Chaosbound: The Eighth Book of the Runelords by David Farland

Author:David Farland
Language: pt
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy - General, Magic, Fantasy fiction, Kings and rulers, Fiction - Fantasy, General, Fiction, Fantasy, Epic, Science Fiction And Fantasy
ISBN: 9780765321688
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-10-13T08:53:26+00:00

15

WATER

There seems to be an unwritten law to the universe. Whenever you determine to do something great, something extraordinary, your fellow men will mock you and combine against you.

—Gaborn Val Orden

For six weeks the Borrowbird plowed through a sea that seemed to Aaath Ulber to be made of stone. For much of the time, leaden waves, as rough as boulders, tumbled into the ship under heavy gray skies. Three times great storms arose, battering the ship, driving it mercilessly.

The ship's meager supplies soon began to give out. The barrels of food dwindled, the water became depleted.

Aaath Ulber never caught sight of land, but six weeks into the journey Draken raised a shout in the nighttime, having spotted sails ahead. They were massive red sails of a wyrmling fleet, some twenty warships strong.

Aaath Ulber stood on the deck in the early morning and peered off in amazement: he hadn't known that the wyrmlings had such fleets.

So much about the wyrmlings was a mystery. They lived underground, and often sought to hide their numbers. Their capitol was at Rugassa, but there were tales of other large cities elsewhere—in the lands that Sir Borenson had once known as Inkarra and Indhopal.

But fleets of warships?

"Where do you think they're going?" Draken asked, while the rest of the family stood at Aaath Ulber's back.

"To introduce themselves to the folk of Landesfallen," Aaath Ulber said. The sight of the ships left him sick. "The wyrmlings must have learned of it."

But how? Aaath Ulber wondered. He could come up with only one answer: The folks in Rofehavan must have alerted the wyrmlings.

Aaath Ulber didn't want to alarm the children, but the sight of the fleet filled him with foreboding.

The wyrmlings have already taken Rofehavan, he reasoned. They wouldn't send out ships if they felt that there was still a threat to their home front.

They could only have gained such complete control, Aaath Ulber reasoned, if they got to the blood metal at Caer Luciare.

Otherwise, the folk of Mystarria would have overrun the wyrmlings.

My wife Gatunyea will be dead, he realized. As will my children there.

The wyrmling ships drew near, and Aaath Ulber had to run to the north for several hours to evade them. But his small vessel, so light and free, quickly outpaced the black ships.

The water ran out completely a day later. Just when Aaath Ulber needed a storm, none came, and his barrels lay empty.

The family could not go long without water—a couple of days if the temperatures stayed cool, fewer if it grew hot.

He wrapped a little goat hair around a hook, creating something that looked like an eel, and threw his line out behind the ship, hoping to lure a fish, hoping for just a bit of moisture.

They caught a striped bass that way, and Aaath Ulber ate it raw, but the moisture in the fish tasted as salty as seawater, and it only made his thirst worsen.

There were tales of water wizards who could turn seawater into fresh pure drinking water, and so he asked Myrrima if she would give it a try.

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