"Tales Of Einarinn - 04 - The Warrior's Bond" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKenna Juliet E)

I ignored him, sweeping the brass circle over the roiling surface of the sea. Where was that fugitive shape? I checked back with my naked eye—there, I had it! Not a coaster; an ocean ship, with steep sides, three masts and deck castles fore and aft.

“Are there any ships due in from the south?” I asked Casuel, minutely adjusting my glass to keep the tiny image in view.

Pages rustled behind me. “No, nothing expected from Zyoutessela or Kalaven until the middle of the season.”

“That’s according to your lists?” I didn’t share Casuel’s faith in inked columns of names and dates. My father may be a mason but I’d known plenty of sailors growing up in Zyoutessela, an isthmus city uniquely favoured by Dastennin with ports to both east and west. This could well be some ship whose captain had risked a profitable if unscheduled voyage. I find seafarers a curious mix of the bold and the cautious, men who plan obsessively for every eventuality they might face once out of reach of harbour but who throw caution to the winds to seize some unforeseen opportunity winging past.

Casuel came to stand at my shoulder, a sheaf of documents in his hand. “It could be from Inglis.”

The metal ring cold in my eye stopped me from shaking my head. “I don’t think so, not coming in on that course.” I leaned forward in a futile effort to see some identifying flag.

“What is it?” Casuel demanded.

I was hissing through my teeth as my concern for the vessel grew. “I think they’re carrying too much sail.” The masts were trimmed with the barest reef of white, but even that was enough to let the winds make a plaything of the ship. I looked up from the spyglass and out at the ocean. The captain’s choices were going from bad to worse. A run for the sheltering embrace of the massive harbour wall would mean letting the storm batter broad on the beam, with seas heavy enough to sink the ship. Turning the prow into the weather risked being driven clear away from the safe anchorage. Taking his chances on the open ocean might save the ship but the captain had wind and tide against him and the Lord of the Sea hones this ocean coast to a razor’s edge with the scour of wind and water. I could see the unforgiving reefs tearing the rolling waves into fraying skeins of foam beyond the sea wall. “Dastennin grant them grace,” I murmured.

Casuel raised himself on tiptoe to look out of the window where my few fingers of extra height saved me the effort. A spatter of rain made him duck and look through the lower pane, brushing wavy brown hair out of his dark eyes. I wiped drops from the end of the spyglass and took a moment to study the sky. Slate-coloured storm clouds threw down rain to batter the bruised seas, crushing the crests of the waves into flat smears of spume. I savoured the sharp salt freshness carried on the wind but then I was safe ashore.

The bowsprit dipped deep into a mountainous sea, wrenching itself free a breath later but the whole ship seemed to shudder, embattled decks awash. Imagination supplied the cries of the panicked passengers inside my head, curses from hard-pressed crew, the groan of straining timber, the insidious sound of water penetrating stressed seams. Pale canvas went soaring away from the masts like fleeing seabirds. The captain had opted to cut loose his sails but the ocean was fighting him on every side now, contrary wind and current confusing rudder and keel.

“Are they going to sink?” the wizard asked in a hesitant voice.

“I don’t know.” My knuckles were white on the spyglass, frustration hollow in my gut. “You said there’d be a mage on board. Can’t you bespeak him, work with him somehow?”

“Even assuming this is the colonists’ ship, my talents are based in the element of earth,” said Casuel with habitual pomposity. “At this distance, my chances of influencing the combined power of air and water that such a storm would generate…” His voice tailed off with honest regret.

The storm-tossed ship slid across my field of view and I cursed as it escaped me. Looking up, I exclaimed with inarticulate surprise. “There’s another one.”

Casuel scrubbed crossly at glass fogged by his breath. “Where?”

“Take a line from the roof of the fish market and out past the end of the harbour wall.” I turned my glass on the newcomer and frowned. “They’re rigged for fair weather.”

“They can’t be,” said Casuel with arbitrary authority.

“I’m the one with the spyglass, Casuel.” I forced myself to keep my tone mild. Irritating he might be, but I had to work with the wizard and that meant civilized manners from me, even if Casuel couldn’t manage common courtesy.

Time enough for idle thoughts later. I focused on the second boat, a round-bellied coastal craft with triangular sails plump and complacent when it should have been fighting for its life in those surging seas. Heedless of raging swells fighting to ram it on to the rocks, it was sweeping serenely towards the harbour.

“Oh.” Casuel’s tone was heavy with displeasure.

“Magic?” I hardly needed mystical communion with the elements to realise that, when I could see the ship defying all sense and logic.

“An advanced practitioner,” Casuel confirmed with glum envy.

I looked for some telltale of magic, a crackle of blue light or a ball of unearthly radiance clinging to the masthead. Deep-water sailors talk of such things, calling it the Eye of Dastennin. There was nothing to see; perhaps this unknown wizard considered it enough to set the ship riding high in the water, untouched by the storm.

I looked back abruptly to the first vessel, now heeling dangerously. It had moved a full length or more closer to the seething rocks, its plight ever more perilous. As we watched, helpless, a great wave plunged over the deck, the waist of the ship vanishing completely, deck castles alone resisting the insatiable seas. We held ourselves motionless until the ship struggled up to ride the surface once more. But now it had a dangerous list; cargo must have shifted in the hold, and that had been the death of many a crew.

“They’re going to help.”