Laugavegur, A Hinterland Journey

Chapter 16 - Waters Deep

As the sun crossed the azimuth in the sky, Tokki, Anja, Skari, and Veld approached the shores of Swan Lake. The breeze was gentle and the air was significantly warmer than it had been when they left Ravendome. The lake was calm but for the ripples emanating from a bevy of white swans bobbing and preening in the shallows. The shoreline was vacant of any sign of Humans except for a rickety oar boat overturned on the western shore.

"This lake doesn't look very deep," said Tokki skeptically as they walked the shoreline toward the boat. "Are we sure it will fulfill the geise?"

"I have it on good account that there is most certainly a hole of great depth just off the shoreline here. We will have to search it out, though. Tokki, do you still have your cotton grass rope?"

"I do."

"Good. Tie a rock to it and we will use it to test the depth."

While Tokki secured a fist-sized cobble to the end of the rope, Anja and Skari flipped the oar boat over and dragged it to the water's edge. The boat creaked and moaned but kept the water out. One of the oarlocks was damaged but Anja was able to lash a round metal fastener from her satchel in place to augment the damaged lock. She tested it out while Skari loaded their bags aboard. Once Tokki had fastened a rock to the cotton grass rope and coated the entire length with lard from one of his tins, he coiled it in the bow of the boat, and they pushed off into the placid waters. Anja dutifully manned the oars while Skari called out directions from the stern of the boat. "To the left, Anja! No, my left! A little more... Okay! Tokki test the depth here!" Tokki dropped the stone into the lake and payed out about 3 meters of rope before it went slack; the rock hitting bottom.

"I wouldn't call it deep," said Tokki.

"Hmm... perhaps over there, on the other side of the lake," replied Skari.

It took the better part of an hour for them to locate the hole. Anja rowed them across the lake and back several times before they had located it just off the southern shoreline. In the end, Tokki had dropped the stone over the side and it had taken nearly the entire length of rope before bottoming out. "Looks to be about twenty meters!" Tokki called to Skari in the stern.

"This must be it," said Skari "The waters deep."

Anja flexed her fingers and rolled her shoulders. It had been an hour's hard rowing and her body ached. As Tokki retrieved the rope and coiled it at his feet, Anja pulled the moonglass vial out of her pack, gently removing it from its cloth wrappings and handing it to Skari. The seer held the vial up to the sun. His face was bathed in prismatic colors.

"We need to fill the vial from the bottom waters," he said. "The question is, however, how to do it."

There was no obvious answer and over the next hour they tried several methods. First, they simply lowered the empty vial into the deep, but quickly realized that the water filled immediately and was not sure to be replaced by deep water. Anja then crafted a puppeted lever mechanism that allowed them to uncork the vial at depth, but they could not find a way to replace the glass stopper before bringing it back to the surface. Skari then attempted to use gauldur to create a septum that would open and close at depth. He tried conjuring moss, seal skin, and finally a thick mucus, but none of them were sufficient to keep the water at bay.

Skari sat in the front of the boat, physically drained from his gaulduric efforts. His head hung, wispy green hair dancing in the light breeze. Anja sat nibbling on a hangnail. "There must be some way to get that stopper back in."

Skari shook his head, exhausted, defeated. "We will have to give this some thought and try again in the morning."

"I don't think we have to do that," Tokki said leaning over the side of the boat looking down into the water. "Twenty meters deep," he said, a grim resolve in his voice. "I can make twenty meters."