8
Cashel leaned over Golden Dragon's bow railing, looking down into the phosphorescent spume that rolled past. A sailor near the mast played a lute whose neck was kinked back in a right angle; several of his fellows sat at his feet, their torsos swaying in time with the music.
"I love your stars," Mellie said, lying on the rail beside Cashel with her fingers laced into a cushion behind her head. "They're just like you humans—they move and then they come back just the way they were."
She raised her right leg and extended her foot in line with it as though she was sighting at the waxing moon. "You're always doing the same things, you know," she said to Cashel with a grin. "Building cities and then tearing them down and killing everybody. Do you suppose it's because you use iron?"
Cashel looked at the sprite and tried not to frown. He was never sure when she was joking. He wasn't sure that she ever joked the way people did.
The breeze was light and visibility good, but the ship proceeded with only two brails of the mainsail clewed down from the yard because the captain believed Erdin was just over the horizon. Navigation out of sight of land was more of an art than a science. An error of a hundred miles was possible, especially on this passage that the crew had never made before. A far smaller mistake could run the Golden Dragon onto the shore of Sandrakkan if the captain clapped on sail in darkness.
"Iron's good for a lot of things," Cashel said, looking into the water again. "I like the feel of hand-rubbed wood, sure, but for a wagon tire or a plow blade there's nothing like iron."
A Highlander played a bamboo flute from the stern gallery where the skiff swung in davits. He wasn't playing the same tune as the lutist—or any tune at all, it seemed to Cashel—but despite that, the instruments managed to create between them a melody that suited the sea very well.
The sigh of waves passing the hull stilled as Cashel peered into them. It was as though the water had vanished and the vessel floated on air. A fish glowing with its own rosy light swam beneath them. It was thirty feet long and had a simple tailfin, not the flaring tail of the fish Cashel was familiar with.
"What's that?" he said in surprise.
"Umm?" Mellie said, rolling onto her stomach and sticking her head over the railing to look down.
The fish vanished into the immensity of the vanished sea. People danced around an altar on a hillside, executing complicated steps and countersteps. The figures were tiny, but Cashel saw every detail of their features and dress. Their faces were pinched-looking, as though they danced with fear rather than joy.
"Oh, they're worried about their harvest," Mellie said. She cocked her face up toward Cashel with the first frown he'd seen from her. She added, "You should keep away from them, Cashel. They're nobody's friends though they like to pretend they are."
Cashel stared downward. Was he seeing the bottom? The lookout on the mast head didn't seem to notice anything wrong with the sea.
"Who are they?" Cashel said. The hillside had passed under the keel, dancers and all. He couldn't understand what he was seeing.
"Oh look!" Mellie said, pointing. She drummed her legs up and down in excitement. "It's your friend Garric, Cashel! Oh, the nymphs have got him!"
She giggled at Cashel. "He should have known better," she said. "He's nice enough as humans go, but he isn't strong the way you are."
"Garric?" said Cashel, craning his torso over the railing. "What's he—"
It was Garric, looking just as he had when Cashel last saw his friend in Carcosa. Garric stood in a great courtyard surrounded by merry girls, turning his head from side to side with an anguished expression.
"What's he doing under the sea?" Cashel said, finishing his question after the moment's pause.
"The nymphs caught him," Mellie repeated in a patient voice. "Why ever did he go to them, do you suppose? They'll never let him go."
The Golden Dragon's square teak bow slid onward. Cashel had to lean still farther outward to see the courtyard. "Can't we help him?" he asked desperately.
"Well, of course you can," Mellie said. She hopped from the railing and danced monkeylike up Cashel's mighty arm. "Just jump over the side."
She pointed.
With no more hesitation than he would have showed if a seawolf came out of the surf to attack his flock, Cashel raised his right foot to the ship's rail and went over the side in a clean dive. He didn't feel the water as the Golden Dragon vanished into the sky above him.