Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

Was Effram the only soul left in the world? Alone, isolated in a storm that he realized could not be natural. Could not be real. This was no hearty downpour of water from over-laden clouds, no swirling of wind from the struggle between the cold air of heaven and the hot air of desert sand. This was… magic? Punishment sent from the gods? Except there were no gods, or if there were, they no longer cared about the pitiful races of Krynn. But someone, something, was surely angry. To pound the sky with thunder as heavy as boulders. To drown the smells of sun and sand. To leach the colors from the land.

For the first time since he’d shouted his exuberance at being afloat, Effram feared.

It was not safe to be so far out to sea, not safe to be surrounded by the roiling black silk of a magical storm. For the first time since he’d set his feet upon the deck, he felt the cold as something clammy and unwelcome. His shirt clung to his back like a worm clings to the stone under which it hides. His shoulders hurt from fighting the wind, his ribs still burned where he’d fallen against the post, and his legs ached from straining to stay upright. His feet were numb with cold, his ringers pruned and old from the wet.

For one heart-stopping moment, he did not know from which direction he had come. All about him was the same. Black and gray, unrelieved except for flashes of yellow, orange, and sometimes blue. Thunder groaned so loudly that he could feel it in his numbed feet. It vibrated into his clenched hands, overshouting even the song of the sail.

He closed his eyes and let the boom line slide through his fingers until it swung free. The sail flogged in the wind, a crunching angry sound of threads being beaten and abused, of a sail hungry to be filled. He was lost at sea in the middle of a dark and supernatural storm. Now he would die, unvindicated, and all those who had called him crazy would be proven correct.

The solution came to him as quickly as the despair had, gusting over him like the bursts of aberrant wind. The fear made him feel stupid and slow. To even have felt it for a moment was to deny all the years he’d spent believing in himself.

He’d been tacking into the wind. All he had to do was turn about and let the wind take him home, or if not home, then to shore. For surely that feeling that he alone lived upon the sea was purest fantasy? The raging sea could not have covered the whole of the continent. Surely there was land somewhere to the north or east of Tarsis. All he had to do was let the wind push him to safety.

He worked the sail and the tiller. The boat wallowed, a great clumsy beast fighting the stronger monster of storm. The pressure of the sea against the keel threatened to swamp him, but then the stern caught the current and the nose swung around. The sail billowed in the strong wind and snapped loud as a blow, skin on skin. For a moment, Effram thought he wouldn’t be able to manage the boom-that either he would give way, the sail would snap free of the mast, or maybe even that the mast would crack at the base like a young tree snapping in the wind.

The strain on his fingers was almost unbearable, the pull on the sail even stronger, but all held. His fingers did not break, the sail did not give way, and the mast creaked and groaned but held. The sailing was as different as the gait of a swift steed was from that of an oxcart.

To run before the wind was like flying! Like being given wings and a great span of free sky in which to try them. The sail whispered and ballooned out, pregnant with storm, with the strong southerly wind that was blowing the sea of Tarsis home. The clumsy boat flew with Effram astride it, faster than any bastard sloop with a tallship’s bow and a carrack’s heavy stern should. It flew so fast the wind dried the water from his face, so fast it felt as if the wind would just lift him up and carry him over the sea.

Only the lightning saved him from smashing headlong into the city. One moment, he was flying across the frothing water, surrounded by the gray-black of the storm. The next he saw, in a flash of white light, the seawall that formed the other protective arm around the harbor of Tarsis arrowing toward him.

Lightning blind, he barely had time to yank the boom in, bleed the sail of some of the wind, and slow the forward slice of the boat. It turned and in the next flash of lightning, he saw the blunt end of the seawall on the starboard side. The boat slid past into the calmer water of the harbor.

The wind was still strong, swirling in angry gusts, as was the water, but it was less choppy. It was an advantage that he appreciated only now. This protected haven had been what made Tarsis the great seaport it had once been. The harbor was a circular refuge backed by the city and enclosed by a semi-circle of breakwater on one side and seawall on the other.

He shortened the sail, giving the wind less yardage on which to tug. Despite the slightly calmer water, the wind still shoved him along at a satisfying clip. There was still plenty of water rushing against the keel and rudder to send the boat skidding forward.

Across the sullen gray light in the harbor, Effram could make out the looming shapes of the waterfront buildings. So Tarsis was still there, still above water, though if the storm continued, he wasn’t sure it would remain so. There was no way to tell time, no way for him to even estimate how long he’d been out on the sea. No way to tell how long it had been since he’d walked in the market and bought butter and peaches, but it felt like a long time.

His muscles, aching and tired, said it had been hours, though he suspected minutes. But if the sea had risen this far in only minutes, how long would it be before it encroached upon the city, and would there still be anyone left alive to see him sail past in all his glory?

The water in the harbor was as gray as the sky, dismal as the clouds, so dark that it appeared depthless. The outlines of what had once been tall, proud sailing ships were dark, hulking shapes in the gray curtain of storm. When the Sea of Tarsis had been taken away by the gods, the ships had been trapped, listing at odd angles on dry sand. Over the centuries, people had used the hulks as homes, an even more ignominious fate in Effram’s mind than if their carcasses had been allowed to rot away.

He steered closer, a little fearful, and more than a little hopeful that one of the ships had bobbed to the surface of the new sea, but it was a wasted wish. The once proud vessels still lay upon their sides, almost drowned by the raging storm, as landlocked as he had once been.

There were people aboard the nearest one. Scurrying humans who clung to the uppermost deck and waved and shouted frantically, hoping he would see them. Effram could barely hear their cries above the cracks of thunder and sloshing water. He steered closer, standing up proud and tall in the stern of his sailing vessel. Let them call him crazy now!

As he sailed closer, wanting to be near enough to see their faces, he was horrified to see them jump into the sea, one by one, like fleas abandoning a dog. They swam toward him, flailing and shouting as they came.

A heavy smack on the side of the boat startled him as he leaned into the tiller, turning the boat before it collided with the swimmers. He wheeled to find a man hanging on the railing of the boat by one arm. Beneath the sheeting rain, the man’s face was familiar.

“Are you gonna just stare or actually be of some use?” the man shouted.

It had been so long since Effram had spoken to anyone that his tongue felt numb. His tongue flopped and twisted around the unfamiliar words, and when the words finally slipped past it, his voice was rusty and unused. “Be of use?”

The man thrust his free hand toward Effram as far as he could. When Effram didn’t take his hand, the man gave out a loud sound of disgust, then he grunted and wriggled himself clumsily up over the side and into the boat. He brought a wave of water with him, and he squished as he struggled to right himself.