The Grey Pearl (Of Caladuin: Volume Two)

21

As Tathariel reached the bottom of the stairs, she paused and looked out across the dock. It had been built out of the water as a series of timber platforms around the walls of the cavern with jetties at right angles to serve the many ships. She made her way along the huge stone walls of the inner fortress, darting from stacks of large storage crates to clusters of barrels. The dock was alive with hundreds of Dolendrim, who all seemed preoccupied with loading the ships. As they worked, they sang a mournful kind of dirge that swelled in reverberating pulses around the cavern.

She looked out across the water and saw that there was less activity further along the right arm of the dock. Perhaps the ships there had already been loaded. But how to reach them? She peered down through the gaps in the boards at the black water below then counted the jetties where the ships were still being loaded.

Crouching beside a crate, she scanned left and right before scurrying across the dock towards the water's edge. She slipped noiselessly into the cold black water then pulled herself under the platform. She worked along the underside of the boards and soon passed the dark hulk of the first ship moored alongside a jetty, its shadow jutting out across the water. Above her, the thuds and creaks of many footsteps and that mournful song passed slowly by.

Soon she was under the second jetty, then the third.

It seemed an age until she neared the last ship where there was no singing, no footfall. She half-swam and half-pushed herself to the far side of the jetty then left the cover of the platform behind. Looking up, she saw the dock was indeed deserted. She turned towards the mouth of the cavern; between the ship and the breakwaters, there was nothing but a small jetty with a couple of rowing boats tied to an upright.

She pulled herself up and out of the water and crouched for a moment, dripping onto the dark wood. She took out her steel and flint. There were no lamps or candles here and it would be useless to try and light a fire until she found some kind of kindling. She had left the last of the barrels and crates behind and besides, it seemed that they were nailed shut. No packing straw then.

She turned, looking up at the dark ship, then ran across the jetty and climbed onto the side of the hull. She could tell that it had been roughly built, not necessarily in a hurry but with none of the ornamentation of a Falathrim ship.

Once on deck she stayed low and got to work on the nearest sail. It was of a strange material, almost like sack cloth but with a tighter weave. And it was coated in some kind of weather-proofing substance. After hacking a rough square she looked along the boom and found a covered hatch beyond the mast. As she moved silently along the boom, she noted that the whole ship had been built using the hard, black timber that was known among the Falathrim as ironwood. Even in a town so close to Duinath, it was costly in Ethirost and highly-prized for its strength and durability. Tathariel wondered at a ship – a whole fleet – that was built from the stuff.

When she reached the mast, she dropped to all fours and crawled across the deck. Then, like an octopus squeezing into a bottle, she lifted the hatch and slipped inside.

The air in the dark space below was pregnant with the scent of Grey Pearls. She knelt down next to the keel and scrunched the piece of sail into a ball. Running her fingers under the timber at her feet, she found a small gap between the keel and the planks and stuffed in the sail. As she struck the steel against the flint, small flashes of light revealed the dozens of small kegs that surround her, from deck to ceiling and into the darkness fore and aft. The planking below her feet was black.

The flame quickly engulfed the ball of sailcloth: its coating must have been some kind of oily emulsion. She sprang up and took a step back. When the fire started spreading to the deck itself, she jumped up and pulled herself through the hatch. Now she saw the truth of it: the whole ship had been painted with some kind of tar. Only much later did it occur to her that there was no means of launching the kegs on board the ship; nothing like a sling shot or trebuchet. The ship had been built for only one voyage.