The captain shrugged. "Very well. Think it over, anyway." He peered
ahead into the red, coiling mists. "Ah! See there?" He pointed, and
Stark made out the shadowy loom of cliffs. "We are coming into the
strait now."
Malthor turned and took the steering sweep himself, the helmsman going
forward to join the others. The ship began to pick up speed. Stark saw
that she had come into the grip of a current that swept toward the
cliffs, a river of fire racing ever more swiftly in the depths of the
sea.
* * * * *
The dark wall seemed to plunge toward them. At first Stark could see no
passage. Then, suddenly, a narrow crimson streak appeared, widened, and
became a gut of boiling flame, rushing silently around broken rocks.
Red fog rose like smoke. The ship quivered, sprang ahead, and tore like
a mad thing into the heart of the inferno.
In spite of himself, Stark's hands tightened on the rail. Tattered
veils of mist swirled past them. The sea, the air, the ship itself,
seemed drenched in blood. There was no sound, in all that wild sweep of
current through the strait. Only the sullen fires burst and flowed.
The reflected glare showed Stark that the Straits of Shuruun were
defended. Squat fortresses brooded on the cliffs. There were ballistas,
and great windlasses for the drawing of nets across the narrow throat.
The men of Shuruun could enforce their law, that barred all foreign
shipping from their gulf.
They had reason for such a law, and such a defense. The legitimate
trade of Shuruun, such as it was, was in wine and the delicate laces
woven from spider-silk. Actually, however, the city lived and throve on
piracy, the arts of wrecking, and a contraband trade in the distilled
juice of the _vela_ poppy.
Looking at the rocks and the fortresses, Stark could understand how it
was that Shuruun had been able for more centuries than anyone could
tell to victimize the shipping of the Red Sea, and offer a refuge to
the outlaw, the wolf's-head, the breaker of tabu.
With startling abruptness, they were through the gut and drifting on
the still surface of this all but landlocked arm of the Red Sea.
Because of the shrouding fog, Stark could see nothing of the land. But
the smell of it was stronger, warm damp soil and the heavy, faintly
rotten perfume of vegetation half jungle, half swamp. Once, through a
rift in the wreathing vapor, he thought he glimpsed the shadowy bulk of
an island, but it was gone at once.
After the terrifying rush of the strait, it seemed to Stark that the
ship barely moved. His impatience and the subtle sense of danger
deepened. He began to pace the deck, with the nervous, velvet motion of
a prowling cat. The moist, steamy air seemed all but unbreathable after
the clean dryness of Mars, from whence he had come so recently. It was
oppressively still.
Suddenly he stopped, his head thrown back, listening.
The sound was borne faintly on the slow wind. It came from everywhere
and nowhere, a vague dim thing without source or direction. It almost
seemed that the night itself had spoken--the hot blue night of Venus,
crying out of the mists with a tongue of infinite woe.
It faded and died away, only half heard, leaving behind it a sense of
aching sadness, as though all the misery and longing of a world had
found voice in that desolate wail.
Stark shivered. For a time there was silence, and then he heard the
sound again, now on a deeper note. Still faint and far away, it was
sustained longer by the vagaries of the heavy air, and it became a
chant, rising and falling. There were no words. It was not the sort of
thing that would have need of words. Then it was gone again.