3Z

3Z

The sailors rested on the shores of the Upper Sea, waiting, they were told, for a white ship to come and take them further south to an unknown destiny. The eloah named Chemah it was who spoke of the dead mariners, but he refused to speak of their final fate, not to his audience in Rumbek and not to the unfortunate sailors themselves. The dead were told only, 'Great gifts are sweeter when they are but revealed in their fulfillment unspoiled by hasty tidings.'

"Within twenty years every member of Captain Skulldaggers's dead but reborn crew passed over the westernmost of the Upper Seas to the south, and he alone remained standing at the edge of the Southern Ice.

"Skulldagger has attained a form of immortality through infamy, and never a day passes but that his name is spoken aloud by someone below, even as I have done today. Yet more often than not his name is spoken with a shudder, as the story of the Will O' The Wisp is told again to every new generation.

"I tell you all these things not that you should be fearless in the face of your own death, which indeed is truly nothing to be feared, but that you may know what you must do, presently, when each one of you find yourselves resurrected and standing the brink of the Ice."

When those words were spoken Marsayas drew out a weapon and thrust forth with a cruel knife that was more like a sharpened pipe with four twisting edges. The blade punched through Lael's ribs to core out his heart.

As though by a pre-arranged signal the six other yeng of House of Larund withdrew identical weapons and made to assail the men of Lael's little band of nomads. But immediately they grew dismayed to find the little humans, both men and women, were ready to defend themselves.