The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  Waiting, watching.

  She almost loosed an arrow at the first bird in line, but she held back. They seemed unwilling to attack her while she was armed. Perhaps they would leave her alone. She had so few arrows…

  So they rode along together—Karah, Windrush, and the birds—while the island grew gradually closer and the storm grew worse. The first spatters of rain blew across her path and struck her, and within an instant the few drops had become a deluge, that whipped in sheets and torrents across her path and nearly blinded her.

  Now, she thought, dismayed. This must be what they were waiting for. I should have shot at them while I had the chance.

  Something huge and grey and toothed rose out of the water in front of her, its maw large enough to engulf her and Windrush and the birds with room to spare. The carrion stink of it overwhelmed her; she loosed her arrow down its maw, aiming as best she could for the tender flesh of the soft pink uvula, while Windrush turned and cantered up the swell of a wave to evade the monster.

  It roared and sounded, and the splash it made as it crashed back into the sea threw water up in cliffs around Karah, and nearly washed her from the back of her horse.

  Karah wiped her sodden hair from her eyes, and rubbed the rain out of them, then nocked another arrow. She looked down, beneath her horses hooves. For a moment she could see nothing but the rosy light that spread each time Windrush stepped on the surface. But then she made out a dark shape, rising beneath her. She longed to goad Windrush into a gallop, but she didn't dare. Instead, she urged him into a schooled sideways leap, and the two of them evaded the nightmare creature—it came up off to one side and slightly behind them, and Karah twisted around and aimed an arrow at its eye. Her shot missed, and the creature sounded again and vanished out of sight.

  She readied another arrow. The rain pounded down harder, so hard that drawing breath became a challenge. Somehow, she'd lost sight of the island—she had no idea whether she and Windrush continued in the right direction, or stumbled in circles while the sea monster that hunted them picked the place where it could most easily devour them. The water streamed into her eyes, and she wiped at them futilely. The toothy sea-thing would be coming—at any moment it would rise up from beneath her to swallow her and Windrush. She put the arrow back and drew her sword She couldn't see to shoot She didn't think the blade would be much use against the giant creature, but holding it gave her some comfort; at least she didn't feel completely helpless.

  Windrush screamed, and the giant toothed maw appeared directly in front of her. The horse wheeled and bolted, and when he did, the monsters head brushed against Karah's left arm. Its coarse sanded-paper skin ripped away her sleeve and abraded pieces of skin, and Karah, in pain, with no time to think, plunged her sword into the monster's eye to the hilt.

  The monster dove; its tail smashed against her left leg as it drove itself deep into the sea, and she screamed in agony. She looked down, and found her blood coursing into her boot, washed thin in the pouring rain. The gash in her thigh was as long as her dagger, and deep. She pressed her hand against the wound to stanch the bleeding and swore. She had no sword, she was lost on the surface of the stormy sea, and she was going to bleed to death. The birds circled around her, closing in tighter and tighter, and she pulled an arrow from her quiver. She couldn't shoot the birds, but she could stab one or two of them before they tore out her eyes—or Windrush's.

  The birds wheeled, and the first one peeled off from the line and dove straight at her.

  Karah shouted, "Damn bird!" Tears ran down her cheeks, so that she tasted salt at the corner of her mouth. She was going to die. She kicked Windrush into an insane gallop straight at it, her arrow gripped like a spear.

  The bird whipped up and out of her reach at the last instant, and suddenly a voice from out of the air said, "Very well. You are brave. Continue."

  The birds vanished, the rain stopped, and the surface of the sea became, in an instant, still as a reflecting pool. Behind her, the storm still raged, but it no longer touched her in anyway.

  The island lay off to one side of her, fairly close. She corrected her course, then ripped off her shirt, and with her dagger cut away the remaining sleeve. She tore that into strips and bound them around her thigh, swearing from the pain. She looked Windrush over—his left flank was abraded, but he didn't have any deep cuts. Just as well, she decided. She couldn't have gotten off of him to treat his wounds if he'd needed help.

  She pulled her soaked blouse back over her head with difficulty and, still watching for the sea monster, galloped Windrush over the finally smooth sea.

  The shapes that glittered on the islands shore grew clearer as they grew closer—fantastical gem-carved beasts that lined the narrow beach and the cliffs to either side of it, around the periphery of the island as far as her eye could see. She remembered the stone watcher set to guard the river, and eyed them warily. They didn't move—but then, the watcher had not moved either, until it broke free of the Tseldene magic. Had the Tseldenes ever been to the island before her, she thought they would have already owned the Theophone—so there was likely no magic to keep those stone beasts from doing what they wished. And she had no real weapons. She doubted the effectiveness of any arrow against such creatures. She would have felt safer holding the sword, but that was gone.

  They surrounded the island—the only break she saw in their line was in front of her, at the point where the waves lapped up onto the narrow, pebbled beach.

  I could go around, she thought. I could see if there's another way on to the island.

  But the thought of riding one instant longer than she had to on the surface of the sea decided her. She took Windrush straight for that narrow tongue of land, riding hard, as fear that the waves would stop holding her up consumed her.

  As Windrush's front feet hit the pebbles on the beach, his hind feet splashed into the water. A chill ran down Karah's spine. She turned the horse around with difficulty; he wanted to run away from the water, and walked him back toward the sea. He balked, but then took one step from the beach into the waves. They washed around his hoof, and he drew it back and reared.

  Karah slid from his back and stared at the sea. She was trapped—unless she could safely retrieve the Theophone and figure out how to make it work. If she could do that, she would be able to escape. But what if she couldn't?

  She turned and studied the carved creatures. They stared out to sea, unmoving. Some of them were lovely, some hideous—winged serpents and clawed horses and multiheaded birds. Most seemed to have been sculpted of huge single gem-stones, though some appeared to have been made of common stone. She saw a sweet-looking giant rabbit, and various frightening reptiles, and a fair selection of creatures that would have been common domestic beasts, if they hadn't had weird horns, or huge fangs, or great furled wings. The only thing any of the carvings had in common was that they were lifeless.

  Karah looked around her. The island was dry and treeless, and a narrow path led up the hill in front of her to the high dun-brown walls of a dun-brown city. Windrush, walking on hard, rocky ground instead of the enchanted surface of the sea, began to favor his hurt foot, so Karah started up the path on her own. The Theophone, she decided, would most likely be hidden there.

  The horse waited at the foot of the hill, cropping at the sere, withered grass. Karah looked upward, leaning back to get a better view of the edge of the wall, for the path quickly grew very steep. She began to hike. The air around her grew hot She patted her canteen, and it rattled. Empty! She'd thought sure she'd filled it with water earlier. No time to worry about a canteen, though. She would fill it again when she found some water.

  She climbed farther. Odd how the higher she climbed, the more the city at the top of the hill seemed to recede. It was a trick of the light, she decided. An illusion. Dust blew across the cliffs around her and clung to her skin. The sun beat down on her from directly overhead She realized how very thirsty she was—her mouth was parched, her lips cracked, her tong
ue dry and swollen, though she had not realized until that moment that they were. Water, she thought She would have gladly given over her bow and arrows for a glass of it.

  She thought of the sea, and the water in it, which was fresh and bubbling—but Darkist and Willek fought Bren and her people. She'd been so long already. If she waited longer, it might be too late to save the people she loved and the world she knew.

  No turning back, then, she thought She refused to even look behind her, so afraid was she that the sight of water—even the bubbling rose-colored water, would be more of a temptation than she could withstand.

  Her leg hurt terribly; she wished she'd tried to ride Windrush—the horse had been in pain, too, but she'd done much to relieve his when she released the pressure on his hoof. Her own pain grew worse with every step she took. She tried not to think about it—tried instead to think of Bren, and lying with him that one night, making love. That was a better thought. She pushed on up the path.

  Gradually she began to realize that her steps were getting smaller—that she was having a harder time moving one leg in front of the other. Her skin felt stiff, tight, almost as if she were stretching out of it Dryness and dust, she thought; but then she looked at her hands, and was horrified to see they were almost skeletal, the flesh drawn across them like paper pasted across bones. Her wrists and elbows bulged around the stick-like lengths of her arms. She felt her face, and her fingers sank into her hollowed eyesockets, and traced the sharp ridges of her cheekbones, and found the thin line where her lips had drawn back from her teeth. Her hair had become wispy and thin—a few strawlike straggles puffed around her face like chick down.

  Thirsty—so thirsty. I'll die without water, she thought. She stopped. I need water. But if I turn back, I'll never be able to make myself do this a second time. Never.

  If she could just get to the top and find the Theophone, she could make everything right.

  As soon as she started forward, the heat vanished, replaced by a vicious ice storm and angry winds that nearly blew her off the path. In an instant, snow and hail closed in the world around her until she could not see more than a step in front of her. Her teeth rattled and chills shook her. Her fingertips withered and blackened, and the skin peeled away from them. Pain burned along her hands and feet, up her arms, across her face. Thirst consumed her. She saw the bones of her fingertips exposed, and watched with mute horror as they fell away. Magic! This is how the others died, she thought. The skin of her arms turned to powder, and the slight breeze blew it away in tatters and puffs. The bones of her arms crumbled, and she looked down her legs and realized her feet were gone, and that she stumped along on the ends of her leg bones.

  Whoever guarded the Theophone would do anything to keep her from it "You can't stop me!" she tried to shout, but her tongue crumbled in her mouth, and all that came out was a hoarse whisper.

  "I'm dead anyway," she thought. But Bren isn't. Not yet.

  She kept climbing, even when her lower leg bones fell away and she had to crawl upward on the bones of her upper legs and upper arms.

  "Stop," a voice whispered out of the air. "She will not be turned from her path. She is faithful. Let her continue."

  As quick as that, she was inside the wall of the ancient city, at the top of a giant staircase that led down into the center of a grassy square. The four streets surrounding the square were full of people, lovely and graceful, their skins white as fine linen or black as ebony, their faces proud, their heads held high. They paced along in swirling robes, bowed gently as they passed each other and murmured liquid-syllabled greetings.

  Musicians and dancers moved across the green in bright costumes, and the tinkling of music filled the scented air. The breezes were once again gentle and warm; fountains played at the square's four corners, and naked children laughed and chased each other through their sprays.

  Karah stood, dumbfounded. Her flesh was once again whole, her body intact, her thirst abated. She looked down into the city wonderingly She'd expected to find ruins, had expected to dig through rubble to come across the relic that would set her gods free and bring them to her—but instead…

  Faces looked up, saw her standing atop the stair, and in an instant, a murmur rose from the crowd. More people stopped and stared—they began pointing and shouting. The musicians stopped playing, the dancers stopped leaping and spinning, and the people below quit going where ever they'd been heading, and walked back towards her.

  Godsall she thought, swallowing hard. What are they going to do to me? She'd figured her biggest challenge would be in finding the Theophone, not in stealing it out from beneath the watchful eyes of thousands of guardians.

  She clenched her hands into fists at her sides and waited to see what would happen next.

  "How came you here?" a man shouted from the crowd. His Tykissian was flawless.

  The truth? Karah wondered. "I rode my horse across t' sea," she called down, "fought a giant fish, and storm, and hunting birds, came between t' stone beasts that line the shore, then climbed up f path through parching heat and freezing cold—and came inside I know not how."

  The murmur grew louder. "How are you known?" a woman called.

  "Karah Grenlaarin!"

  "Is that what he calls you?" little doubt about the "he," she thought If she and they shared any acquaintances, they would share only one. The ghostly Shaman.

  "He calls me Fateborn."

  "Fateborn," she heard whispered "She's the Fateborn! She's come at last!"

  The musicians started to play again—but this time the music they played was stirring and dramatic. More and more people joined the crowd already in the streets, and all of them began cheering and chanting. Nearby, and then all across the city, she heard great bells begin to toll, and bright, high bells to ring the counterpoint above them.

  "Fateborn!" they chanted, "Fateborn! FATEBORN!"

  Long horns sounded, and Karah felt the air around her crackle. She looked down, and found herself suddenly dressed in a green gown of soft, gauzy cloth that draped and folded elegantly.

  "FATE-born! FATE-born! FATE-born!"

  Karah felt herself blush and stared down at her feet. A man shimmered into existence beside her on the stairs. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark eyes and a sensuous smile. Her heart caught in her throat; she had never seen a man so lovely or so fine. He wore a jeweled circlet on his dark hair, and held a jeweled scepter in one hand.

  "My lady, my queen," he murmured softly. "You are more beautiful than ever I could have hoped. I will pledge my heart and my kingdom to you forever."

  My queen? She cleared her throat, and below her the multitudes called out, "Hush! The Fateborn speaks."

  Oh, dear, she thought. "I hadn't planned to say anything everyone needed to hear," she whispered to the…prince… king? Her whisper carried clearly to the green below her, amplified by some magic, and echoed back to her from the walls of the towers all around "… needed to hear… to hear… hear…" She closed her eyes and swallowed hard "You don't understand," she told the man. "I've come to get the Theophone and stop a war."

  "But of course you have," he said, and smiled gently. "Everybody knows that. You are fated to save the world from an evil magician, and to wield the Theophone to speak to the gods—and to marry me. It has been written on the stone walls of the Temple since near the beginning of time."

  "But…" Karah said.

  He patted her shoulder. "I know. You wish to hurry. As soon as we've wed, I'll bring out the Theophone and show you how to use it, and you can beat the wizard you and your people are fighting."

  "Ah…" Karah said.

  He studied her curiously, one eyebrow raised and his head tilted a bit to one side. "There's something else? Something you aren't telling me?"

  "I love someone already."

  "Many people do. What has that to do with anything?"

  The crowds in the square below were silent, staring up at Karah and the man who claimed the right to marry her. They seem
ed to strain forward, as if afraid they would miss a single word. She wished fervently that she and the man were alone. She wanted privacy to say what she had to say—but she wasn't going to get it.

  She stared down at the expectant faces, then into the man's beautiful brown eyes. "I don't want to marry you," she said at last.

  He chuckled, and below, in the square, some of the watchers laughed with him.

  "No, of course not," he said. "Arranged marriages are never popular, are they? And we, who have had our marriage arranged by no less than the gods—" He chuckled again and shook his head. "—To whom do we complain? But come, if we are to win your war, we must marry quickly."

  Karah frowned. "What if I don't?"

  "If you don't marry me?" His eyebrow rose again. "Then you are not the true Fateborn, and you must die."

  That was clear enough, Karah thought. With every moment she pondered, men and women fell in battle. Darkist and Willek would win, and the world would become a place of evil and misery. Compared to that, her happiness was nothing.

  "Marry me in the Tykissian ceremony," she said quietly, "then help me win my war."

  "The Tykissian ceremony?"

  She said, "Yes. It's short. Take my hand." She held up her left, and he clasped it with his right. She drew the dagger which hung from a jeweled girdle around her waist, and slipped the blade carefully between their palms.

  "Say you marry me," she told him.

  "I marry you."

  "And I many you. Witnessed by the Three—" she spat, and after an instant's hesitation, and with an amused look, so did he.

  "Hold the knife with me," she said. He wrapped his other hand around hers. "—and sealed in blood," she intoned. She turned the blade sideways and drew it back quickly, slashing both of their palms.

  She gasped at the sudden sharp pain—her blood ran down her wrist, hot and pulsing, and stained the green of her sleeve.

  He smiled at her, and she saw that he did not bleed. A soft voice that filled the air around her said, "So she is practical, too. She has been tried by fire and by ice, and her childishness has fallen away from her. She has shown herself worthy. Let her go."