Chapter 1 Part 1

DARKWIND
BY
LOGAN MIZAR

Part 3
The Price of Power

THE ISLAND

It took the better part of the day for them to cover the ground between the strange mountain and the equally bizarre sea. They had very little sense of time since there were no suns visible for them to gauge the day's passing. In fact when night approached, it came upon them very suddenly. The light grew dim until they were in pitch-black darkness with only the sound of the breaking waves of the sea to cut the darkness. Just as in the daytime, the sky was unbroken and showed neither moons nor stars.

A piece of driftwood was procured and applied to the efforts of Avery's flint and steel. Fortunately no pain accompanied the illumination, though everyone winced in anticipation as the light burst forth from the pyre. By the light of the torch, a proper campfire was built.

They sat about talking until late and listened to the soft roar of the surf. Avery was disturbed that he could not detect any wild animals in abundance. He commented that occasionally he would hear something, but it was very infrequent. Armegon recalled that they had not seen any birds or any signs of wildlife as yet. Calista informed them that she had noticed a butterfly earlier while they were walking, so there had to be something alive in the area. They spoke further on the subject for some time until finally they turned in leaving Avery and Ruk to share the night watch duties.

The next morning they woke to the gray light of day. Once again there was no sun nor was there any clue as to which direction the light was coming from. Avery and Ruk also reported that throughout the night the temperature had not changed, and Avery suspected that there was no sun at all to begin with.

"Life can’t exist without solar activity," Ultrecht argued.

"It would appear that in this case it does," Armegon pointed out.

"It’s possible the light is second hand," Ultrecht hypothesized. "If instead of being a gateway, we’re actually inside the gem, then the light may be sunlight from the outside. Since the gem was in a cavern, that would explain why we don't get any direct sunlight."

"You're probably right," Avery agreed. "That would also explain the thermal stability."

"The what?" Calista asked.

"Why the temperature stayed the same last night," Armegon answered. "Normally at night when the suns' light is removed, the temperature drops. During the day, the suns warm the air and the temperature rises again. That doesn't happen here."

"Do you suspect a heat source nearby?" Ultrecht asked.

"I don't think it’s as complex as that," Avery said. "If we are inside a gemstone, and the gemstone is in that cave, that would explain the light and the temperature. Caves tend to remain the same temperature with very little variance."

"That’s sort of funny," Ultrecht noted.

"What?" Armegon asked.

"The suggestion that we’re all in a cave and perceiving light and temperature from the outside, reminds me of that fellow we met about two hundred years ago. What was his name? Play-do?"

"No," Armegon reminded him, "Platoe, I think."

"In any event it would seem that climate won't be any concern," Avery decided.
Ruk waded out to his ankles in the running water of a stream which cascaded gently down a rise or rocks to empty into the sea nearby. He washed his hands then stuck a hand to his lips. "Well," he announced, "there won't be any problems with water. This sea is fresh water."

Avery sniffed the air. "There’s smoke from that direction," he pointed along the shore. "I suppose we should get going."

They followed the shoreline for a few hours until they rounded a bend at the mouth of a small river and located the source of the smoke. A collection of small cottages clustered on one shore was the only indication they had seen of any life at all.

As they approached, a crowd of about a dozen people gathered to meet them at the edge of town. Since they displayed no sign of aggression, It was decided to meet them head on. The five travelers confidently marched right up to the place's residents.

The townsfolk was a mixed collection of men and women, all of which were in their advanced years. One, a bent old man with a long snowy beard leaned heavily on a cane as he stepped shakily forward. "Breddas coni frothetyr?"

Armegon bowed. "I’m afraid my companions don’t speak your language," he said. "And while I can understand your words, I can’t reply either."

The old man looked puzzled and glanced to his left at a woman who though younger, was still fairly old by human standards.

"I, speak," she replied. "You, please forgive. It, long has been."

Armegon nodded. "I can understand your speech."

The woman translated for her people then turned back. "We, question give. You, from where come?"

Armegon pointed to the now distant mountain rising over the scattered trees and grass covered sand dunes. The people followed his gesture. On seeing their point of origin, the people muttered among themselves.

"You, arrivals new are?" the woman asked.

"Yes, Armegon confirmed.

"We, welcome extend. We, sympathies offer. We, help offer."

"Sympathies," Ultrecht asked questioningly

Armegon asked for clarification. "Why do you offer sympathy."

The old woman offered her hand. Armegon took it and she squeezed reassuringly. "It, hard is," she said. "Prisoners new, the difficulty adjust. Prisoners new, no escape discover soon."

"We’re not prisoners," Armegon told her.

The woman's eyes widened and she anxiously translated his statement. The people listened and grew very excited at the news. The old man who apparently was their leader asked a question to Armegon.

"He asked if the gods did not imprison us here, why we have come." Armegon told them.

"Tell them we’ve come to find the green unicorn and free him." Ultrecht replied.

The woman listened to Ultrecht and smiled. She translated to the others. They laughed. "You, a task impossible seek," she told them.

"We don’t think it’s impossible," Armegon objected.

"Comers new, escape believe always."

"We’ll try anyway," Armegon said.

"You, rest and food we offer before go," the woman said as she gestured to a cottage.

Armegon bowed to her and the old man as well. They led the way and Armegon followed motioning his companions to follow too. Ultrecht commented on the woman's strange speech as they followed, and Armegon told them that she possessed a talent similar to his own, but that even though she knew their words, she did not know their grammatical forms. He told them that she was using her own form of sentence structure.

Calista found that after a while, she could understand the broken speech quite easily. Speaking it, however was a different story entirely, and whenever someone tried, the woman became confused. They listened to the woman who had apparently been assigned as their liaison for the duration of their stay.

Armegon and she--her name was Marta--spoke at some length. They made some startling discoveries. Probably the most important discovery was that the inhabitants of the village were gods. Well, not precisely gods, but apparently from what Armegon could gather, the people were the descendants of the race that had overthrown the Creator, except that their ancestors had refused to take part in the action and had been imprisoned as traitors.

They also learned that as they suspected, there was no sun, moon, or stars. They were told that neither was there any true death. The woman had stated that even in death they were prisoners. She explained that in order for there to be a death, there had to be birth.

She told them that in the beginning they had tried to have children, but that all the children were stillborn. It was not unless one of their people took his or her own life at the moment of birth that a living child could be born. It was the same throughout the realm. No one could die except by his or her own hand, and only if a birth was occurring at the same time.

The woman told them that her own father and mother had given their lives after she had come of age so that another set of couples could have a children. Over the eons, it had become a custom that when one grew old, and no longer could serve the colony, that person took his life at a birthing ceremony. That person was then known as the soul-father or soul-mother of the newborn. She told them that her own soul-father had been named Greff. She had a portrait of him in her own room along with the portrait of her parents. It seemed that each child had three parents.

They were also told that the same was true with life elsewhere in the world. The fruit of trees, though edible, was barren unless a tree itself was cut down. There were no animals of prey, but the ecological balance was maintained by the same reincarnation cycle.

Marta told them that there were places where one could be killed, but they were very remote, and easy to identify and avoid. She told them that the mountain where they had come from and four other places she called the Towers were close enough to the other world that death could occur there.

When asked about the green unicorn, Marta told them that the creature lived a sad and lonely life on an island in the Dead Lake. The Dead Lake, she told them was a body of water that burned the flesh. She told them that no one had died from the lake's waters, but the agony of the waters made experimenting with it undesirable.

"So what’ve we learned?" Ultrecht asked later when they were alone. "We know that we’re in a prison. We know that the green unicorn lives on an island in a weird lake. We know that death is virtually unknown except where it is specifically planned. And we know that escape is very difficult if possible at all."

"We know that the other prisoners were of the same race as the gods, and that they were imprisoned for opposing the rebellion against the Creator," Armegon added. "And, we know that there are also some places called the Towers where death is possible due to the closeness to the other world."

"That about sums it up," Ruk said.

"So where do we go from here?" Calista asked.

"Well," Avery said. "Tomorrow, if we can get some directions, I recommend we try to reach the island where the unicorn is imprisoned. No matter what else, that’s our primary goal. I see no reason to prolong it."

"We can do that first," Armegon said. "But succeed or not we also have to get out of here. These people are sure that escape is impossible. That implies that they’ve made the attempt and failed. I want to hear more about their attempts."

"Shouldn't we find the unicorn first?" Calista asked.

"No," Armegon said. "It won't take long to learn what we need to know." He did not want to say that there was still a possibility that they would not find the unicorn. "Besides, after we find the unicorn we don’t want to have to come back here to learn how to escape."

Calista accepted that explanation, but still was impatient to get on with the journey. Even the next morning, while Avery and Armegon spoke with the villagers, she fidgeted with her pack. At one point, Ruk offered to help her retie the harness link to her pack, and she snapped rudely at him. Immediately she felt ashamed and apologized. The bull headed minotaan smiled and winked. He forgave her and understood her impatience.

Avery conversed until mid morning getting verbal descriptions of the geography from those villagers whom had explored various areas. The result of the interviews was a rough map of the area. Avery showed it to Ruk. He explained that without cardinal directions he had based the map on landmarks with the mountain they had arrived in at the origin of the coordinate system and the grid was laid out in days of travel. "As we get accurate distances to other landmarks," the ranger said, "we’ll be able to predict direction and range geometrically"

"That assumes that everything is Euclidean," Ultrecht pointed out.

"We’d have to travel a long way before a non-Euclidean surface would have a significant change," Avery said.

"On a planet you’re right," Ultrecht argued. "But we’re not on a planet. To the best of our knowledge we’re inside a sphere."

"Since we can’t see the horizon curving upwards," Armegon cut in, "I suggest that if we are inside a sphere the size scale is large enough not to worry about it. I think we can treat the map as planar." Ultrecht gave in and concurred.

Calista was totally lost. Ruk, having sailed a great deal over vast distances understood the problem and tried to explain it to her so that she understood it. It took him some time, but eventually she grasped the general concept.

That in itself was good, because by the time Calista was grasping elementary spherical geometry, Armegon and Ultrecht had milked the colony for as much information as they possibly could concerning previous attempts to escape. They finished around noon and after one last meal, they departed the village. Armegon spoke briefly with Marta before they left. When questioned by his peers, he replied that he had offered to take any of them who wished to escape with them. He said that if any of the people decided to try to escape, they would meet them at the central mountain when they themselves prepared their escape.

The terrain was thick brush and tall pine and cedar trees. Brambles and vines made walking difficult and the movement was slow. "Their information is somewhat sketchy," Armegon briefed the others as they traveled. "None of the present generation has tried to make an escape. The only things they could tell us is word that was passed down from their ancestors."

"We did learn one valuable, and to be honest, alarming piece of information," Ultrecht added. "There’s no magic native to this dimension. That’s why the prisoners can’t escape."

"Without magic, how do we escape?" Ruk asked.

"We didn’t say that there was no magic, but that there was no native magic," Armegon repeated. "There’s imported magic. The light that we see every day is light from the outer world. That means that light or prismatic magic is imported every day."

"Does that mean we can use magic only during the day?" Avery asked.

"We can only use prismatic magic during the day," Ultrecht said, "if at all. The light may be too diffuse to harness as it is." That was his field of expertise. "I think, however, that at night we might be able to use shadow magic, but in this place I have seen very little to suggest that anything is going to work normally. We may be without magic totally."

"That cuts our magical ability down a great deal. As things stand, only Ultrecht can work magic, and even that is iffy" Armegon told them. "I think that Avery's healing power will still work, its source is himself, but it probably won't be needed. In a land where it’s difficult to die, injury isn’t very likely to be critical, especially if there are no beasts of prey."

"What about magical items?" Calista asked.

"That’s a good question," Ultrecht said. "I would guess that most magic items no longer work." He glanced critically at Avery. "That sword, on the other hand, may very well still work. I can’t be sure."

Avery reached over his shoulder and touched the grip lightly. His eyes closed for a moment then reopened. "We still have a magic weapon," he informed them. Avery smiled sheepishly. "The sword is somewhat insulted that we should ask."

"Then we’re not defenseless," Armegon said. "For where we must go to escape we’ll need every advantage."

"So, again, how do we escape?" Ruk asked.

"From what I gathered," Armegon explained, "The central mountain where we arrived is the door. That room with the chests is the lock, and the contents of the chests are the keys, but that’s not all. We have the door, lock, and key, but not the doorway. The Towers must open the portal. Apparently there are guardians in the Towers who we must ask of permission to depart. If we can convince all four guardians in all four Towers, then the portal will open and we may use the door."

"That’s deep," Avery muttered as he pushed a low hanging branch out of his way.
Calista had a question. "How does the door work without magic?"

"You know I asked the same question?" Armegon replied. "Apparently the Towers are close enough to the other world to draw prismatic magic from it. Then somehow they open the door."

"Is there any order in which we must visit the Towers?" Ruk wondered.

"Not that I know of," Ultrecht answered. "I don’t see any reason why that would be important though." When no further questions about the portal came, Ultrecht decided to change the subject.

"How far away is the Dead Lake," he asked.
Avery waded through a clump of tall grass. "I’d say about two days of walking. The direction and distances were given from memory so I can’t vouch for their accuracy."

Ruk wiped his brow. He was by far the strongest and had insisted on carrying the heaviest load. That included most of Calista's own pack. The minotaan and young woman had become good friends.

When the darkness came, they snuggled down in the night with a small fire. The dead wood was easily located. It was a matter of searching for new growth. The balance of death made some things easy it seemed.

That night they slept soundly. Though they had been told that there were no beasts of prey, Avery was adamant on setting watches. He insisted that it was better to be safe than sorry. The caution was misplaced as the night passed uneventfully, but Avery felt it was necessary nonetheless.

The next three days were almost identical to the first. When they finally arrived at the bare shore of a calm lake, they knew instantly where they were. The lake was obviously the aptly named Dead Lake as the shoreline was devoid of any vegetation and the water was still and motionless. On the horizon, the faint outline of a landmass was visible. Ancient trees that had once lived near the edge of the water were nothing more than dead wood bleached bone white.

It was no wonder that the vegetation was so thick in the forest near the shores. So many trees were begging to die as the lake consumed them that almost every seed that fell to the ground was assured of germination.

"It looks almost like a graveyard," Ruk observed sadly. "What kind of lake is this?"

"They told us that the water burned the flesh," Armegon recalled. "But I don’t see any flame."

Avery knelt and examined the water more closely. "Why don't you go for a little swim and solve this riddle for us," he asked.

"Very funny," Armegon shot back. "Seriously, I’d like to know more about this lake before we try to travel across its waters."

Avery shrugged his shoulders walked back to the forest edge, and snapped a limb from a low hanging branch of a nearby tree. He walked back to the water and thrust the leafy part of the branch into the water.

The water began to boil around the foliage. Bubbles and gasses erupted from the shallow depths. Avery soon withdrew the limb and examined the damage. The leaves were gone completely and the bark had been stripped. "Acid," he said. "Not very strong, but effective."

"I think a swim is out of the question, then," Armegon muttered. "If we’re to build a raft, it’ll have to be one that acid won't eat through."

"This’s going to be a good one," Ultrecht observed. "We have to construct a vessel that will stand up to the lake's acid. Unfortunately our magic is limited, and we have only wood to work with."

"Any ideas?" Armegon asked.

Ultrecht did not answer, but rummaged through his pack for a moment before drawing forth a wand with a blue tip. He glared unappreciatively as Armegon and Avery made exaggerated attempts to hide in the forest. "Very funny," he said unhumored.

The mage then turned back and faced the lake. With everyone else to his back, Ultrecht made a grand wave with the wand. "Galashia!" he commanded. Nothing happened.

Avery applauded. "I see you finally got control of that thing."

Ultrecht kicked dirt at the obnoxious ranger. "It was worth a try," he said. "An ice float would’ve provided its own protection against the acid as it melted."

"Don't listen to him," Armegon said to the mage. "It was a very good idea."

"And we really didn't know if the wand would work or not," Ultrecht added. "So there!"

"Okay, okay," Avery gave in. "It was a good idea. I just keep remembering the last time I saw you use a wand." He shivered. "We barely escaped that thing before it killed us all."

Ultrecht was getting cynical. "Oh those butterflies were so bloodthirsty weren't they?"

"I was not referring to the butterflies nor the grass that sprung up under our feet. I was referring to the fireball that backlashed off the ice wall that came out immediately before it and set that wand off. When that wand exploded we almost lost Norwind and Keeneye both."

While Avery and Ultrecht bickered, Armegon explained to Calista and Ruk that magic wands carried magical charges and that when a wand is damaged, the charges all explode. That was the case that Avery was referring to. A wand Ultrecht had made that carried a multitude of different spells got out of control during an adventure and began spitting out spells at random. Unfortunately at one point it created a wall of ice and followed that with a flame blast that rebounded and damaged the wand. "It was a pity too," Armegon said sadly. "That wand was truly a wonder."

As the argument died down, Armegon added: "Don't let it worry you. Ever since then, we’ve all been giving Ultrecht a hard when he pulls a wand out of his pack. For the most part they are safe to use."

"Which still leaves us without a boat," Ultrecht finished the argument.

"We can't use wood," Armegon said kicking a beached piece of acid stripped driftwood. The limb, about four inches thick shattered. "Even what the acid doesn't eat is too brittle to support any weight."

"Well we can't fly," Calista said. Then, she considered who she was traveling with, "can we?"

Armegon shook his head. "Not without magic," he told her.

"How about science then?" Ultrecht offered.

"What do you have in mind?" Avery asked.

"Hang gliders," the mage returned hopefully.

"Hey," Armegon interjected excitedly. "Now that’s an idea!"

Avery was less optimistic. "It’s a good idea, but I’m not very sure of it. We’d need thermal convection zones to lift us up or we’d be in for a long glide downwards. With the temperature so steady in this world, and no sun to power a weather system, I don't think our chances of gliding are very promising."

"He's right," Armegon agreed reluctantly. "That island’s much too far out in the lake to glide there." He stared out across the water. "I wonder if there’s a way to fashion a ceramic hull?"

"Without a means of purifying the mud, the acid would eat right through," Ultrecht answered.

Ruk kicked at the dried mud. He picked up a chunk of the material and skipped it out over the water. "I wonder," the minotaan began, "what holds the lake in?"

"What?" Armegon asked, his head quickly coming up from the hung position of despair it had slumped in.

"Well if this lake is made of acid," Ruk explained, "I wonder why it doesn't just eat its way down through the ground?"

"Now that’s a good question," Avery agreed.

"Possibly," Ultrecht said as he dug down through the mud. After a few moments he reached the water table. "Sand," he announced. "A very fine grained sand. That’s why the lake stays where it is. Acids react very slowly and sometimes not at all with silicon."

"Sand won't make a ceramic hull will it," Calista asked.

"I don't think it will," Ultrecht said. "It might if we had the right resources, but we don't"

"Do you think we might make it across the water if we build a raft of freshly cut wood?" Ruk asked.

"I don't think the wood’ll last that long," Armegon said remembering Avery's demonstration with the green branch.

"Then can we speed up the raft?" Calista asked.

"A sail might do the trick," Ruk said, "but there’s no wind."

"Then how about coating the raft with dried mud?" Calista suggested. "Something has to work."

Armegon stared at Calista for a moment. "What did you say?"

"I said, 'something has to work'," she repeated.

"No," Armegon said waving his hands frantically. "What did you say before that?"

"Can we speed up the raft?" Calista asked confused.

"No, no. I mean after that."

"What you mean the mud?" Calista wondered what Armegon was trying to get at.

"Yes, what was it that you said?"

Calista paused, unsure of what she had said. "I asked if we could cover the raft with mud to protect it."

"No you didn't," Armegon said triumphantly. "You didn’t say 'cover the raft', you said 'coat the raft'."

"What’re you getting at, Armegon?" Ultrecht asked.

"We can put a coating on the raft base that will slow down or maybe even stop the acid from eating the wood," Armegon said excitedly.

"What kind of coating do you have in mind?" Ultrecht asked.

"Avery," Armegon asked exhilarated, "we need rubber, wax, something, anything that might slow the acidic reaction long enough to make the crossing."

Avery rubbed his chin. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I didn't really notice any plant life that we could extract...wait! There were some pines back there a short distance. We could coat the raft bottom with pine tar and adhease a layer of sand to the tar. That might slow the reaction enough for us to get across."

With renewed hope, they constructed a small raft of rope and green boughs. Avery and Calista made some cat-faces on a stand of slash and loblolly pines and the next morning collected a small bowl of tar. They coated the bottom of their test raft with the sap and set the vessel afloat about halfway through the day.

Their elation, however, was short lived as the telltale bubbles of a chemical reaction began to rise after about an hour and a half. Still, the setback was not a total loss. Though they had managed to extend the travel time across the water to one and a half hours, they would need at least two hours by Avery and Ruk's estimation to get to the island. That was over an hour and fifteen minutes more than they had before.

"If only we could speed the raft up some," Avery said. He had been so sure that the sap coating would buy them enough time to cross. "We don't need much speed now, just enough to make up the other half hour."

"We could cut oars," Armegon suggested.

"No," Ruk said. "Our estimation of two hours assumes we are using oars already."

They moped about the camp for the rest of the day discussing possibilities. They dismissed elaborate ideas left and right. Everything from a paddle wheel to poling with long coated staffs was considered. When morning came they were no closer to a solution than they were the night before.

Calista was the first to lose her temper. She jumped up, grabbed a brittle piece of driftwood and started attacking everything on sight. Armegon and Ruk settled her down while carefully staying out of range of the swinging stick. When they got her calmed down she spent a good hour weeping on Armegon's shoulder. He assured her that they were not thwarted, just delayed.

Avery tossed another small stick into the water. Puzzled, he wondered allowed to Ultrecht, "what kind of acid do you think this is?"

The mage frowned. "That should not be too difficult to narrow down," he replied. "Dip a bowl of the stuff."

Avery complied with the request and Ultrecht dug through a set of pouches. The mage drew forth a silver coin. He affixed it to the fork of a small acid bleached twig. "Here," he told Avery. "Dip a stick into the acid and shake a few drops on this coin."

Avery tipped the small ceramic bowl and dipped the twig into the acid. Then he quickly shook a few drops onto the coin. Instantly the acid bubbled with a vengeance. A moment later the reaction died down and Ultrecht tilted the twig back slightly so that the remaining liquid ran down the twig. He dropped the twig before the liquid reached his hand.

"How interesting," Ultrecht said as he observed the forked stick. Where the liquid had touched the bleached twig, the wood had turned a deep brown. "I would guess that we have nitric acid in that lake. When it reacted with the silver coin, it left silver nitrate in its wake." The mage looked around. "Of course that is just a guess."

Armegon took interest in the little experiment. "Hey, Ultrecht. How much silver do you have?"

"Not really very much without the magic I need to open my money pouch," he responded. "Why?"

"Oh, it is nothing really. It is just that the reaction you just described gives off a lot of hydrogen."

"So?"

"Well I thought if we could get some of that in a bladder and pressurize it we could make a..."

"Rocket?" Ultrecht laughed. "You have to admit that idea has class!"

"It’d also give us some additional speed on the water," Armegon chuckled. "That's okay, we’ll do without. We obviously don't have enough silver to do that."

"Ya gotta admit," Avery shook his head in wonder. "That really was a good idea."

"What’s a rocket?" Calista asked.

Ultrecht took Calista aside and began to explain. He started by demonstrating that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. "If you travel to different worlds, you’ll find the same thing hold true almost always. Although you’ll also find many different people claiming to have been the first to realize it. Who said it is not important. What it says is."

Finally after about fifteen minutes of discussion, Ultrecht was comfortable that Calista understood the concept, at least in theory. He drew some diagrams in the sand with a stick showing her how the rocket would work, and she seemed to grasp the device's function.

"And that’s not magic?" she asked.

Ultrecht sighed. "Well to someone who does not know, it might appear to be magic. But, you yourself could do this and wouldn’t need any special charms or incantations to do so. It’s simply a matter of knowledge."

Calista nodded. She understood--at least she thought she did. That was good enough for Ultrecht. He tossed the stick out into the lake and turned back to see if the others had come up with an idea.

"Too bad we can't shrink ourselves," Calista muttered. "Then we could ride across the water on that little stick."

Ultrecht glanced absently back at the stick he had tossed and an inspiration came. He snapped his fingers and his face lit up. "Got it," he announced.

The others looked at him expectantly. "Well what is it, man!" Armegon said impatiently. "Don't keep us in the dark."

"Ruk," Ultrecht said excitedly. "When you and Avery calculated the time it would take to row across the lake, what kind of vessel did you use?"

The minotaan frowned. His ears wiggled slightly. "We used a raft," he replied. "There’s no evidence of any trees large enough to build a canoe or dugout."

"What about a catamaran?"

The minotaan's eyes widened, as did Armegon and Avery's. "Yes!" Armegon shouted. "That would reduce the drag drastically and if we streamlined the pontoons we can speed up the raft even more."

They set to work. The wood was cut with the aid of Ruk's big ax. The logs were sized and trimmed by sword and dagger. By the end of the day, the platform that they would have to ride on was completed. Calista and Avery collected another bucket of pine tar overnight, and the next day they constructed the raft's pontoons. They too were trimmed, and were set to ride fairly deeply through the water. Ruk explained to Calista when she asked, that the deeper the pontoons were in the water the more stable the boat would be. By nightfall of that day, the raft was entirely complete and by morning three bucket loads of pine tar had been layered to the entire underside of the raft and especially to the pontoons and struts.

The raft looked like a huge sled with tree trunks, perhaps seven inches in diameter for runners. The struts had taken the most work. Avery had located some young strong hickory trees, cut them down and whittled the wood into streamlined supports for the pontoons.

They took a pair of long sturdy poles, also tarred, and after boarding their vessel they poled out into the water deep enough for the raft to float freely. Then under Ruk's direction, the broke set out the tarred oars and Avery and Ruk began to stroke as Armegon steered.

The trip lasted about one and a quarter hours. There was a sigh of relief when the vessel's pontoons hit bottom as they approached the island. Avery and Ruk poled the raft across the bottom as far as they could. Then Avery attached the poles to his feet and walked to the shore via the stilts carrying a rope with him. When he reached the shore, he tossed one end of the rope to the raft where he and Ruk tugged the raft up onto the dry sand.

"Well," Ultrecht said as he stretched his legs on the beach, "we're here.” He stared back across the water the way they had come. “I hate to point this out, but has it occurred to anyone that we will have to go back?"

They had brought no extra tar and the layer they had put on the raft only had about fifteen minutes worth of protection left. "Too late to worry with that now," Armegon said. "We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it."

"What bridge?" Calista asked looking around. Surely if there had been a bridge they would have used it!

Once again Calista concluded that she had not been privy to a private joke. She was getting annoyed at them for that. The only consolation was that Ruk had also looked for the bridge. Minotaan and young woman could only shrug at each other.