She nodded. “Fetch them aft to my quarters.”
She disappeared inside the cabin. Scyld, unhappy and completely bewildered, turned to obey her order, and Boghaz moaned.
“Oh, merciful gods!” he whispered. “That’s done it!” He leaned closer to Carse and said rapidly while he still had the chance, “Lie, as you never lied before! If she thinks you know the secret of the Tomb she or the Dhuvians will force it out of you!”
Carse said nothing. He was having all he could do to retain consciousness. Scyld called profanely for wine, which was brought. He forced some of it down Carse’s throat, then had him and Boghaz released from the oar and marched up to the afterdeck.
The wine and the sea wind up on deck revived Carse enough so that he could keep his feet under him. Scyld ushered them ungently into Ywain’s torchlit cabin, where she sat with the sword of Rhiannon laid on the carven table before her.
In the opposite bulkhead was a low door leading into an inner cabin. Carse saw that it was open the merest crack.
No light showed but he got the feeling that someone—something—was crouching behind it, listening. It made him remember Jaxart’s word and Shallah’s.
There was a taint in the air—a faint musky odor, dry and sickly. It seemed to come from that inner cabin. It had a strange effect on Carse. Without knowing what it was he hated it.
He thought that if it was a lover Ywain was hiding in there it must be a strange sort of lover. Ywain took his mind off that. Her gaze stabbed at him, and once again he thought that he had never seen such eyes. Then she said to Scyld, “Tell me—the full story.”
Uncomfortably, in halting sentences, he told her. Ywain looked at Boghaz.