A wave caused the ship to roll. The man steadied himself by grabbing one of the rope ladders that led up to the mast. Suddenly his smile disappeared. His gaze became unfocused, as if he were staring out at something on the distant horizon. A moment later, he blinked. "The hemp in one of the ratlines is rotten," he called up to the sailors. "If you don't replace it, one of you will die."
He spoke with such certainty that the sailors above shivered. One of them began to whisper a prayer.
The man below dressed himself, pulling on his trousers, shirt, and boots, and belting on a knife so that its sheath was snug against the small of his back. Then, rubbing himself briskly and at last shivering, he strode along the rolling deck and disappeared down the hatch that led to the passengers' cabins.
CHAPTER 1
Arvin leaned on the ship's rail, staring across the waters of the broad bay the ship had just entered. Ahead lay the city of Mimph. Like Hlondeth, it was a port, its harbor crowded so thickly with ships that their masts resembled the bare trees of a winter forest. But there the resemblance ended. Hlondeth had been built by serpents-it was a city of round towers, gracefully arcing viaducts, and ramps that led to rounded doorways reminiscent of the entrance to a snake's burrow. The buildings of Mimph, in contrast, were squat, blocky, and square. The city was a series of sharp angles and edges, from its square windows and doors to the jagged-looking flights of stairs that led up from the piers that lined the waterfront. Where Hlondeth's buildings were of green stone that glowed by night with the residual energies of the magic used to shape them, Mimph's structures were of plain gray granite that had been hewn by hand.