Introduction | Prologue and Chapter One | Chapter Three
In the Sea of the East, a Cherek warship cut across the waves towards land. After a successful run of attacks on Mallorean ships carrying troops to 'Zakath's staging area at Thull Zelik, it was returning to the impromptu base at the mouth of the River Mardu where about half the Cherek navy was being reprovisioned for further expeditions. Mounted on the prow of the ship as a figurehead was an elegant wooden sculpture of one of those strong-winged birds that spends its life above the ocean. Some thirty yards behind that figurehead was the thick trunk of the ship's mainmast, and to that mast was chained the struggling figure of a bear.
Anheg sighed. "Grodeg's been telling me for years about that 'Doom' he and his sour-mouthed augurers forecast for my cousin," he said to Barak's first mate, Heltig, now acting captain of the Seabird. "He always said I should have exiled him long ago. As much as it grates on me to find myself agreeing with a cultist, he might have had a point. If your crew can't keep him chained to that mast until we get back to Mishrak ac Thull, we could all find ourselves eaten or thrown overboard or worse."
"Do you really think Barak would attack his own cousin, your Majesty?" Heltig asked. He had been below decks asleep when Barak underwent his dreadful transformation.
"Heltig, at the moment Barak would kill his own mother. Apart from anything else, that crewman he knocked overboard with one swipe only survived because somebody had enough wits about him to throw him a rope. There's no way we can reason with a bear. He has to be kept to that mast until we reach that shore, or we're all sunk, one way or another."
As Anheg was speaking, the bear on the mast raised its muzzle and let loose an almost heartrending howl of despair, ceasing to struggle at its chains. As Anheg regarded the bear with sadness, he caught sight of the moon behind it, appearing through a gap in the clouds overhead. He watched it for a few moments, wishing with the more scholarly part of him for its serene peace and an end to this war, and so was in a perfect position to see as it, along with every other source of light within sight, dimmed and vanished.
A moment of utter silence, as everything around them stood immobile, and the moon and the stars reappeared as if they had never gone.
"What happened?" a shaken Heltig asked his king.
"Heltig, if I knew I'd tell you. I have a feeling, though, that this has something to do with Torak. Whether he's woken up and decided he doesn't like us sinking his army I have no idea, but I'm not staying around here to find out."
Heltig's attention, though, was elsewhere. The figure of the bear chained to the mainmast was shifting in a way that defied the eye, and, as Anheg stared, it shrank to man-size - albeit a rather large man - and resolved itself into the figure of his cousin. Barak looked, bemused, at the chains that bound him. "Anheg!" he bellowed.
"Oh, Belar," Anheg muttered. "Which one do I prefer?"
"Get these chains off me!" shouted the captain of the Seabird. "I'll have the men who mutinied thrown overboard within the hour!"
"No one mutinied, Barak," Anheg told him. "You went berserk and turned into a bear."
"You've lost your wits, Anheg."
"Ask any man on board ship. We were lucky we managed to restrain you before you killed anybody. That's by the by, though. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Anheg - apart from these chains." He paused. "That and a sense that something's not right. How long was I ... different?"
"Four hours."
"That should put us nearly ashore, then."
"We're about a mile from the estuary of the River Mardu. We were hoping we could keep you restrained until we got help there."
"That's not important now. I have to find out if anybody ashore knows what's happening to Garion."
"Garion?"
"Yes. It's part of this feeling I have."
Just then, the ship shook with a massive concussion. The lookout above held on to his perch by little more than luck. Picking himself up and looking sternward, Anheg's jaw dropped. Behind them, land was actually rising out of the sea before their eyes. Land that had been sunk beneath the waves since the Sea of the East was created by the cracking of the world was once more seeing the light of day, and he wondered for a moment if it was the last land he would ever see.
"Row!" Barak roared, restrained as he still was. "Row, you bunch of pirates! Torak's teeth, get us to land before the land comes up under us!"
The ship creaked as the oarsmen bent their backs to push the ship as fast as it would go, but they could only pull so fast. The shore seemed as far away as ever, and the new land was rapidly displacing the sea behind them. The swell of the sea increased, and finally an enormous wave came up beneath the Seabird, sending them all grabbing for handholds. Stumbling on a coil of rope, Anheg was thrown forward, struck his head on the roughly squared-off edge of the deck rail, and saw no more.
Introduction | Prologue and Chapter One | Chapter Three