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“The same way you know about everything. Do you have a bad feeling about him?”
“No, not really. But I sense he’s in danger. Both from himself and others.”
“What does that mean, damn it?” I made a sudden effort to get up, surprised to find myself so completely worn out and exhausted, that every muscle in my body, it seemed, was aching and refusing to move. I fell back on the furs, breathing hard. “What kind of danger?” I shouted, feeling alarmed.
“I don’t know. No, don’t get upset. I don’t. Not yet anyway, though perhaps it will come to me. I simply feel uneasy about him, and I can surmise he must be having a hard time. I don’t know anything for sure.”
“He’s with his cousins. His pack. Surely, they’ll watch out for him.”
“Yes, I’m sure they will.”
I tried again to get up, with some half-baked idea about going after Brandon right away, but it was no use. I obviously wasn’t thinking straight, because I could barely move, let alone mount a rescue effort.
“You said he was in danger from himself. What do you mean by that?”
“We can discuss this later. For now, you need to rest and heal. You’re no good to him until you do.”
“No, the hell with that,” I tried to say, but I fell back, dizzy and disoriented. I was awake long enough to take a few sips of some kind of vile tasting tonic he pressed on me, and then my eyes shut, and I fell back into a deep and coma-like sleep. I suspected there had been something in the tonic to knock me out and make me have awful dreams.
In them, I was falling over and over again, the dark shadow of the hull all around me, and then I was trying desperately to swim to the surface, as beside me bodies were floating up to the surface. One or two of them I recognized and tried to take with me to the top, but I couldn’t hold onto them. One man, the first mate, mouthed curses at me as he slid toward the bottom. As they slipped from my hands, one by one, a vast, black fin rose up in front of me. I whirled around in the water to get away, but I could still feel it behind me, getting closer and closer, and I knew it must be a sea monster who would swallow me whole. I woke up screaming.
Once again, Grimora was there, pushing me back down and soothing me in a soft voice. He reassured me that I was out of the sea now and safe inside his cave, and he pushed the hair out of my face and made me lie back down again. I believe I had a fever, because I was burning up. Again, he held my shoulders and made me drink some horrible substance that put me back to sleep, but this time there weren’t any more bad dreams.
The next time I awoke, I decided I might live after all. I had no idea how much time might have passed, and I looked around for Grimora. I found him close by. He came over to me, offering me broth in a cup, which I drank down greedily and looked around for more. He offered me some bread instead, and I ate that more slowly and didn’t throw it back up, which I counted as a win. It exhausted me though, and I fell asleep again.
All that long day, I slept, woke back up to eat and drink another of his potions and then before I knew it, I was asleep again. A vicious cycle, but a healing one. Finally, and I think it was late in the evening because of the quality of light, I was able to sit up without passing out. Grimora handed me a warm drink, and deeper in the cave, I thought I could hear the rumbling snores of Banshira, echoing down the passageway.
“He saved me, you know,” I told Grimora, though of course he must know. I wasn’t quite a hundred percent yet, I suppose. “He brought me here.”
“Yes. I was with him, but you were mostly unconscious when we pulled you off the beach.”
“Oh. But that wasn’t your beach, though.”
“No, it was a few miles away.”
“Then how did you…”
He shrugged, as if in embarrassment. “I saw you in a dream.”
“You saw me?”
“Yes. I saw you swimming toward Igella. You shouldn’t have been able to make it in those icy waters with the choppy waves. I was most concerned for you. Banshira and I came as soon as the skies lightened the next morning.”
“And you found me.”
‘Indeed, we did. We built a big fire, hoping you’d see it.”
“I think I did. And you have my gratitude. I don’t know if I could have walked here to this cave.”
“Why did your ship sink? Did the other ships do it?”
“You know about them too? No, or at least I don’t think they did anything. A freakish wind blew out of a clear blue sky, caught our sails and toppled us right over. We sank like a stone.”
“A freakish wind? Or a magical one?”
“It had to be some kind of wicked sorcery, though I don’t know who could have done such a thing. Sent fifty men to their doom without remorse.”
I took a deep, and I admit, a shuddery breath. I had only a working relationship with my men—they were pirates and outlaws after all, but I’d been with some of them for years, and some of them, at least, weren’t so bad. A few of them I’d known for almost ten years, and I wouldn’t have wished that kind of death on anyone. They hadn’t had a chance, and I still didn’t understand how I’d managed to survive when they had all perished.
