The unidentified ship approached the shadows of the first islands slowly and cautiously, the mist gradually dissipating around their rocky edges as if revealing a secret it was reluctant to disclose all at once. The first island that appeared before them was small, covered with short, twisted trees unlike any Lewai had ever seen, their leaves darker than the usual green...
Lewai took out of his leather bag an old map that he had secretly bought weeks earlier from a rare book dealer in the capital - a nautical chart drawn decades ago by an anonymous captain, which the seller claimed depicted the archipelago with reasonable accuracy, although he cautioned that there was no absolute certainty about its authenticity.
Leway spread the map out on a wooden box beside him, carefully comparing the shapes drawn on it with what he saw before him now. He felt his eyebrows rise in silent bewilderment.
Finally, he said, in a voice with an unusual hesitation: "Dorik, this map draws one large island in this exact location, followed by an empty expanse of water, and then a group of three small islands. But what I see before me now are five medium-sized islands, distributed in a completely different pattern."
Dorik approached and glanced quickly at the map, then laughed his usual dry laugh, but this time it carried a deeper warning than mockery. "Burn that map when you return, my prince, or keep it as a souvenir, but never trust it. There is no accurate map of these islands. They cannot exist."
"That doesn't make sense," Leway objected with the stubbornness of an accountant, a stubbornness that doesn't readily accept the idea that geography itself can be changing. "Islands don't move, Dorick. Rocks don't move. That goes against every natural law I know."
Dorik answered with strange calmness, adjusting the steering wheel slightly towards a narrow gap between two closely spaced islands: "Perhaps the islands themselves do not move. But the surrounding waters change, the currents shift, and passages that were open yesterday may be blocked by rocks that were not there hours before, while new passages open up in places that were solid ground. Do the islands really move, or does the surrounding water change in such a way that it deceives the eye into thinking that the islands themselves have moved? I do not know the true answer, my prince, and I do not think any human being does."
Leway felt a deep frustration creep into his chest, the kind of frustration a man accustomed to finding a logical explanation for everything feels when he suddenly encounters something that refuses to obey any rule he knows. "So how do you find your way if maps are useless?"
Dorik smiled slightly, and for the first time since the start of the voyage, he displayed genuine confidence rather than mere cautious experience. He said, "I don't follow the map, my prince, but the patterns. Look with me: that crooked tree on the small island, which resembles a hand outstretched toward the sky—I saw it exactly twenty years ago, in almost the same place, even with the surrounding islands having changed. Some things here remain constant despite all the apparent change. My task is not to memorize a fixed map, but to perceive what does not change amidst all that changes."
Leway looked at the crooked tree Dorick had pointed out, and an unexpected sense of admiration crept over him despite his growing unease. This, in essence, was the same method he used to analyze complex tax records: not by memorizing each figure individually, but by searching for consistent patterns amidst apparent chaos. Perhaps, Leway thought, he and this despised old captain weren't as different as they had initially seemed.
The ship continued to sail cautiously between the islands, following the course of the Doric, which at first glance seemed completely random, but in fact responded to subtle signals that could only be noticed by a trained eye: a certain bend in a rock, a slightly different color in the water indicating a change in depth, and the flight pattern of a single seabird that had been circling above them for several long minutes without drifting away.
"That bird, it's following us, isn't it? It's not just a passing bird," Leway said suddenly, having noticed the pattern after a period of silent observation.
Dorik looked up and saw a large white bird with a strangely long beak, circling above them in regular, slow loops. "I noticed it too, about half an hour ago. I don't know if it's just normal animal curiosity, or if something else is watching us on behalf of the owner of these waters."
"Should we be worried?"
"We must always be careful, my prince, but excessive worry won't do us any good now." Doric continued steering the ship through another narrow gap between two dangerously close rocks. "If someone is watching us, it means we've gotten close enough to be noticed. And that in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. The worst that could happen is if we go through unnoticed at all, because that would mean we're not important enough for any real deal."
Leway pondered this strange logic for a moment, then found himself slowly nodding. This was, after all, the same logic that governed the stock market and trading in Oswald: a company that no one cared about, that no one watched, was a failing company, not a successful one. Perhaps the same principle applied here as well, in this strange world of shifting waters and islands that seemed to breathe.
Around noon, they reached a relatively open area between the islands, a wide expanse of calm water encircled by a ring of low rocks, resembling a natural lake formed in the heart of the archipelago. In the center of this expanse, Lewai saw for the first time clear evidence of human, or near-human, life: a tall wooden pole, meticulously carved, rising from the shallow seabed, from which hung dozens of small bells made of a shiny metal that Lewai did not recognize.
"What is this?" he asked in a low voice, feeling that it warranted instinctive caution.
Doric stopped the ship at a safe distance from the pole and stood silently for a long moment, gazing at it with strange admiration. "A boundary marker. But not a marker for a danger zone this time, rather a marker for... let's call it a market. This place is for meeting, my prince. Here come those who wish to trade, and from here begins the real road to what lies beyond."
Leway felt his heart race slightly, not with fear this time, but with calculated anticipation. "How do we announce our presence then? Do we ring those bells?"
"Never touch the bells with your hand," Dorik warned sharply and immediately, as if the question alone was enough to alarm him. "These bells are not meant to be rung directly. They move only by the wind and water, according to their natural rhythm. If you touch them with your hand, it would be like breaking into a house uninvited."
"So how do we communicate?"
Doric smiled mysteriously and pointed to a small wooden box, carefully kept at the stern of the ship, a box Leway had never noticed before amidst the chaos of provisions and ropes. "I've brought something with me, my prince, something I've kept for twenty years just for this moment, though I wasn't sure I'd ever use it again."
Doric carefully opened the box, revealing a meticulously folded piece of cloth, woven with an intricate pattern of silver threads that shimmered strangely even in the dim mist. With slightly trembling hands, he lifted it and tied it to the pole above the lit lantern, where it began to sway gently in a light breeze that Leway hadn't noticed just moments before.
"What is this?" Leway asked, his eyes fixed on the shiny fabric as it swayed slowly.
"A sign. A silent sign of respect. It means, in a language neither written nor spoken, that I have come to trade, not to plunder; that I know the laws; and that I have brought a guest worthy of being listened to." Doric looked at Lewai with his one eye, and in that look was a dignity that Lewai had not seen in him all along the journey. "Now, my prince, all that remains is for us to wait. And that, believe me, may be the hardest part of this whole journey."
Wait.
Long minutes passed, then a full hour, while the ship lay quietly in the middle of the small, rocky lake, its silver bells jingling softly and intermittently with every breeze. Leway felt the tension of waiting creep into his nerves, a tension that even the most patient mind could not completely ignore.
"How long are we going to wait?" he asked finally, trying to hide his impatience behind a calm and measured tone.
Dorik answered simply, sitting on a wooden box with the quietude of a man accustomed to long waits as an essential part of his job: "Until they decide, not us. That is the first real lesson in negotiating with this world, my prince, and I think you already know it from your own experience: the one who holds the real power in any deal is not the one who speaks first, but the one who decides when to start the dialogue."
Lewai pondered these words in silence, feeling something akin to an inner confession creep into his mind. How often had he himself employed this tactic in the corridors of the Imperial Council, letting his brothers talk and argue while he waited for the perfect moment to intervene? Perhaps this world, in all its strangeness, was closer to his own than he had initially imagined.
After about an hour and a quarter of silent waiting, Gilbert was the first to notice the change: the silver bells suddenly stopped ringing, although the breeze continued to blow. A strange silence fell over the place, as if the air itself were holding its breath.
Gilbert whispered with growing concern, "Dorik..."
"Everyone, silence," Doric ordered in a calm but firm tone, as he slowly rose from his seat, his eyes scanning the surrounding water with intense focus. "Something is about to happen."
Suddenly, and without any prior warning, the calm water surface around the ship began to ripple strangely, and concentric circles gradually expanded from a single, invisible point directly beneath the surface, as if something huge was moving very slowly toward the surface from the depths.
Leway clung tightly to the ship's railing, his heart pounding with a force he hadn't felt in years of self-control. As he stared at those widening circles, he suddenly realized that the most difficult stage of his entire voyage, the one that neither the old captain's rules nor his own sailing experience had helped him overcome, was finally about to begin, right here, in the heart of this world that no one of his lineage had been allowed to enter for three whole decades.