The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

planking of the hold between his feet and felt the heat of the sun on his naked shoulders and felt the thirst drying out his mouth and narrowing his throat again.
    The sun sank. Night came on clear and cold. The sharp stars came out. The drum beat like a slow heart, keeping the oar-stroke,for there was no breath of wind. Now the cold became the greatest misery. Arren’s back gained a little warmth from the cramped legs of the man behind him and his left side from the mute beside him, who sat hunched up, humming a grunting rhythm all on one note. The rowers changed shift; the drum beat again. Arren had longed for the darkness, but he could not sleep. His bones ached, and he could not change position. He sat aching, shivering, parched, staring up at the stars, which jerked across the sky with every stroke the oarsmen took, slid to their places, and were still, jerked again, slid, paused. . . .
    The man with the collar and another man stood between the after hold and the mast; the little swinging lantern on the mast sent gleams between them and silhouetted their heads and shoulders. “Fog, you pig’s bladder,” said the weak, hateful voice of the man with the collar, “what’s a fog doing in the Southing Straits this time of year? Curse the luck!”
    The drum beat. The stars jerked, slid, paused. Beside Arren the tongueless man shuddered all at once and, raising his head, let out a nightmare scream, a terrible, formless noise. “Quiet there!” roared the second man by the mast. The mute shuddered again and was silent, munching with his jaws.
    Stealthily the stars slid forward into nothingness.
    The mast wavered and vanished. A cold, grey blanket seemed to drop over Arren’s back. The drum faltered and then resumed its beat, but slower.
    “Thick as curdled milk,” said the hoarse voice somewhere above Arren. “Keep up the stroke there! There’s no shoals for twenty miles!” A horny, scarred foot appeared out of the fog, paused an instant close to Arren’s face, then with one step vanished.
    In the fog there was no sense of forward motion, only of swaying and the tug of the oars. The throb of the stroke-drum was muffled. It was clammy cold. The mist condensing in Arren’s hair ran down into his eyes; he tried to catch the drops with his tongue and breathed the damp air with open mouth, trying to assuage his thirst. But his teeth chattered. The cold metal of a chain swung against his thigh and burnt like fire where it touched. The drum beat, and beat, and ceased.
    It was silent.
    “Keep the beat! What’s amiss?” roared the hoarse, whistling voice from the prow. No answer came.
    The ship rolled a little on the quiet sea. Beyond the dim rails was nothing: blank. Something grated against the ship’s side. The noise was loud in that dead, weird silence and darkness. “We’re aground,” one of the prisoners whispered, but the silence closed in on his voice.
    The fog grew bright, as if a light were blooming in it. Arren saw the heads of the men chained by him clearly, the tiny moisture-drops shining in their hair.
    Again the ship swayed, and he strained as far up as his chains would let him, stretching his neck, to see forward in the ship.The fog glowed over the deck like the moon behind thin clouds, cold and radiant. The oarsmen sat like carved statues. Crewmen stood in the waist of the ship, their eyes shining a little. Alone on the port side stood a man, and it was from him that the light came, from the face and hands and staff that burned like molten silver.
    At the feet of the radiant man a dark shape was crouched.
    Arren tried to speak and could not. Clothed in that majesty of light, the Archmage came to him and knelt down on the deck. Arren felt the touch of his hand and heard his voice. He felt the bonds on his wrists and body give way; all through the hold there was a rattling of chains. But no man moved; only Arren tried to stand, but he could not, being cramped with long immobility. The Archmage’s