Chapter 15: The Sand Isles

The Sand Isles are a long way from Beletara, but then again, they are a long way from everyplace. They are far, far to the west of even the most westward reaching part of Arbor, the southern shores of Westhal. Far to the west, and far south as well. The shores of Beletara were warm, compared to Midhal where I grew up, but even Beletara was not close to the equator. The Sand Isles were, running both north, south and through the equator itself.

You don't book passage to the Sand Isles just any time you want. The sailings are infrequent, and the Jessian States, the governing entity that rules across the isles, is somewhat suspicious of Arborians from outside the isles.

What fears we had of sailings and schedules were removed in short order by Cord Ambrul, and reinforced by Wick and Cap shavrom, who both came out of semi-retirement to organize and equip their fleet's flagship vessel, the Pride of Beletara.

"Bel will treat you well." Wick told us. "She was made for transporting people of importance across the face of Arbor. She has not served in that capacity for a while, but it is in her blood, and she will serve you well."

Again in a fairy tale, or one of those thinly disguised histories we read in the Academy, Chimer Vanoc would have been our captain, in charge of his first vessel and bursting with pride and determined to do us proud.

Our captain was Demise Duvoro, a seasoned and serious man who had a bristle brush of a beard, thick with stiff, black hairs and above that, a hawk nose and eyes etched with lines at the corners.

"This is a long run, but the season is right for it," Captain Duvoro said as we watched Beletara fade away on the horizon. "With favorable winds and calms seas, we could be at the Sand Isles in a couple of weeks."

"We may make better time than you expect." I told him. "We'll have the wind with us the entire way, and favorable seas."

"You say that as if you know it is true." The Captain said.

"Well, I have asked the Wind of Arbor to give us the wind we need, and she has agreed." I said. "As for the seas, my wife River has asked the ocean and the ocean says okay."

I left the Captain laughing. I figured he'd come around eventually.

We were given a quick tour of the weather deck by Mister Lamon, the First Mate. The weather deck included the quarterdeck, where we were allowed to move about without permission of the captain of the deck, and the rest of the top deck, where we were not.

The captain of the deck, we were told, wouldn't be Captain Duvoro.

"Its the Bosun, usually in the person of one of the deck officers," Mister Lamon told us. "If you ever see the Captain or myself acting as captain of the deck, it'll be because we're in some deep foulness that we're not sure we'll get out of."

A cabin was assigned to each couple, and a crewman was assigned in turn, 'to the cabin', but was really there to wait on its occupants in whatever way was needed. I suspect this arrangement was also intended to keep the passengers out of trouble and away from the common crewmen, some of whom could be pretty rough customers.

The crewmen assigned to us were officially addressed as 'Ensign's Mate'. Ours was Ensign's Mate Rusbic, and he literally slept in a hammock slung in the passageway outside our cabin.

The four cabins were labeled, in a way meant to pander to the rich and important she carried, 'King', 'Queen', 'Prince' and 'Princess'. River and I had the King cabin, Flare and Sky had the Queen, and Trunk and Alianna had the Prince. The Princess cabin was converted into a day room and lounge that we could use collectively for morning and midday meals, but we were expected to eat our evening meals at the Captain's mess, which was really the officer's mess normally, but was the Captain's mess whenever he joined the rest of the officers. As it turned out, except for the first night, we never saw the third and fourth officers. The crew and the officers stood watches, and the third and fourth officers were either on deck or sleeping every other evening meal during the trip.

We officially met the officers during evening meal. In addition to Captain Duvoro and the First Mate, Mister Lamon, there was Mister Elms, the Second Mate, Mister Hawal, the Third Mate, and Mister Chayn, the Fourth Mate. In addition to the deck officers we met the ship's healer, Host ferdeen, and the Chief Gunnery officer, Spleen Ioder, who was the senior below decks officer.

"We have sixteen guns, and none of them have ever been fired in battle, except for the signal cannon on the foredeck." Chief Ioder said. "That gun was taken from the deck of the Green Isle, when she was salvaged after the battle of the Stozian Shoals. The Captain and Healer Ferdeen brought it themselves, along with the compass from the pilot house."

A signal from the Captain caused that subject to suddenly get changed, and we talked about the weather, the length of the voyage, and sailing in general. I suspect the Captain didn't want the crew talking about some past glory of his, and was being modest.

I diverted the conversation myself one night when I mentioned having studied the naval battles of the Redecine Wars while at the Academy. Mister Lamon was a student of naval history as well, and we soon were engaged in the analysis of a battle that had happened before either of our grandparents had been born, and on the other side of the world from where we were sailing. Trunk, with his perfect memory would correct one or the other of us now and then when we got a detail or a date wrong, even quoting chapter and verse from whatever text I claimed to be remembering my details from. When I mentioned the title, 'The Redecine Wars: A Study in Diplomatic Failure and Military Response', I swear the captain flinched. When I mentioned the name, Unity Carbos though, he perked up.

"Carbos?" Captain Duvoro said. "I've read Carbos. I like his style!"

"I do too." I said. "I've sought out everything I could find that he wrote, and have read it, just because I liked the way he wrote."

"Have you read his telling of the crossing of the Selanian Reach?" He asked.

"No, I don't think I have." I said after a moments thought. None of the Carbos I'd read had been recent.

"I've got a copy in my cabin. I'll loan it to you for the voyage. Its one of his shorter works, but it is an engaging read."

So I spent the rest of my trip reading Carbos, which I loved, loving River, which I really loved, and talking Carbos with the captain and naval history with the first mate, which was much better than thinking about what might lie ahead, but which I suspect drove everyone else a bit off the edge.

Strangely enough, I had no problem with being at sea and away from the land this time. No sense of disconnectedness and imbalance. It was impossible to compare my sense with everyone else's. Sky was never away from the sky, and River had not been far from a source of moving water in quite a while. I asked Flare if he felt different at night, when the Sun was down.

"I used to, but not anymore." He answered. "Not since we became four."

"I can sense the Shadar, even from here." River said into the silence. "It is on the other side of Arbor, and still I feel it."

We began using the fourth cabin for meditation, every morning, and again every night before bed. It was something new for both Flare and Sky, and Trunk and Alianna joined us at first.

"Alianna and I won't be joining the rest of you for your meditations." Trunk said at morning meal of our third day. "You four are going somewhere within your thoughts that Ali and I can't follow."

"We understand." I said. "We all wish you could make this journey with us. You've been as true a friend and companion as I could ever have wished for."

"You say that like you might not be coming back one of these times."

"We might not." I answered. "Some of the paths we have in front of us include not returning, or not living to return."

Laid out plain like that for Trunk's benefit, the four of us discussed it that night for the first time.

"River and I have known, since our time with the Shar, that what they ask us to do is dangerous." I began.

"But when we met with the Dragons, in the Dream World, we discovered that it could truly mean our deaths." River added.

"A time will come when we will be presented with a choice." I continued. "That choice could mean our deaths, or our going away from Arbor, as the Dragons have been gone."

"The Dragons wish us well." Flare said. "I have had them near my thoughts and around my spirit for a long time. A lot longer than the rest of you, I think. What they will ask will not be asked cruelly, or without compassion."

"It seems hard to believe though, that whatever it is the Dragons might ask of us, we need to travel to some specific place for them to do it." Sky said.

"There is something more to this than we have yet heard from either the Dragons or the Shar." I said.

"There is another factor in all of this." River said. "One that remains unspoken and unknown."

"The Spirits." Sky said. "Its the Spirits that will guide us in the end."

"No, the Spirits have been guiding us." River said. "They will be a part of this, and in a way we do not see now, but like you said about the Dragons, Flare, I don't believe the Spirits could have anything but our best interests in mind, whatever they ask."

"If what we believe is true, that the four of us can in some way act to free the Dragons from whatever state they are in, We have to believe that our Transformations were not coincidental." I said.

""We have to believe that the Spirits have chosen us. In some ways it is the answer to the old question — 'what marks the Transformed from the Ur and Brude?'" Sky said. "The hand of the Spirits marks us. We are changed by outside forces, rather than interior ones."

"Can we presume so much of the Spirits?" I asked.

"You have the Wind of Arbor for a mother, and you can ask that?" Flare said.

I laughed.

"Well said Flare, well said. Truth be told, there is even more reason to believe the Spirits are taking a direct hand. Don't forget Master Jo."

"Who?" Sky asked.

"Master Jo." Flare said. "He was once the Arms Master in the Valley of the Wind, but he is becoming more. I met him only once, but Sid and River have known him for far longer."

"Sid has known him his whole life. For me it just seems so." River said.

"Don't forget his mule Legend." Flare said with a laugh.

"You mean the man in the wide hat, with the pole for a cane?" Sky asked. "how do you know him?"

You could have knocked us over with a feather. Master Jo had been more involved, and more helpful than we had realized.

"I have been having chats with the man you describe for weeks now. He would always be by the Captain's Fountain when I stopped there to have my midday meal." Sky told us. "At first I was worried — you know, about his intentions. He was sweet and kind, and acted far older than he looked, and Legend was sweet as well, and funny. She would nuzzle my robe looking for an apple in my pockets."

Stunned, but somehow not surprised, all of us.

We meditated, longer than usual, and as we had become accustomed to doing, we spent a good deal of time during our meditation building on Flare and Sky's gifts. They had been able to reach us and each other, mind-to-mind, since we had become four, but their use of the gifts were rudimentary and done without much understanding. As those skills strengthened, we were moving on into something else. Something hard to describe.

When we were deep within our meditation, and pushing Flare and Sky as far into a link as we could get them, we could almost feel that there were certain... edges, for lack of a better word, that fit together. But there was something about the way the edges fit that wasn't working. Perhaps we were just not ready, perhaps we were missing a piece of the puzzle, someone who would make us five instead of four. Maybe we were missing a point of view, a perception shift that would make the solution obvious.

Lots and lots of maybes.

We received permission from the Captain to use the largest part of the quarterdeck to practice our stick work in the morning, as long as the seas were calm. He still hadn't taken my comment about the wind and seas to heart yet.

In addition to the work that River, Trunk and I did, I had Trunk giving Alianna, Flare and Sky lessons. Trunk had already been instructing Alianna, but Sky and Flare had never so much as held a staff, and their introduction to the art of the stick was amusing in its awkwardness, and refreshingly earnest at the same time.

Even in a calm sea, the open deck of a ship under sail isn't the best place in the world to be getting your first lessons in balance and footwork, but it also was an easy way to demonstrate the effects of bad footwork, and loss of balance. They took the good natured ribbing with smiles. They took their bruises with equal grace, and we worked together to hasten their departure every night during our meditation.

Not to be funny, but I was somewhat at sea during the voyage. Sid had his book and his conversations with Captain Duvoro and Mister Lamon. Flare and Sky had their training with Trunk, as did Alianna. The morning exercises were a help, but other than that, I was drowning in a sea of intimate, overwhelming data.

The sea surrounded me, and I swam in its memories, drowned in its awareness, sank within its knowledge.

Everything returns to the sea, they say, and it certainly seems as if that might be true. I knew of shipwrecks and treasures, and lost souls in numbers made meaningless by their vastness. There were more bright little lights of life than my brain could register. Some, in the depths were aware, and a few even aware of me!

I exchanged thoughts, crudely, slowly, ponderously, with a consciousness that thought of itself as US/WE. A million little motes of thought, forming a collective mind, which unlike the Shar, were not made up of individuals.

Collectively, they understood life as a concept, but death was a puzzle that they only inferred from what they observed in those others they sensed around them. They greeted me, as a welcome novelty, but were soon distracted back into their internal community of thought.

A being with social concepts, endlessly caught up in its own internal conversation with itself. And slow! The hello and how are you had taken almost three hours.

There was a time when I wouldn't have been able to take the multitude of voices and the avalanche of information coming at me. There had been times when the Shadar had been enough to have overwhelmed me. I was able to handle things now, not because my mind had grown stronger, but because it had grown more discriminating. The great mass of inputs were just not there unless I focused on them.

There were Ur and Brude within the seas. Cities and countries of them, and some of those among them, who saw me seeing them, were not happy to know they were known of by someone on the surface world. What a dizzying chain of thought! Some were curious, and some were unconcerned, but some were enemies from the moment our consciousnesses impinged upon each other.

As I grew more accustomed to the new levels of refinement in my waterborne senses, I realized something startling. I had a blind spot, and we were heading straight for it!

"Sweetheart?" I said the moment I realized it. Sid lay beside me, napping after having spent a few hours reading. He didn't stir at the sound of my voice.

<Sweetheart?> I sent.

<What? River? What's wrong?> He returned.

<Wake up, I have something to show you.>

"What?" He said, sitting up with a yawn.

"I'm not sure we'll have to worry about finding the place we're looking for." I said. Join your mind with mine."

With Sid's mind fused tightly with my own, I slipped into the sensory mode I had just been using.

<<Spirits!>> Sid thought as the information attempted to overwhelm him. This mode was a very long step back form being immersed in it though, and was easy to keep at bay.

<<Its not what we are seeing that's important.>> I thought. <<Its what we don't.>>