I had silenced his magical songs forever with a last desperate shaft from my bow.

The birds could fly to no one with their fearful news. Nor could anyone liberate them from their bondage.

One by one my shipmates stirred the slightest, then returned to their long rests.

Sometimes in darkness, sometimes in light, the caravel glided northward. The shadowweaver ran its shuttle to and fro. No foul weather came to gnaw on our ragged floating Hell. The fog surrounding us neither advanced nor receded, nor did the water we sailed ever change. It always resembled polished jade.

My shipmates did not move again.

Then darkness descended upon me, the oblivion for which I had longed since my realization that Vengeful Dragon was not just another pirate, but a seagoing purgatory manned by the blackest souls of the western world....

And while I slept in the embrace of the Dark Lady, the weaver weaved. The ship changed. So did her crew. And the watchbirds followed in dismay.

IV

A dense fog gently bumped Itaskia's South Coast. It did not cross the shoreline. The light of a three-quarters moon gleamed off its lowlying upper surface. It looked like an army of woolballs come to besiege the land.

A ship's main truck and a single spar cut the fog's surface like a shark's fin, moving north.

The moon set. The sun rose. The fog dissipated gradually, revealing a pretty caravel. She had a new but plain look, like a miser's beautiful wife cloaked in homespun.

The fog dwindled to a single irreducible cloud. That refused to disperse. It drifted round the ship's decks. Black birds dipped in and out.

I began to itch all over. My skin twitched. Awareness returned. Straining, I opened my eyes.