Citadels of Darkover

by Deborah J. Ross

  Ian turned back to his work with a lighter heart, and soon had the net stretched out and ready for casting. He could tell from the sound and feel of the sea that the sea-mounts were close ahead, and yes, thick shoals of fish were gathered there. He could drop his anchor and cast his net very soon now...

  The shorebird leaped up off the bow, screaming.

  An instant later Ian heard/felt that deep restlessness in the sea gathering itself and rushing toward a point—no, a line—in the sea-bed behind him: a rumbling, a shaking, a burst of pressure— Upwelling! he realized, as he felt the fish scattering frantically, fleeing. He looked back and saw it: a rogue wave, enormous, bigger than he’d ever seen or heard of, crested with a crown of foam, reaching for the sky and rushing straight toward him.

  Ian lunged for the tiller and held it hard, desperate to keep the skiff’s stern pointed straight toward the oncoming mountain of water. He remembered, from Father’s old tales, that he had a chance to ride out the wave if he could just keep at the right angle to it. Sea and sky tilted as the monster rushed under him, lifting the boat, stern-first. Ian braced his feet against the water-box and held the tiller straight with all the strength in his body. Another wrenching, the skiff fell flat and the pressure on the tiller slacked. Ian saw nothing ahead of him but sky. I’m on the crest! he realized dizzily.

  The skiff was safe for the moment, riding the crest of the rogue wave, but—like the legendary skier who rode the avalanche—he had no choice as to where, or how long, it would carry him.

  All Ian could think to do was tie down the tiller, crawl forward and secure the net. The wave showed no sign of slacking, and the feel and sound of the sea was unchanged. Ian settled in the bow, where he could at least look down and see the face of the wave slanting away before him and the surface of the sea a dizzying distance below that. He guessed that he was well past the sea-mounts by now, far out into the Bay of Dalereuth, possibly further out than any sailor had ever gone. How far would the wave run? He’d heard legends of great waves that could run halfway—or even all the way—around the world. How would he ever get home again?

  As he watched the hypnotic sight of the water running below, Ian began to wonder why people knew so little about the sea. Yes, the weather was always treacherous and usually rough, the water prone to ferocious storms and—as now—huge rogue waves, but if his little skiff could survive, why not a bigger boat? Back on the mainland there was no shortage of timber; he’d seen huge trees in the forest north of town that could supply wood for a ship 100 meters long. Why had no one but fishermen, like his family, ever ventured out on the sea? Why had none of them ever ventured far, no more than ten kilometers at most? The threat of storms and huge waves didn’t explain it. It was as if the vast majority of humans had long ago chosen to turn their backs on the sea and never think of it again. His brothers, he knew, had minds like that. But why? He couldn’t understand it.

  And the wave rolled on, and on. Hours passed, bringing hunger and thirst. Ian crawled back to the stern cabinet, drew a cup of clean water from the keg anchored there, and took one of the oilcloth-wrapped packets of dried fish. As he ate he thanked all the gods in agreement that he’d always kept up the tradition of keeping the cabinet full-stocked. There was food and drink enough to sustain him for a tenday, easily. Hopefully, the wave would exhaust itself before then. He wondered how he would sleep when night came. The thick blanket in the fore-cabinet would keep him warm enough, but the thought of himself snoring peaceably while his skiff raced along on the top of the mountain of moving water made him laugh.

  He was halfway through the dried fish when a familiar caw drew his attention to the bow. As he watched, scarcely believing, a shorebird came angling downward, flailing its wings gamely, to land on the bow-post. Yes, it was the same bird, the dark-grey bands on its tail-feathers were unmistakable.

  “You followed me all this way?” Ian marveled. “Are you that greedy for easy food?”

  He held out the chunk of dried fish. The bird took a single delicate peck, and then graciously left him the rest.

  Not hungry, Ian considered as he chewed the last of the fish. If not for food, why did he follow me?

  As if in answer, the bird turned around and faced out toward the oncoming sea. Idly curious, Ian unbuttoned his belt-bag and pulled out the folding spy-glass. It took awhile to adjust to the altered angle of the sea and look toward the horizon.

  Yes! There was a rigid unchanging shape there, just visible above the edge of the sea, dark and solid: an island.

  And the skiff was headed straight toward it.

  Ian’s flare of hope changed into a shock of alarm. If the edge of the island was a stone cliff, or even a pile of boulders, the boat would be smashed like a bug under a rock. He searched the edge of the island frantically, looking for some kind of beach or low shore. If he couldn’t find any, he’d have to discover some means of steering the skiff along the top of the wave, row it east or west somehow, get past the end of the island—and keep riding the wave, hopefully weakened by then...

  In fact, that was his best hope to get free of it.

  Ian stuffed the spy-glass back in his pouch, scrambled to the stern and re-set the tiller. Then crawled to the waist of the boat, pulled up the oars, set them in the locks and clamped the locks shut, put their blades in the water and push-pulled to starboard. It was incredibly hard, like hauling against packed sand, but the nose of the skiff shifted a finger-width to the right.

  The shorebird gave a caw that sounded almost triumphant, and flapped into the sky. At ten meters up, it turned and began circling the skiff.

  Thanks for your help, Ian thought, as he hauled on the oars again. Yes, the skiff was turning, but so slowly against all that weight of water. Could he get it turned in time? How close now was the island?

  He glanced down at the sea—and saw something changed. There seemed to be lumps bobbing in the water rushing toward him. Fish? he wondered, though they didn’t have the look or feel of fish. And now the island was visible without the spy-glass. Too close! Ian concentrated on hauling the oars. His shoulders ached.

  Then the arms came out of the water.

  They were pale human arms, followed by pale human heads with long varicolored hair. They clutched the port-side gunwales of the skiff, ahead of the sweep of his oar, and pushed. He felt the skiff turn, much further than his own efforts could move it. A quick glance to starboard astern showed more gripping hands—with webbed fingers—pushing. They had come to help him, these creatures.

  Selkies!

  What else could they be? Everyone who lived on the seacoast knew the legend, but nobody living had ever seen one. Mother had said that her grandfather swore to his dying day that he had seen a Selkie once, but he was known to be fond of drink, so no one believed him.

  And here was the legend, come to life—dozens of them—helping him save his skiff from destruction.

  Now the skiff faced across the arched length of the monster wave, and the Selkies let go of the gunwales and slipped backward in the water. Ian lifted the oars, scrambled back to the tiller and re-tied it straight, then crawled forward and bent to the oars again. One of the Selkies gave a complex trilling call, and most of them darted to the skiff’s stern. Ian felt the nudge that added to his effort, looked back and saw that as many Selkies as could crowd close had pressed their hands to the stern gunwale and were pushing again. As he turned forward Ian saw one of the Selkies lunge up, almost completely out of the water, reach into the bow and grab the hitching-line, then slip back into the sea. Even as he bent to the oars, Ian saw the line slide around in front of the bow, and then go taut. Pull and push, he understood, as he worked the oars. The skiff moved faster.

  But the island was close now, very close, and the wave was still rushing toward it. Ian’s heart sank as he realized there was no time to reach the end of the shore, and the isle’s coastline was a tumbled slope of wave-washed boulders. He rowed harder, desperately scanning the shore for a change.


  And there: just a hundred meters, maybe less, at the foot of a hill, there was a pebbled beach. If he could turn again, at just the right moment... No time to change the tiller.

  But the Selkies knew! Quick as darting fish, as the bow came parallel to the edge of the beach, they changed position again. Even as Ian push-pulled the oars, they slipped to the sides of the skiff and helped it turn again. The skiff came about landward, facing clear beach, Ian shipped the oars fast, all the Selkies dashed to the stern, and then the surf was roaring close and there was no more time.

  Ian dropped to the scuppers and curled up fast, feeling/hearing the bottom of the wave catch on the rising shore and the top crest over it. The howling of stone and water filled all creation, and the wave rushed up the beach, arched over and crashed into seething chaos that carried skiff and Selkies and all up to the top of the pebble-slope and further, up the hill, into salt-grass and brush, losing force at last, and finally sinking into foam.

  Before Ian could even raise his head, the Selkies were swarming around the boat, pulling the hitch-line and gunwales, pushing the stern, making certain that the skiff wasn’t sucked back into the withdrawing water. He thought to grab the anchor and, with a shout of warning, throw it out ahead of the bow. The boat held in place while the retreating water howled in frustration and sank away. Ian sat up in time to see the Selkies go wallowing after it into the muddy and grumbling sea.

  The lone shorebird settled on the bow-post and cawed in satisfaction.

  No, not all the Selkies were gone. One of them—clearly female, her modesty preserved only by her long hair, which looked as if had been deliberately placed—sat waiting on the coarse grass, calmly watching him. He noticed that one lock of her pale hair had been braided, with something—it looked to be a round stone—woven into it, and one hand was stroking the braid. She looked very human, save for her webbed fingers, and her elongated splayed feet that resembled nothing so much as two halves of a fish’s tail. Ian wondered if she could walk on those, or only swim.

  He pulled himself shakily out of the skiff, gave the Selkie a brief bow, and said: “By all the gods in agreement, Sea-Lady, I thank you for my life—and my boat.”

  The Selkie woman clutched her braid, visibly concentrated, and said—slowly: “We. Need. Your help.”

  Ian’s first thought was: Can I rest awhile first? What he said was: “What help, Lady?”

  For answer, she swept her arm wide, uphill, indicating the top of the island. Ian climbed on tottering feet up the slope, past the flattened and uprooted brush, up to the stony crest of the hill. There he looked up and down the length of the island, and saw what the monster wave had done.

  Except for the central hill, the island was long and thin and fairly low—and the wave had swept it bare. Save for the thin band of soil and scrubby brush around the hilltop, nothing remained but wet, bare and jumbled rock. At only one spot, perhaps 30 meters away, was a roughly round area of flat stone, maybe 50 meters across before it fell away to the jumbled slopes on either side. An oddity: between the stones on the slopes lay deposits of mud that was oddly pale, almost white.

  What is it that I am supposed to see? Ian wondered, giving a questioning look back to the Selkie.

  She furrowed her brow in thought—just like a human—and gripped her braid. Ian got the strong impression that she thought in terms of images, clusters of sounds and scents and...feel, the way he could feel the mood of the sea—and it took her effort to translate these into discrete words, to speak like a human.

  He also knew, as surely as he knew that the sea behind him was calm and sated, that the round pebble braided into the Selkie’s hair was a deep and glittering blue: a laran-stone, such as landside sorcerers used. She used it to enhance her sea-sense—so much like his own—to communicate with beings other than Selkies.

  As if in confirmation, the shorebird circled down to perch on the ground between his feet and gave a cheerful caw.

  The Selkie pointed toward the bare stone platform and pronounced: “Rookery.”

  Understanding came in a flood. This island was where the local shorebirds came in their migration, came here to mate and breed and raise their chicks. Before the ruin of the wave there had been topsoil here, and sheltering brush: enough flat and covered ground on the island to host countless thousands of birds. That white mud between the now-bare stones was guano from generations of birds; it had fertilized the topsoil and drained down in the summer rains into the sea, where it fed the algae and broadweed that in turn fed and sheltered the stone-worms and sea-flies and fish—which fed the birds and the larger fish, which fed the Selkies and other creatures of the sea. The guano from the birds washed as far off as the sea-mounts, which accounted for their abundant sea-life. All of this depended on the roosting birds.

  And now there was no safe place, no shelter, for all those birds when their season came. A few hundred, perhaps, could crowd into the surviving brush on the central hill, but for the rest—thousands and thousands—there was nothing but the bare and jagged stone.

  Ian spread his hands helplessly, and turned back to the Selkie-maid. “Speaker,” he named her, “What can I do?”

  Speaker clutched her stone and concentrated again.

  This time the message was a simple image: his family’s house on the mainland, as seen from the sea—in fact, seen from several angles, and seasons, and times. He saw Father patching the roof and himself, a small boy, solemnly handing up tools and baskets full of tiles. He saw storms battering at that plain stone wall, exhausting themselves while the stones stood firm. He saw a vague image of that circular stone wall being built, by people he didn’t recognize but who had a familiar look, and knew that the memory was very old. He saw, with a peculiar intensity, the building of the narrow windows.

  ...Windows, gaps...

  Right there, he understood what Speaker wanted. He imagined it as a single image: a round roofless tower with a thick, sea-proof, stone wall—and regular gaps in the wall, all the way around and all the way up—small gaps, fit for shorebird nests—a rookery tower.

  And more... His thoughts skipped ahead. The rocks of the island where the same flat-sided stone as on the mainland shore; he could fill the rough gaps, build nest-spaces, all over the island. He knew the technique of splitting one rock with another, chipping stone into shape, making a flat surface and rough walls and roofing them with another large stone. He could do it, make spaces for thousands of nests, enough to house all the birds of the migration. How much time would it take?

  “I’ll need help,” he told Speaker, “Help to carry the stones, and chip them... And for now, I’ll need to rest. And how shall I eat, or find drinking-water?”

  He paced his way back to the stranded skiff, too weary to think further, and there he found that somebody—oh, the Selkies of course. Who else?—had pulled out the sail and propped it into a small tent beside the boat. They had also thoughtfully dug out his camp-blanket and spread it under the tent. Wordlessly grateful, Ian crawled into the tent, pulled off his boots, curled up in the blanket and fell asleep within minutes.

  His last thought was the realization that the Selkies had been watching his family for a very long time.

  ~o0o~

  Waking came slowly, but with complete memory. Ian crawled out of the tent into a warm and sunny dawn, feeling his salt-stiffened clothes as rigid as armor. After a moment’s thought he stripped them off, intending to rinse them in the sea and dry them spread straight in the sun; there was no point being modest in front of the Selkies, who were as naked as fish.

  When he got to his feet, Ian saw immense change. The pebble-beach was gone, washed away by the rogue wave as might be expected, but the slope of heavier rocks remained—and the sleepy ocean seemed to be slowly rolling the pebbles back. More interesting was the number of Selkies working among the stones. They were sorting the rocks by size, pulling the bigger slabs up the hill to leave them near the flat area, and piling the smaller slabs to one side. The work was difficult
for them, with their broad fin-feet not designed for walking. Still others, he noted were crouched over the assembled slabs, holding smaller stones and using them as hammers to chip the rough ends of the slabs somewhat smooth. Ian realized they had learned this from him, by way of Speaker—or else from his ancestors, by way of Speaker’s mentor. What else have they learned from us? he wondered, thinking of Mother’s vegetable garden.

  On the other side of the skiff Ian saw that the Selkies had gathered driftwood into a tidy pile. Speaker, after a glance at him, clutched the stone in her braid and concentrated on the pile. As he watched, a thin stream of smoke rose up from the wood. Firestarting, he knew, was not something the Selkies could have learned by themselves. What use did they have for fire? He looked further, saw some cleaned and skewered bluefish waiting to be cooked, and understood. He also saw his waterskin lying nearby, looking full. Speaker wordlessly held out the skin for him, and Ian uncorked it and took an experimental sip. Yes, the water was fresh, with a faint taste of fish. He handed it back, considering that Selkies intended to pay him well for his work.

  The water on the wave-ward side of the island was too thick with mud and debris to consider for rinsing his clothes. Ian abandoned them in the skiff and resigned himself to going naked for the unforeseeable future—though his boots might be useful. He sincerely hoped the weather would stay warm and dry.

  A dozen Selkies were waiting for him, watching, beside the pile of stones. Ian wondered briefly how long they could stay out in the sunlight, whether their skins would suffer, and if they’d have to retreat to the sea often during the day—then set the thought aside as he decided where to set the first slab. He strained to lift the stone, and two Selkies hurried to help him, walking with an odd high-stepping gait to raise their long fin-feet clear of the ground.