The Mark of Ran Read Free Page A

moored fore and aft to great boulders while the sea foamed four fathoms astern in impotent rage and a northwesterly gale shrieked about the sea cliffs. The
Gannet
was no light craft, and for perhaps the first time Rol realized just how strong Morin was. The big man grasped her bowline and hauled her up the shingle by main force. Rol had to shout at him to slow down, as the stones had begun to rasp splinters off her keel and bottom timbers to expose the white wood.
    He examined the damage while Morin stood by rubbing his palms together in contrition. “I hurt
Gannet
?”
    “No great problem, I think. A spot of pitch here and there will cover it. You go on home. It’s getting dark anyway. The pitch pot is down in the hold. I’ll root it out and bring it back with me. We’ll never get a fire started here.”
    Morin nodded obediently. He ran one huge hand over
Gannet’
s gunwale apologetically, and then turned to put the screaming wind at his back and begin the climb back up out of the cove to Eyrie.
    The hold was dark and evil-smelling and Rol located the sticky pitch pot by touch alone. A crab scuttled out from under his questing fingers and the accumulated miasma of a million netted fish tempted his gorge to rise. He clambered out into the storm-tossed air with relief, glad of the clean howl of the wind.
    And stopped as he caught sight of the figure leaning casually against
Gannet
’s sternpost.
    A small man dressed in odd, shimmering gray garments the like of which Rol had never seen before. Grandfather had described such material, though, or something like it. Fishpelt, the skin of a semilegendary deep-sea creature. The man was dark and bearded, and he stared out to sea as though this were his own boat he was leaning against and he was contemplating her proper element. Rol froze, the pitch pot swinging heavy in his hand.
    “There will be a good haul of drift in the morning,” the man said. His voice was light, yet it carried over the wind effortlessly, as though made way for. “The Banks are on the move; there will be men drowned by sunrise.” He turned and smiled, and Rol saw that his eyes were the color of the wind-sped waves he had been watching, cold as a night on the Winterpack.
    “You have hauled up your craft in good time. I congratulate you.”
    Rol found his voice, and straightened so that he was looking down on the stranger from the height of
Gannet
’s tilting deck. “Ran is greedy for ships. They are his playthings. You have to keep them out of his reach.”
    One black brow rose, amused. “And who told you that, I wonder?”
    “My grandfather. He was at sea all his life.”
    “Hard-won wisdom. He is right, your grandfather. But Ran is not an evil god. Merely capricious.”
    Rol dropped from the boat down onto the wet shingle. He was taller than the stranger, and a good deal broader, but there was something intimidating about the man.
    “You are from Driol, along the coast?” he asked politely.
    “No.” The stranger did not elaborate, but studied Rol with an appraising air. “You are a long way from home, young Ordiseyn, and I see ten million waves yet to roll under your keel. Many is the green sea that you will go over, and in the end many a green sea will go over you; but not yet.”
    “My name is Cortishane,” Rol said, somewhat alarmed to find that he was talking to a babbling lunatic. He backed away, weighing the pitch pot in his fist and calculating the distance to the man’s head. The dirk in his bootleg seemed suddenly too far from his fingers.
    The stranger grinned, a gesture that transformed his countenance into something bright and feral.
    “Old Ardisan has been discreet,” he said in a low voice that the storm should have rendered inaudible. “Perhaps too much so. Listen here. There is a dead city in the delta of the Vosk. It was named after you, and you will go there one day. When you do, I shall be waiting.” He raised his head to stare at the black cloud that towered over