the margins of a spell scroll that called for nine coin-weight of dragon's teeth."

  This revelation was remarkable only for brashness. While a man trained to power could sometimes influence an elemental through the binding properties of its name, Korendir was no wizard.

  Haldeth took a breath of cold air. "Since when does knowing penmanship make you an expert?"

  Korendir tossed off the last rope. He glanced up with eyes that were much too steady. "Do you want to turn back?"

  "No, the more fool I!" Haldeth flung away in emotional contrast. He sought comfortless refuge in the cockpit while Korendir slung the dory from the main halyard, then wrestled against the pitch of the seas to launch the craft over the rail. Not until he tossed his tools and line beneath the oar seat did the smith surrender to the inevitable. Haldeth emerged to steady the painter, while his companion kicked over the lifelines and settled himself on board.

  Korendir signalled his wish to be cast off.

  Haldeth gripped the line in white knuckles. "Is there nothing that moves you to fear?"

  Korendir shrugged, supremely reluctant to answer. Then, on a whim, he changed his mind. "The death that's in front is a known thing, already faced and accepted. But the end that catches a man without grace from behind, that one drives me to terror. There I will raise walls in defense, Haldeth. Until then, nothing else matters."

  Brusque now, Korendir freed his oars. As though his conclusion was inevitable, he added, "Stone masons demand great piles of coin." Almost gently, he reached up and pried the line from the frozen fist of his friend.

  A swell rolled green beneath the sloop. Lifted on its crest, the dory spun away, snatched off by the twist of the current. Haldeth watched, his chest all aching and hollow, and
his throat closed to sound.

  Korendir made no attempt to row, but instead struggled upright, propped against his oarshafts in the dory's pitching stern. Wind cracked his cloak like a flag and the punch of the waves rattled the boards beneath his feet. Tossed like a chip before the might of the elemental, the man's braced figure reflected all the futility of a twig propped upright against an avalanche.

  Had means existed, Haldeth would have dragged both dory and occupant back to Carcadonn by main force. Since that was impossible, the smith pondered the merits of earnest prayer for the first time since Mhurgai had murdered his family.

  The next instant, Korendir flung a shout like a herald's cry against the ice-runged cliffs. "Cyondide!"

  The word echoed back, baldfaced enough to provoke war between neighboring kingdoms. Haldeth's emotions were quenched with the speed of a pinched candle.

  "Cyondide!"

  Whitestorm's elemental gave response in a rush of wind and wave. Carcadonn's dory spun like a cork compass, and spray plumed over her gunwales. Balanced on sloshing floorboards, Korendir fought to stay upright. As if the roiling waters posed no significant threat, he raised his voice again. "Cyondide, I come to Whitestorm as envoy. Would you founder my craft before I deliver my message?"

  Water slapped the dory's bow. Her keel settled so abruptly that Korendir was slammed to his knees. Then the wind parted to carve a circle of calm around the tiny boat. Into air frozen in sudden silence, the elemental replied, its voice the hiss of breaking surf. "Cyondide is here. Who sends a mortal man as envoy? No wizard would so dare."

  Korendir recovered his footing. He answered with a calm that chilled Haldeth's blood. "Ishone, from the east sends me. As bearer of his message, I demand safe harbor and leave to moor my craft against the rocks."