AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I cleared the salt from my stinging eyes and when I could see again, I glanced around me again, trying to orient myself and saw I had somehow made it a good way from where the Fancy Lady had gone down. Helped along with that fucking, wicked wind, I might add, which was still blowing me in the opposite direction of the other ships. The cold water was already wreaking havoc on my body, but though I could see the lifeboats in the water, searching for survivors, and though I knew Brandon must be frantic with worry, every time I tried to swim toward then, the current held me back.
After a while, I quit trying because all I was doing was exhausting myself. I knew I couldn’t make it against that treacherous wind that had sunk us. It was grabbing my voice and carrying it in the opposite direction from the boats, so they couldn’t hear me if I shouted, and at that moment, I didn’t have the breath anyway to keep trying. One of the masts from the ship floated past me in the water—it must have broken off as we overturned. I quickly swam over to it and wrapped my arms around it to give myself a chance to rest. My weight tried to sink it a little in the water when I put a leg over it, so I didn’t try to get on top of it, but clung to it, resting and trying to wrap my mind around what had happened. I couldn’t float on top of it, but it was still a blessing just to be able to rest my arms on top of it and to have my face up out of the water for a while. I hung there for seemed like an endless time, just trying to breathe and gather my strength.
Meanwhile the current was taking me farther and farther away from the rescue boats, back toward Igella. I knew that it was about five nautical miles to the shore of Igella, the closest land mass. A nautical mile was longer than a land mile, so I calculated it was around six or six and a half miles away. It was in the realm of possibility, but just barely. If the weather held, and I didn’t get lost, and the waves weren’t too strong against me. If I didn’t freeze to death, and if I could muster the strength…maybe I could make land. I’d always been a strong swimmer. One saving grace was that the northern shores of Igella were surrounded by reefs and rocks that jutted out of the water, some of them twenty feet in length or more. Some of them were as much as a mile or two out from shore, which would give me a resting place if I could reach one of them first.
Now a reef was not a hospitable place to be, but it would be possible for me to rest on one, if I could make it. Maybe even stay there long enough to attract the attention of a passing fisherman or a boat rounding the tip of Igella. The reefs were fairly close to shore and though they were dangerous to ships, most of them were shallow all around. It might even be possible to find rainwater collected on one or another. It gave me a bit of hope anyway that I could find one, rest on it and then make the final effort to make shore.
I wished I could continue to ride the mast, but it was way too long and impossible to steer, even the broken part that I’d found. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the wind was dying and the tide had begun to turn, taking the mast and me farther out to sea. It was now or never, so I slid off into the cold water and began to swim for my life. I didn’t rush, but took it slow and steady, one arm after the next, over and over, counting the strokes as I went to occupy my mind. I didn’t look behind me, in case the sight of the ships still in the water—even though impossible to reach--might tempt me to turn around and try for one of them. I knew that effort would fail, because I strongly suspected witchcraft was involved and probably some spell, keeping any signs of survivors away from their would-be rescuers.
In the back my mind, I thought I probably wouldn’t make shore because of this same dark sorcery. Whatever terrible, black spells that had been cast against the Fancy Lady would still be at work.
The sun was setting as I swam toward Igella, plowing along, floating when I could, not thinking about how far I still had to go or much of anything really. I purposely kept my mind a blank, and I think I may have slipped into a waking dream. In that dream, I was swimming with dolphins, as I had once done long ago off the coast of Sudfarma in southern seas. The water was warm and caressed my skin like silk and the hot sun shone down on my back. Occasionally, a dolphin would swim playfully close and bump me with its nose like a cat.
When I came back fully awake, I saw no playful dolphins and had no company except for the stars overhead. Nightfall had fallen like a black, velvet curtain, sharp and sudden. Only the moon and the starlight overhead showed me the way, and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the gods I prayed to the gods I no longer believed in that they would keep the clouds away and the skies clear. I was used to using the stars for navigation, so much so that it was like second nature to me now, and I’d have little difficulty as long as the clouds kept far away.
I swam and kicked and tried not to think about where I was and how far it still was, and the bottomless depths of the sea beneath me. I had begun to see an occasional light far in the distance and wondered if it was a hallucination or if it could possibly be lights on the shores of Igella.
Without any warning, I suddenly ran right up against a dark mass rising from the water. A huge rock or reef—black as a whale’s back in the water, with waves breaking across it in sprays of white foam. I reached it and just clung to it for a long while, too weak to pull myself up on it. When I finally managed to gather the strength, I discovered a small crevice in the middle of the rock where rainwater had collected. It was brackish and tasted terrible, but it wasn’t salt water, and my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I knew I must be badly dehydrated. I drank as much as I could. Threw it up again and then drank some more. Threw that up too. After a long, long time during which I shivered uncontrollably in the cold night air, I thought it might be time to try and make the final push toward the shore. I heaved myself back over into the water and began swimming toward the beach.
It didn’t look that far away, but I knew that was deceptive. The waves were helping to push me to the shore, and I allowed myself to be taken by them. When I finally crawled up on the beach, I was shuddering with cold. I was mostly naked, bruised and scratched from the rocks. My skin was encrusted with salt. And I’d never been so grateful before for my life.
I think I passed out then, so exhausted and worn out that I couldn’t have called it falling into a natural sleep, but more like sinking into complete exhaustion.
I slept dreamlessly and awoke to find myself being dragged along the beach. I was encased in a rough blanket, and someone had the ends gathered in his hand and was pulling me along behind him. He had his back to me as he heaved me down the sand, and I must have made a noise of some kind that made him stop his efforts and turn around to look down at me. The face I saw nearly made me pass out again, this time in fear, because all I could see was a set of enormous sharp teeth and a dark, hairy face. Then I realized that what I was looking at was Banshira, the so-called monster of the cave.
And he was smiling at me.
****
It was perhaps a couple of days later when I awoke again and stayed conscious for more than a few seconds. Hard to believe I’d been mostly unconscious for two days, but there I was. Perhaps I hadn’t been in quite as good shape as I’d thought I was, because my body ached all over. At least, I was surrounded by warmth and soft light, and Grimora was bending over me solicitously, with a worried frown on his face.
His eyes widened when he realized I was awake, and he stared down at me. “Ah, young captain. I’m glad to see you open your eyes. I’ve been worried about you. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“I’ve been pretty worried about myself,” I said, or at least I tried to. My voice came out in a croak like a bullfrog’s. Grimora quickly held a cup of cool water to my cracked lips, and I drank deeply, until I was out of breath and lightheaded and had to lay my head back down for a minute or two. Finally, I swallowed hard and tried again.
“I meant to say, I’ve been worried about me too.”
I still sounded pretty bad to my own ears, but perhaps not quite as alarming as before.
“Where is your ship, my friend?” Grimora asked softly.
I shook my head. “At the bottom of the sea.”
“With…all hands on-board?”
A sudden chill slipped down my spine at his tone, like an icy finger, as the memories came back to me and I nodded.
“All but me.”
“Your…blood mate?” he asked, looking shocked.
“No, thank the gods. He had left the ship only minutes before, going over to another vessel. He’s safe.”
“I see,” he replied, but still looking troubled.
“What is it? What do you know, Grimora? Tell me quickly.”
“Know? How could I know anything?”
