The Acolyte dragged his boat up onto the sand as best he could, stowing his oars. He looked around him. He was a young man of average size, clean shaven, his skin tanned by the sun. His face was round, his nose a little flat, his large eyes widely spaced; the moon face of a dreamer, you might have thought, but there was nothing dreamy about the rapid movements of his eyes. His physique was hidden by an ankle-length brown robe, but he moved with energy and his steps were precise. On his feet were worn leather sandals.

  His eyes took in the scene. The sand of the broad beach was strewn with bits of pottery and glass, and off to his left he could see fragments of stone walls. A village of fishers or traders had once stood here, but it had been snuffed out by the Wave, its people dead, its very name now swallowed in sand. Above him loomed a range of low hills clad with young pine trees. He put a water bottle in his pack, thrust his knife in his belt, took his staff in his hand and began walking toward the hills.

  The sand was firm and the walking easy. When he reached the trees he walked along them, searching for the path he had been told of. It took some searching, for it was not much of a path, but at length he found it and began to climb. The day was warm and his face beaded with sweat despite the shade of the trees. On soft spots he saw the prints of goats’ hooves, and he noticed tufts of white hair in the branches of the scraggly pines. The trail wound up the hillside, taking its time, seeking the easiest way rather than the quickest, so he walked for nearly an hour before he reached the top of the first hill. Trees blocked his view. The trail then turned downward, still taking its lazy, winding path.

  He began to feel it. It was not very strong, and if he were not attuned to these uncanny sensations he might have ignored them. But he had been trained to recognize them. The air vibrated with a stew of opposite emotions: tingling excitement but also deep weariness, anxiety and courage, sorrow and joy. After another hundred yards a clearing opened before him and he saw the ship. It was a cog of average size, looking in this hilltop clearing like a whale stranded on a roof. It was lying on its side, and it was wide enough that it still rose well above his head. The port bow was stove in, leaving a hole in the hull filled with wreckage, and its mast had been snapped off. Other than that it looked new. There was no rot, no peeling paint, nothing to show that the boat had been sitting in this inland valley for twenty-two years.

  The deck faced toward him, with a single rectangular opening just behind the stump of the mast. He approached cautiously, eyes in constant motion, ears straining. He saw no signs of people or animals. Not even the scrubby pine trees grew close to the ship, only lichens and grass that looked barely alive. He first examined the hole in the hull, but it was blocked by a mass of timber. He then turned his attention to the opening in the deck.

  A noise came from inside the ship. Something was moving in the hold, hidden from his view. An animal? A human refugee? Another relic hunter? The Acolyte paused, considering. Then came the moan, a low, throbbing call from a chill land beyond death’s door: a maremorbo. Some poor soul had been trapped in this ship and had drowned there before the Wave lifted the vessel onto land, and now it was trapped between life and death by the Wave’s power. These were far from the worst of the Wave’s leavings, but they were bad enough, and they were legion, for the Wave had drowned millions and its dark might had cursed them all to a monstrous fate.

  The Acolyte listened closely to the sounds of movement. The maremorbo was not walking or crawling. It seemed to be struggling, as if it were trapped. That explained why it was still here. He thought it was just inside the bow, amidst the wreckage of the broken hull. So no entrance via that break. He went back to the hatch and began to clear away the boards that blocked it. The strange sensations hit him harder, but he ignored a sudden urge to leap from the ship and forced his body to keep working. Something shifted before him, and a pile of boards and beams crashed down into the space within the hold. He froze, waiting to see if this would free the maremorbo. No change: the sound of its struggling remained the same. He could now see a path large enough for him to crawl through, but inside the hull was only darkness. He reached into the front of his robe and drew forth his precious relic: a fragment of crystal charged with ancient mage light that he wore on a thong around his neck. To be entrusted with such a wonder was a great honor, and he felt this every time he shone its light into the dark.

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  The crystal was the size of his thumbnail and looked like a shard of glass. He waited for two minutes, staring into the dark, letting his pupils open. Then he gripped the shard in his hand and stared into its depths, seeking the star that burned within it, until it began to glow. A thin beam of faint light shown forth. He turned it into the hold, where it lit up a circle of the wooden hull about the size of his face. It was enough to show him what lay before him.

  In the bow he could see the maremorbo, trapped in a pile of beams and a tangle of rope. When the light touched the monster’s eyes it let out another unearthly moan. Behind the break the hold was almost empty. They must have thrown everything overboard during the storm that had raged all that day, all across the Middle Sea. But, he thought, nothing could have saved them from the Wave. The hold was not completely empty, though, and toward the stern he saw what he had been looking for. A well-made chest of dark wood sat on its side against the hull. Tucking the crystal back under his robe he began crawling through the dark hull toward the chest. He had carefully memorized its location and all that he would cross on the way, but it did not matter. The chest drew him to it as if he were sliding down a long slope; he was not sure he could have gone any other way if he had tried. Surely this was an item of power.

  The chest was locked, but the Acolyte was prepared for that. It seemed like only an ordinary lock, so he drew forth a short length of wire and inserted it into the keyhole. The wire tripped the tumblers as if guided from within, and the lock clicked open. The maremorbo moaned again.

  Inside the chest was a pile of cloth. He felt through it. When his finger touched metal the slope he had been sliding down turned into a cliff, and briefly he seemed to fall. He closed his hand around what he had found and jerked his body backward against the vertigo. Shutting his dark-blinded eyes against the force that pulled at his mind he crawled rapidly backward out of the hold and into the sun. As he exited the hatch he tripped and fell heavily to the ground. Opening his hand he looked, briefly, at what he had found. It was a diamond-shaped gold amulet an inch or so long, light and thin, shining brilliantly in the sunlight. On its surface was a rune of power.

  Reaching into his pack, he drew out the small black cloth bag he had been given for just this purpose. It stank of alchemy, some mix of herbs and minerals he could not guess at. Dropping the amulet into the bag he immediately felt its power over him lessen. He tucked the small bag back into his pack. Looking around, he saw a rock that looked comfortable. He sat on it, drew his water bottle out of his pack and then set the pack away from him as far as his arm could reach.

  He took a swallow of water, but it tasted foul. No, he realized, it was not the water; a smell had reached him, a smell of rot. He turned and looked at the ship. With the artifact removed it was rotting before his eyes, twenty-two years of decay compressed into a minute or less. And that meant –

  Setting the water bottle into the pack, he stood and drew his knife. The maremorbo was rising from the wreck, bits of rotted rope falling from its arms.