Stalking Darkness

shirt.
    “Damnation, it’s that scar. It’s opened up again,” he whispered, touching a finger to Seregil’s chest and showing him the blood.
    Using Micum’s shaving mirror, Seregil inspected the small trickle of blood oozing from the raised outline of the scar. He could even make out the faint whorls left by the disk, and the small square mark of the hole at its center. He also caught a glimpse of his own face, looking sallow and hollow-eyed in the early light. Pulling his coat shut, he fastened the top buttons.
    “What does it mean?” Micum asked.
    “Don’t you remember what the date is today?” Seregil replied grimly.
    Micum’s jaw dropped. “By the Flame, I’d lost track being on a ship so long.”
    “The fifteenth of Lithion,” Seregil said, nodding. “If Leiteus and Nysander were right in their calculations, Rendel’s Spear should be in the sky tonight.”
    Seregil saw awe and concern mingle in his friend’s eyes as Micum took a last look at the blood on his fingers before wiping them on his coat.
    “You know I came along on this trip mostly to look out for you, don’t you?” Micum said quietly.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I just want you to know that as of now, I’m beginning to be a believer. Whatever it was that left its mark on you there, it’s working on us now. I just hope Nysander is right about Illior being the immortal who’s leading us around.”
    Seregil grasped his friend’s shoulder. “After all these years, maybe I’ll finally make an Illioran out of you.”
    “Not if it means waking up looking like you do this morning,” Micum countered.
    “Still no dreams?” Seregil asked, still puzzled by the fact that of the four of them, Micum was the only one who hadn’t had a premonition of some sort.
    Micum shrugged. “Not one. Like I’ve always told you, I do my fighting when I’m awake.”
    The mountain loomed steadily larger ahead of them as they followed the coast north through the day. From a distance it seemed to rise directly up from the sea itself, its summit lost in a mantle of cloud.
    “Pillar of the Sky, eh?” Rhal remarked, standing with Seregil and Micum at the rail that afternoon. “Well, they sure named it rightly. How in hell are you going to find this temple of yours on something that big?”
    “It’s somewhere along the water,” Seregil replied softly, rubbing unconsciously at the front of his coat; Micum had tied a wadded bit of linen over the raw circle of skin. Oddly enough, the wound hardly hurt at all.
    “Well, it’ll take some doing to put you ashore.” Rhal shaded his eyes, peering landward. The weather had remained clear through the day but a wind was blowing up out of the west, piling up the waves and lashing the foam from their white crests. “I see breakers against the rocks all up and down there. Most of it’s cliff and ledge. You’ll just have to coast along until you see a likely landing place.”
    “Is the boat ready?” asked Seregil.
    Rhal nodded, his gaze still on the distant coastline. “Water, food, all that you asked for. I saw to it myself. We can cast you off as soon as you’ve packed in your gear.”
    “We’d best get at it then,” Micum said. “It’s been a while since either of us has sailed. I don’t want to try this sea without some daylight ahead of us.”
    When the final pack and cask had been lashed into the
Lady’s
starboard longboat, Seregil and Micum took leave of Rhal.
    “Good luck to you,” the captain said solemnly, clasping hands with them. “Whatever it is the two of you are up to over there, give those Plenimaran bastards merry hell for me.”
    “Nothing will make me any happier,” Micum assured him.
    “Lay off the coast as long as you can,” said Seregil. “If we’re not back in four or five days, or if you get run off yourself, head north and put in at the first friendly port you find.”
    Rhal gripped Seregil’s hand a moment longer. “By the Old Sailor, when this whole thing is over, I’d like to hear the tale of it. You look out for yourselves, and find that boy of yours.”
    “We will,” Seregil promised, climbing into the boat. Crouching down beside Micum, he wrapped his hands around one of the ropes securing the boat’s small mast.
    “Hold tight!” Rhal called as his men set to work lowering it over the side. “Wait until we’re well away before you put up your sail. Good luck, friends!”
    The little boat swung precariously from the halyards as it was lowered down the