Eldest: Book Two (The Inheritance cycle 2)

The sloops continued to draw closer to the Dragon Wing over the course of the day. Roran watched their progress whenever he could, concerned that they would get near enough to attack before the Dragon Wing reached the Eye. Still, Uthar seemed able to outrun them, at least for a little while longer.

At Uthar’s orders, Roran and the other villagers worked to tidy up the ship after the storm and prepare for the ordeal that was to come. Their work ended at nightfall, when they extinguished every light on board in an attempt to confuse their pursuers as to the Dragon Wing’s heading. The ruse succeeded in part, for when the sun rose, Roran saw that the sloops had fallen back to the northwest another mile or so, though they soon made up the lost distance.

Late that morning, Roran climbed the mainmast and pulled himself up into the crow’s nest a hundred and thirty feet above the deck, so high that the men below appeared no larger than his little finger. The water and sky seemed to rock perilously about him as the Dragon Wing heeled from side to side.

Taking out the spyglass he had brought with him, Roran put it to his eye and adjusted it until the sloops came into focus not four miles astern and approaching faster than he would have liked. They must have realized what we intend to do, he thought. Sweeping the glass around, he searched the ocean for any sign of the Boar’s Eye. He stopped as he descried a great disk of foam the size of an island, gyrating from north to east. We’re late, he thought, a pit in his stomach. High tide had already passed and the Boar’s Eye was gathering in speed and strength as the ocean withdrew from land. Roran trained the glass over the edge of the crow’s nest and saw that the knotted rope Uthar had tied to the starboard side of the stern—to detect when they entered the pull of the whirlpool—now floated alongside the Dragon Wing instead of trailing behind as was usual. The one thing in their favor was that they were sailing with the Eye’s current and not against it. If it had been the other way around, they would have had no choice but to wait until the tide turned.

Below, Roran heard Uthar shout for the villagers to man the oars. A moment later, the Dragon Wing sprouted two rows of poles along each side, making the ship look like nothing more than a giant water strider. At the beat of an ox-hide drum, accompanied by Bonden’s rhythmic chant as he set the tempo, the oars arched forward, dipped into the sea of green, and swept back across the surface of the water, leaving white streaks of bubbles in their wake. The Dragon Wing accelerated quickly, now moving faster than the sloops, which were still outside the Eye’s influence.

Roran watched with horrified fascination the play that unfolded around him. The essential plot element, the crux upon which the outcome depended, was time. Though they were late, was the Dragon Wing, with its oars and sails combined, fast enough to traverse the Eye? And could the sloops—which had deployed their own oars now—narrow the gap between them and the Dragon Wing enough to ensure their own survival? He could not tell. The pounding drum measured out the minutes; Roran was acutely aware of each moment as it trickled by.

He was surprised when an arm reached over the edge of the basket and Baldor’s face appeared, looking up at him. “Give me a hand, won’t you? I feel like I’m about to fall.”

Bracing himself, Roran helped Baldor into the basket. Baldor handed Roran a biscuit and a dried apple and said, “Thought you might like some lunch.” With a nod of thanks, Roran tore into the biscuit and resumed gazing through the spyglass. When Baldor asked, “Can you see the Eye?” Roran passed him the glass and concentrated on eating.

Over the next half hour, the foam disk increased the speed of its revolutions until it spun like a top. The water around the foam bulged and began to rise, while the foam itself sank from view into the bottom of a gigantic pit that continued to deepen and enlarge. The air over the vortex filled with a cyclone of twisting mist, and from the ebony throat of the abyss came a tortured howl like the cries of an injured wolf.

The speed with which the Boar’s Eye formed amazed Roran. “You’d better go tell Uthar,” he said.

Baldor climbed out of the nest. “Tie yourself to the mast or you may get thrown off.”

“I will.”

Roran left his arms free when he secured himself, making sure that, if needed, he could reach his belt knife to cut himself free. Anxiety filled him as he surveyed the situation. The Dragon Wing was but a mile past the median of the Eye, the sloops were but two miles behind her, and the Eye itself was quickly building toward its full fury. Worse, disrupted by the whirlpool, the wind sputtered and gasped, blowing first from one direction and then the other. The sails billowed for a moment, then fell slack, then filled again as the confused wind swirled about the ship.

Perhaps Uthar was right, thought Roran. Perhaps I’ve gone too far and pitted myself against an opponent that cannot be overcome by sheer determination. Perhaps I am sending the villagers to their deaths. The forces of nature were immune to intimidation.

The gaping center of the Boar’s Eye was now almost nine and a half miles in circumference, and how many fathoms deep no one could say, except for those who had been trapped within it. The sides of the Eye slanted inward at a forty-five-degree angle; they were striated with shallow grooves, like wet clay being molded on a potter’s wheel. The bass howl grew louder, until it seemed to Roran that the entire world must crumble to pieces from the intensity of the vibrations. A glorious rainbow emerged from the mist over the whirling chasm.

The current moved faster than ever, driving the Dragon Wing at a breakneck pace as it whipped around the rim of the whirlpool and making it more and more unlikely that the ship could break free at the Eye’s southern edge. So prodigious was her velocity, the Dragon Wing tilted far to the starboard, suspending Roran out over the rushing water.

Despite the Dragon Wing’s progress, the sloops continued to gain on her. The enemy ships sailed abreast less than a mile away, their oars moving in perfect accord, two fins of water flying from each prow as they plowed the ocean. Roran could not help but admire the sight.

He tucked the spyglass away in his shirt; he had no need of it now. The sloops were close enough for the naked eye, while the whirlpool was increasingly obscured by the clouds of white vapor thrown off the lip of the funnel. As it was pulled into the deep, the vapor formed a spiral lens over the gulf, mimicking the whirlpool’s appearance.

Then the Dragon Wing tacked port, diverging from the current in Uthar’s bid for the open sea. The keel chattered across the puckered water, and the ship’s speed dropped in half as the Dragon Wing fought the deadly embrace of the Boar’s Eye. A shudder ran up the mast, jarring Roran’s teeth, and the crow’s nest swung in the new direction, making him giddy with vertigo.

Fear gripped Roran when they continued to slow. He slashed off his bindings and—with reckless disregard for his own safety—swung himself over the edge of the basket, grabbed the ropes underneath, and shinnied down the rigging so quickly that he lost his grip once and fell several feet before he could catch himself. He jumped to the deck, ran to the fore hatchway, and descended to the first bank of oars, where he joined Baldor and Albriech on an oak pole.

They said not a word, but labored to the sound of their own desperate breathing, the frenzied beat of the drum, Bonden’s hoarse shouts, and the roar of the Boar’s Eye. Roran could feel the mighty whirlpool resisting with every stroke of the oar.

And yet their efforts could not keep the Dragon Wing from coming to a virtual standstill. We’re not going to make it, thought Roran. His back and legs burned from the exertion. His lungs stabbed. Between the drumbeats, he heard Uthar ordering the hands above deck to trim the sails to take full advantage of the fickle wind.

Two places ahead of Roran, Darmmen and Hamund surrendered their oar to Thane and Ridley, then lay in the middle of the aisle, their limbs trembling. Less than a minute later, someone else collapsed farther down the gallery and was immediately replaced by Birgit and another woman.

If we survive, thought Roran, it’ll only be because we have enough people to sustain this pace however long is necessary.

It seemed an eternity that he worked the oar in the murky, smoky room, first pushing, then pulling, doing his best to ignore the pain mounting within his body. His neck ached from hunching underneath the low ceiling. The dark wood of the pole was streaked with blood where his skin had blistered and torn. He ripped off his shirt—dropping the spyglass to the floor—wrapped the cloth around the oar, and continued rowing.

At last Roran could do no more. His legs gave way and he fell on his side, slipping across the aisle because he was so sweaty. Orval took his place. Roran lay still until his breath returned, then pushed himself onto his hands and knees and crawled to the hatchway.

Like a fever-mad drunk, he pulled himself up the ladder, swaying with the motion of the ship and often slumping against the wall to rest. When he came out on deck, he took a brief moment to appreciate the fresh air, then staggered aft to the helm, his legs threatening to cramp with every step.

“How goes it?” he gasped to Uthar, who manned the wheel.

Uthar shook his head.

Peering over the gunwale, Roran espied the three sloops perhaps a half mile away and slightly more to the west, closer to the center of the Eye. The sloops appeared motionless in relation to the Dragon Wing.

At first, as Roran watched, the positions of the four ships remained unchanged. Then he sensed a shift in the Dragon Wing’s speed, as if the ship had crossed some crucial point and the forces restraining her had diminished. It was a subtle difference and amounted to little more than a few additional feet per minute—but it was enough that the distance between the Dragon Wing and the sloops began to increase. With every stroke of the oars, the Dragon Wing gained momentum.

The sloops, however, could not overcome the whirlpool’s dreadful strength. Their oars gradually slowed until, one by one, the ships drifted backward and were drawn toward the veil of mist, beyond which waited the gyrating walls of ebony water and the gnashing rocks at the bottom of the ocean floor.

They can’t keep rowing, realized Roran. Their crews are too small and they’re too tired. He could not help but feel a pang of sympathy for the fate of the men on the sloops.

At that precise instant, an arrow sprang from the nearest sloop and burst into green flame as it raced toward the Dragon Wing. The dart must have been sustained by magic to have flown so far. It struck the mizzen sail and exploded into globules of liquid fire that stuck to whatever they touched. Within seconds, twenty small fires burned along the mizzenmast, the mizzen sail, and the deck below.

“We can’t put it out,” shouted one of the sailors with a panicked expression.

“Chop off whatever’s burning an’ throw it overboard!” roared Uthar in reply.

Unsheathing his belt knife, Roran set to work excising a dollop of green fire from the boards by his feet. Several tense minutes elapsed before the unnatural blazes were removed and it became clear that the conflagrations would not spread to the rest of the ship.

Once the cry of “All clear!” was sounded, Uthar relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. “If that was the best their magician can do, then I’d say we have nothing more to fear of him.”

“We’re going to get out of the Eye, aren’t we?” asked Roran, eager to confirm his hope.

Uthar squared his shoulders and flashed a quick grin, both proud and disbelieving. “Not quite this cycle, but we’ll be close. We won’t make real progress away from that gaping monster until the tide slacks off. Go tell Bonden to lower the tempo a bit; I don’t want them fainting at the oars if’n I can help it.”

And so it was. Roran took another shift rowing and, by the time he returned to the deck, the whirlpool was subsiding. The vortex’s ghastly howl faded into the usual noise of the wind; the water assumed a calm, flat quality that betrayed no hint of the habitual violence visited upon that location; and the contorted fog that had writhed above the abyss melted under the warm rays of the sun, leaving the air as clear as oiled glass. Of the Boar’s Eye itself—as Roran saw when he retrieved the spyglass from among the rowers—nothing remained but the selfsame disk of yellow foam rotating upon the water.

And in the center of the foam, he thought he could discern, just barely, three broken masts and a black sail floating round and round and round in an endless circle. But it might have been his imagination.

Leastways, that’s what he told himself.

Elain came up beside him, one hand resting on her swollen belly. In a small voice, she said, “We were lucky, Roran, more lucky than we had reason to expect.”

“Aye,” he agreed.