The Search for Magic Part 6

All before him was darkness. Roiling clouds and sheeting water and lightning flashed like fire in the sky. The wind was solid as stone. It battered him, the wood beneath his feet, and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the boom from his hands. It drove the salty rain into the side of his face so that it felt like stinging sand on his skin. It was madness to sail toward that black wall of storm, but that was just what he did.

Effram understood the maneuvers necessary for sailing into the wind, even though he'd never had occasion to attempt them. In order to go forward, toward that unnatural blackness, he knew he had to zigzag, back and forth so that he tricked the wind into taking him into it. It seemed only another test of his will, like all the past years had been tests, leading up to this moment.

He sailed leeward for a short while, never taking his gaze from the black horizon. As he s.h.i.+fted, knowing that now he must change course and sail at an opposite angle, he lost his hold on the boom. The boat careened wildly and he fell as the sail went flat. Effram flailed about and finally caught the lines that trailed from the boom. He yanked it into position, the wind grabbed the sail, and the clumsy boat turned and shot away into the storm once more.

Effram threw back his head and laughed with the joy of it all. The pure delight of accomplishment, the pleasure of the salt wind in his face, and the rus.h.i.+ng power of the sea, singing through the planks beneath his feet.

This! This was why he'd done it all. This was why he'd spent his life building this thing that had no life except that which the sea could give it. He knew that, whatever else life brought him, he'd be a happy old man someday, to sit in the sun and remember the life of the sea beneath his feet.

As he tacked again, he noticed that the black of the storm was no longer ahead of him. It was all around him. Rain pounded steadily, unrelenting, so that he could barely see through the sheets. The rain tasted of cold blood, salty, coppery, and alive. The only light came from the harsh streaks of fire that zigzagged across the sky, guiding his course through the storm- as if the lightning reached earthward, fighting against the clouds.

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 G.o.ds? Except there were no G.o.ds, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d sloop with a talls.h.i.+p'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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.ter 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 s.h.i.+ps were dark, hulking shapes in the gray curtain of storm. When the Sea of Tarsis had been taken away by the G.o.ds, the s.h.i.+ps 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 carca.s.ses had been allowed to rot away.

He steered closer, a little fearful, and more than a little hopeful that one of the s.h.i.+ps 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 slos.h.i.+ng 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.

Effram stared at him, not sure what to do. Never once in all the years of cutting and sawing and shaping and tarring had he ever pictured anyone else aboard his boat. It didn't seem quite right. In fact, it seemed sacrilege. The sodden heap of the man's colorful clothing against the s.h.i.+ning wet of the deck was too bright. Garish. As incongruous as a harlot in a temple or a cowled priest bellied up to a raucous bar. It made the boat seem lopsided, weighted down. But that was crazy, for while his boat was not huge, it was not so small that the weight of one wet, squis.h.i.+ng man could be felt.

The man rolled to his feet and swayed clumsily to stay upright. "You could'a lent a hand to help me in," he growled.

Still shocked to have feet other than his own on the deck of the boat, Effram stared as the man stumbled toward him, awkward but menacing. In a flash of lightning and daydream, he saw himself tossing the man back overboard like so much unwanted driftwood. Effram shook his head, dispelling the image as unworthy, but he thought he should at least protest the alien presence on his deck.

The man couldn't possibly stand up to him, for Effram was tall, strong and broad shouldered from years of cutting down trees and carting them home, from sawing planks and working them into place single-handedly.

The top of the man's head barely came up to Effram's chin. The man's arms looked spindly and easily breakable, but the man's fear was huge. His terror, as he glanced over his shoulder at the encroaching sea, was larger than both men.

The man lurched the last few steps toward Effram, grabbing his arm at the last moment to stay upright. "Turn the boat!" he shouted. "You're going the wrong way."

As shocking as it had been to see someone upon his deck, it was even more shocking to be touched, to feel the man's weight and the clammy, hot press of his hands.

As Effram backed away, the man grabbed for the tiller.

"No!" Effram pushed the man's hand off. "Don't touch my boat!"

"Then turn it around!" The man grappled with him, trying to grab the tiller through Effram's longer reach. "There are people over there-children who aren't strong enough to swim!"

The boat rocked as another man dragged himself over the rail. The movement was slight, but enough for Effrarn to feel it. This man was bigger than the one who had managed to get one hand on the end of the tiller.

"Trouble, Blaies?" he rumbled.

"This fellow don't want to go back for the others."

Effram opened his mouth to protest, but still his tongue felt rusty, tarred to the roof of his mouth.

"Sure he does," the bigger man said easily, fixing Effram with a glare every bit as sharp as a flash of lightning. "You just gotta explain it to him right. If he don't wanta swim, he can turn this tub around."

Then the man turned away from the shocked Effram and fished a bedraggled child from the sea. Then another. He slapped a boy, who was coughing and crying at the same time, on the back. "You're all right, boy. Stop yer sniveling and sit down." He thrust the child to the middle of the deck.

Blaies tugged, then pushed on the tiller, trying to break Effram's hold on it, but he was pus.h.i.+ng the wrong way and the boat turned even more toward the dock. The man swore softly. He pointed toward the closest of the beached s.h.i.+ps. "That way. There's more in the water. And more on that house." He paused to swipe water from his face. "Unless you want to swim?"

"All right. Just . . ." Effram shoved his hand away from the tiller. "Just move away."

Blaies released his hold and moved away to give Effram room to work.

Effram thrust the tiller away. It was not that he feared going into the water, but he would do anything, anything, to keep another's hands from controlling his boat. The boat slipped across the water in the direction Blaies indicated.

As the boat slipped past some of the people who had taken to the water upon seeing Effram, the bigger man scurried along the rail to help the stragglers over the stern. Blaies stumbled forward to help them move to the center of the deck. Coughing and gagging, they fell onto the deck and lay where they'd landed until pushed amids.h.i.+p.

Effram stared at the soaked, half-drowned people littering his deck. He did not register Blaies's demand that he sail further among the old s.h.i.+pwrecks until he said it a second time. Even then, it didn't register as words. Only as annoyance and a buzzing sound of fear that cut through the rage of the storm.

"Here." One of the men on the deck crawled to his feet. "I have money, if that's what you want." He took two ungainly, rolling steps towards Effram and thrust a small bag of coins into his hand. "Go that way. That house right over there. The smaller one. In the middle. That's where my family is."

Effram stared at the leather bag in his palm. It had a heavy, rich feel to it. He didn't even have to jiggle it to know it was full of steel coins-more money, in just the one small moment, than he'd ever made in a month of selling carved bits of wood and old books.

Effram looked up to find Blaies and the bigger man watching him intently, knowingly. As if it was just what they'd expected. As if they'd thought, all along, that behind his facade of craziness had roiled greed and any number of other unsavory motivations.

"I don't want money," Effram said, and he handed the small, weighty bag back to the man. He tugged on the tiller until the boat moved in the direction the man had pointed. The man had the grace to look away, to flush and mumble, "Thanks."

Blaies rolled his eyes, obviously thinking this was just more evidence of craziness. He braced himself against the rail, looking down into the water for more survivors.

The water was already up past the door that had been cut into the side of the small merchant vessel. The man's wife and a pa.s.sel of dark-haired children hung out the windows. Effram maneuvered alongside, and the man held up his arms to receive the first child. They came out the window one by one and huddled, wet and miserable, amidst the clutter of people already in the boat.

Effram peered at them through the rain, wondering if any of these were the brats who had yelled into his windows, thrown rocks at his porch, and climbed over his piles of freshly cut wood. All children looked alike to him, save for the differing colors of their hair.

He looked down at one of the children the man had handed into the boat, a little boy who was probably blond but whose hair was so wet and plastered to his skull that it looked as dark as Effram's own. The child stuck out his tongue at him, than clambered to his feet and jumped up to grab onto the boom. He swung from it like a monkey.

Effram gave it a vicious twitch and jerked the child off. The child thumped in a heap to the deck and sent up a wail to rival the thunder. A woman crawled over, cuddled him, and looked in fear at Effram.

"Hush, now, you're not hurt," she said to the child. "You musn't play on Captain Effram's boat. Not after he's saved us."

Effram turned away, more uncomfortable with the kind words than he had been with the child's playing. At least the child's transgression was straightforward devilment. These adult's words were something else. He'd seen her fear. He'd heard it.

By the time the last child had been dragged onboard, shouts could be heard from the s.h.i.+p-house next door. The man who had offered to pay him pushed the boat away from his house with his hands and pointed at the next one.

The boat was more sluggish, weighed down, and difficult to steer amongst the s.h.i.+ps where there was less current.

There was another husband and wife and three soaked children clinging to the next s.h.i.+p. "I can't believe this d.a.m.ned boat actually floats," this new addition said, as soon as his feet touched the deck of Effram's boat. He smiled sheepishly to ease the sting of his words.

Effram knew this face, too, and the grating tone. The man was a merchant in the main market, one of those who smiled nicely to his face then snickered and snorted when he went on his way. Effram's anger must have shown in his eyes, because the man flushed and turned his head away.

A few feet away was another s.h.i.+p-house, crawling with bodies trying to avoid drowning. Effram directed the boat to them without being told and stood bracing the tiller, fighting the current's attempt to push them onward, while those who could stand in the rocking boat helped these new ones climb aboard.

"All this time," a man gasped, "I thought this thing was a waste of trees."

Someone snickered in response and a woman shushed him, reprimanding him as if he was a naughty child. "Captain Effram saved us. He's the only one who could."

That silenced the snickers, but not the other voices. Where before there had been only the lonely, lovely voice of the storm, the crash and crack of thunder and lightning, there was now coughing and crying and gasping and moaning, screams for help and demands to be saved. Watery voices thanked the long-gone G.o.ds and the hands that reached over the railing and fished them from the sea to lie like gasping, floundering fish upon his deck. Some even touched the sanded and waxed deck beneath them with reverence and joy. Most of them thanked Effram. A few even took up the woman's words and praised him as the "only one" who could have saved them.

Effram stared at those collapsed on the deck of his boat at his feet, sodden and pale as fish. They mouthed the right words, the words that should rightfully have come to him from the moment the first rain drop splashed down.

But they were too late. Too little.

"Should have said that to begin with," he mumbled softly under his breath. "Should have said that all along." He stiffened his spine and turned his boat towards the docks even though there were more waving, shouting people farther into the clump of prost.i.tuted s.h.i.+ps. He could not bear to load more of that noise onto his boat.

"Hey!" Blaies waved to larboard as Effram turned the boat. "There's more over there."

Effram ignored him. He ignored the scowl of Blaies's big friend. They would have to kill him to make him let go of the tiller. They would have to break his fingers to uncurl them from around it.

Effram looped his fingers through the rigging that controlled the sail. Ignoring the sharp pain of the lines, cutting into his flesh, he yanked on it. It gave, barely, the blocks squealing in protest as he put his weight on the line and on his hand. The sail edged up. Up the mast, reaching greedily for the wind.

The boat leaped forward, bringing shocked gasps from his pa.s.sengers. He could almost hear their nails dig into the planks of the deck. His fingers felt as if they might fall off his hand, but he didn't care. He didn't care if the pa.s.sengers all washed off the deck and back into the water from which they'd been fished so long as he got them off his boat. Quickly.

It was difficult steering the boat with one hand wrapped in rope and the other clamped around the tiller. The wind tearing at the sail was as strong and angry as he was. The current inside the harbor was stronger-strange, almost as if a whirlpool was building at its center, the water starting to froth and show little white-capped waves out across its gray, mottled surface.

Two pa.s.sengers, a man and a woman, joined Blaies, protesting that there were still more people out amongst the wrecks. They all went silent at one glance from Effram. He growled, "If you don't like it, you can swim." It felt good to see them shrink back and s.h.i.+ver and clutch at their chests. It felt good to see even the big man stagger as Effram put his considerable muscle on the rigging.

His skin broke under the rough rope, and slick drops of blood dripped down his wrist like warm rain. The sail inched higher, catching even more of the mad wind. The boat rushed inland, toward the waterfront that was visible now through the gray air. Effram could make out the different buildings, the white stone of the main dock, the muted yellow of lanterns trying to s.h.i.+ne through the storm.

The dock sped toward them at an alarming rate, approaching even faster as he hauled up more of the sail. A woman squeaked in fear, threw her arm over her eyes, then changed her mind and clutched at the person nearest her. Blaies staggered toward him, fists balled, then stopped. A flush of power ran down Effram's spine, hot and spangled and sweet as wine. They wanted to stop him. They all wanted to stop him, but none of them knew how to sail his boat. None of them knew how to stop it from smacking into the wall of stone.

At the last moment, just before he'd gone too far, just before he committed his boat into slamming her elegant bowsprit into the dock, he shoved the tiller viciously to larboard and swung the boom in. It barely missed cracking the head of the little monkey child, but it did send Blaies sprawling across the deck.

The boat turned, faster than Effram thought it could, with such elegance it made his heart swell. The boat swooped in a graceful circle before the waterfront. Effram could see faces pressed to the cloudy windows of the nearest tavern. Some of the more hardy patrons ran out into the wind and rain to watch them sail past. Effram wondered if they could hear the shocked, gull-like cries of his pa.s.sengers, the shrill pleas for rescue.

For good measure, he sailed along the dock, just so they could all see him. Then he took his ungrateful pa.s.sengers for a great looping ride across the waterfront. Maneuvering the boom, the tiller, and the twisted ropes around his hand, he slid the boat into place alongside the dock with the expertise of the only sailor in Tarsis.

Blaies and his big bully of a friend grabbed hold of the dock. They clung to it with all their strength, though the rough stone must surely be cutting their hands to ribbons.

"All ash.o.r.e that's going ash.o.r.e!" Effram called heartily. He'd read that in storybooks. He suspected that it was something made up, something no sailor had ever really said, but these fools didn't know the difference, and it felt good to shout it, to see them all slip and trip and fall over each other in their rush to exit the rocking boat.

His pa.s.sengers greeted the stone dock with glad cries and much scrambling. He gave them one last chance to look at him the way they should. He stared at them, at their mewling little children as they climbed to safety. In none of those wet faces did he see the respect or the grudging admiration he was due. All he saw was fear. They dragged their belongings or their children up onto the docks and even further up into the town, all the while glancing fearfully over their shoulders at the sea and the storm.

At him.

There was reason to fear. In just the few moments while he'd been at the dock, the storm had darkened more than seemed possible. Water shrieked past, so fierce it stung his ears, blowing rain almost parallel to the deck. The rain looked like streaks of gray satin ribbon, whirling and twisting in the wind. The blackness he'd likened to night was a pearly gray compared to the encroaching darkness on the horizon.

At least, right now, he could still see the waterfront buildings, the gawking tavern patrons who stood against the front of the building as if it could s.h.i.+eld them. In the flashes of lightning, he could still see the jumble of s.h.i.+ps-become-homes, but the coming darkness threatened even midnight.

What would that velvet darkness be like? How black would darker than night be? Would he even be able to see the lightning? He raised his arms up to the rain, as if it could wrap itself around him and trail behind, like the ribbons on a girl's hat. Would the rain follow him the way it followed the wind?

"You are to be commended!" he screamed into the sky. "Whoever you are, it's a glorious storm!"

The last quaking pa.s.senger, Blaies, who had also been his first, pulled himself up the wet, slick stone and wobbled a few steps. From the safety of still land, he paused to look back at Effram. "You're mad," he hissed. "Mad."

Effram laughed at him. Inside, in that dark place where dreams slept, darker even than the storm, his hope of vindication warbled, s.h.i.+vered, and died. Shriveled, it dropped back down to silence, another dream that would never come true.

Effram wrenched at the boom and tiller in unison. It was automatic to him now, the way these two moved opposite each other, but to the same effect. His boat slipped away from the dock with practiced, expert ease. He turned back into the harbor.

To starboard, the tall, abandoned s.h.i.+ps were suddenly more menacing than the blackness of the sky. They'd only been shorn up to bear the weight of occupancy, not completely clipped of their wings, and now the water reached that one inch more of height that was enough to bear their dead, beached weight. The storm lifted them, those ghost s.h.i.+ps. They s.h.i.+fted and groaned with each slosh of water and threatened to break free of the land that locked them.

He barely heard the scream, followed by an unmistakable splash, over the roar of the wind. He looked back in time to see a whirl of white cloth and frothing foam sucked underwater. A moment later, a woman- really only a ma.s.s of black hair-popped to the surface.

She screamed for him to come back, motioning toward the abandoned s.h.i.+ps.

For a moment, he stared at her, at the ma.s.s of black hair that floated about her like wriggling seaweed. He could see the air between them darkening, visibly, second by second. The yellow lantern light from the tavern was a mere pinp.r.i.c.k in a dark curtain now, like a firefly seen across an evening field. Choking and coughing, slipping down into the water then fighting back to the surface, the woman waved for him to return. He turned from her, from the ma.s.s of black hair to a blacker sky. To the sea. The storm over it.