Sorceress of Darshiva

Part Two – PELDANE

CHAPTER NINE

There was a man in a sea coat talking alone with Silk in the second floor sitting room when Garion, Belgarath, and Beldin returned. The man was stocky. He had silver-shot hair and beard and he wore a large gold earring in his left ear."Ah, there you are," Silk said, looking up as the three them entered. The rat-faced little man had changed clothes and now wore plain doublet and hose of a nondescrip brown. "This is Captain Kadian. He's the one who took our friends to the mainland."

He looked back at the boatman. "Why don't you tell them what you just told me?" he suggested.

"If you want me to, your Highness," Kadian agreed. He had that rusty sort of voice seafaring men often have—the resultt of bad weather and strong drink, Garion surmised.

He took a swallow from the silver tankard he was holding. "Well, sir," he began, "it was three days ago when it happened. I'd just come up from Bashad in Gandahar. It's down by the mouth of the Magan." He made a face. "It's an unhealthy sort of a place—all swamps and jungles. Anyhow, I'd carried a cargo of ivory up here for the Consortium, and we'd just off-loaded, so I was sort of looking around for a cargo. A ship doesn't make any money for her owner when she's tied up to a wharf, y'know. I went to a certain tavern I know of. The tavern keeper's an old friend of mine—we was shipmates when we was younger—and he sort of keeps his ear to the ground for me.

"Well sir, I no sooner got there and set myself down, when my friend, he comes over to me and he asks me if I'd be interested in a short, easy voyage at a good price. I says to him that I'm always interested in that kind of proposition, but that I'd want to know what kind of cargo was involved before I made up my mind. There's some things I don't like to carry—cattle, for instance. They can dirty up the hold of a ship to the point where it takes weeks to get it clean again. Well, my friend, he says to me that there wouldn't be no cargo involved at all. It was just some people as wanted passage to the mainland. I says that it wouldn't hurt none to talk with them, and so he takes me into this room in the back of the tavern where four people was sitting at a table—two men, a woman, and a little boy. One of the men was dressed in expensive clothes—a nobleman of some kind, I think—but it was the other one as did all the talking."

"Was there anything unusual about that one?" Silk prompted.

"I was just getting to that. He was wearing ordinary clothes, but that wasn't what caught my attention. At first I thought he was blind—because of his eyes, you understand—but it seems that he can see well enough, even though his eyes don't have no color at all. I had a ship's cook one time, and one of his eyes was the same way.

Foul-tempered sort he was, and a real poor excuse for a cook. Well sir, this man with the funny eyes, he says that he and his friends had to get to Peldane in a hurry, but that they sort of wanted it kept quiet that they was going there. Then he asks me if I knows of a place outside of die town of Selda where I could put them on the beach with no one the wiser, and I says that I did." He pulled his nose slyly. "Just about any man as owns a ship knows of a few places like that-customs people being what they are an' all. I sort of had my suspicions up by now. People who want to end a voyage on a lonely beach someplace are usually up to no good.

Now, I figure that what a man does is his own concern, but if he gets me mixed up in it, it starts being my business real quick. I can get into trouble enough on my own without no help from others." He paused and took a long drink from his tankard and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Like I say, I had mysuspicions about these people by now and I was just about to tell them that I wasn't really interested in the proposition, but then the woman, she says something I didn't hear to the one as was doing the talking. She was wearing a kind of long cloak or robe of some kind made out of black satin. She kept the hood of it up the whole time, so I never saw her face, but she was keeping a real tight grip on the little boy.

Anyhow, the one with the white eyes, he pulls out a purse and spills it out on the table, and that purse was full of gold, my friends, more than I'd make in a dozen voyages along these coasts. That put a whole new light on the situation, let me tell you. Well sir, to make it short, we struck the bargain right then and there, and I asks them when they wanted to leave, and the fellow as was doing the talking, he says they'd come down to my ship just as soon as it gets dark. I saw right off that my suspicions wasn't too far off the mark. You don't find very many as is honest who want to sail out of a harbor in the dark of night, but we'd already struck our bargain, and I had his purse tucked under my belt, so it was too late to back out. We sailed that very night and got to the coast of Peldane on the next afternoon."

"Tell them about the fog," Silk said intently.

"I was just about to, your Highness," Kadian said. "That coast down there is sunk in fog almost all spring, and the day we got there wasn't no exception. It was thicker than a wool cloak, but the people in Selda, they're used to it, so they always lights beacons on the city walls to guide ships into their harbor on foggy days. I took my bearings on those beacons and I didn't have no trouble finding the beach I wanted. We hove to a few hundred yards offshore, and I sent my passengers toward the beach in a small boat with my bo'sun in charge. We hung a lantern from the mainmast to guide him back through the fog, and I put some men to banging on pots and pans to help him find the way. Anyhow, after some time passed, we could hear the sound of the oarlocks out there in the fog near the beach, and we knowed the bo'sun's coming back. And then, all of a sudden, I seen the light of a fire coming through the fog all sort of misty, like. I heard some screaming, and then everything got quiet. We waited for a bit, but the bo'sun, he never came back. I didn't like the smell of things, so I ordered the anchor up, and we sort of eased on back out to sea. I don't know what happened and I wasn't going to stay around to find out. There was things going on that made me real nervous."

"Oh," Beldin said, "such as what?"

"Well sir, one time in the main cabin, this woman as the white-eyed man and the aristocrat had with them, she reached out to take hold of the little boy, him acting kind of restless and all, and I seen her hand. Now, it might have been bad light in the cabin or some such—I don't spend all that much on lamp oil or candles. But—and strike me blind if I "m wrong—it seemed to me that there was sparkles under the skin of her hand."