Serpent Mage by Margaret Weis Page B

unwelcome revelation. He wasn't under attack.
    “The damn ship's breaking apart!” Haplo swore, stared about in disbelief.
    It was impossible. Every plank, every beam, every mast and sail, every splinter of this ship, was protected by rune-magic. Nothing could harm it.
    The
Dragon Wing
had sailed without injury through the suns of Pryan. It had survived the Maelstrom of Arianus, floated unscathed on the molten lava sea of Abarrach. A powerful Sartan necromancer had tried unsuccessfully to break its spell. The dread lazar had sought to unravel its magic.
Dragon Wing
and its pilot had survived them all. But water, ordinary water, was causing it to shatter like flawed pottery.
    The ship was wallowing sluggishly, timbers creakingand groaning, straining to survive, then giving way.
Dragon Wing
was breaking apart slowly; it hadn't been crushed, but it shouldn't be breaking apart at all.
    Haplo still couldn't believe it, refused to believe it. He stood up with difficulty, fighting to balance himself on the listing deck. Water sloshed over his ankles.
    He turned to look for the steering stone, wondering briefly as he searched why it should have been knocked loose. It, too, was covered with runes, protected by sigla that guided the ship. If he could retrieve the stone, replace it, he could steer his vessel out of the water and back to what he now concluded must have been some sort of air pocket.
    Haplo located the steering stone; it had rolled up against the bulkheads. Its rounded top was barely visible above the rising water. He waded toward it, reached down to pick it up. His hand paused. He stared at the stone.
    It was smooth, round, and completely blank. The sigla were gone.
    Another crash. The water level was rising rapidly.
    This must be a trick of his mind, a panicked reaction to what was happening. The sigla on the steering stone were inscribed deeply, magically, in the rock. They could not, by any possible means, be washed away. Haplo plunged his hands into the water in an effort to retrieve the stone. He drew it out, speaking the runes that should have caused its magic to activate.
    Nothing happened. He might have been holding a rock dug from his lord's garden. And then, glaring at the stone in baffled, angry frustration, Haplo's gaze shifted to his hands.
    Water dripped from his fingers, his wrists, his lower arms, ran from skin that was smooth and unblemished, as blank and bare as the rock.
    Haplo dropped the stone. Oblivious to the water that was at his knees now, to the shattering crashes that told him
Dragon Wing
was in its death throes, he stared hard at his hands, tried in vain to trace the comforting, reassuring lines of the runes.
    The sigla were gone.
    Fighting a surge of panic that rose in him even with the level of the water, Haplo lifted his right arm. A trickle of the liquid streamed from the back of his hand—now bare— down his rune-covered arm. In amazed horror, he watched the drop of water slide down his skin, meander among the sigla tattooed on his flesh. In its wake, it left a clean trail of slowly fading, diminishing runes.
    This, then, was what was happening to his ship. The water was dissolving the runes, wiping out any trace of magical power.
    Unable to think of any explanation why the water should destroy the magic, Haplo could find no way to remedy the situation. His mind was in turmoil and chaos. Accustomed to relying all his life on his magic, he was suddenly rendered helpless as a mensch.
    The water level on the bridge was high enough now to float Haplo off his feet. He felt a strange reluctance to leave the protection of his vessel, though he knew logically that it would very soon be able to offer no protection whatsoever. Its magic was diminishing, dying, even as his own magic was dying. The thought came to him that it would be better to die himself than to live like a mensch—or worse than a mensch, for some of them possessed magical skills, though on a very crude level.
    The temptation to