P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

“You stay here,” Jame told Jorin. “What, d’you want to wade all the way to the horizon?”

She, the other two lordan, and her ten-command saddled up their moas. They could see the scrapes where the reverted sledges had entered the shallow water to become boats, and beyond that, salt plates on the bottom were broken by the lambas’ hooves. The moas dithered on the shore until encouraged in with whip and spur. The water came halfway up to their knees. They lifted their three-toed, webbed feet high, almost daintily, with every step.

Jorin paced the shore behind them, crying. Jame thought of Kalan and the baby that she had left behind. Would she ever see the ounce again? How did one make clear to a cat or to an infant that it wasn’t being willfully abandoned?

“I should explain some things to you,” she said to her fellow lordan, and told them about Langadine. “Time is fluid here,” she concluded. “Granny Sit-by-the-Fire called this the Sea of Time. The camp might be stranded on the shore forever if our seeker doesn’t return, and we may find ourselves too deep in the past to return even that far.”

Timmon was aghast. “Now you tell us?”

Gorbel only shook his heavy head. “It doesn’t matter. Once we came to the edge of the sea, wet or dry, we had to follow the caravan. The only way back leads though this mysterious city of yours, if we can find it.”

They waded slowly on. Clouds came up from the south, mirrored under their feet by the water so that one felt almost as if one could walk on either. The sun disappeared. The horizon circled them in a thin, dark band. Without the broken salt plates leading straight ahead, they would quickly have lost all sense of direction.

“How far have we come?” asked Timmon, breaking a long silence.

Gorbel grunted. “At this pace? Hard to tell. More than three miles. Out here, distance plays tricks as well as time.”

The reflected sky made the lambas’ trail harder and harder to follow, and the water was now up to the moas’ knees, over three feet deep. They had started in midmorning. It now appeared to be midafternoon, but who could say? Had they been walking hours, or days, or years?

The suspense seemed to unnerve Timmon. “What will your father do if he learns the way to Langadine?” he asked.

“Whatever he can to get a trade mission there, or a raiding party, but from what you say”—with a nod to Jame—“he will need a seeker, and those are dying out.”

“What about Kalan’s daughter in Kothifir?”

“She can only find her way back to her birth city. If Laurintine is the last of her line, no one will ever find the city again, at least until after its destruction.”

“And what do you make of that?”

“What can I? Something happened some three thousand years ago that shattered Langadine.”

“That would be more or less when the Kencyrath arrived on Rathillien,” said Jame.

Timmon scratched a peeling nose, dubious. “Coincidence?”

“I doubt it. Anyway, our appearance here and Perimal Darkling moving one world closer seem to have shaken up all sorts of things.”

She was thinking about the sudden manifestation of the Four and about Langadine’s climate changing, along with that of the Southern Wastes, although that seemed to have started before the Kencyrath had arrived.

Was the water getting deeper? Yes, to mid-thigh on the moas, who no longer tried to lift their feet free with each stride. The fluffy feathers on their bellies were soaked and matted. She raised her boots to keep them from getting wet.

Brier nudged her bird up level with the three lordan. “I can’t see the trail anymore,” she said.

Jame peered down. The moas’ progress had stirred up the bottom somewhat, and further distortion made the salt plates dance. Were they broken, or simply smaller than they had been before? At what point would the lambas have started to swim, pulling their barges behind them?

All the birds had stopped and were honking uneasily to each other. The riders sat, surrounded by a seemingly infinite, trackless expanse. The sun was going down.

“Now what?” Timmon asked.

“Forward,” said Gorbel, and kicked his moas into reluctant motion.

“I don’t think these birds can swim,” Jame said, but she followed the Caineron, her ten-command trailing after her.

The sun dipped below the clouds and set them on fire. Orange, red, and yellow ribbons streamed across the sky, perfectly mirrored in the waters below. It was like wading through the heart of a silent inferno. Then the sun’s fiery disk sank into its own reflection, going, going, gone. Color died out of the sky and stars winked between sable clouds. It was hours yet before the moon would rise, if it ever did.

They splashed on into the deepening night, drawn by Gorbel’s will. Water edged up to the moas’ breasts.

“He’s going to drown all of us,” Timmon said to Jame in an undertone.

“Maybe. Turn around, if you choose.”

Timmon rose in the saddle to look back the way they had come, past the following cadets. Nothing remained to mark their passage, and clouds were beginning to extinguish whatever stars might have guided them.

“Huh,” he said.

They continued. The water rose until they were sitting in it as much as in the saddle, and yet it crept higher.

“Look,” said Quill, pointing ahead.

A faint light shone there, perhaps a star near the now invisible horizon. Soon, however, it twinned, one above and one below. More dim lights came out as they advanced, a cluster low in the sky, reflecting off the water.

The moas were mostly underwater now, their small heads rising on serpentine necks. A new determination animated them, a straining forward as if toward the scent of land.

Jame slipped out of the stirrups and rose to swim beside her bird’s head. The others did too, except for Brier and Damson. Jame cursed herself for forgetting that neither cadet could swim. Mint supported the five-commander while Dar grabbed Damson. The lights loomed over them now, above and below, faintly defining high walls and candlelit windows.

Gorbel sank. Timmon and Jame dove, seized his arms, and pulled him up. Trinity, when had the man grown so heavy?

They were coming in between high marble wharfs topped with torches. Jame’s moa found its footing and surged upward. A moment later her feet also hit a flight of marble stairs rising out of the water. The birds lurched up them, their riders staggering beside them.

Timmon and Jame dragged Gorbel to the summit and dropped him.

“Well,” he gasped, rolling over, leaking water from every fold. “Here . . . we are.”

The nearest building showed lights at every window and echoed like a seashell with voices. After Tai-tastigon, Jame knew the sight, sound, and smell of an inn, wherever its location. The cordial commotion within stopped as she opened the door and stepped inside, followed by her dripping retinue. A tubby, bald man, clearly the host, approached them, drying his hands on his apron, and asked a question in a language that none of them knew.

“We seek shelter,” said Jame in Kothifiran Rendish. “For myself, my friends, and our mounts.”

The man brightened. “Ah! Our kin from over the sea. At last! Welcome!”

The weary, bedraggled moas were led around to the stable where the local horses could be heard protesting at their alien smell. Meanwhile, their riders were given quarters, towels, and food—a fish stew, crusty bread, and coarse, red wine—while their clothes dried before the fire. The relief, after hours of uncertainty, was profound, and perhaps premature.

“How are we going to pay for all of this?” Jame asked, dipping her bread into the stew broth. Both were delicious, although something in the stew ate most of the bread before she could.