David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

She wasn't afraid of Alfdan. She wouldn't have been afraid of him even without Beard, but she knew that Alfdan, like an injured dog, might snap at her out of pain and blind fury. She didn't want that to happen, but there's no way to control what a madman may do. She'd deal with whatever happened.

"The Queen Ship sails over the sea, not in it," Alfdan said, calm and seemingly reasonable again. "Over the sea or the land either one-it doesn't matter to the ship."

"All right," said Sharina. Her fingers were slipping. She shifted her grip, snatching at the mast before she could begin to slide off the deck.

What does this ship of light weigh? Could a man or a hundred men lift it from the beach using ordinary muscles instead of wizardry?

"We're searching for the Key of Reyazel," Alfdan said, lifting his head and speaking in a consciously portentous voice. "Will you come with us, Sharina os-Reise?"

Sharina frowned. "Why should I?" she said bluntly. Did Alfdan think he could compel her by his art, now that his men had refused to use force on her?

Couldthe wizard compel her by his art, whatever he thought?

"You're alone," Alfdan said. "We are many, and-"

"Franca is with me," Sharina said.

Alfdan sniffed. "Yes, I saw him," he said. "A sturdy help, I'm sure!"

"And Beard is with her, wizard," said the axe with ringing clarity. "Mistress, let me kill him now. The others will follow you, see if they don't!"

"We are many," Alfdan repeated, wetting his lips with his tongue again. "And I have the treasures which allow us to flourish even in this world. The Cape of Shadows, the Queen Ship; other objects now, and perhaps in the futuremany more objects. If you slew me… if you wereable to slay me, as this one wishes… they'd be quite useless to you."

Sharina looked at the wizard. She neither liked nor trusted him, but he was certainly right that she couldn't use tools which required wizardry; nor, she suspected, was she likely to meet another wizard-in this place or anywhere-whom she'd like or trust any better than she did Alfdan.

She smiled. If she hadn't met Tenoctris, she'd have believed all wizards were arrogantly self-willed, and that most were actively evil besides.

Alfdan misunderstood her expression. "Do you doubt me?" he demanded. "Do you think-"

"I know you're a wizard," Sharina said, raising her voice enough to ride over his. "I know I'm not and that I could no more use your cape than I could fly. But I'm still not convinced that we should join you, Master Alfdan."

The wizard leaned back and chuckled, suddenly at ease again. "Well, mistress," he said. "The fauns were looking for something, were they not? Or do you believe it was chance that brought a pack of them here, now?"

Sharina kept a strait face. "I don't suppose it was chance," she said. "I don't think it was, no."

"So they might have been looking for me, but nothing of the sort has happened to me in the past," Alfdan said. "Never in the ten years since She came. But you, mistress… you just came to our world, you say. If their friends or many more of their friends come looking for you again, would you rather run from them on your two legs? Or would you sail away with us on the Queen Ship?"

"I see," said Sharina, her hand motionless on Beard's helve. "Yes, that's a reason to join you. Now, Master Alfdan, tell me why youwant us with you?"

"Because the axe in your hands is almost better than having it in mine, mistress," the wizard said. He laughed again, but this time the humor trailed off in a giggle that was close to something else. "There's finding the Key of Reyazel, which I can do easily; and there's bringing it up from where it lies. If you and your axe will agree to fetch me the Key of Reyazel, then you're welcome to all the protection to be had from my band and my art, I assure you."

"There'll be things to kill," Beard said in a steely whisper. "Blood to drink, mistress, much blood for Beard to drink!"

"I'll get this key for you…," said Sharina. "If you take me where I want to go in exchange."

"Where is that?" said Alfdan with a frown.

"I don't know," she said. She smiled without humor. "I just arrived. Does it matter?"

Alfdan shrugged. "I don't suppose so," he said. "All right, mistress. But first you must fetch the key."

He and the axe both began to laugh in high-pitched voices.

"Sit in the middle, Lord Cashel," Syl said as she got into the bow of the craft and knelt facing backward. "Getchin will guide the boat. He's good at that."

"He weighs too much," said Getchin, the blond man. He stood in the stern, holding a slender crystal rod about as long as his arms would spread. "You shouldn't come with us, Syl."

"He doesn't weigh more than Elpel and Gromis both," Syl said composedly. "Not quite."

Cashel looked doubtfully at the vessel he was supposed to get into. Not only was it shaped like a pastel pink milkweed pod, it seemed to be equally flimsy. He wasn't much happier about the prospect than Getchin was.

"Are you sure I won't just step through the bottom?" Cashel said.

"It makes no difference to me, since I'll be carried whether you enter the airboat or hike on your own legs, master," said Evne from his shoulder. "But it's three days journey if you walk it, so we'd best be getting on… unless it's your plan to bury Kotia instead of rescuing her?"

"I don't have a plan," Cashel muttered, stepping over the boat's curved side. It had a warm, firm roughness to his bare feet, the feel of a thick, newly-sawn plank. "I just thought somebody ought to…"

Cashel thought somebody ought to give the Visitor some of what he was dishing out to other folks. Saying that-and saying that he meant to be the fellow who did it-sounded like bragging. If things worked out, Cashel wouldn't need talk; and if they didn't, well, at the end he wouldn't have to worry that he'd made a fool of himself in addition to losing a fight.

"Well sit down, then," said Getchin peevishly. "And keep your weight balanced, if you would!"

Cashel looked at the blond man. Getchin was as tall as he was, but he was only of middling build and soft besides. He glared at Cashel, then flushed. No one spoke until Cashel turned and seated himself with his usual care. The boat's interior was hollow with neither thwarts nor furnishings of any kind. Cashel held his quarterstaff across the gunwales before him.

" Getchin hopes to replace the late Farran in Syl's affections, master," the toad said in a voice that folks deep in the circle of spectators could hear clearly. "He regards you as a rival, so he regrets that Syl insists on coming along at the start of your heroic endeavor."

"Look, let's get moving, can we?" Cashel said. He didn't look over his shoulder at Getchin, and he wished that Syl wasn't seated staring right into his face.

"Getchin is a fool," Syl said distinctly. "To believehe has any chance, I mean."

The toad laughed. The boat lifted, jerking forward with a wobbly violence like a skiff rowed by an angry man. Someone on the ground cheered, and then the whole crowd was shouting, "Lord Cashel!" and "Long live the wizard Cashel!"

Syl smiled faintly. Her eyes looked through Cashel, not at him.

The boat slanted upward till it was about a furlong above the ground. It steadied, too; they trembled a little when Cashel turned his head to look around, but nothing serious.

He half expected Getchin to say something anyway, but the fellow just stood there in the stern with his crystal rod held out crossways like a rope walker using a balance pole. He didn't seem to notice Cashel-or Syl, either one.

"At the beginning of the First Cycle…," Evne said. She sounded like one of the priests reading the Hymn of the Lady to the assembled borough at the end of the Tithe Procession. "A moon fell to earth. Its impact formed a great bowl surrounded by ranges of mountains."