My beloved brothers: I try to avoid thinking about who I was, most of the time.
Being—well, let me not say who I am being, shall I? Writings can fall into wrong hands, and codes can be broken. Being the one who you have asked me to be is rather a full-time preoccupation, and leaves little time for thinking about being the one who I was.
When my service is done, though, I would very much like to become that man again, if it be your will.
And, if it not, I am not only a slave of Allah, and a servant of the Prophet (peace be upon him), but of yours, as well, and know that you will do that which is right.—Nissim al-Furat
"What the bloody hell?" Fotheringay said.
None of the knights were moving. Not at all—they just stood stock-still like living statues for a long moment, as though frozen in time before the perched, equally motionless raven.
For just a heartbeat—a long, eternal heartbeat.
And then, with no warning, the raven was gone. Stavros was just turning to Fotheringay to say something, he wasn't sure quite what, when darkness swept down across the sea, covering the land in an impenetrable blanket; a single huge wall of water, blacker than dark, black as black could be, rose up before the bow of the ship, towering so far above the top of the foremast as to dwarf the Marienios.
There were shouts and screams, and it took Stavros but a moment to realize that some of them were his own—but the black wave just hung there, not crashing down on the deck and smashing the ship to flinders, as it should have.
The boy, Niko, drew his sword, and ran for the rail. Cully moved to intercept him, shouting something that Stavros couldn't make out over the rush of blood in his own ears, but the boy didn't stop; he leaped to the rail, and off into the darkness, vanishing without a splash, without anything to mark his passage.
The black wave began to shrink, to recede.
Cully shook his head, and turned to Gray and Bear. "Stay—I can't let him go alone."
"No," Gray said. "We have our own—"
There was no preliminary, no warning. One moment, Gray was standing between Cully and the for'ard railing, the two of them still dwarfed by the black wall of water, and the next Gray had fallen to his knees, bleeding from his nose, clutching at his crotch.
"Take care of him, Bear," Cully said, not looking back. "Don't follow. Be sensible. I've always loved you for your good sense."
"Father Cully—no."
But he was already gone, vanished into the black wall, just as the boy had.
Gray struggled to get to his feet, but fell back to the deck. "Bear, help me." His words came out in a croaking shout, horrible to hear. "I'm not . . ." He gasped for breath. "I'm not going to—I can't let him die without me at his side, any more than I could—throw me through, please, Bear, please. Please don't make me beg—no, no, I don't mind begging, Bear, just do it." He forced himself up to his knees. "Please, Bear. There's no time, there's no time at all."
Moving far more gracefully than a man his size had any business doing, Bear scooped up Gray, and threw him over his shoulder. "As you wish, Gray."
"No, Bear, not you. No, please."
"Don't be silly, Gray," he said, as with the weakly struggling Gray on his shoulder, he struggled up to a precarious perch on the bow rail, and leaped into the darkness.
Fotheringay had not just been standing there—he had donned his backpack, belted on his sword and dagger, and retrieved his curiously short boarding pike.
He gave a quick glance at the rapidly diminishing wall of water.
"Who's with me?" he shouted. His brow was furrowed—Fotheringay didn't understand what was going on any more than anybody else did. The only thing he knew was that the knights had leaped into the dark wall.
To what purpose? Stavros didn't believe for a moment that the marine sergeant knew any better than Stavros did, but . . .
Stavros had thought the wizard had stood motionless while it all went on, but he had obviously been mistaken—Sigerson had somehow managed to get into his robes. The hems fluttered in the wind, and the tip of the wand clutched with surprising delicacy in his long fingers sparkled against the receding darkness of the wall of water behind him.
"If it will be done, Sergeant, it had best be done quickly," he said.
And then, just like the others: the wizard, his manservant, and the sergeant vanished into the shrinking blackness.
Well, it was obvious what Stavros Kechiroski would do under such circumstances: he'd simply sigh with relief as the wall of water continued to recede rather than smashing the ship, and be as puzzled and frightened and confused as anybody else.
Nissim al-Furat, on the other hand, was of the opinion that whatever was going on on the other side of that diminishing wall of water was probably of greater importance to the Dar al-Islam in general, and the hay'atal-amr bilma`ruf wa al-nahi `an al-munkar in particular, than whatever Nissim would be able to discover from whatever expedition—if there was to be one, now—on the shore here.
Of course, the problem would be in reporting whatever that something of interest was, should he live through this. Why would Stavros Kechiroski do such a thing?
Well, he'd just have to think up a good story, later.
If there was a later.