He knew, then, that he would not make it.

He swam on. Stubbornness was in his blood.

He had learned four names during his sojourn. The Director. The Fadema. Magden Norath. Lord Chin. He knew nothing about the man who owned the first. Norath was a sorcerer of Ehelebe. The Fadema was Queen of Argon and, apparently, bewitched by Lord Chin. He and she had spirited Ethrian to the island. Lord Chin was one of the high Tervola, or sorcerer-nobles, of the Dread Empire, against which Ethrian’s father had striven. Chin was dead now, but the empire that had spawned him remained active….

Shinsan, the Dread Empire, surely was behind all this.

If he survived….

It seemed that many, many hours had passed. The sun had, indeed, moved westward, but it was not yet in his eyes. The grey hills had grown only slightly darker…. He was too tired to go on. His stubbornness had burned away.

He was ready to sink into the deep. He was too tired to be afraid.

Something brushed his leg.

He was no longer too tired. He kicked in panic and tried to swim away.

A dorsal fin slid across his field of vision. Another something touched him.

He began to flail and gasp.

One of the sea beasts flung itself into the air. It arced gracefully and plunged into the brine.

Ethrian was not reassured. He was an inland child. He did not know a dolphin from a shark. Of sharks he had heard from his father’s friend, Bragi Ragnarson. His godfather had told cruel, grim stories of the great killers ravening amongst the crews of ships wrecked in fell sea-battles.

His struggles earned him nothing but a belly full of salt water.

The dolphins surrounded him. They bore him up and carried him to the desert shore. With his last spark of energy he dragged himself across the rocky beach into the shadow of a cliff. He collapsed, puked seawater till his guts ached, fell asleep.

Something wakened him. The time was deep night. The moon was high and full. He listened. He had thought he heard a voice calling, but now there was nothing.

He looked down at the beach. Something was moving there, making little clacky sounds… He saw them. Crabs. Scores of them. They seemed to be staring at him, waving their claws like soldiers’ salutes. One by one, they scuttled closer.

He drew away, frightened. They meant to eat him! He sprang to his feet and stumbled away. The crabs became agitated. They could not keep his pace.

He seated himself a hundred yards away. Stones had torn his feet and barked his shins.

Again, faintly, he thought he heard someone calling. He could distinguish neither direction nor words.

He stumbled a little farther, then collapsed and slept again.

He had strange dreams. A beautiful woman in white came and spoke to him, but he could not understand her, nor did he remember her when he wakened.

Daylight was almost gone. He was hungry and thirsty. His whole body ached. His sunburned skin had blistered. He tried drinking from the sea. His stomach refused the brine. For a time he lay on the sand in an agony of heaving.