Free Black Wizards by Douglas Niles Page B

King Carrathal. “I shall declare the prince of Corwell an outlaw. The Scarlet Guard will meet him as he lands. They will arrest the usurper and bring him to me in chains.”

    Water pounded and crashed about Tristan, choking him and pressing him down. He kicked and flailed but could not find the surface. He felt his consciousness slipping away, though he struggled even more desperately to swim. He barely felt the vicelike jaws close over his arm, jerking him roughly through the sea. For a second his face broke free from the black water, and he gulped a great lungful of air. Then he became conscious of the teeth that were sinking through his flesh.
    Thrashing upward, struggling for more air, the prince felt the grip on his arm slacken. But then he was grabbed by the collar and pulled backward helplessly. Miraculously, his face remained out of the water.
    He felt a solid object strike him in the back, and he twisted around to catch a long section of planking. The
Lucky Duckling
, he thought. As he did so, the grip on his collar broke free, and he turned to find himself face-to-face with his panting moorhound. Canthus thrashed beside him, finally forcing his forelegs over the plank.
    “Thanks, old dog,” he choked, wrapping an arm around the broad neck. “You almost ripped my arm off, didn’t you, buddy?” The presence of the hound warmed his heart but did little for his hopes. “I fear you have only postponed the inevitable,” he added, after he had recovered his breath.
    “Daryth!” he shouted suddenly. Where was the houndmaster? The bleak, despairing realization crept over him: His friend had drowned, along with Rodger and Pontswain. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe that the man’s cocky self-assurance, his casual energy, had been snuffed out. “By the goddess, no!” he cried aloud.
    The feeling that he was doomed would not go away, and he had to grit his teeth and shake his head to dissuade himself from releasing the plank and sinking into oblivion.
    Through the remainder of the long night, the young man and his dog bobbed, barely alive, across the heaving surface of the strait.Tristan lost consciousness once, only to awaken as Canthus dragged him back to the plank. Frightened and shivering, he nevertheless remained alert after that.
    He groped to understand the death of the
Lucky Duckling
. Black sorcery had killed her, he felt certain, but how? And by whose hand? Over and over again he vowed vengeance against the force that had sought to destroy him. Gradually his anger began to sustain him. I’m not going to die, he told himself. I’m too mad to die.
    Gradually he noticed that the waves grew smaller, and the wind died away almost completely. The swells lessened. Though the crests of the waves still loomed six or eight feet higher than the troughs, they seemed to carry him up and down with an easy and unthreatening rhythm. No longer did they curl over at the top, thundering down to crush anything below them.
    The horizon lightened to a dull gray, and he peered around for any sight of land or sail or even debris. Visibility was still very poor, and he could make out no features beyond the rolling swells.
    “Tristan!” He heard the voice as if from a great distance away, and he was certain that he imagined it.
    “Tristan!” it repeated. “Over here!”
    Now he squinted intently across the gray surface, wondering if he was losing his mind. There! He saw a flash of brightness over the crest of a wave.
    “Daryth!” He croaked. He finally saw his friend, and Pontswain too, bobbing across the rolling summit of a wave. The Calishite was soon kicking toward him, buoyed by an air-filled wineskin and a loose bundle of wood, and dragging a sodden Pontswain behind him.
    “Are you injured?” asked Daryth.
    “I don’t think so. How about you?”
    “Just wet and cold.” The Calishite somehow found the strength to grin. Pontswain’s formerly graceful locks hung like a wet blanket across his face. He