Chapter 7

"This is the spot?" the duke asked his companion.

Achmed simply nodded his head once. He was busy keeping an eye out. He hated being so near to the water. There was no way for him to feel the vibrations that had been the bane and blessing of his existence. He felt naked and exposed to the world with no warnings or hints of what might be coming up on him.

"Well, I better see if someone can tell me which direction the boat that was here sailed off…" Gwydion suddenly broke off, staring blankly off into to quickly setting sun.

"What?" Achmed demanded.

Gwydion continued looking off into the west, as if listening to something only he could hear when he respond, "Well, I don't think I need to be asking where they sailed off to anymore. It seems Rhapsody had her own idea for telling me where to look for her."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

Shaking himself, Gwydion turned back to Achmed, "I believe I just got a summons from her. I hear my name on the wind, and with it is a call to follow it and a hint of danger as well. She is the only one I can think of that would send such a call."

"Hmm, her or her captor. But either way, it still leads us to her. And I now have to find this man anyway."

"Why?"

Glancing around, Achmed grabbed Gwydion's arm and hulled him off to a secluded alcove. "I should have told you this before we entered the city. My primary objective for this journey has changed. When I was nearly knocked out back there, I sensed the presence of a F'dor. It is a F'dor that has her, I am sure of it. He is now my target. Nothing else matters to me but the elimination of the demon. You may still be in this to simply rescue Rhapsody, but you must know that that is only a distant secondary concern to me now."

"Achmed, how can you say that about Rhapsody? She is my grandmother, and one of your oldest friends. She is of much more importance than killing some demon."

"Wrong! Rhapsody is one life, if this demon is allowed to escape, he could wipe out the whole world. Rhapsody would agree with me. Her life is not near as important as destroying this demon. She has seen what they are capable of and what they wish to do to this world. I hunt demon now, and you must too even if all you wish to do is save your grandmother."

"Alright Achmed, I'll help you. But I am still going to make sure that we get Rhapsody out of there, agreed?"

Achmed gave a single nod once again and turned to walk back to where they had been before he pulled them aside.

"Wait, I know where she went now. What we need now is a boat of our own to reach her."

Achmed knew that this part had been coming but had been dreading it. Still not knowing how to swim, he found the thought of being completely surrounded by water, being held up by a few planks of wood, was not something he was looking forward to.

"I trust that you know how to sail a boat?" Achmed asked the duke.

"Yes, of course. But the problem is finding a boat that just the two of us can sail that will be able to catch up to the ship that they sailed off in."

"Where do you think they are heading to?" Achmed asked suddenly.

Caught a bit off guard, Gwydion responded, "Ah, I don't know. I didn't think about that. They were heading nearly due west, just a little to the north. As far as I know the first landfall in that direction is the Northland. Maybe Gaematia if they adjust their course to the south some. Or possibly Manosse, if they shifted south after clearing Gaematia."

"We need to know how far we a expecting to go. If they are going all the way to Northland or Manosse then we should see about gaining access to a larger ship that is sailing out to those locations. If they are going to Gaematia, which I doubt, we could probably make it on our own. But there is one other option."

"And what would that be?" Gwydion asked.

"They may be heading to a small nearby island. I would suspect that they just want to be somewhere that it would be difficult to be found. Gaematia is probably not their choice because that is where her husband currently is, and he would know the second she set foot on the island. Manosse and Northland are much more distant and would have required them to take passage on a boat that was already going there, meaning their passage and cargo would have to have been logged. That would not be good for their situation. That would only leave some nearby island to take shelter on."

"Well, if that is the case then we wouldn't have to wait too long to know if they are stopping just off the coast. I can track them the same way you had before and know if they are moving or not."

"Of course, if our guess is wrong then it will be time wasted in our hunt."

"That is a problem."

Achmed stood and stared off into the nearly set sun, studying the riddle a bit longer. "Find us a boat that we can take ourselves as well as a ship that we can board that will take us to Manosse. We will wait until midnight, if they have not stopped before then, we will plan to head to Manosse. If they do stop, we will head out and find whatever island they are hiding out at."

"Sounds like a good plan. I'll go and do that. What will you do?"

"Gather information." And with that Achmed slipped into the crowd and was gone form Gwydion's sight in a flash. Shaking his head, Gwydion entered the milling crowd, heading in the opposite direction his silent friend had just passed.

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"Why don't we just drown ourselves now and get it over with," Achmed sneered as he glared at the boat that Gwydion expected them to take.

"Achmed, I know a thing or two about sailing, and we won't have to worry about wind and storm problems, I can make sure that the wind is always in our favor."
Achmed merely glared at both the duke and the boat all in one. He did not want to trust his life to this flimsy looking, so called boat, that to him appeared to merely be a few timbers and a piece of canvas.

Gwydion explained to the king that the boat was made of sound wood well pegged and caulked, with a stout mast and sail. Also she was clinker-built, with planks overlapped and clenched one upon the other for strength in high seas.

Still, Achmed was very nervous about the whole thing of trusting his life to this piece of wood.

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"Achmed, would you relax? We're not going to sink, I promise," Gwydion called over the rush of the wind. He had been using his connection to the wind to speed their boat on to their goal. The Island was now just within sight with notice of the main land being left behind nearly an hour ago. They were further out than they had thought they would be.

Achmed had been tense and on edge since he had first stepped into the boat, and the high winds that Gwydion was causing wasn't helping his nerves any. He was still desperately seeking out any hint of Rhapsody, but the rush of water was just too much for his senses.

"I think we should slow down now, we don't want the captors to see us coming," Achmed growled.

"Right," said Gwydion as the wind began to die down around them.

 This paragraph was borrowed from Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. My thanks to her for helping me fill in a description of a boat, an area that I am clueless in.

 This paragraph was borrowed from Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. My thanks to her for helping me fill in a description of a boat, an area that I am clueless in.