Titans of Chaos

Now she smiled, and her eyes twinkled, and she knelt down again beside me to speak in a lowvoice. It is the kind of voice you use when you are telling a secret, whether there is anyone aroundor not. "We are going to see if we can help your old friend Sam. The drayman who gave you alift."

Less than thirty-six hours later, after an afternoon of punishment chores I do not want toremember, and the most charming birthday I do not want to forget, we five were aboard theArgent Nautilus, in a fogbound Irish Sea, rolling and pitching in the choppy waves, and thesmothering cold was leaving droplets on our thick woolen sea-coats.

Sam had mentioned to me that he had a nephew in an institution with a mental disease. I hadonce, half-jokingly, offered to grant him a wish. He wished for a cure.

Now we would see what we could do.

Pallid Hounds A-Hunting

This trip, we had bought supplies with more forethought. We had drifted off the coast of the Isleof Man. Quentin had passed across the waves as silently as a shadow, to approach Castletown, onthe south of the island. He returned with the sweaters and jackets and caps we wore, and a heavybackpack filled with chow. We were still low on some things, but he had restocked our larder.

There was no piano to buy for Colin on the Isle of Man.

"The severed head of Bran has not seen us yet," said Quentin as he stepped out of the shadowsand down to the deck. "The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, merely a possession ofthe Crown. I saw the shivering ghosts of Vikings, still hungry for blood, but no sigils of Arthur, noravens loyal to the spells of Elizabeth the First. Officially, I did not step foot on the soil Branprotects. Now, since we are coming on a mission of mercy, perhaps, even when we do, he will notinform the gods of our coming. Perhaps." He gave Vanity a look of doubt, but said no more. VeryVictor-like.

A few hours later, after midnight, we had crossed the rough North Sea and were approaching theopposite coast. Quentin, on the bow, summoned friends of his from below the waters, while we allhuddled in the stern, trying not to overhear the sinister whispers. But that worked, or somethingdid, and the fog thickened as we crept silently into the mouth of the river Wear, with the lights ofSunderland above us. A short way up the river were the ancient stone bridges and modern ironshipyards of Durham.