Chapter 6

"It's good to have friends," McAllister noted casually.

The steel horse turned one emerald eye to her rider, and somehow suggested weary patience with the tiny motion. "Very well. Why make this particular observation now?"

McAllister studied the pallet supporting their belongings as it was lifted onto the sailing ship, SV Beaualito. Square and broad of beam, the hull was much higher than the docks, and the complex system of booms and draglines cluttered the air around the ship's masts and yardage.

The crew expected to hoist Sable ignominiously aboard, but with a disdainful flick of tail and ears, the horse calmly walked up the gangplank, which bowed under the great weight of the metal moving across it. McAllister prudently waited for the hooves to clear the gangway before mounting it himself.

In answer, McAllister indicated their belongings, bedding, tent, saddle and gear, along with a goodly supply of food suitable for a long trail ride, were packed on a small three-foot by three-foot pallet, then wrapped in oilcloth and lashed to the deck. A small canoe was aboard, lashed below the stern rail, for McAllister's use getting ashore wherever he expected to debark.

McAllister himself was unsure of where that would be. The Western Continent was a large unknown, with only minimalist maps of it having yet been created. All he had was a twelve-hundred year-old report that Croso or Caruso, whichever he was called, had sailed to the southern half of that continent.

The Master of the Beaualito, one Burnsby by name, would sail to the colony cities the City-States of the Middle Sea formed on the Western Continent. They'd sail generally south by southwest, and beat up the coast until they found the cities. McAllister would disembark when they found land.

The steel horse scoffed at the notion that a dock was needed to disembark, and so Madelle provided a canoe for McAllister.

Sable watched the sailors on the deck, and then, with an equine snort, gave agreement. "It's not so good we leave all these friends behind, McAllister," she observed. "Madelle..."

"Madelle is the new Head of the Church of the Mother," McAllister interrupted, flatly. "Even if the old Head does not yet believe it, or indeed know of it. She is needed here. Our part is to make it possible to remove the old Hierarchy."

"It would be useful to have one who knows when falsehood is spoken," the horse continued, unperturbed.

"Can you offer a theory why you and I cannot so divine?"

"No. I am puzzled."

"Me too, my friend, me too." McAllister watched the stevedores and dockworkers moving on the wharf below.

The ship sailed on.

"Well sir, where are we?" McAllister asked of the Captain.

"I don't know," the Captain answered him from behind the helmsman. "I think we've traveled two hundred leagues generally south by southwest."

"Are there no islands you could spot, to fix your location?" McAllister turned to the man, shocked.

"There are," Burnsby responded.

"Then why don't you have lookouts on the masts to spot them?"

"Because, Sir, they would do no good. On a journey of this length, if I knew where I started to the most precise degree, it would avail me little at the far end, as the imprecision would be so large." The First Mate, by Burnsby's side glared at McAllister.

McAllister said nothing, though his jaw set. Later that evening, he obtained some of the shipmaster's precious vellum, and sat, late into the night, resting against the horse's leg, staring at stars and occasionally marking their positions on the paper.

It took McAllister some time to explain the concept of latitude and longitude on the world's surface the next morning, and he was morosely certain the majority of his audience only humored him. The First Mate had a truculent air about him, as if his failure to understand McAllister's excursion into the geometry of the world were willful.

On the fiftieth day of the journey McAllister's boredom was finally broken.

Under a broken cloud cover, with much haze in the air, the Beaualito moved listlessly, rocking in the gentle swells, making slow headway. The creaking of ropes and the occasional ruffle of the nearly empty sails in the nearly nonexistent wind filled the stultifyingly moist and heavy, oppressive air.

Ahead of the ship, with an odd tearing noise, the sea bulged and lifted. A large triangular head, malachite in color, iridescent, rose from the water, and stood a dozen feet over the surface. Water rushed and tumbled into the void left behind that massive head, and swirled with some noise behind the graceful neck suspending it.

The tumult awoke McAllister, who scrambled to his feet beside Sable, and together they stood and stared over the gunwale to the port side into large eyes with vertical slits for pupils. The pupils were encircled by emerald irises, the eyes fully two yards apart in a long, toothy face covered in fine scales of vibrant green.

"Hail, Cousin," the monstrous creature 'spoke', and McAllister understood. Behind him there was alarm and panic, and McAllister turned.

"Hold," he commanded. "If this creature means us harm, harm it will do. The man who unleashes a weapon will answer to me." McAllister fixed the First Mate with a stare, then returned to the giant serpent.

"Why do you greet us so?" McAllister asked, in the silent way.

"I greet my cousin, beside you, Man," the other answered, "though you are like us."

Surprised, McAllister turned to Sable. "You know each other?"

The clouds had closed in, and the now-pointless sails reefed, bundled tightly to the yardarms. Ahead of them, the anchor rope creaked against the capstan, as the sea-dragon towed the ship. Burnsby watched the rope almost angrily. "How did I get to this pass?" he asked his First Mate. "Who is this McAllister?"

"I was a Captain of Marines, men who sailed on fighting vessels, and would fight hand-to-hand against pirates, or board or repel boarders." McAllister spoke from his position behind a pallet, previously unseen. "I was unfairly captured, betrayed, and when I refused a slave's brand was shredded in an instant by a stupid little man who cursed me and excommunicated me from his Church as he killed me. Never mind my church was not his."

Seeing the Captain understood, McAllister finished the tale. "I escaped from Hell, and with the aid of my companion Horse, I came here. I was charged with finding a lost relic of the Church of the Mother, and that is why the Deacon of that Church moved amongst you, to gauge your measure. You see me now, I am no different than you."

There was silence as the Captain and his First Mate left McAllister.

"I heard and knew each word to be the truth," the sea-dragon ahead of them caused him to 'hear'.

The SV Beaualito stood several hundred yards off the limestone that tumbled off the escarpment and formed the rocky beach of the cove, unable to draw closer for fear of submerged rocks.

"I will swim into my home," the sea-dragon 'told' them from under the surface, ahead of them. "You may enter from over the land, less than a quarter mile inland is an entrance. Have a care, cousin, debarking from your vessel, the water below is still some ten fathoms."

McAllister and Sable turned to look at the crew, every man silently watching the two of them.

"Set the anchor, please, Mister Boatswain," McAllister ordered.

"McAllister, I can reach the shore, but I would crash through the gunwale. Please have them construct me a ramp, using the gangway, and lash it in place."

McAllister nodded, and asked 'why' after he gave the order.

"Because you may not be aware of it, but I am some twenty tons," came the answer. "I have a limited ability to firm the footing I stand on, and spread the load without visible means, though on water, its speed I need to push my weight against the water's own resistance to movement."

McAllister understood. "The faster you move across the surface, the more you can rely on the surface to seem firm."

"Yes. I cannot run from here back to Marcelon, as I would quickly develop too much heat, but I can accelerate and run across the seven hundred yards to the shore. But there isn't enough room on the deck of this ship for me to clear the gunwale, and I would have the master of the ship wait here for our return."

McAllister nodded, but did not voice his doubts.

Nearly two months had passed since McAllister was last on Sable's back, and now he felt again the power of the horse, so unlike any beast he had ever ridden before. A smooth rush forward, then they were over the water, while the wind tore the tears from his eyes as he lay on the horse's neck.

The shock of each hoof-fall on the water was akin to the shock of running on flagstone. Soon, the horse slowed in the surf, and then they picked their way up the limestone cliff to the top of the escarpment.

McAllister saluted the boat, smaller now in the center of the bay. He was pleased to see the anchor rope still out. The flash from his saber would catch the eyes of the crew, he knew, the crew that was strangely silent when he or Sable was in hearing distance. He reset the pack stuffed with biscuit and salt pork on his shoulder — neither he nor Sable wanted to go ashore without bringing enough to last McAllister for weeks.

Ahead of them waited a low stone building, cut from the same limestone at the base of the cliff.

Descending the stair was not easy, the steps were shallow and wide, causing both Horse and Man difficulty. Sable lit the way with an odd green glow, cast from emerald eyes in twin cones visible in the omnipresent hanging dust.

The staircase led down, to a path hewn out of the limestone, and then into a wetter cave system that reeked of sulphur. Crushed limestone made a path above the uneven cave floor, and wound between dripping, glistening stalactites and sharp stalagmites.

For many minutes they moved amongst the silent sentinels of the dark, guarding secrets it seemed only they and the builder of the path had ever seen. Finally, they reached another stair, one with honest sea-air rising up from the depths. As they reached bottom, McAllister found a cave with water in it, a large underground grotto. Eerie phosphorescent light gave the chamber a dim glow, almost exactly matching the color of Sable's eyes. The great sea-dragon lay around the center isle in a groove its body had worn smooth over time unknown, its sinuous form resting half-in and half-out of the water.

"Welcome to my home," the dragon 'spoke'. "Attend," directed at Sable. A strange and subtle twisting began, and the dragon rushed into itself. McAllister would have sworn the mass of the huge body went ... elsewhere, tucked aside. The body shifted its constituent parts, and then a woman of grace and beauty stood before Horse and Rider, clad in a diaphanous blue gown with blonde tresses stacked high on her head and held with combs. McAllister found her beautiful, but could not place an age on the woman before him.

"This is my form when I am in residence for a period of time," she spoke aloud to her two guests. "Though," she said with a tinge of amusement, "I would as a matter of course omit the clothing. Please, come into my house."

The two exchanged a silent glance, and then followed.

"Why do you not change your shape, Cousin?"

"I do not wish my second attempt to be witnessed," the horse answered with equine equanimity. "And in this form, I need not eat, though I would feed my intellectual hunger."

The woman that was the sea-dragon smiled, and gestured around at the library shelves. Deep in the side of the cave, the living quarters the dragon made for herself were human-scale, though the scale of the living quarters was large.

"This has been my home for twenty-five centuries," the dragon said offhandedly, as if reading her guests' minds. "I've had a lot of time to make myself a home to be at home in."

A small ball of furry creature with wide wings stuck at a silly angle to the funny body launched itself the length of the library, gaining speed, chirping "Kee rah, kee rah", before colliding with the woman in the sapphire dress. It reached up with a wing with hook-like fingers on it, and pulled a comb from the blonde's hair, causing it to tumble over a shoulder.

"My familiar Yivani," she introduced the small creature. McAllister saw the glint of an eye as it wormed its way under the dragon's blonde tresses, perched on her shoulder.

"I am McAllister," he said gravely, to the small creature.

"And I am Sable," the horse spoke aloud.

"I am Kira," the dragon in human form replied. "Yivani is a friend, who wandered into my cave as her kind is wont to do. She elected to stay with me, though she does get lonely from time to time when I am out in the wide world." Kira looked down fondly at the bat, and made a chirring noise with her lips, one the small creature echoed.

"Why did you greet me as cousin?" Sable asked Kira, aloud.

If Kira were taken aback by the bluntness of the question, she showed no sign of it. "Like you, I was born in the place we left. I escaped tens of thousands of years ago, in a great breaking, when all manner of things escaped." The other woman smiled sadly. "I chose wisely in my form for survival in this world, but not so wisely as a female might."

She looked up, and told Sable defiantly, "I was hiding from those who would chase, to force me back to Hell, the Gods and other denizens of the planes. Nowadays, Hell itself pulls its own back to the Abyss, to avoid a repetition of that Great Hunt. I suspect you two have been beset and Hounded during your sojourn?"

McAllister nodded, once.

Sable, though, asked a different question. "Twenty or more centuries, and without male companionship?"

Kira met the emerald gaze with her own sapphire eyes. "There were no other dragons of any type on this world, Sable."

Sable pressed. "A human male?"

"Would be consumed," Kira answered, sadly. "I would not do that to any creature. I am not evil, though I was born in Hell. You of all people should know that."

"He has the internal Fire, as you have seen. McAllister is no ordinary man," Sable said, aloud, quietly. "If he wishes it, you are guaranteed to conceive a child."

Unexpectedly excluded from the conversation, McAllister watched the two Hellborn stare at one another, though he knew they were discussing him.

McAllister sat in one of the chairs under a glowing lamp, fuelled by no visible means, and picked up the book on the table next to it. A moment later, Yivani worked her way out from under the blonde hair of the Dragon Kira, and flapped over to McAllister. "You are different," the familiar said, then, "scratch!" and extended her neck to be rubbed.

Kira came to him, later, as he sat in the entrance to the ruddy limestone building on the desert plain, looking off the cliff at the faraway ocean. Together they watched from afar as the Captain of the Beaualito and one sailor were lowered over the side of the ship in McAllister's small boat. The Beaualito then sailed off, northward. The men in the boat raised sail and followed, albeit more slowly.