Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

"Don't touch it!" he finally managed to gasp.

"It's dead," Yavanna said.

"It shouldn't have been alive in the first place," Torvik said, and Yavanna had to nod.

"Far be it from me to expect gratitude for saving your life…." she growled, turning away, axe still in hand. She looked at the trees as if daring one of them to so much as shake a leaf at her.

"I am grateful," Torvik said. "And don't you all stand around staring at me! Watch the trees or fill the barrels!" he shouted at a circle of wide-eyed sailors who had seemingly sprung from nowhere.

The sailors obeyed, and the withdrawal from the island was a retreat rather than a rout, in as much as they left no barrels or other gear ashore. No one turned his back on anything larger than a pebble or a strand of seaweed until they were all on the beach and ready to board the boats.

Nor did any of the watering party stop telling their shipmates about the magic loose on Suivinari Island, once they were aboard, until Sorraz gave the order to raise anchor and make sail.

At sunset, Torvik left the top to a lookout, because his bruised leg was more than a trifle painful and for another reason that he would barely admit to himself. The sooner the darkness swallowed Suivinari Island, the sooner he would feel safe from whatever lurked in the waters around it and the sand and rock inland.

He felt halfway between a coward and a fool for even thinking this, but he doubted that he was the only one aboard Kingfisher's Claw whose wits were a trifle blunter after today. It would be as well if they spoke to another ship soon, to carry the warning and perhaps learn if others had seen any strangeness in these waters. At the moment, most of the crew would willingly see even a minotaur ship lift above the horizon, rather than an empty sea.

The thought made Torvik lift his telescope, not that he expected to see anything that the lookout had not already spotted, but sometimes on a hazy night there was clear air on deck and fog around the tops, instead of the reverse.

Flickering, sinuous movement close to a barely-visible reef drew his attention. He swung the telescope to see why the porpoises were that close inshore, then saw that the sleek backs were too small to be porpoises. Seals or sea otters, most likely.

Then Torvik could have sworn he saw a faint ruddy glow in the water, where one of the seals had swum. The glow made a circle in the water, lasting only as long as a single deep breath-but out of it swam a human form. It reached the rocks with swift flashing strokes of long arms, then rose on long legs.

It was a woman, with hair the same color as the glow-a rich dark wine hue, and flowing all the way down to her knees, so that it alone cloaked her graceful form from Torvik's eyes.

Then she vanished so suddenly that Torvik suspected magic before he saw a rock pinnacle that effectively shielded anyone behind it from the ship. If there was anyone to shield. Torvik wrestled for a moment with the thought that he had in truth seen nothing. But if that were so, then his eyes and wits were both failing him. Better to accept that he had seen a seal-no, it would be a sea otter-change to a woman, and know that the Dimernesti also swam in these waters.

Which might mean they knew of the minotaur-killer? Yes, but it was far from certain that anything would come that.

The Dimernesti were rarer by far in these waters than the Dargonesti. Few humans could find them, and the Dargonesti were not always willing to help. Even when found, the Dimernesti were slow to speak to humans, who had hunted seals and sea otters in a way that they had never hunted porpoises and dolphins.

Hidden by the darkness and his beard, Torvik's mouth twisted in a wry smile as a thought struck him. The captain would certainly know more of the Dimernesti than most, as he knew more than most of any creature that could fall to his harpoon. But in gaining that knowledge, Sorraz had most likely shed enough Dimernesti blood that the shallows-dwellers would see Kingfisher's Claw at the bottom of the sea before they gave anyone aboard her so much as a dead clam.

About the same time as Torvik sighted Suivinari Island, the lord and lady of Tirabot Manor in the lands of mighty Istar received a guest.

Sir Niebar ducked his head gracefully to pass through the doorway into the narrow tower chamber where Sir Pirvan and Lady Haimya waited. The two men, both Knights of the Rose, greeted each other formally, then embraced. Sir Niebar actually chuckled.

"It has reached my ears that your people are wagering on how soon and how often I will knock my head on your doorways," he said. Long before he wore any emblem of the Knights of Solamnia, he had been known as Niebar the Tall, and the years had left him much of that height.

Pirvan said nothing. He could tell that his chief and comrade had brought ill news and was trying to hide it behind lightness, as an army's scouts might hide behind the smoke a grass fire. But Niebar had not succeeded Sir Marod of Ellersford at the head of the "secret work" of the Knights of Solamnia without the courage to tell plain truths sooner rather than later.

"If any contrive your downfall, we will punish them as they deserve," Pirvan's wife said, smiling.

"I am not so old that I have lost the power to judge the height of a door, or lost the suppleness to pass under it," Niebar said. He lowered himself onto one end of a bench hat was, save for a chest and two fading, moth-riddled tapestries, the sole furniture of the chamber.

From the way Niebar moved, Pirvan judged that these words were something of whistling in the dark. Stiffness in the joints did not kill, the way congestions of blood in the brain did, but they could make a man miserable or even unfit for a knight's work.

When Sir Marod died three months ago, Sir Niebar had made no secret of preferring to let Pirvan step directly into command of the secret work. However, the Grand Master and the high knights disagreed; Pirvan rose one rung on the ladder rather than two.

"Would you care for refreshment?" Haimya asked.

Niebar shook his head. "The last stage of our journey was easy. Our stop for the night had ample water, kender left out fruit and bread, and word of our strength has reached all the bandits in this part of the country."

This was likely true. Niebar took even more seriously than most a knight's duty not to lie to another knight. Pirvan still thought that he heard more behind it.

So did Haimya. Her eyebrows twitched and one shoulder lifted slightly. She had a whole arsenal of these subtle gestures and movements, which Pirvan could read like a scroll after more than twenty years of being wed to her.

"The kingpriest is dead," Niebar said.

Pirvan made a gesture of aversion from the thieves' underground of Istar. Haimya made several of her own. Then she threw her husband a speaking look. Her right to be here did not carry the right to prod Niebar to greater eloquence. Prodding her husband was another matter.

"We heard not even the smallest rumor," Pirvan said. He frowned. "Was it sudden?"

"So sudden that tales of poison are already abroad in the streets of Istar," Niebar said.

Pirvan needed no further looks from Haimya to understand where this was leading. He needed only to contemplate Niebar's too-carefully commanded face.

"Am I suspected?"

Niebar shook his head but simultaneously tugged at his beard. Pirvan knew a moment's wild temptation to tug at his own beard, then challenge Niebar to a beard-tugging contest that might go on until both were clean-chinned.

Instead, Pirvan shrugged. "What can I say, but this: I owe Sir Marod more than I owe any man, living or dead. Without him, I might at best be an aging thief in Istar. I would never have known Haimya, and the gods themselves could not reward the giver of such a gift."