LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE The Albatross

      He was the bird, and the bird was him. He was Ezroc, son of Tilarc, fifteenth grandson in a direct line from Ezroc Stormrider, the greatest albatross who ever lived. He had flown the Four Oceans and the Ten Seas, and had seen the South Pole rising like a spire of emerald from the violet hills of the Land-Beyond-Night, and the white foam of the combers on the pink coral beaches, and had smelt the perfume of the last flowers that ever were, before the hungry waters took it all away. He had lived to a hundred and two, and had died in the season his fifteenth-generation grandson was born, so the name had been passed on, but young Ezroc knew he could only dream of touching the legend.

      They had set out from the Ice Cliffs more than two moons past, the albatross flying on wings still short of three spans from tip to tip – three spans would mark him for an adult – leaving the cold clean seas of the north far behind, heading south, always south. Keerye could not match his speed, for all his seal-swiftness, and from time to time the bird would descend onto the rocking waters, waiting for his friend to catch up. Some nights they would rest together, sea-cradled, Keerye half-human, steadying himself on the swell with his tail-flippers, while they gazed up at the unfamiliar stars.

      ‘Do you think we’ve reached the Fourth Ocean yet?’ Ezroc said once.

      ‘There are no Four Oceans any more,’ said Keerye, who was older and wiser, or at least more knowledgeable. ‘No Ten Seas. When people speak of them, it’s just words. Now, it’s all one big ocean, without any land in between to divide it up.’

      ‘But we’re looking for land,’ Ezroc pointed out. ‘We’re looking for the islands in the stories – the Jewelled Archipelago, and the Giant’s Knucklebones, and the Floating Islands of the utter south. There must be land somewhere.’

      ‘Islands are different,’ Keerye said sagely. ‘Islands grow, like plants. They come out of the sea sprouting fire and when they cool down there are great weeds on them with stems as thick as a monster eel, poking up into the sky all by themselves.’

      ‘I don’t believe it,’ Ezroc said. He had dismissed such tales before. ‘Without water to support them, they’d fall down.’

      ‘I heard it from Shifka,’ said Keerye,

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