CHAPTER TWO
It was early morning, and these were the high seas. Actually, the sun had cleared the headlands, which meant it couldn’t be all that early, and since the headlands above the seasonally fog-shrouded coast were in easy sight off the starboard beam the seas couldn’t be all that high themselves. Zalzyn Shaa had appropriated his accustomed morning-watch position on the quarterdeck of the Not Unreasonable Profit, and, with his sea legs long since thoroughly entrenched, was balancing easily against the coastal swells with a steaming mug of herb-brew tea in his grasp. This fine if slightly foggy morning, Shaa was reflecting back on his early acquaintance with the Not Unreasonable Profit and its similarly not unreasonable captain and crew, on the middle reaches of the River Oolvaan. The River Oolvaan, as was typical of intra-continental and land-locked waterways, had a fresh-water source, even though it emptied ultimately into the sea. Its navigational challenges had been those of sandbars and shifting currents, punctuated by the odd flood and the occasional cataract. Didn’t that mean, Shaa was wondering, that a vessel which made its habitat on such a river would have been designed specifically for fresh-water navigation in areas of restricted passage, rather than for the vicissitudes of the open ocean?
Despite his brief tenure as captain of this very ship, Shaa did not consider himself enough of an expert on nautical matters to speak authoritatively. Such a sage was, however, present. “Captain Luff,” said Shaa, addressing the slicker-garbed individual standing beside him at the rail, where he had been keeping his usual weather-eye peeled for any fresh pandemonium Shaa might feel compelled to unexpectedly unleash, “this ship and this crew, and one might add, yourself, are used to sailing the River Oolvaan, is that not true?”
“Aye, Dr. Shaa,” Captain Luff said warily, “that is indeed the situation.”
“Indeed,” said Shaa. “Have you found, then, that the forces at your command have been equal to the transition to the salt-water environment we are now cruising so pleasantly across?”
Captain Luff removed his pipe from the corner of his mouth, extracted a pointed implement from beneath his slicker, and set to work scraping at the pipe’s inner recesses. “Why do you ask, Dr. Shaa? Do you have a criticism to lodge?”
“Not at all,” Shaa told him, “not at all. I was only reflecting on the reservoirs of seamanship and marine expertise present on this ship, not to say within its very sinews.”
The captain looked at Shaa for a moment, his hands still and the pipe forgotten. “You know, it is true,” he continued, after the pause for consideration, resuming work at the same time on his pipe, “that a mariner does not often get the chance to engage in conversation of the sort I have engaged in with you, especially while at sea, don’t you know. That being said, and that being no less than the truth, it must also be said that never in all my years of roaming the waterways of the known world, aye and seas and oceans beyond the commonly known, too, never, as I say, I can state with confidence, have I heard before today any person refer to any ship as having sinews.”
“It is my honor to be the first, then,” said Shaa. “But the matter of sinews remains, nevertheless, with or without the delineation, as does the matter of the difficulty in realigning ship and crew from one environment to another. That would appear to be just the sort of challenge to appeal to an old sea-dog such as yourself. Wouldn’t you say so, Captain?”
“There be more than enough challenges aboard this ship,” stated Captain Luff. Shaa inclined a guileless eyebrow. By this time, however, Captain Luff had been through enough of these encounters to realize that if Shaa had a guileless bone in his body it had not yet revealed itself, even by implication. “More challenges than that, Captain?” Shaa said. “A hardy sea-dog you must be indeed, and no doubt about it. Surely there must be some way I can help lighten the load of your burden.”
“I would doubt that very much, Dr. Shaa,” said the captain with a sidelong glance in his direction, “seeing as you yourself contribute mightily to it, don’t you know. You are a challenge yourself, sir, and no doubt about that. You must have been quite a vexation to your mother, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“So she often commented,” said Shaa, “which was all the more curious considering the overall balance of terror in my family.”
Captain Luff examined his now-clean pipe with relish before propping it securely back in the corner of his mouth. “How was that, now, then?”
Shaa had been lulled by the pleasant swells and the motion of the ship, which was for a change gentle to a degree approaching placidity. “I had an older brother, you see, compared to whom I was the merest pussycat.”
“‘Had,’ then, you say.”
“Had, have, it’s all the same anyway.”
“Is that how it is? I lack the personal experience, don’t you know, being an only child.”
“A prudent philosophy,” Shaa told him, “have no doubt about it.” To the east, the sun broke through the last wisps of the morning mist and cast a clean light across the ship. Below them and forward, the main deck was spotted with clumps of crew members adjusting ratlines, coiling ropes, swabbing the deck, and checking the lashings on the few crates of trade goods that had failed to fit down in the hold with the rest of the cargo. Much more of the deck was open than had been the case on their run down the Oolvaan. Perhaps this was also related to the different demands of sea and river. Shaa decided that, all things considered and curiosity aside, it might be better not to reopen the topic.
Members of the crew were not the only ones abroad on the deck. Ronibet Karlini and the young Tildamire Mont were ensconced at their small writing-desk over by the starboard bulwark. Tildamire was not so young as that, actually, Shaa reminded himself, noting the appreciative glances the deckhands were giving her whenever they had the opportunity. She and Roni were both dressed in shirts and shipboard trousers, with loose jackets as outer wear, and Tildy had similarly followed Roni’s lead by cutting her sandy hair short. In Shaa’s professional opinion as a physician an adolescent woman could do much worse than adopt the sensible Ronibet as her role model. Shaa hadn’t known Roni at Tildamire’s age, though, so it was possible that could have been a time when the model had broken down. As Shaa well knew, even sensible adults are not necessarily sensible from birth.
Tildamire had been following Roni in more than just deportment, though. Roni was easygoing but that was not the same as being easily impressed. In discussing their plans for the near future just the previous evening, in fact, Roni had commented on Tildy’s rapidly developing aptitude for symbolic math and theoretical magic. Tildy didn’t have practical spell-knowledge or casting skills, but her grasp of their underpinnings was significantly the harder to achieve. It could also ultimately take her further if she chose to continue with wizardry as a career. Still, the thrill of discovering an astute disciple did not totally account for the fervor with which Roni had been alternately encouraging Tildy and egging her on. Observing Ronibet, the situation made Shaa wonder if she was not reenacting one of her own formative experiences. Perhaps Karlini knew, but if so he had thus far been unwilling to spill those particular beans.
Not that the Great Karlini had been all that communicative on any other topic for the last few days, either. This morning Karlini was at his accustomed place too, up on the foredeck wedged into the bow. Karlini had spoken vaguely about keeping a watch for icebergs, and indeed he had been spending an inordinate amount of time gazing off into the water ahead of the ship. True, Karlini at the best of times was noticeably absent-minded. At the moment, though, Shaa had observed that Karlini had been taking preoccupation to new levels of intensity. This did not seriously interfere with his value as a deterrent, and was clearly playing a role keeping the sailors at a healthy distance away from his wife and Tildamire. Sailors were a superstitious lot by tradition, and Shaa would not have been surprised to discover that this was codified in their guild rules as well, but it took no superstition for them to treat Karlini with vigilant respect, only powers of observation. They had viewed Karlini’s pyrotechnics earlier in the voyage.
Of course, as far as the issue of deterrence went, there was Svin, too.
As Shaa watched him along the length of the ship, Karlini suddenly stood, brushed himself off, shook one leg clear of the coil of rope that had decided to tangle itself up with him on his getting up off the deck, and began to make his way aft. Some ancient philosophies had claimed that observer and object were linked in a complementary relationship, with an act of observation causing some reciprocal change at the other end, and indeed a certain class of spells were based directly on this principle, not to mention its ramifications throughout the treatment of action-reaction coupled pairs. Outside of the direct application of this philosophy through sorcery, Shaa did not believe its effects could be felt at the level of the macroscopic world. Nevertheless, it was certainly true that the world was full of surprises. Shaa had been watching Karlini, and Karlini had taken that moment to spring into action. Of course, nothing said the world’s surprises had to be any more than inconsequential.
Shaa heard a discreet cough at his elbow. “Excuse me, sir,” said Wroclaw, Karlini’s retainer. “Might I bring you a refill for your tea? And you, sir, captain, a fresh pouch for your pipe?”
Indeed, Captain Luff had just started to fumble beneath his slicker with an increasingly furrowed expression, which Shaa had interpreted to mean that his tobacco had somehow eluded his grasp. As Wroclaw deferentially extended a full pouch of the captain’s blend toward him, it became clear that he had in fact been even better than his word had implied in anticipating the needs of the moment. “Thank you, Mr. Wroclaw,” Captain Luff said, taking the pouch and beginning to prime his pipe. “How do you do that, man?”
For Wroclaw, “man” was a generic honorific, what with his lime-tinted skin and extra-jointed arms, but then you had to allow species terms a certain laxity in modern society in general, unless of course bigotry was your all-too-common philosophy of life. “I’ve always looked on it as more a calling than a job, sir,” said Wroclaw. “And you, Dr. Shaa?”
Shaa had thoroughly inspected Wroclaw as he’d handed over the captain’s pouch; both of Wroclaw’s hands were now free and there were no noticeable bulges around his coat or trousers. “Yes,” said Shaa, “I will thank you for your offer and indeed take a refill, since it is after all for medicinal purposes rather than raw sybaritic pleasure, but only if you can produce it now from about your person.”
Wroclaw cleared his throat again with a genteel “ahem.” Then, when nothing had happened after a few seconds, he stamped lightly on the top step of the companionway up which he had first appeared. “Ahem,” he said more forcefully, aiming it down the steep stairs. An earthenware teapot appeared at the top of the companionway and rose into the air.
“Not beast of burden am, I,” said a crackly voice. His attention now focussed in response to the new speaker, Shaa could perceive that the teapot was not in fact floating on its own in mid-air. Instead, the teapot was clutched in a set of black-cloaked arms that Shaa had lost at first against the similar gloom of the unlighted below-decks passage. Beside him, Shaa felt Captain Luff find something else to observe on the quarterdeck, and edge carefully away. Captain Luff did have his limits.
Shaa had his own limits too, of course, but he made a point of drawing them much more liberally, and on a time-varying basis of relativity. “Thank you, Wroclaw,” he said as Wroclaw poured more brew from the teapot, “and you too, of course, Haddo. That was quite neighborly of you, I must say,” he added judiciously.
“Hmph,” said Haddo. “Low is fate, for teapot the porter I to become. If not on vacation was bird, different would be things. Wroclaw, speak with you would I.”
“Please excuse me, gentlemen,” Wroclaw said. “Is there anything else I might get you?”
“Thank you, Wroclaw, no,” Shaa said. “Off with you now. The path of wisdom is not to keep friend Haddo waiting.”
“Indeed, no, sir,” agreed Wroclaw, followed by another echoy “hmph” from beneath his feet. Wroclaw disappeared down the stairs.
“Quite a crew you are,” commented Captain Luff from his new position behind the helmsman, “and about that there’s no mistaking.” He fingered his nattily short growth of new beard. “Speaking of which, where’s that other young fellow this morning? The one with the cane and his mind in the haze.”
“The Creeping Sword?” said Shaa. “I’m sure he’s skulking about somewhere.” He had not actually told a lie, Shaa reminded himself. He had merely neglected to mention the fact that the “somewhere” to which he had alluded was no longer onboard the boat.
Captain Luff gave a noncommittal grunt and puffed vigorously on his pipe. A cloud of aromatic smoke engulfed his head before shredding away in the breeze. “And our other amenities are adequate, I hope? And our navigation? I trust we are approaching Peridol at a quick enough rate to suit you, Dr. Shaa?”
“‘Alacrity’ is a word that comes to mind,” said Shaa. This was not necessarily an unmixed blessing. The circumstances of his last departure from Peridol had been what they had been, nor were they likely in the interim to have changed. Back then, it had been made clear to Shaa that Peridol was not what he would be able to call a healthy place. Nevertheless, one characteristic of interims was that they did offer an opportunity for situations to evolve. His heart gave a sudden palpitation and broke into a run of rapid beats. Be still, Shaa told it, and took an extra swig of the glycosidic tea for good measure. Surprisingly, his heart did quiet, resuming its regular rate and rhythm. Pharmacologically speaking, the double swallow of brew he had just downed would not have yet had an opportunity to affect things one way or another, but Shaa was never one to devalue the role of a timely placebo, even on himself. For all his crustiness, Shaa knew well just how vulnerable he could be to suggestion.
In the classical texts, suggestibility was tied up with susceptibility to a curse. Learning that there was such a thing as a curse-prone personality had not improved Shaa’s attitude on the subject of curses as a whole. Unfortunately, one’s conscious attitude, whether approving or disapproving, was not a side of the issue that had any impact on the results; one’s receptivity remained. So did Shaa’s track record. To the extent that Shaa’s vulnerability to curses might depend on his suggestibility, Max had tried to browbeat him out of it, and Shaa had also submitted to various arcane therapies from the deepest ranges of science and superstition both, but still the curse remained. Shaa was resigned to it. I am, he thought, really I am.
Resignation in this case was as much a matter of practicality as anything else. Too many oaths would have to be broken - and for that matter too many people would have to die - for the effects of the curse to end. The thought always left Max undaunted, but then Max was an undauntable kind of guy. Shaa was much less so, at least in this case. In this particular case, the most probable single person whose death would bring the curse to a close was Zalzyn Shaa, himself.
Down on the deck, the Great Karlini had reached Roni and Tildamire. He had been joined partway along his path from the bow by a seagull, which had perched itself on his shoulder. This being the sea, there were many seagulls about, and a small flock of them had taken up regular station just astern of the boat. This particular seagull, however, had not entered their company with these others, but had been dogging Karlini’s steps since even before he’d come to Roosing Oolvaya, having joined up with them the first time at a spot far inland.
“There’s something not quite right about that thought,” Karlini muttered. “‘Dogging your steps’ is a common enough expression, but doesn’t it sound kind of odd when applied to a seagull?”
“Many things you say sound odd, dear,” his wife told him.
Karlini’s face had furrowed itself in thought. “Isn’t there some tradition that looks at the seagull as a harbinger of doom?”
“Not as far as I know,” said Roni. “That’s not to say you don’t hear about seagulls here and there in some of the out-of-the-way texts. Usually they’re put in a concrete rather than metaphysical role, though; avatars of pelagic ecology, that kind of thing. The seagull? - maybe a harbinger of ocean carrion and bivalve mollusks, but doom? Why aren’t you talking to Shaa, anyway? He’s the student of natural philosophy, not me.”
The seagull stretched out its wing and flapped Karlini once over the head. “Urr,” Karlini said. “It has to mean something! The thing’s been following me for months.”
“It probably knows you’re an easy touch, dear.”
I simply must take up tennis, thought Tildy Mont. Her father had sent her off with Roni to get an education and see the world. The academic stuff she supposed she was getting, all right. What she’d been seeing of the world, though, was less scenic than distressing. Tildy had lost count of the number of conversations she’d witnessed that were just like being a center-line spectator at a tennis match, only without the ball, although sometimes with the rackets.
Tildy was used to it enough by now that she didn’t swivel her head back and forth to follow the volleys; she could observe with her eyes alone, and even with her eyes closed. The way the Karlinis played the game was different from the way Shaa did it, though, or for that matter most anyone else she’d run across. The things Karlini said often didn’t seem to have much connection at all with what was going on in the rest of the conversation. Karlini did this with everybody, but with his wife he was getting to be the worst. Was that because they’d been married for so long, or was Karlini just heading off on a different plane? Tildy glanced idly at the seagull, which as usual was paying no heed to Karlini’s comments except for an occasional nip at the closest ear, and sat up straight with a start.
For a change, the seagull had swiveled its eye around and seemed to be watching her.
“No, you don’t,” Tildy hissed. “You’ve already got a shoulder.” The seagull squawked and tossed its beak, then turned and wailed straight into Karlini’s eardrum.
“Yow! Stop that, will you?” Karlini growled at it. “The first thing when we land in Peridol I’m heading straight to the college library to look up an exorcism for sea-fowl.”
“Sit down and have a piece of cheese, dear,” Roni suggested. “The grapes are still fresh, too.”
“I don’t want a grape,” said Karlini, sitting down anyway and immediately regretting it. Why was Roni looking at him like that? “What? What is it?”
“What’s wrong with you, dear? You’ve been snapping at everyone ever since we left Oolsmouth.”
“Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine. I’m bored. I don’t like boats. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“So you said.”
Karlini managed a strained-looking smile. “See? Nothing’s wrong. You like to see smiles, right?”
“Okay, fine.”
“What did I say? Now you’re mad at me.”
“You’re just fine?” said Roni. “Okay then, I’m not mad.”
“Okay then, fine,” said Karlini.
“Fine.”
“Great.”
“... Uh, guys?” Tildy said, watching the two of them sit there glaring at each other, Karlini with his arms folded belligerently and Roni matching him with a sour enough expression to make you think she’d just taken a swig of milk a week out from under its freshness spell. “You love each other, right? Why are you beating up on each other all of a sudden?” It was sort of like watching your parents argue. Part of Tildy wanted to slide under the table and shrink away. Of course, that was the part her father, the former Lion of the Oolvaan Plain, had tried to totally expunge, along with any other personality features that smacked to the least extent of anything less than no-holds-barred straight-ahead attack-dog ferocity. No weaknesses were tolerated in the Mont family. That was surely why Tildy’s brother, Jurtan, had had such a hard time, what with his seizures and all; the Lion had looked at him like he was a strange invertebrate dragged in by the cat and dropped on the rug with a binding set of adoption papers. Tildy wondered how Jurtan was doing. Karlini might have been able to snoop in on him and Max to find out what was up, but Roni was right - Karlini hadn’t done much of anything since they’d left Oolsmouth except mope around and be peckish.
“There’s more to a relationship than love,” Roni said, after a pause long enough that Tildy had just about decided neither one of them had heard a word she’d said. “You decide what’s important in the relationship and then you stick to it. Trust. Openness. Sharing. Communication. Old favorites like that.”
“I’ve got nothing to share!” protested Karlini.
“So, see,” said Roni. “I guess we’ve communicated.”
“Good, I guess we have.”
“Right.”
“Fine.”
“It seems to me,” said Tildy, “that if you, Karlini, were working on some project instead of -”
“I don’t need marriage counseling from an adolescent,” Karlini sputtered. Maybe he’d also been listening after all. “Give me a break! Okay, I’m on edge, big deal. We’re heading into who knows what-all kinds of trouble in Peridol, that’s enough to put anybody on edge. There’s - oh, why bother. And there’s always Haddo.”
“Yes,” said a reedy voice approaching from astern, “always is Haddo.”
Tildy looked over her shoulder behind her. There was no doubt from the voice, of course, that Haddo was heading their way, but you could always hope. Haddo was trailed by a distressed-looking Wroclaw.
“Thanks, Haddo,” muttered Karlini. “Perfect.” Karlini didn’t enjoy knocking heads with his wife, especially with Tildy tossed in the mix to boot, so that should make the idea of being rescued more appealing, he thought, right? Unfortunately, rescue by Haddo promised its own set of new aggravations. Haddo’s industrious scuttle ground to a halt next to the table. Ready or not, Haddo was upon him. “Time for more contract negotiations, Haddo?” Karlini said.
Haddo aimed the black opening in his dark hood at Karlini, the twin floating red sparks in its depths canted reprovingly and the cloth of the upper rim drooping over them like accusingly furrowed eyebrows. “Master, O Great,” said Haddo. “Homage give we small laborers. Master are you, light can you treat serious the matters.”
“I guess that means yes,” said Karlini, his scowl (if that was possible) deepening further. He pushed himself to his feet. “I guess I’d better deal with it.”
“Guess?” said Haddo. “Guess not. Only do.”
“What?” Karlini muttered. “What, you want me to start paying you for those pearls of wisdom now too?”
Roni watched Karlini move reluctantly off with his retainers, and Tildamire watched Roni. She hadn’t seen Roni like this before. Roni sighed. Actually, Tildy thought, remembering that all of them kept telling her precision was important, it was more a masculine exclamation of “huh!” than a feminine sigh. To say it was a sigh would put the wrong spin on it. “I don’t know, Tildy,” Roni was saying, oblivious to Tildy’s internal battle with vocabulary. “You spend years with somebody, you start to think you know them, then you blink at them one day and see they’ve turned into someone else.”
“Uh, maybe it’s like he said, he’s just worried,” Tildy suggested. “He thinks he’s got to watch out for me, keep the sailors off me. I wish he’d back off a little. I mean, there’s my father and everything. My father thinks I can take care of myself or he wouldn’t have let me go off with you.” She noticed Roni wasn’t listening again. Just as well; Tildy thought she might have gone overboard a little with the bit about her father. As far as the Lion was concerned, the only one who could take care of themselves was the Lion. “Karlini said he doesn’t like boats.”
Roni was playing with a grape from the bowl on the table. “He doesn’t like boats, but he’s never reacted like this before. He usually just turns green and sits in a locker moaning. I’m not a shrew. It’s him - he’s keeping something from me. He was always a terrible liar.”
“Okay, maybe he is. Why would he do that? If he is, he sure doesn’t seem very happy about it either.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’ll tell you this. I’m going to find out.” Grape juice squirted. Roni wiped the crushed grape skin off her fingers.
Tildy found she was staring at the remains of the grape. Don’t go making a metaphor out of this, she told herself. The image of the pulped fruit stayed with her, though. If this kept up somehow Tildy didn’t think grapes were the only things that might get crushed.
The Great Karlini stopped on the far side of the deck, leaned on the rail so he could look over the side, and said in a low voice, “Is this far enough out of anybody’s earshot for you?”
Haddo regarded him, his arms beneath his cloak planted solidly on what in any similarly proportioned humanoid would have been his hips. “Bum are turning yourself into, you.”
“What Haddo means to say -” Wroclaw began.
“What means Haddo to say,” snapped Haddo, “Haddo will say. Not for you is business this, you with for liver the lilies. When tough must get - are doing you what?”
“Would you like to sleep with the fishes?” asked Wroclaw, in the same urbanely unruffled tone he always used. The other incongruity in the scene, aside from his words, was contributed by the way in which Haddo was now dangling over the side of the boat above the rushing water below, suspended by the bunched material of his hood caught up in Wroclaw’s clenched hand. “Answer now, if you would, Haddo my colleague.”
From the strangled sound of Haddo’s voice, Karlini thought, you might think Wroclaw had him by the neck instead of by the hood. “Down put me!” he gargled. “Point have you made!”
Karlini blinked. Haddo was back on the deck. There’d been a slight black-tinged blur in the air, but that was the only sign that Wroclaw had swung him back rather than using some kind of quick-zap teleport number. Haddo shook out his cloak and reached up to adjust the hang of his hood. “Regret will you this,” he muttered. Rather than a manifesto of vendetta and doom, though, the remark sounded to Karlini like a statement made pro forma, for the sake of appearance and conversational nicety.
But Wroclaw? “Uh, have you been taking some kind of martial arts lessons or something, Wroclaw?” Karlini said tentatively.
“As always, sir, my services are yours to command,” said Wroclaw. “As Haddo was commenting, though, with his usual velvety manner, we have been noting a certain ... decline in your condition of mind of late, sir. We beg your pardon for our boldness in raising this, but there it is.”
“Condition of mind? What are you talking about?”
“A term that comes to hand, sir, is ‘mope;’ also ‘brood’ or ‘sulk.’ We would all much rather see you engaged in some productive activity than slipping into, excuse me sir, as I mentioned before, decline.”
There it was. A sorcerer in “decline” was one who’d lost his or her touch and was an accident waiting to happen; raw meat for the next predator who walked up with half an appetite, a sinking ship to be deserted. The seagull shifted its balance uneasily on Karlini’s shoulder. “Is that what this is about?” said Karlini. “Are you telling me you’re quitting?”
“No, sir,” Wroclaw stated, “certainly not at just this moment. Peridol in this season is likely to be rather a challenge, though, if I might say so.”
“I’ll be ready! Don’t worry about me, I’ll be ready.”
Wroclaw scrutinized him. “Indeed, sir, of that I had no doubt. Please pardon our impertinence. Haddo, shall we go?”
“I’ve got something else to discuss with Haddo,” said Karlini. “Leave him with me.”
“As you say, sir.” Wroclaw bowed and withdrew.
Karlini directed a hard stare at Haddo, which the seagull still perched next to his head duplicated. Haddo stared back. “Well?” Karlini said. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“Close enough is matter. Better can you do than doing have been you.”
Karlini closed his eyes, and kneaded his forehead. “All this plotting and scheming, scheming and plotting. It never ends, Haddo, it only gets worse.”
“Word gave you.”
“I know I gave my word, Haddo, but this is not going to work. I haven’t kept anything from Roni since I met her. Now I’m supposed to work against her behind her back?”
“Not as extreme as statement is situation. Know this you.”
Karlini turned back to the ocean and drooped over the rail. The seagull squawked and hopped off his shoulder, flapped once, and came to a neat landing next to him on the gunwales. “I can’t do this, Haddo. It’s only going to get worse, it’s not going to get better.”
Karlini felt Haddo’s leathery hand on his back. “Do it you can,” Haddo told him, “because do it you must. In Peridol perhaps will be all things resolved.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
Haddo shrugged. “Happen it could. Happened have stranger things.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“How things go, that is. Help you perhaps can I. On this think I should.” Karlini had fallen silent. Haddo watched him a moment longer, though, before deciding Karlini was in no significant danger of falling or leaping over the rail. As he retreated, Haddo cast another glance back to be on the safe side. Karlini was still drooping, his back to Haddo, but the seagull fixed him with an intent, watchful look.
Checking periodically over his shoulder, Haddo made his way below decks and into the hold. The crates and lashed bales of their cargo had been packed tightly into the available space, with only a few narrow passageways left to twist and dodge their way between them. Haddo, however, was a being of less than average size. He had also assisted in the packing. This was not the first time during the trip he had been down in the hold, either. He was sure no one had been following him, and no one was in sight when he scuttled around a bend in one of the passageways, dropped to the deck, and slid himself to the left. Anyone carrying a lamp through the hold would have seen no hint of an opening, since the sacks that flanked the passage at that point bulged out at the front, casting a maze of shadows on everything below them. To detect the narrow recess at the bottom where a cleverly raised palette kept the sacks off the deck an observer would have had to crawl, hope for a quiet bilge as they put their eye down on the deck, and aim their light just right.
Of course, it was a ship, so there were rats. As Haddo wriggled through the narrow space, pushing the sack he’d picked up on his way past the kitchen in front of him, something chittered at him from up ahead deeper in the blackness. Haddo growled back at it. The squeaking persisted, joined by a blinking set of green eyes. Obviously this was a rodent he had not previously encountered. “Warned you did I,” muttered Haddo. A red glow spread from under his hood, then focussed down and became twin beams, straight, clear, and narrow with a color like spotlit rubies. The rat’s green eyes fluoresced and its chittering turned to a squeal as its sharp-edged shadow spread out behind it. Where the beams converged, a puff of smoke rose out of its fur. Then the rat had had enough. It twisted away with a final wail and was gone. The beams and the red glow died. Haddo edged through the area the rat had abandoned and reached the lower edge of a crate. He rapped on it. “Who is it?” said a muffled voice.
“Who think you it is?” Haddo snapped.
“You can’t be too careful,” grumbled the voice. The wood panel clicked and slid upward, and Haddo edged through the opening. The panel glided shut behind him. “Hold on while I get the lights.” A ripple of shining green ran around the wall over Haddo’s head and snaked off at right angles, outlining the inside of the crate. Then yellow burst out through the green, the two colors pulsated once or twice as they worked things out between them, and the light level settled down to a constant low but serviceable glow.
The crate measured perhaps eight feet on a side. As you’d expect from a crate in a cargo hold, the space ahead of Haddo was crammed tight with stuff - rolled parcels concealed in oilskins, boxes with latches, a lashed set of short metal rods, a hand-axe. Barely visible atop the mounds of equipment was the curve of a spherical cauldron.
Behind Haddo, a ladder was fastened to the inside surface of the crate. The same lattice-work retaining wall that kept the contents of the crate from collapsing into the entrance-space continued upward along the ladder’s path. Haddo grasped the ladder and scurried up. At the top of the ladder a two-foot-high gap separated the cargo and the crate’s upper lid. Protruding from the center of the cargo was the upper swell of the round ball, and swung back from the center of the ball was a domed lid. “Outside met I rat,” Haddo told the creature perched inside the sphere, its head propped on the lip.
“You want to tell me about inconvenience?” said the creature, its pointed ears splayed at conflicting angles. “Try taking an ocean voyage inside a box.” He moved his head around in a slow circle, carefully stretching his neck muscles, then worked one shoulder back and forth to match. “I’m getting to be nothing but a mess of hog-tied ligaments.”
Haddo tossed the sack he’d lugged up the ladder onto a cluster of skyrockets protruding out of the baggage next to the ball. He gestured at the metal sphere. “Have you not your vehicle, Favored? Life support facilities has it, said you not?”
“There’s a big difference between support and comfort,” said Favored-of-the-Gods. “At least you get to walk outside on the deck.”
“A pleasure always that is not,” Haddo said drily. “Also my idea this plan was not.”
“You could have tried to talk me out of it.”
“Frozen permanently in frown is mouth,” asked Haddo, “or is just to make of visitor with supplies to welcome feel?”
“If you weren’t bigger than me I’d whomp you one,” Favored muttered.
“Testy is getting on ship everyone,” Haddo reflected. “At throats people are.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Haddo shrugged. “Not alone are you. Good or bad not is, fact is only. Of it make what choose you. To Peridol ride wanted you.”
“Well, yeah, all right,” said Favored. “You’d think if my patron wanted me in Peridol for the Knitting she’d at least have supplied transportation, but no.”
“Insensitive ones work you for,” commiserated Haddo. “Downtrodden masses are we.”
“You starting with the dialectic again?” Haddo shrugged. “Anyway,” Favored went on, “as long as you’re bringing up insensitivity, how’s that Karlini of yours doing? You keeping an eye on him?”
“Faith has kept Karlini. Speak to wife will he not.”
Favored shook his head. “I don’t know about him, Haddo. He could be a weak link. If he lets something slip to her - or, worse, directly to Max - Max’ll come after us the first thing he does. I don’t mind telling you I’d rather not face him head-on.”
“Danger is Max. Getting around it no way is. To check put on Max, options limited are. Karlini most attractive option is.”
“You’re sure he’s not going to fall apart?”
“Sure am I not,” snapped Haddo. “Said I not under strain is he not. Observing closely am him I. Difficult position have put we in him.”
“So we’re just going to watch while his fuse burns down?”
“Credit give me for brains,” Haddo said. “When Peridol reach we, mood of Karlini must we lift. Cycle must we break. This for, place Peridol perfect is.” Haddo hesitated. “Problem only is Karlini not. Told I not you about ice the attack.”
One of Favored’s eyes snapped wide open and the other squinted half-shut, his nictitating membranes twitching. “Did you say ‘ice’?”
“Ice said I,” said Haddo reluctantly. “On trip down river to Oolsmouth attacked by icebergs was boat. Thought Karlini and Shaa against them was aimed strike this.”
“Does that mean what I think?”
“Know not I, suspect I only.”
Favored slumped back into his sphere. His voice echoed out with a hollow metallic tone. “That’s the last thing we need right now.”
“Last need we, first yet but may we have.”
“Ice, you say?” Favored repeated, with a note of disbelief. “That’s not good. What the hell business does he have heading out of the frozen wastes to come after you down here, anyway? I thought he was out of the picture for good. You said he couldn’t survive out of that climate, either.”
“Maybe someone he got refrigerator to build.”
“Damn,” said Favored, now thoroughly morose. “You got anything else you want to tell me? What about that seagull?”
“Bird speaks not yet.”
Favored hung his head back over the lip of the hatch. “I don’t like that either. The idea of that bird makes me nervous. As long as that thing’s walking around … Well, I don’t like it.”
“Much around is there that like you not,” said Haddo. “Agree with you do I, yet strike we preemptively can not. To be on guard, to wait, to watch is of wisdom the strategy.”
“Wisdom? You trying to turn yourself into a sage now too?”
“Particularly wise am I not. Open merely are eyes.”
“Yeah, well, you’re probably right,” Favored said. “You’ve had more fieldwork than me anyway. There sure isn’t much we could do on a boat even if we wanted to. Once we get to Peridol the story’ll be different.”
“In Peridol will be many things different,” Haddo said. “Enjoy you of refill the fruit.” Always a useful ally, was Favored, Haddo mused as he squirmed his way back out of the crate and into the passageway in the cargo hold. Seeing adequately as always in the minimal light, he padded quietly toward the exit, dodging around the jogs and corners. Two to the left, then one to the right, then - whoompf!
“Where from came wall?” muttered Haddo, taking a step back. There hadn’t been a surface at this spot on his way in. Then all at once he realized that what he’d run into wasn’t a wall at all. It was a man. A large man, in fact a very large man. A man whose mass owed nothing to sloth or fat and everything to cord upon band of muscle, that and his hereditary ceiling-scraping stature.
“You,” whispered the man.
“Down keep your voice,” hissed Haddo, feeling the cargo shift around him in resonant vibration with the subterranean rumble of the speech, “or avalanche cause could you. Around boat seen you have I. Svin are you. Dark corners liking are you now?”
“You,” Svin repeated, with a bit less rumble this time, but with the same hollow bang and boom. “I have seen you too. You have been avoiding me. You are Haddo.”
“Avoiding have I been not,” protested Haddo. “No reason would have I -”
“I have tracked the snow leopard. For three days have I followed him through the tundra, through the empty plains. When someone tries to hide from me, I know. You are Haddo. I know you.”
“Serve we both same masters,” Haddo said, his own voice a bit scratchier than usual. “Met did we in service together, recently, on boat.”
“No,” said Svin. “I know you. I am a barbarian from the frozen north, like my parents before me.”
Haddo stared him up and down. Even in the gloom of the hold, lit only by the stray beams of sunlight that had wormed their way through gaps between the planks of the deck above, it was apparent that this statement was out of date. “Barbarian were you,” Haddo stated. “Now wear you trousers and shirt, cut you your hair; abandoned have you loincloth, are gone your furs. Civilization have you entered.”
“You may be right,” Svin said reflectively. “Perhaps now I am something else. That is not the point. You will not change the subject, you with your games of language and your culture of deceit. Men are not born to -”
“If to something say have you,” said Haddo, “stop you can I not, but favor do me this - forget at least of noble savage the spiel. Old has it become.”
“Words are a trap,” Svin acknowledged. “I leave the snares of rhetoric; the truth is this. At the top of the world my people lived with the land; with the caribou, the ice hawk, the polar bear. We lived the way of the warrior. Man strove against beast, family against nature, tribe against tribe. Who would dare rule us? Chill wastes were our home. Even the hand of the gods was light. Then came Dortonn, Dortonn the sorcerer, Dortonn and his Kingdom of Ice.” Svin spat, as though to clear his throat of something vile.
What was vile to Svin was not merely the content of his speech, Haddo knew. Not that long ago Svin had been down with tuberculosis. Since then it had been hack and hack, cough and cough all over the ship. Svin got his throat back under control and continued. “With his power Dortonn forced my people to serve him, to build his castle. We called to our gods, but they were with Dortonn. They told us to submit. We would not submit, even at the word of our god. But we were not the only ones under Dortonn’s hand. There were others in the wastes. Those like you.”
“Many relatives have I -”
Svin squatted down in a smooth powerful motion and closed one hand over Haddo’s cloak next to the hood, where his shoulder probably was. “One among them served Dortonn as his chamberlain, as Fist of Dortonn. He too was a cunning sorcerer. He was called Haddo.”
“Among my people common of Haddo is name,” Haddo said quickly.
Svin’s hand tightened. “Under Haddo, Fist of Dortonn, life was hard, but before this time Dortonn himself was even worse. There was little difference; we hated both Dortonn and his Fist. Then one day there was lightning and fire in the castle. One tower fell. We fought Dortonn’s soldiers shoulder to shoulder with Haddo’s people, who seemed to come from the very walls. Some said this was Haddo’s doing, his plan to overcome Dortonn.
“Many fell. Many fled. Dortonn survived, though his strength was now weak. Haddo was not seen again.”
“Interesting perhaps this is,” allowed Haddo. “Happened what then? Events these must years ago have been.”
“Yes,” Svin said, his voice lost in memory, “years ago. I was a child. Yet it was I who saw Dortonn escape into the cliffs.”
“Do not understand I why to rule frozen wastes would want someone,” said Haddo. “Of better places are there plenty.”
“That is what I need to ask you. Why? Why did Dortonn come to us? What was the true story, and the story of Haddo?”
“Release you your hand,” Haddo instructed him. To his surprise, Svin realized that his fingers had obeyed almost before his mind had had a chance to process the demand. Still, rather than grab Haddo again he stood up and moved back a step. In Haddo’s voice, croaky though it was, Svin had suddenly heard the same tone of nonsense-is-over that he’d been trained to recognize across from him at the other end of a sword. The twin red embers beneath Haddo’s cloak looked hotter than usual, almost like the actual pit-of-hell flames Svin remembered from bedtime tales as a youngster, and seemed to circulate like whirlpools of fire as Haddo stared up at him and spoke. “If that Haddo were I, if there had I been, think would I that behind this story, really was there a god, that his tool Dortonn was. For gods games these are.”
“That is not enough. I must know more.”
“Your time bide you,” Haddo said after a moment. “If that Haddo were I, lightly not would take I this. Much means this to you... Against this Haddo swore you vengeance?”
“Of course I swore vengeance,” said Svin, taking another step back. “My people are always swearing vengeance for one thing or another.” The elders had told him to watch out for magicians, especially ones who weren’t human, but they’d never really explained how to rationalize the craftiness you needed around sorcery with the forthrightness expected from a warrior born. “But now I am older,” he went on, more thoughtfully, “and have seen too much for things to be that simple. Perhaps knowledge may be a kind of vengeance too.”
A sudden creaking at the far end of the cargo hold, and a new glow in the air, indicated that someone else was undogging the door across from them and coming in. “Perhaps talk will we again,” hissed Haddo. “One question pose will I for you. Name know you of god, master of Dortonn?”
“They said Dortonn’s allegiance was only to Death,” said Svin. “That’s all my people ever thought of him as, Death.”
“Many deaths there are. To tell them apart, names they have.”
“... I was only a child,” Svin said tentatively, “but perhaps I did hear something else, at night, when the elders were talking. Is it even a name? Pod Dall?”
“Is a name,” Haddo reassured him. It was quite an interesting one, especially under the circumstances. The god whose creatures had terrorized Svin’s people had kept an uncharacteristically low profile; this god had apparently not wanted his identity bandied idly about. Still, Svin’s information corroborated Haddo’s own suspicions.
Quite interesting. Especially under the circumstances. Did Svin know about the ring they had picked up in Roosing Oolvaya? Probably not. It would be just as well not to tell him. In particular, it might be better, at least for the moment, that Svin not know about the god trapped in the ring. The god by the name of Pod Dall.