R. Salvatore - Echoes of the Fourth Magic

Mitchell turned a menacing glance at Brady and Corbin and warned in all seriousness, “Control that idiot or he’s going overboard.”

But even as the captain spoke, Thompson dropped to the raft, alternating wild laughter and sobbing. Tears streamed freely down his face and he kept whispering, “Just a frigging game,” desperately begging anyone to agree with him.

Later that morning they drank the last of the water, and then sat helpless, quiet, betrayed. How long would it take? each of them now wondered.

Those contemplations were stolen by a loud splash, and then another.

“Dolphins!” Doc Brady shouted as a large bottle-nosed dolphin broke the surface and arrowed into the air. In seconds the water around the raft churned as dozens of dolphins danced and soared all about them, silver-flitting needles weaving intricate patterns in the azure fabric of the sea.

“Unbelievable!” Del whispered, seeing the display in an inspiring light. A week ago he might have viewed the dance as a pleasing diversion, but now his vision went much deeper. In their evolution, the dolphins had become perfectly suited for their world, the embodiment of nature’s ability to flow toward perfection. They were the flesh-and-blood music of universal law and divine order. Del wanted to share his revelation and see if the others, too, saw the true beauty of it all, but no words good enough came to him.

The ballet went on for several minutes.

Then a dolphin sat up in the water, half of its blue-gray body effortlessly still in the air a few feet in front of the raft. It stared with intelligent eyes into seven puzzled faces and began clicking and whinnying and waving its long nose frantically.

“He’s talking to us!” Billy laughed.

“Don’t be stupid!” Mitchell retorted.

But Del realized that Billy was right, and moreover, he somehow felt that he understood. He darted under the tent and tore away some of the cord that edged the canvas, quickly securing one end to the raft, then ran back up front and threw the other end toward the dolphin.

“What are you doing?” Mitchell demanded. But even before Del could respond there came a great tug and the raft started moving as several dolphins pounced on the rope and took it in tow.

“Incredible,” was all that Doc Brady managed to mutter.

“I just had a feeling,” Del said with an embarrassed shrug.

The dolphins pulled due east. On and on for hours and hours, and when those on the rope tired, they were replaced by fresher companions. Once again the men took faith in their salvation and by mid-afternoon their prayers were answered.

“Land!” Billy cried, and sure enough, edging the eastern horizon, loomed the black silhouette of distant mountains.

“Any idea where we are?” Mitchell asked.

“None,” Billy answered. “We’ve been going the wrong way for Florida. Could be Haiti.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Corbin said. The dolphins continued their incredible pace, and less than an hour later the raft was barely several hundred yards from the shoreline.

The dolphins let go of the rope and graced the men with a final dance. Perhaps it was a farewell salute, the dolphins’ way of saying good-bye; or perhaps they danced simply for the joy of it, cutting sleekly through the water and leaping in pirouette or somersault. Then, as precisely as any drill team, they formed into a line and headed back out to sea, skimming the surface in majestic flight. Del hung over the edge of the raft, calling out good-bye.

Not even Mitchell berated him.

“The tide will get us in now,” Corbin observed.

A few minutes later the raft beached onto the sand of a new world.

THE BEACH WAS as dreary and gray as the sky above. Soggy clumps of seaweed, disgorged offal of the ocean, lined the high-tide mark as monuments of neglect. Dead fish and crabs, untended by scavengers and parasites, festered in the sand. Something was terribly wrong here. What should have been a place of revitalizing, cleansing tides offended the senses like a fetid, unmoving swamp. Nature seemingly had abandoned or had been forced from this stretch, leaving it in total decay. Yet the men were undaunted, for this land, however discouraging, was their salvation, their deliverance from the very fires of hell.

After a couple minutes of quiet thanks-none of them had even stepped out of the raft-Mitchell remembered his responsibilities. “We’ve got to find some water,” he said. “And I want to know where we are.”

“And when we are,” Reinheiser quipped. Brady’s test of the cadavers had gone exactly as the physicist had predicted, though Reinheiser and the doctor had decided to keep their findings private until the more serious problems were addressed.

But none of the others missed Reinheiser’s remark, and for the first time, Del seriously contemplated the possibilities. The devastation beyond the golden sheet had convinced him that there had been a holocaust, likely a nuclear war, but occupied with other pressing issues, he hadn’t really considered that perhaps the devastation came fifty or even a hundred years after the Unicorn had sailed from Woods Hole. The prospect of a new world, of meeting a man from the future, now intrigued Del; a very large part of him hoped that Reinheiser’s theory would be proven right.

“We’ll split up into three groups,” Mitchell said, looking at the three remaining rifles. He surveyed the landscape. North, faintly visible through the light fog, loomed the distant shapes of huge boulders, a rocky prelude to great dark mountains. South, the beach remained redundantly gray for as far as the eye could see. Due east, inland, was a marshy plain, flat and misty, misshapen black puddles of salty backwash blotting a gray-green background.

“Pull the raft up above the tide line,” Mitchell told Del and Billy. “Then head north. Corbin, take Thompson and go south.”

“Thanks a bunch,” Corbin mumbled.

“The rest of us will head inland,” Mitchell continued. “And each group takes a rifle. We’ve got about four hours until sundown; and I want you all back here before then.”

Del and Billy moved at a swift pace, excited and anxious to discover their whereabouts and, as Del put it, their “when-abouts.” Two hours and several miles later, they found themselves stomping along the only twisting trail they could follow through the great boulders and sheer rock faces. It rose and fell, more up than down as they steadily climbed higher and higher. Off a few hundred yards to the left and below them came the incessant pounding of the waves vainly bashing against the invincible cliffs.

“There’s no end to these rocks,” Del muttered, his head down, watching his step; he had already stubbed his toes several times on the unyielding stone. The path was only a couple of feet wide at this point, barely a crack in a huge slab of solid stone, and inclined steeply. Finally approaching the summit of the difficult rise, he looked up and beheld a magnificent sight.

“A castle!” he gasped, and darted up the trail. Billy shrugged, about to ask what his friend might be talking about, but seeing Del so obviously intrigued, even consumed, he simply followed Del’s lead. Amoment later a gust of wind thinned the fog, and sure enough, Billy too saw the black walls and imposing towers of an immense fortress far in the distance, set upon a cliff face overlooking the sea.

Del stood on the lip of a ledge, his hand shading his eyes as he tried to gain a better view of the castle through the alternately thick and thin patches of fog. He still hadn’t looked at the drop beneath him.

Billy did when he got there.

“Get down!” he whispered harshly. He grabbed Del by the shirt collar and pulled him back from the ledge and to the ground.