The Seascape Tattoo

by Larry Niven

  He tried other spells, other techniques to see if there was more information that could be extracted from the mind of this simple, honest man. He just didn’t know enough.

  And, failing that, were there other ways he could see into the future, determine what had happened, where the princess might be, and what might be done?

  He tried everything he knew, and nothing worked. Twenty hours later, he was shaking and exhausted and frightened by the implications. Was a wizard blocking him? Or—

  Wizards couldn’t see into their own futures. If there was something he could do for the princess … it would not show in his scrying pool. Nothing to show for his work but this damned fog.

  Shrike had once been an equal member of the Eight Kingdoms, but in recent years it had become more insular, less open to trade or cultural exchange. No one outside Shrike really seemed to know what was happening within it. Rather than respect or affection, the dominant emotion felt toward the northern kingdom was fear.

  If they had kidnapped Tahlia, then minions of Shrike hadn’t merely plucked her from the sea … they had actually strolled into her mother’s throne room and announced their actions while maintaining plausible deniability. Which meant that they didn’t merely want her life. Or a ransom. There was another game in play.

  And the ambassadors had arrived in Quillia so openly that it was impossible for her citizens not to know.

  This was a direct warning for Quillia to remain neutral. But neutral to what? Neoloth knew of no current events that might matter here and no ways that Quillia was involved in anything concerning Shrike. But this outrage might relate to something that would become known in the future.

  Something huge. Something brewing in the heart of Shrike. No single kingdom could stand against the other seven kingdoms. Quillia was one of the strongest … and Quillia had now been neutralized. What if Shrike had found ways to neutralize the others as well?

  It was a game of chess played with invisible pieces, on a board of unknown dimensions, with unfathomed rules and objectives. The puzzle pieces chased themselves around and around in his head, whirling as if caught in a cyclone.

  The princess had been kidnapped to retard response. He could assume that she had been taken by Shrike, but where exactly was she? An invasion would accomplish nothing and might kill the princess. What action could the queen take that would return her daughter?

  Perhaps none. But, then, what could she do to protect her kingdom and her authority?

  She could offer reward for the return of her daughter, and she had. That would free individual action, and that might work. Where a large-scale assault would almost certainly end in Tahlia’s being murdered, it was just possible that smaller actions might suffice. And the queen had unleashed the fortune-seeking princes of seven countries to save her child.

  Shrike had opened a door, and the queen had responded in kind. And whatever marched forth from that door might change their world with their struggles.

  But with all of the storm and fury, all the war elephants clashing and rending the earth, all that might come …

  It was possible, just possible, that a mouse could slip out of one door and through another.

  Why had the queen brought him into the throne room and yet concealed him from sight? She wanted him to know. She was asking for him to take action.

  Sleep, even Wizard’s Sleep, eluded him. For the next two days, he exhaustively studied the kingdom of Shrike: its history, wealth, and powers. Its families and industries.

  But it was in studying Shrike’s military that he found the very first glimmer of hope.

  He turned the idea around and around in his mind, trying to disprove it. And, instead, a second piece fell into place, so large and perfectly shaped it was almost as if it had all been predestined.

  In fact, when he snapped out of his reverie and looked at the entirety of it, he almost forgot to breathe. Neoloth was overwhelmed with the perfection. The synchronicity.

  All he needed now was to be certain that a certain barbarian had not yet been executed.

  EIGHT

  The Bargain

  Chains, trials, testimony.

  The last weeks had been filled with scowling faces and accusatory speeches. Aros had long experienced the ire with which people hold thieves, but the anger and hatred directed at a taxman were a totally different standard. The strangling of C’Vall seemed a mere incident. It was amazing how many people came forward to accuse a chained man of perfidy. And, likewise, the number of people who seemed happy that he had been stripped of the trappings of authority, as they seemed to take unnatural pleasure from hauling him half-naked and chained before an unsympathetic judge.

  His men had testified, mostly in his favor. The crowd had jeered.

  It was humiliating. And if he had wondered who had betrayed him, he now knew that that had been the wrong question. The right question was, Why had he ever been foolish enough to think these bastards would accept him as an equal? Let alone fail to resent his power as tax collector? That they would not take their first opportunity to cast him down?

  But Aros had never paid taxes.

  Aros was languishing in his chains when the white-bearded jailer brought him his daily bowl of gruel. The ancient was a trustee, serving a life sentence for some crime he could no longer remember. Sometimes murder, sometimes theft, and once merely the seduction of a noble daughter. The story shifted with the phases of the moon.

  “Pirates got the princess,” he whispered as Aros sopped gruel in coarse bread and chewed.

  That caught his attention, although he had never met or even seen her. “When?”

  “I hear she was on her way back from her cousin’s wedding.”

  “The ransom will be huge,” he said. That was reflex: he would never touch it. “When did the news come?”

  “Two days ago,” the old man said.

  “Pirates?”

  The old man shrugged. “Don’t know. But that’s what I’ve heard. I think you’re going to have other fish to fry soon. They’re asking for death.”

  “I fed those people!” Aros shrugged his massive shoulders. Death came to all men. That didn’t bother him as much as its manner. He’d hoped never to die on a gallows. Given half a chance, he would force the guardsman to give him a cleaner, swifter end.

  So far he hadn’t had the chance.

  * * *

  In the first hour after midnight, the door of his cell opened. “It stinks in here,” said the man silhouetted in the door frame.

  The light hurt Aros’s eyes, and he shielded them with his arm. “Try shitting through a hole in the floor and see how you smell.”

  The man in the doorway cocked his head. “You are much as I remember you.”

  Aros squinted. “I know you? Come closer.” Whoever this was, perhaps he could be lured within reach.

  Aros had no friends in Quillia—he understood that now. Tor One-Eye had come once, bringing apples, but never since. If this fool had come to gloat, he would regret it. Briefly. Intensely.

  He was studying Aros … perhaps his tattoos. “That’s a nice seascape,” the intruder said. “You must have jumped back pretty fast.”

  The seascape was a calm ocean, flat beneath a setting sun, in four colors—but tilted twenty degrees. It crossed his heart. Several small ships showed below the horizon.

  “Not backward. I didn’t have a sword,” Aros said. “He got in one good slash right across my chest, and then I broke his knee and strangled him. Come, take a better look.”

  “This is fine. Are you ready to die?”

  “We are born dying,” Aros said. “Every warrior knows this.”

  “I was under the impression you were more of a thief than a warrior.”

  “One makes one’s way in the world however one can,” Aros said. “Please, come closer. I still cannot see you. It is so dark in here.”

  The man stepped closer. Whatever he had to say, whatever offer he had to make, certainly nothing could be as satisfying as
killing one more Quillian.

  “So cold. So calm and certain,” the stranger said. “You are the man I thought you were. No pleading or bribery or protestations of innocence.”

  The stranger balanced on the edge. Just another step. “If any of those would have made a difference,” Aros growled, “I would have been happy to oblige. Are you saying they would? Please, come closer that I might see your face and know if you lie.”

  The man smiled. Where had Aros seen him before?

  “I will come no closer,” the man said. “I am not a fool.”

  “What are you? And why should I care? I am a man already dead.”

  “Yesss.” The single syllable was serpentine. He could easily imagine this creature slithering across sand on its belly. Come to taunt him? A torturer perhaps. Well, the bastard would gain no satisfaction here.

  “How would you like to live?” the man said.

  Aros felt something that he did not want to feel: hope. “Like a king. What nonsense is this?”

  “Perhaps you have heard the uproar around you. In the streets. The kingdom is in peril.”

  “I had nothing to do with the disappearance of your princess,” Aros said.

  “Ah, yes. Your barbarian’s code.” He nodded. “I have to say that I have seen many things from you, but cruelty toward women was not one of them. Especially widows, I recall. I’ve often wondered if this had something to do with your past.”

  Who was this bastard? How the hell did he know so much?

  “For instance, the Brothers of Blood were known to hold hostages, have they not?”

  Aros felt his heart sink. The Brothers of Blood was his pirate crew, the tribe of brigands he’d captained for three years. He’d thought that his connection to them remained unknown. Certainly, it had never arisen in his trial. The judges had sentenced him to death without knowing all about his past. If they had known, they would have skinned him and rolled him in salt.

  Best to say nothing. But … who was this man? Could he be lured another step closer? “You cannot connect me with that crew.”

  “Not without effort,” the man said. “But what I can do … is set you free.”

  Aros felt it again, a tug at his leashed emotions. A hammer strike against the boulder he had rolled atop his hopes and dreams.

  “In your time,” the man said, “you have been many things. A thief, a pirate, a soldier, a … taxman.” The hint of a smile. “I want to know if you can play one more role.”

  “What role is this?”

  And now, for the first time, Aros had the sense that the man was revealing his actual feelings about … something.

  “The princess Tahlia has been taken. We have good reason to believe that the nation of Shrike took her.”

  “Then go and get her. Quillia has an army.”

  “But where in Shrike is she?” Another hint of emotion. This man cared. Fascinating. “And where’s the proof? If we invade and fail to find her, we will have started a war for no reason. Our relations with the Eight Kingdoms would crumble.”

  That made sense. In fact, unless his ears deceived him, this stranger had just spoken to him man to man, without the carefully judged obliqueness that had defined his speech until now. There was something emotional. Something personal. Hope leapt within Aros. A man of high speech, with the power to enter his cell and speak to him privately. Yes, this was hope.

  And hope killed.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Where armies cannot go, another approach might bear fruit.” And now, for the first time, the stranger came closer. Now, if Aros whipped his chain up, he might be able to wrap it around the neck. A snap at that point would be satisfying beyond belief. But that would also destroy whatever small chance this represented.

  And Aros knew that the stranger knew it. Damn.

  “I asked about your ability to play a role,” the stranger said. “And this is why I asked. Some say a minor prince, General Silith, is the most powerful man in the kingdom of Shrike. It is difficult to tell, because no one has seen the king for years. Some say this is due to fear of assassination. And others that he is already dead, and that Silith is Shrike’s actual leader. Little is known of the general, except that he is a prince or half prince who had no hope of inheriting the throne. Instead of a life of leisure, he apparently chose the military path and has succeeded brilliantly. We know he is reputed to be one of the finest swordsmen in the world and a brilliant tactician as well. I see Sinjin Silith’s hand in this kidnapping.”

  “You wish him killed?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “Fifteen years ago, his son Elio traveled with the son of a king of another of the Eight Kingdoms, as companion. The caravan was ambushed, the prince held for ransom. The general’s son disappeared in the chaos and was not recovered when the ransom was paid. It is known that the general held his employers responsible and left to find his fortune elsewhere.”

  “Revenge?”

  “Always a powerful motivator.”

  Damn it, now they were talking. Almost as if one of them were not covered in offal and crouching in chains.

  “Is the boy dead?”

  The man nodded. “Yes. But the general cannot be certain of this. He assumes it, yes. But his wife, Jade, has never given up hope. It is known that, as recently as last year, she paid for the testimony of a man who had encountered one of the original raiders, who spoke of desert tribes and a story she accepted as true.”

  “A mother’s love,” Aros said.

  “And it is that mother who concerns us.”

  “Why?”

  “Jade Silith is Azteca. She was offered to the general as part of his spoils of war, although it is said their bond has become one of love. The general is a huge man. Your size.”

  And there he stopped speaking.

  Aros thought, and he suddenly saw it. “He’s big, she’s Azteca, and you are insane.”

  “You are about the age that Elio would be. Black hair, dark skin. You are a warrior, like his father. His mother is obsessed that the boy is still alive. Do you speak the language of the desert people?”

  “A little. I fought a skirmish against them during the border wars.”

  “When was this?”

  “Eight, nine years ago. I was a soldier.”

  “Well … that can be fixed. Yes.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “I want you to remake yourself as the general’s missing son. To enter the kingdom with me, I as your servant. You must ingratiate yourself to the grieving mother and father. Allow them to celebrate your return. And during that process, I will find a chance to discover what I need.”

  “And if I do this? If I can do this?”

  “If we do this and succeed, not only will you be free … but you will be wealthy, with the gratitude of the greatest queen in the Eight Kingdoms.”

  “Who are you,” Aros said, suddenly without the need to ask. He knew.

  “That is not important,” the stranger said. This was no stranger. By the Feathered One, no stranger at all! “What is important is your oath. You are many things, but your people have a sacred pledge no righteous Aztec has ever broken. If you make that oath to me, I in turn will swear to set you free at the end of this.”

  The anger boiled within him. “You did this to me. You wanted my help and arranged for me to be here.”

  “I swear I had no such scheme,” the man said. “Yes, I did put you here. No, it had nothing to do with the princess.”

  “The tomb?” The last time he had seen his old enemy, he had been sealed in a tomb infested with giant hungry arachnids.

  “The tomb. I can see your scars. There’s a spider bite under that setting sun. I bear their wounds as well.”

  Aros’s lips curled in a smile. That, at least, was something.

  He hated himself for not wringing the sorcerer’s scrawny neck. But the desire for life had stirred within him, corrupting his resolve. But … he just couldn’t
help his worst enemy, damn it.

  Could he?

  “All right,” he said. “By the Feathered One. I promise that if you free me, I will serve you until the princess is rescued or we discover it is impossible. But there is a condition: if you lie to me, even once … our deal is off.”

  “Agreed,” the sorcerer said. “And if you disobey me or break your oath in any way … you are dead.”

  Aros thought about that and realized that he had nothing at all to lose. “Then in that case, Neoloth-Pteor, I’m your man.”

  NINE

  In the Desert

  For three days now, their tiny caravan had picked its way through sand and rock and rain-carved arroyos, through heat-shimmer mirages and past distant mountain ridges that resembled skeletal spines peeking through the earth in a dragon’s graveyard.

  Neoloth called to Aros, who rode a half length ahead. “You have passed this way?” he asked.

  Aros nodded. Both wizard and barbarian rode brown stallions more spirited than the four packhorses following them, or the tiny, sure-footed mule carrying Fandy. “I was with the desert peoples south of here for half a year.”

  “Thieving, no doubt.” Neoloth regretted saying it as soon as the words left his mouth. He just couldn’t seem to stop himself from digging at his sun-bronzed companion. He noted the easy way Aros rode his horse, more centaur than soldier. The barbarian filled his leather tunic to perfection, arms swelling out of the diagonally cut sleeves. Neoloth realized that some of what he felt was anger … but another bit was pure jealousy.

  Neoloth’s elf Fandy rescued him from his thoughts. As he had for the last three days, the elf continued to drill Aros on his new assumed identity.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Elio.”

  “What is your mother’s name?” he asked.

  “Jade,” Aros said.

  “And your father, General Silith?”

  “Sinjin.”

  Fandy winced at the mangled accent. “Emphasis on the first syllable, please.”

  Aros looked as if he’d sucked a lemon. “Sinjin,” he said.