30
The outward-spreading wave was a perfect visual echo of the shore, a vast wall across the sea's face that ignored the water's own swelling rhythms. The dugout had bucked and pitched when the tremor first struck; now it merely whispered urgently in the play of wavelets against its hull.
Sharina stood up beside the vessel where she'd fallen at the initial shock. The wave had combed a hundred feet up the slope, dousing the fire, but Nonnus had snatched the handle of the bronze cookpot before it vanished into the rolling sea. The crabs still steamed with a memory of the flames.
Moving with practiced ease, Nonnus set the pot and his javelin into the dugout's bow cavity, then stepped to the iron shore fasts. He gripped one pin with both hands and kicked the shaft with the heel of his foot.
"Nonnus!" Sharina cried. "The others!"
The island shook itself again even more violently. Sharina leaped onto the port outrigger and wrapped both arms around the mast stay. The dugout lifted, fought the line, and crashed again onto the rock with an impact that would have threatened the frames of a planked hull.
"If we're afloat," Nonnus said, shouting over the sea's bass roar, "we've a chance to pick them out of the water. If we're hard on shore and the next wave flips the boat over, we'll never right her again!"
Foam surged around Sharina's waist and spewed into her face. She blinked in the salt but didn't close her eyes. Nonnus stood like an outcrop of rock, unmoving in the white bubbling chaos.
The sea settled again in nervous anticipation. The surface had an oily sheen; tiny life-forms circled in the frothing water, feeding and fodder alike in the disturbed conditions. Though the water was gurglingly alive, Sharina didn't hear a volcanic rumble from the rocks beneath her. What was shaking it this way?
Nonnus kicked the shore fast again, working it in the crack where he'd set it. The pin came loose in his grip. He tugged it clear and tossed it into the bow as he stepped to the remaining iron.
Sharina could see the nobles struggling downslope with the chest between them. Whenever one slipped, they both fell. It took them longer each time to get up again.
"I'm going up there," Sharina said, springing from her perch.
"No!" Nonnus called. "Child, no!"
Sharina ran with a surefootedness that reason would have told her was impossible, bounding from one wave-wet rock to the next without slipping. Dissipating foam gleamed in the channels, marking them as clearly as they were by daylight. She managed to stay upright even during the third tremor. She was above the reach of the waves, though a halo of foam crowned the hillcrest from the other side.
She'd reached the nobles before they saw her coming. Meder cried, "Help—"
Sharina wrenched the heavy chest from his hands and swung it to her right shoulder. The wizard was probably stronger than she was in absolute terms, but he didn't know how to carry a load. The nobles had made things worse by sharing the burden. If one fell, both did. Asera was holding her knee as she crawled out of the channel she'd fallen into.
"Come on or you'll have to swim!" Sharina shouted as she started back, running as she'd never run before. The chest's inertia gave her leaps a ponderous majesty that would mean disaster if she put a foot wrong.
She didn't. Tonight she couldn't. With the nobles staggering in her wake, freed from each other and the heavy container, Sharina sprinted to the flank of the dugout as the fourth tremor sent the sea rising to meet her.
Sharina wrapped her left arm around the brace of the port outrigger. The wave poured in. Nonnus stood at the remaining shore fast with his legs locked on the hawser to free his hands. He grabbed both Meder and Asera by the wrist. They lost their footing and streamed at full length in the rushing current.
Sounds dissolved in the boiling water, but Asera opened her mouth in a scream of pain. She was trying to loosen the hermit's iron grip with her free hand. She might as well have tried to drag down the crescent moon just rising: Nonnus wasn't going to let her drown to save her wrist from a bruise.
The wave started to subside. Nonnus sent Meder, then the procurator, scrambling along the hawser and over the dugout's bows. He looked toward Sharina.
Sharina released the brace and stood upright with both hands holding the chest. She took two steps along the outrigger and hurled the magical paraphernalia seaward with all her strength.
She heard Meder scream like a balked eagle. The case rolled twice in the receding waves, then vanished forever toward the bottom of the Outer Sea. She turned to face the wizard. He was white: his mouth was open, his eyes staring.
Sharina clambered into the dugout and took the tiller. Nonnus' smile was brighter than the moon's. He kicked the shore fast free and hopped onto the vessel's bow, then ran sternward along the gunwale to join Sharina.
The dugout pitched bow-down as the rock tilted beneath it, then righted as the sea rushed in with a smash of thunder and foam. "We're sinking!" Meder cried. "We're sinking!"
The vessel wasn't sinking, though the violence with which the sea thrashed it threatened to capsize them despite the outriggers. The island was sinking.
The island had sunk; completely and utterly, into a salt waste tossed by its departure.
A vast bulk rose again above the surface to westward, streaming water. For a long moment moonlight gleamed on the eye of a creature whose shell was more than half a mile in diameter; a creature the size of an island floating in the sea.
The front flippers rotated forward again. With the gravity of something unimaginably ancient, the turtle dived out of the world of men.