A clacking of rocks started him to caution again, and he crouched, tugging his gray cloak around his shoulders to conceal the brightness of his armor. He scanned the ruins and discerned two men encumbered with tools, making their way uphill over piles of rubble. They were some distance away, but Lhean’s keen hearing was good enough, he could pick up every word they spoke.
“—thought I saw someone up there,” said a fellow wearing a brimmed hat.
“Some of the stones look like people and, depending on the light, looks like they’re moving.”
“Still . . .” the first trailed off, his breath ragged from the effort of climbing over treacherous ground.
“Could be Ghouls,” the other replied, “hunting for relics.”
“Could be, though they’d be in big trouble if they got caught without a license.”
“Enough’ll take the chance if they think they’ll find something good.”
The man in the brimmed hat paused to catch his breath and mop his brow with his sleeve. His companion also stopped, removing an implement from his shoulder and leaning it against a block of granite. He arched his back and kneaded the small of it with his knuckles.
The man in the hat took a long look up the slope. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I think there are real ghouls in these ruins.”
His companion laughed. “You’re letting all the old stones get to you, friend. Come, if we don’t finish the survey today, we’ll be the ones in trouble, especially if we’re the cause of a delay for getting that drill emplaced.”
His friend shuddered, and they began making their painstaking way, wobbling on loose rocks, sending debris skidding down the hill behind them.
Lhean slid back into his crevice and huddled at the bottom with his knees drawn to his chest. He knew with certainty where he was: these were the ruins of Sacor City, and the one structure in the city that had created so much of the rubble on the crown of the hill was the king’s castle.
The force capable of tearing it down must have been terrible beyond imagination, for the strength of the castle was not merely in stone but subtle touches of magic, far less than what was used in the crafting of the D’Yer Wall, but enough to reinforce it. He’d felt the will to endure in the stone when he’d visited King Zachary with Graelalea and Telagioth at the end of winter. He’d felt the castle’s confidence and pride even though it was several centuries old. He was also certain the humans who inhabited it, worked and lived within its walls, were entirely deaf to the life in it.
But now it was gone, the castle dead, echoes of memory.
Since Eletians did not see time as necessarily linear, Lhean was not surprised he had traveled forward. He could not sense Ealdaen or Telagioth, so either they had not come here with him, or they lay dead. As for the others, his human companions? He could not say.
It did not matter. He must find some way of returning to the time he’d left behind. Otherwise, in this land where etherea had dwindled to almost nothing, he too, would sicken and fade until he was no more.
In the Present:
YOLANDHE’S ISLAND
The waves rolled Yap onto the pebbly beach. He dug his fingers between the pebbles into silt and sediment to keep the ocean from dragging him back into the deathly deeps. The retreating waves pulled relentlessly on him, hissing over stone and sand, pebbles clicking together. Yap scrabbled forward so he would not lose ground, even while retching all the sea water he had inadvertently drunk.
He managed to reach the crest in the beach that marked the high tide line, and he lay there atop knots of dead rockweed, panting and resting, relieved to have made it to land.
Not food for the fishes today, he thought, as he had often thought after surviving a bad storm on the Mermaid, a pirate ship on which he’d served.
Despite having spent much of his life aboard ships, he had never learned to swim. Most mariners never did. Why, learning to swim was bad luck for a sailor. It was like inviting the gods to send disaster, a wave to sweep you overboard or sink the ship.
Somehow he’d made it to land without knowing how to swim. He bet if he knew how, the currents wouldn’t have been favorable, and he’d have drowned. The storm and breaking up of the gig notwithstanding, fortune was smiling on old Yap and had brought him ashore alive.
He groaned. But how his head and lungs hurt, and how exhausted he was from his ordeal. He spared a thought for his master. Lord Amberhill was a landsman—surely he did not know how to swim either. Yap hoped it was so. He hoped that fortune had pulled Lord Amberhill ashore, too.
Yap lay there on the stones, oblivious as a hermit crab scuttled by his fingers. He closed salt-rimed eyes against the brightness of the sun uncloaked by the parting of storm clouds.
• • •
Later, Yap awoke with a start. His belly ached badly, very badly. He shivered. His back was dry from the sun, but his front wet from lying prone. Waves tickled his toes, which meant the tide was on its way back in. He rubbed his eyes, knocking his specs askew. Somehow they’d stayed with him through the disaster. He tried to polish the residue of salt water from them with his shirt, but when he put them back on, he found he’d only smeared them. It was then, when he looked up to see his surroundings, he realized he was not alone.
First he saw her bare feet and ankles, then he looked up her long legs to the simple kilt of seagrass green. She wore a necklace of pearls and sea glass. Her long hair tousled away from a face he’d seen before. A tremor of fear ran through him, threatening to disgorge the contents of his already upset gut. He writhed on the ground and floundered about in an attempt to crawl away. He’d crawl back into the ocean if he had to.