Kushiel's Chosen

a gentle sea.
    It was bright morning when it happened, the sun dazzling silver on the water. I made my way to Tormos' side with exaggerated caution, unused to the bobbing steadiness of our craft. He looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, weary beyond words.
    "Tormos," I said. My voice cracked on his name; I had lost it shouting above the pounding sea. I cleared my throat, addressing him in Illyrian. "Where are we, do you know?"
    He merely looked dully at me and shook his head.
    All around us, the sea sparkled in the sunlight. Dark blue, the water was, and deep. On deck, sailors moved slowly, straightening limbs cramped by long resistance to the storm. Glaukos' head and shoulders appeared in the opening of the hold as he hoisted our last cask of fresh water on deck. It seemed pitiably small. I felt light-headed, and could not remember when last I'd eaten.
    "Look!"
    It was Oltukh who shouted, pointing; Oltukh, who had made me necklaces of shells. We all looked and saw where he pointed, a pod of dolphins breaching the surface of the waves, sleek and grey, wearing their perpetual smiles. One spouted very near the ship, blowing a plume of spray into the air.
    Asherat-of-the-Sea, I thought, loved dolphins.
    "There." Glaukos' voice, for once quavering with age. He leaned over the railings, staring past the merry dolphins. "There, there! Don't you see it? Land!" His hand rose, trembling; I realized then that he had spoken in Hellene, reverting to the milk-tongue of his infancy, that his slave-mother had taught him. "Land!" he cried, pointing. "Land!"
    Tormos frowned, shoving sailors out of his way. He had understood the urgency, if not the words. We all jostled for position then, gazing across the waters while our torn sails flapped mildly in the calm breeze.
    There, on the horizon, lay a smudge of darkness.
    Land.
    We cheered, and we wept, and we set our sails for land. The rudder-bar had snapped and the rudder itself split in two under the dreadful force we had endured; still, we limped over the surface of the water, and the island before us loomed larger and larger. No Dobrek, this isle; no, it was vaster, its size deceptively diminished by distance. The nearer we got, the larger it grew, and what had seemed hills at its center became mountains, forest-shrouded and gilded in the bright sunlight.
    I saw Glaukos' face, the moment he recognized it. He drew a sharp breath, and awe came over his features. He was Tiberian by rearing and Illyrian by choice, but his blood was Hellene, and what he knew, he had learnt at his mother's knee.
    "It is Kriti," he said reverently. "We have come to Kriti.”
    I measured our course in my head and thought, it may be so. Pure south had we been driven, down the coast of Illyria, of mainland Hellas. Had we truly come so far, that we had reached the isle of the House of Minos? I remembered Delaunay's study, maps spread on the table, awash in late afternoon sunlight. In truth, mayhap we had.
    At Tormos' command, we followed the dolphins, and no one questioned it for superstition. Kazan came forth from the forecastle and watched with childlike interest, his face disturbingly blank. I took his arm, and steered him to a place of safety along the railing; he went unprotesting.
    We drew near enough to make out the shape of the isle, measuring some thirty-odd leagues from tip to tip. The sides were sheer and rocky but, here and there, sandy beaches beckoned. A flock of gulls skirled above us, giving out their harsh cries; young Volos, triumphantly alive, lifted his head and gave back their raucous cries. The gulls veered landward, heading for the smallest of bays, a crescent of white sand cradled betwixt horns of stone. Half-laughing and half-weeping, Tormos ordered the ship to follow.
    Deep-blue water gave way to sapphire, and our breeze died entirely. Undeterred, Tormos ordered the Illyrians to oars, and they pulled to a ragged beat as he stamped out the rhythm. Faltering yet game, ragged sails flapping emptily, we slid through the waters, until they grew shallower and turned to aquamarine.
    We had entered the horns of the harbor.
    Light-headed as I was, it took me a moment to realize that the sound I heard was mightier than the oarsmen's beat, echoing across the water. There is no mistaking that beat, once one hears it. It is measured to the pace of the mortal heart and it is measured out in bronze, eldest tool of the earth that ever humankind shaped to serve its need. I did not see, until we were well