They dropped the oars, aware of their impotence. They were dumbfounded, they even stopped yelling.

Alkyone, still whirling, slowly rose above the waves. And rose higher and higher. They saw the keel, dripping water, covered in shellfish and algae. They saw a black shape, a figure falling into the sea. Then a second. And a third.

‘They’re jumping!’ Asa Thjazi roared. ‘Row, men, don’t stop! With all your might! We must row to their aid!’

Alkyone was now a good hundred cubits above the boiling surface of the water. It continued to whirl, an immense spindle dripping with water, entwined in a cobweb of lightning, being dragged into the swirling clouds by an unseen force.

Suddenly an ear-splitting explosion rent the air. Although fifteen pairs of oars were pushing Tamara forwards, she suddenly leaped up and flew backwards, as if rammed. The deck flew from under Thjazi’s feet. He fell over, banging his forehead on the side.

He couldn’t stand up by himself, he had to be lifted to his feet. He was dazed; he twisted and shook his head, staggering and mumbling incoherently. The screams of the crew seemed muffled. He went over to the side, tottering like a drunkard and clung on to the rail.

The wind had dropped and the sea was calm. But the sky was still black from the billowing clouds.

There wasn’t a single trace of Alkyone.

‘Not even a trace was left, yarl. Well, tiny pieces of rigging, some rags… Nothing more.’

Asa Thjazi interrupted his tale, watching the sun vanishing beyond Spikeroog’s wooded peaks. Crach an Craite, lost in thought, didn’t hurry him.

‘We know not,’ Asa Thjazi finally continued, ‘how many managed to jump before Alkyone was sucked into that devilish cloud. But no matter how many jumped, none survived. And we, though we spared neither time nor strength, fished out but two bodies. Two bodies, borne on the water. Only two.’

‘Was the sorceress,’ the yarl asked in an altered voice, ‘not among them?’

‘No.’

Crach an Craite was silent a long while. The sun was completely hidden behind Spikeroog.

‘Old Guthlaf, son of Sven is lost,’ Asa Thjazi spoke again. ‘The crabs on the bottom of the Abyss have surely ate him till the last little bone… And the witch is certainly lost… Yarl, folk are beginning to talk… That it’s all her fault. And punishment for her crimes…’

‘Foolish nonsense!’

‘She’s perished,’ Asa muttered, ‘in the Sedna Abyss. In the same place as Pavetta and Duny did back then… It was an accident…’

‘It was no accident,’ Crach an Craite said with conviction. ‘It was certainly no accident then. And nor was it now.’