“And no one since his time has devised a way to lift the spell, or to expand and perfect it as he sought to do?”
“ Aunt Meg, as I say, was—is—our best magician. She’s really the one you ought to talk to, as soon as she’s able.” Judging from his confident tone, the Tyrant had great faith in the healer Wood had sent him. “But no, friend Chilperic, as far as I know, no one on our side in modern times has been much interested in using the mermaid spell. I have the idea that somehow it’s impractical. I suppose the Malolo leaders really haven’t cared that much about it, either. It actually doesn’t affect enough of their people to do them any harm. Having a few mermaids about is interesting, and sometimes such creatures command big prices as slaves or oddities. Sometimes the Malolo sell one, sometimes we do.”
“I see.”
“Yes. Now that I come to think of it, I did once hear a rumor that Cosmo, the Malolo who disappeared on the night of the big fight, was tinkering around with the curse, though I don’t know why.”
“It would have been Cosmo’s mount that I found dead today. I think that he was carrying the Sword.”
“Yes, that’s what you were saying. And I have to admit Cosmo may have been the best magician on either side in modern times. But I doubt that he got anywhere trying to revoke the curse, either. People still see mermaids.”
“Indeed. Where, if I may ask, did you hear this rumor about Cosmo’s working on the mermaid curse?”
The Tyrant shrugged. “One hears things sometimes among the servants.” It was obvious that Hissarlik was really not much interested in the subject.
Chilperic stood for a little time in silent thought. He was increasingly intrigued by the fact that this magician, Cosmo, was the same man who had so cravenly—or so wisely—terminated the Sword-throwing fight by absconding with the Sword. But Chilperic made no comment on that fact now.
“So, what about the mermaids?” he asked at last. “With your permission, my friend, I would like to have some of them searching the bottom of the river for the Sword as soon as possible.”
“Very well. We can go down to the river and call some of them up for you.” The Tyrant drummed with his fingers on the arms of the old chair, making no move to get up. “Boats go out to their island more or less regularly. Usually someone in the clan here takes them some food every day or two. We should take food, too. It might work better than such magic as we have available.”
“Food?” Chilperic had thought of mermaids as being somehow completely self-supporting.
“Well, as I understand it, having spent their childhood ashore in villages, sleeping under roofs, and eating in most cases from some kind of plates, even when they grow tails they remain reluctant to bite raw fish and chew on snails they’ve just grubbed up out of the mud. At the same time, since they can’t get about on land, cooking and housekeeping in the traditional ways present them with certain difficulties.”
“Yes. Now that I think about it, I suppose they would.”
“So, in return for some real food, or at least for certain things that pass for real food in the villages, the fishgirls provide us with a few pearls. Or other valuables if they find any. It’s a sporadic kind of barter, that happens when both parties have an urge to trade. No really considerable wealth is involved.”
“I see. How many mermaids do you suppose will show up when you summon them?”
Hissarlik shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose we’ll get a dozen if we’re lucky. As I said, there’s a minor control spell that will summon them, or at least those who are within range, to attend us at the water’s edge. It’s related to the spell we use to call up mermaids when we want to sell or rent them out to visiting magicians, or to traveling shows. We rent them, usually. The creatures seldom live beyond the age of thirty, so there’s no great bargain for a purchaser in buying one. When we have them at the shore we can give them orders, and bribe them with food. But as I warned you earlier, the magic for obedience is unreliable, and the orders we give them are seldom or never carried out just as we would wish. So, you see, the curse has never been of much value in a military way.”
Chilperic brushed aside the problems associated with the regular mermaid trade. “You keep harping on the idea that they’ll be unreliable as searchers.”
“I’m afraid they will.” Hissarlik hesitated. “And then—suppose they do find this Sword.”
“Yes?”
“Well then, suppose one of them found it and instead of turning it in decided to try to use it.”
“Is that what’s bothering you? Consider that if Farslayer does lie at the bottom of the river, one of the fishgirls is likely to discover it there anyway.”
“Oh.” It was obvious from the Tyrant’s sudden change of expression that he hadn’t thought of that.
Chilperic pressed his new advantage. “So, it should help if I offer a reward to the fishgirl who brings it to us. And if at the same time I threaten punishment of any who try to conceal the Sword or dispose of it in any other way.”
Hissarlik looked reluctantly ready to agree.
“They are at least moderately intelligent, are they not?”
“Hey?”
“The mermaids, man, the mermaids.” There were limits to Chilperic’s patience.
“Oh yes. As intelligent as any other peasant. Very well, then, let’s go.” And Hissarlik got to his feet.
Within an hour a small party, consisting of Hissarlik, Chilperic, and an escort of militia, had formed and had moved on to the riverbank, where several boats were being made available for the short jaunt to Mermaids’ Island.
“Hissarlik, my friend?”
“Yes?”
“Is there any real advantage in our going out to the island? Can we not lure the creatures, and speak to them, just as successfully from here on shore?”
“Well, it might take a trifle longer that way—but yes, I suppose we can.”
“Then let us do so.” A handful of soldiers from the Senones Home Guard were standing by, ready to offer armed protection during the boat trip to the island, just in case some of the Malolo forces should be encountered on the island or on the water. But Chilperic, sniffing the air and eyeing suspiciously the fishing boats already on the river, had decided that he would rather not trust in the protective abilities of the Home Guard. He could of course call up the demon for protection, but his reluctance to depend entirely upon that power continued.
“I suppose we can do it just as well from shore. And perhaps we ought to wait for Megara anyway,” said Hissarlik vaguely, turning away from the boat he had been about to enter.
Anselm had joined them, and was now serving as stand-in magician. He began to cast a spell. Within a quarter of an hour three or four of the underwater creatures had appeared in the water near shore, where they paddled about looking surprised, as if wondering why they had come here. Within an hour there were about a dozen, and these were all the mermaids that were likely to attend, according to Hissarlik.
A couple of the creatures sat on the muddy shoreline, while the others swam about. By now they all looked sullenly unwilling to be here.
Chilperic had to admit they were all lithe and attractive young women from the waist up. When he was assured that no more were likely to arrive, he stood up on the bank and spoke to them, describing the missing Sword, and promising to heal all of them of their affliction if one of them could bring him such a weapon. Their reaction was subdued; he could not tell to what extent his promise was believed.
So he took care, before dismissing them, and while the food from the hampers was being thrown to them, to threaten them with his demon if none of them did bring him the Sword he sought. He let them see the demon to convince them that it was no empty threat—and this time he got the reaction that he sought.
Chapter Eleven
The mermaid named Black Pearl had attended the gathering on the northern shore, more out of curiosity than from any compulsion by the feeble magic of Anselm Senones. She had listened to the
arrogant strange man who spoke from the bank after Anselm, but she had not been much impressed by either his promises or his threats. At least not until the demon appeared to give a brief demonstration of its powers. Naturally the people on the north bank wanted the Sword, but they, or their late parents, were the same people who had sold Black Pearl into slavery, and she was not inclined to help them get anything they wanted now. Besides, if she had known where the Sword was, she would have taken it to Zoltan.
When the demon-master had finished his threats and the feeble magic of Anselm had relaxed its grip, Black Pearl had slipped away from the other mermaids, into the swift flowing depths of the Tungri. And now she was on the south shore. Swimming and scrambling, she was struggling with great difficulty to make headway against a roaring and shallow rush of water. With hands and fins and tail she labored to ascend the rocky bed of a small stream.
This particular stream, much faster than the creek Zoltan had followed on his way to meet her, came gushing down the mountain through a narrow little canyon in the south side of the river gorge. The mouth of this brook, where it poured into the Tungri, was less than a kilometer from the hermit’s house high on the irregular slope above. That house was still invisible from the place where the young mermaid squirmed and struggled.
On this spring day the little stream had been augmented by melting snow in the high country, yet still there were stretches in which its depth was insufficient to keep afloat a swimming creature of the mermaid’s size. Black Pearl, in the form to which she had been condemned by enchantment, was only a little smaller than she would have been as a young woman with two legs.
Even this close to the stream’s mouth she had already encountered an especially difficult spot. Here, where the water spread out into a mere corrugated sheet stretched over a rocky bed, it was impossible for any creature of her size to swim. Pausing in her efforts, lying on her side in the rushing shallows, she reached for the amulet that hung from a thin chain about her neck, and muttered a few soft words.
Almost unwillingly Black Pearl had memorized the words of the spell, after hearing Cosmo recite it countless times in the secret grotto. Perhaps he would be surprised, she thought now, to see that his magic worked for her alone almost as well as it had ever worked for him. Perhaps he would be surprised to know that it worked away from the grotto as well.
Immediately the spell had its effect. In a puff of watery mist her mermaid tail was gone, replaced by pale but very human-looking hips and legs. Shakily Black Pearl stood up, nakedly vulnerable now to the cold water and completely human. A young woman’s body, perfectly normal in appearance, poised now upon two bare and very human feet.
Stepping carefully and with difficulty, yet trying to make the best speed she could, she walked forward over the rough rocks, muttering prayers to all the gods that she had ever heard of.
Barely had Black Pearl reached the next deep pool upstream before the strength of the spell she had just recited collapsed under the burden of the greater magic it labored to counteract. The forces that had for the space of a few breaths maintained her body in a normal human form abruptly dissipated. In an instant, metamorphosis reversed itself. Feet and legs were returned in the twinkling of an eye into the fishtail that she had worn for the past five years, since the age of twelve. She fell with a great splash.
But still she was able to make progress. Here, and upstream for some distance she had yet to discover, there ran a channel deep enough to support her finned body as she swam. Once more she could fight the current with her fins and tail—until she reached the next stretch where the channel disappeared.
Several times during the next few minutes of the mermaid’s upstream struggle she was forced to use the secret counterspell and amulet. The trouble was that the effect of the counterspell faded rapidly with frequent repetition. The time Black Pearl was able to spend in fully human form was limited to a few minutes at most with each use of the amulet, and the power had to be carefully husbanded. Only rarely and infrequently could she escape the deforming impact of accursed Senones magic, and regain for a heartbreakingly small time the shape that would have been hers in normal life. And each interval of relief cost her more and more in psychic effort to achieve. It would be necessary to let the power in the amulet lie fallow for days, weeks, or even months before the maximum, comparatively long periods of full humanity could be attained once more. She had husbanded the power for many days before attempting this ascent, where she expected that it would be needed in its fullest form.
She was determined to tell her secrets to someone, and it certainly would not be those slave dealers on the north side of the river. Nor would it, could it, be Zoltan. Never that.
Months ago, Cosmo, lying with Black Pearl in the secret grotto upon a bed of moss and furs, with his own gift of her true woman’s legs clasped round him, had murmured into her ear again and again that the secrecy was part of the spell. That if she revealed the magical power of changing to another living soul, that power might be taken from her, beyond even his wizard’s power to restore it.
At that time Black Pearl had assured her lover fiercely that she would never tell. And until now she had kept the secret safe, though several times she had come close to telling Soft Ripple everything.
But today she intended to tell someone. Her confidant would not be her only real friend, Soft Ripple. Because Soft Ripple could be of no help to her, and Black Pearl desperately needed help. The secret had developed a monstrous complication.
In the intervals when Black Pearl could use her tail and swim, her progress upstream was swift. But now already she was entering yet another stretch of the stream where the water grew too shallow for swimming. A few moments later Black Pearl was on her magically restored feet again and walking. This time, while the change to normalcy still held, she took a moment to look down at herself, studying fearfully the near-flatness of her woman’s belly, pale and goose-bumped now with cold.
So far the enlargement was minimal, almost undetectable. But she was more firmly convinced than ever before that she was pregnant.
Cosmo the magician, who had made this desperate upstream journey possible for Black Pearl, was or had been also Cosmo the man, who had made the journey necessary. The Malolo magician had been her lover for several months before the night of many killings, the night he had disappeared. Black Pearl was going to have to assume now that he was dead.
Far less than any ordinary woman did Black Pearl have any means of knowing with any certainty what went on inside her own belly, down there on the borderline of magic, the region of her body where five years ago the ancestral curse had imposed itself. Down there, where a true woman would have a womb, what did a fishgirl have? For that matter, what organs did a real fish possess? Daughter of fisherfolk as she was, she could recall no clear image. Her mind refused to think about it.
One fact was obvious. Mermaid bodies were not equipped, any more than the bodies of real fish were, for anything like human pregnancy or human birth. What was going to happen to her as her pregnancy advanced, if she did not get some effective help from somewhere, Black Pearl did not know, could only guess. But each imagined possibility that suggested itself to her was more horrible than the last. She could only be certain that the outcome was going to be monstrous, unnatural, and fatal to herself and to the unborn as well.
And one more thing was very clear to her. Never before in the history of any village, Black Pearl was quite sure, had any mermaid ever become pregnant.
For more than a month now she had been experiencing dull aching pains in her abdomen, pains that could be relieved only by her assuming the fully human form, and which returned the instant she again became half fish. She had been on the verge of telling Cosmo about her difficulty, though she feared his reaction. And then, about a month ago, on the night when manor folk had slaughtered one another across the river, he had disappeared. Terrible as it was, the only assumption she dared make was that her magician lover was dead.
Withi
n hours of the great slaughter, the news had spread rapidly, first in its essentials and then in its details, among the peasants and fisherfolk along both shores. From some of these legged people the story had diffused quickly to the mermaids. Black Pearl was soon aware that there was no one left in the Malolo clan who might provide effective medical help. Black Pearl didn’t think there were any very capable people left in the Senones clan either, and anyway she wouldn’t expect anything better from them than being sold into slavery.
So far Black Pearl had not hinted to anyone, not even Soft Ripple—and most certainly not Zoltan—of her fear that she was pregnant. Such a claim would have made no sense to either of them anyway. Neither of them had any idea that even a temporary reversal of a mermaid’s condition was now possible.
Oh, if only it could be possible that Cosmo was not dead! Word passed along from the Malolo household servants had said that his body was not among those arrayed in the underground vault, where all the other dead were said to be gathered, still magically preserved. For several hours, for a few days even, that reported absence had given Black Pearl hope, and the hope had been confirmed by Zoltan. But now she realized that Cosmo’s absence really proved nothing. If her lover was not dead, where was he? If he had fled the valley permanently, he might as well be dead as far as she was concerned.
With each day that passed without word from her magician lover, Black Pearl became more and more fearfully certain that she was never going to see him again. There were still occasional moments when she nursed hopes that he was alive, but those hopes were growing more and more desperate.
In the midst of her growing despair, her thoughts had fastened on the hermit Gelimer. Black Pearl’s only real hope at this point was that the hermit might be able and willing to do something to help her with her pregnancy. She wanted desperately to save the unborn child, which was Cosmo’s child too, if that were at all possible. And if she could be granted some assurance that the child was not monstrous. But failing that, she still wanted at least to have a chance of saving her own life. She knew now that at least a temporary cure of her condition was attainable; and now also Zoltan had come to seek her out and had said he loved her. She had begun to forget Zoltan more than a year ago, and he had passed out of her thoughts completely for a time. Now Zoltan offered hope. But if he ever learned that she was pregnant…
The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4) Page 13