![]() Those from the top bank had already withdrawn their oars from the rowlocks on the outrigger they thrust the blades down into the sand, bracing the vessel, which, for the moment, rested only on its narrow keel. Sailors from the lower oarbanks stepped to the outriggers, leaped into the sea, and splashed shoreward carrying ropes. They shouted a confused medley of orders, but so far as Ilna could see the crew was already in motion. The officers wore broad leather belts over their short tunics instead of sashes or simply breechclouts like the oarsmen who came from Shengy, Sirimat, and perhaps a few of the other southern islands. The Shepherd scrunched onto the sand, beginning to wobble as it ground to a halt. "Here we go, child," Chalcus said in an eager voice. It hadn't been long by most reckonings, but Ilna knew that if she lived forever, she couldn't undo the harm she'd done while Evil rode her like a mettlesome horse. She'd returned to the waking world without leaving Hell, becoming Evil's most skillful minion for a time. Then she'd made a mistake, a wrong turning that took her to Hell and brought her knowledge fit only for demons. ![]() She could run her hand over a bale of wool and hear it murmuring of meadows and clover, of the brook south of Barca's Hamlet and the insistent warmth of the lamb nuzzling your udder. Ilna's fingers wove, then opened the coarse fabrics to weave again. Chalcus was her friend and her lover and…well, not her man, because he wasn't the sort to be anybody's man save his own, but a man and even at age nineteen Ilna was aware of how rare a thing real men were in this world. Lady Merota was her ward, as amazing as that seemed to an illiterate peasant girl. That he'd survived said as much for his will as it did for the undoubted strength of his tautly muscular body. Under his long-sleeved saffron tunic and his red-dyed leather breeches, Chalcus' body bore the scars of wounds that should have been fatal a dozen times over. As a youth he'd roamed southern waters with the Lataaene pirates, where the wrong choice meant death, and the right choice didn't guarantee survival. He'd learned his skill in the same hard school that taught him to use the slim, in-curved sword he carried stuck through his sash of vivid orange silk. As he spoke, he gestured with his free hand to point out this or that part of the business of landing that only an expert would see. The Shepherd of the Isles is as big as a warship gets, but I'll grant that with four hundred souls aboard you could find more room in a clothespress."Ĭhalcus dressed in as many different bright colors as a clown and had a clown's smile and cheerful laughter. "Depending on the words our friend the prince has with the Earl of Sandrakkan," Chalcus said, laughing, "we'll have rooms or at least ground to pitch a tent on, I'm sure. "With their weight in the bow, we can back up onto the beach instead of crunching into it." He held her ward, the nine-year-old Lady Merota, on his shoulder. "Now you see why the men who aren't needed on the oars crowd into the bow, child," said Chalcus at Ilna's side. The Shepherd of the Isles was backing toward the beach on the reversed strokes of only one of its five banks of oars. "Easy!" bellowed the sailing master, leaning out from the pintle of the port steering oar. For example, she'd imagined then that she'd make a suitable wife for her neighbor Garric. ![]() Ilna prided herself on clear thinking, but there'd been a great deal of distortion in her view of her possible future a few years ago when she lived in the backwater of Barca's Hamlet on the east coast of Haft. She smiled-not bitterly, or at any rate without any more bitterness than her usual expression. Ilna's reflection was distorted, of course. The patterns were simple, as simple as so many knives and like knives, they could be tools or weapons if the need arose. He was speaking to his fiancée and secretary, Lady Liane bos-Benliman, as she jotted notes onto a thin board with a small gold pen.Īs she watched, Ilna's fingers knotted and unknotted patterns from the lengths of cord that she kept in her left sleeve. Ilna could see her reflection in the silvered backplate of the man who'd been her childhood friend Garric, the innkeeper's son-but who now was Prince Garric of Haft, the King of the Isles in all but name. ![]()
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