THE M AW OF
THE OCEAN
The obsidian
seas heaved underneath the Dragon Wing, propelling the ship high in the
air. There it teetered on the precipitous crest of a foam-capped swell before
pitching forward and racing down the face of the wave into the black trough
below.
Billows of
stinging mist drove through the frigid air as the wind groaned and howled like
a monstrous spirit.
Roran clung
to the starboard rigging at the waist of the ship and retched over the gunwale;
nothing came up but sour bile. He had prided himself that his stomach never
bothered him while on Clovis’s barges, but the storm they raced before was so
violent that even Uthar’s men--seasoned tars each and every one--had difficulty
keeping their whisky down.
It felt like
a boulder of ice clouted Roran between the shoulder blades as a wave struck the
ship crossways, drenching the deck before draining through the scuppers and
pouring back into the frothing, furrowed, furious ocean from whence it came.
Roran wiped
the salty water from his eyes with fingers as clumsy as frozen lumps of wood,
and squinted toward the inky horizon to the aft.
Maybe this
will shake them off our scent. Three black-sailed sloops had pursued them ever since
they passed the Iron Cliffs and rounded what Jeod dubbed Edur CarthungavÊ and
Uthar identified as Rathbar’s Spur. “The tailbone of the Spine, that’s what it
be,” Uthar said, grinning. The sloops were faster than the Dragon Wing,
weighed down with villagers as it was, and had quickly gained upon the merchant
ship until they were close enough to exchange volleys of arrows. Worst of all,
it seemed that the lead sloop carried a magician, for its arrows were uncannily
accurate, splitting ropes, destroying ballistae, and clogging the blocks. From
their attacks, Roran deduced that the Empire no longer cared about capturing
him and only wanted to stop him from finding sanctuary with the Varden. He had
just been preparing the villagers to repel boarding parties when the clouds
above ripened to a bruised purple, heavy with rain, and a ravening tempest blew
in from the northwest. At the present, Uthar had the Dragon Wing tacked
crossways to the wind, heading toward the Southern Isles, where he hoped to
elude the sloops among the shoals and coves of Beirland.
A sheet of
horizontal lightning flickered between two bulbous thunderheads, and the world
became a tableau of pale marble before darkness reigned once more. Every
blinding flash imprinted a motionless scene upon Roran’s eyes that lingered,
pulsing, long after the brazen bolts vanished.
Then came
another round of forked lightning, and Roran saw--as if in a series of
monochrome paintings--the mizzen topmast twist, crack, and topple into the
thrashing sea, port amidships. Grabbing a lifeline, Roran pulled himself to the
quarterdeck and, in unison with Bonden, hacked through the cables that still
connected the topmast to the Dragon Wing and dragged the stern low in
the water.
The ropes
writhed like snakes as they were cut.
Afterward,
Roran sank to the deck, his right arm hooked through the gunwale to hold
himself in place as the ship dropped twenty… thirty… feet between waves. A
swell washed over him, leaching the warmth from his bones. Shivers racked his
body.
Don’t let me
die here, he pleaded,
though whom he addressed, he knew not. Not in these cruel waves. My
task is yet unfinished. During that long night, he clung to his memories of
Katrina, drawing solace from them when he grew weary and hope threatened to
desert him.
The storm
lasted two full days and broke during the wee hours of the night. The following
morning brought with it a pale green dawn, clear skies, and three black sails
riding the northern horizon. To the southwest, the hazy outline of Beirland lay
underneath a shelf of clouds gathered about the ridged mountain that dominated
the island.
Roran, Jeod,
and Uthar met in a small fore cabin--since the captain’s stateroom was given
over to the infirm--where Uthar unrolled sea charts on the table and tapped a
point above Beirland. “This’d be where we are now,” he said. He reached for a
larger map of AlagaÊsia’s coastline and tapped the mouth of the Jiet River. “An‘
this’d be our destination, since food won’t last us to Reavstone. How we get
there, though, without being overtaken is beyond me. Without our mizzen
topgallant, those accursed sloops will catch us by noon tomorrow, evening if we
manage the sails well.”
“Can we
replace the mast?” asked Jeod. “Vessels of this size carry spars to make just
such repairs.”
Uthar
shrugged. “We could, provided we had a proper ship’s carpenter among us.
Seeing as we
don’t, I’d rather not let inexperienced hands mount a spar, only to have it
crash down on deck and perhaps injure somebody.” Roran said, “If it weren’t for
the magician or magicians, I’d say we should stand and fight, since we far
outnumber the crews of the sloops. As it is, I’m chary of battle. It seems
unlikely that we could prevail, considering how many ships sent to help the
Varden have disappeared.”
Grunting,
Uthar drew a circle around their current position. “This’d be how far we can
sail by tomorrow evening, assuming the wind stays with us. We could make
landfall somewhere on Beirland or NÃa if we wanted, but I can’t see how that’d
help us. We’d be trapped. The soldiers on those sloops or the Ra’zac or
Galbatorix himself could hunt us at his leisure.”
Roran
scowled as he considered their options; a fight with the sloops appeared
inevitable.
For several
minutes, the cabin was silent except for the slap of waves against the hull.
Then Jeod
placed his finger on the map between Beirland and NÃa, looked at Uthar, and
asked, “What about the Boar’s Eye?”
To Roran’s
amazement, the scarred sailor actually blanched. “I’d not risk that, M aster
Jeod, not on my life. I’d rather face the sloops an‘ die in the open sea than
go to that doomed place. There has consumed twice as many ships as in
Galbatorix’s fleet.”
“I seem to
recall reading,” said Jeod, leaning back in his chair, “that the passage is
perfectly safe at high tide and low tide. Is that not so?” With great and
evident reluctance, Uthar admitted, “Aye. But the Eye is so wide, it requires
the most precise timing to cross without being destroyed. We’d be hard-pressed
to accomplish that with the sloops near on our tail.”
“If we
could, though,” pressed Jeod, “if we could time it right, the sloops would be
wrecked or--if their nerve failed them--forced to circumvent NÃa. It would
give us time to find a place to hide along Beirland.”
“If, if…
You’d send us to the crushing deep, you would.”
“Come now,
Uthar, your fear is unreasoning. What I propose is dangerous, I admit, but no
more than fleeing Teirm was. Or do you doubt your ability to sail the gap? Are
you not man enough to do it?”
Uthar
crossed his bare arms. “You’ve never seen the Eye, have you, sir?”
“I can’t say
I have.”
“It’s not
that I’m not man enough, but that the Eye far exceeds the strength of men; it
puts to shame our biggest ships, our grandest buildings, an‘ anything else
you’d care to name. Tempting it would be like trying to outrun an avalanche;
you might succeed, but then you just as well might be ground into dust.”
“What,”
asked Roran, “is this Boar’s Eye?”
“The
all-devouring maw of the ocean,” proclaimed Uthar.
In a milder
tone, Jeod said, “It’s a whirlpool, Roran. The Eye forms as the result of tidal
currents that collide between Beirland and NÃa. When the tide waxes, the Eye
rotates north to west. When the tide wanes, it rotates north to east.”
“That doesn’t
sound so dangerous.”
Uthar shook
his head, queue whipping the sides of his wind-burned neck, and laughed. “Not
so dangerous, he says! Ha!”
“What you
fail to comprehend,” continued Jeod, “is the size of the vortex. On average,
the center of the Eye is a league in diameter, while the arms of the pool can
be anywhere from ten to fifteen miles across. Ships unlucky enough to be snared
by the Eye are borne down to the floor of the ocean and dashed against the
jagged rocks therein. Remnants of the vessels are often found as flotsam on the
beaches of the two islands.”
“Would
anyone expect us to take this route?” Roran queried.
“No, an‘
for good reason,” growled Uthar. Jeod shook his head at the same time.
“Is it even
possible for us to cross the Eye?”
“It’d be a
blasted fool thing to do.”
Roran
nodded. “I know it’s not something you want to risk, Uthar, but our options are
limited. I’m no seaman, so I must rely upon your judgment: Can we cross the
Eye?”
The captain
hesitated. “M aybe, maybe not. You’d have t‘ be stark raving mad to go nearer’n
five miles of that monster.”
Pulling out
his hammer, Roran banged it on the table, leaving a dent a half-inch deep.
“Then I’m
stark raving mad!” He held Uthar’s gaze until the sailor shifted with
discomfort. “M ust I remind you, we’ve only gotten this far by doing what
quibbling worrywarts said couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be done? We of Carvahall
dared to abandon our homes and cross the Spine. Jeod dared to imagine we could
steal the Dragon Wing. What will you dare, Uthar? If we can brave the
Eye and live to tell the tale, you shall be hailed as one of the greatest
mariners in history. Now answer me and answer me well and true: Can this be
done?”
Uthar drew a
hand over his face. When he spoke, it was in a low voice, as if Roran’s
outburst had caused him to abandon all bluster. “I don’t know, Stronghammer…
If we wait for the Eye to subside, the sloops may be so close to us that if we
escape, they’d escape. An‘ if the wind should falter, we’d be caught in the
current, unable to break free.”
“As captain,
are you willing to attempt it? Neither Jeod nor I can command the Dragon
Wing in your place.”
Long did
Uthar stare down at the charts, one hand clasped over the other. He drew a line
or two from their position and worked a table of figures that Roran could make
nothing of. At last he said, “I fear we sail to our doom, but aye, I’ll do my
best to see us through.”
Satisfied,
Roran put away his hammer. “So be it.”
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