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The new members of the rapidly expanding band were two women — Pandelon and Cordeine, a carpenter and a sailmender — and a man, Thesme, one of the winchwinders. Valentine bade them be welcome, and accepted pledges of allegiance from them, a ceremony that stirred vague discomfort in him. Yet he was growing accustomed to taking on these trappings of rank.
Grigitor and his children had paid no attention to the kneelings and hand-kissings among the passengers. Just as well: until he had conferred with the Lady, Valentine wished not to spread news across the world of his return to self-awareness. He was still uncertain of his strategy and unsure of his powers. Besides, if he advertised his existence he might draw the attention of the present Coronal, who was not likely to stay his hand if he discovered that a pretender was journeying toward Castle Mount.
The trimaran resumed its voyage. From isle to golden isle it went, staying well within the coastal cha
This was a large lush island of mountainous origin, surrounded by black volcanic beaches and equipped along its southern shore with a splendid natural breakwater. Rodamaunt Graun was dominant in the Archipelago, by far the largest in the chain, with a population, so Grigitor asserted, of five and a half million. Twin cities spread out like wings from both sides of the harbor, but the flanks of the island’s looming central peak were also well populated, with dwellings of rattan and skupik-wood rising in neat ranks almost to mid-point. About the last line of houses the slopes were thickly covered with jungle, and at the highest level rose a plume of thin white smoke, for Rodamaunt Graun was an active volcano. The last eruption, said Grigitor, had occurred less than fifty years before. But that was hard to believe, when one looked at the impeccable houses and the unbroken forest growth above them.
Here the Pride of Mardigile would turn back for home, but Grigitor arranged for the voyagers to shift to a trimaran even more noble, the Rodamaunt Queen, which would carry them to the Isle of Sleep. Her skipper was one Namurinta, a woman of regal poise and bearing, with long straight hair as white as Sleet’s and a youthful, unlined face. Her ma
"Does the Isle often refuse pilgrims?" Valentine asked.
"Not when they come at the proper time. But the pilgrim-ships, as I suppose you know, don’t sail in autumn. There may not be facilities ready for receiving you."
"We’ve come this far with only minor difficulties," said Valentine jauntily. He heard Carabella snicker and Sleet make stagy coughing sounds. "I feel confident," he went on, "that we’ll meet no obstacles greater than those we’ve already encountered."
"I admire your determination," Namurinta said, and signaled to her crew to prepare for departure.
The Archipelago in its eastern half hooked somewhat to the north, and the islands here were generally unlike Mardigile and its neighbors, being mainly the tops of a submerged mountain chain, not flat coral-based platforms. Studying Namurinta’s charts, Valentine concluded that this part of the Archipelago had once been a long tail of a peninsula jutting out of the southwest corner of the Isle of Sleep, but had been swallowed by some rising of the I
But the voyage was uneventful. They stopped at four ports — Hellirache, Sempifiore, Dimmid, and Guadeloom — for water and victuals, sailed on serenely past Rodamaunt Ounze, the last island of the Archipelago, and entered Ungehoyer Cha
"Thoughtful! Primitive gasbags, no cleverer than a sponge!"
"But look carefully at them, Carabella. They want to fly, to soar — they look up at the sky, at the whole world of the air, and long to encounter it, but all they can do is hang below the waves, and sway, and fill themselves with invisible organisms. Just in front of their faces lies another world, and it would be death to them to enter it. Are you untouched by that?"
"Silly," Carabella said.
On the second day in the cha
"Medicinal," she replied. "For the comfort of the very old, when their blood flows sluggishly. One of them provides enough of the drug for all the islands for a year or more: what you see is a rare event."
When I am Coronal again, Valentine resolved, I will reserve judgment until I am in full possession of the truth, if such a thing is ever possible.
Nevertheless, the imagined solemn profundity of the volevants haunted him with strange emotions, and he was relieved to pass beyond their zone, and into the cool waters that bordered the Isle of Sleep.