by Larry Niven
Without another word, Aros slid his arms under Neoloth, as gently and easily as lifting a baby, carried him to the side, and propped him up.
Neoloth could feel it. He was a feather. He was positioned so that he could look down over the side of the ship, and down there in the waves danced the Merfolk.
M’thrilli and his family.
“Neoloth,” the merman said. “We have won.”
“Yes.” He barely recognized his own voice.
“The victory was dearly won, I see.”
“No man lives forever,” Neoloth said. “I think that … perhaps … I finally found something worth dying for.”
Aros shook his head. “That means that, after all this time, you found something worth living for.”
Neoloth laughed at the absurdity of it, and before he knew what had happened, the others were laughing as well. He laughed and laughed until the tears streamed down his face.
How old was he, Neoloth? He didn’t even know. Old enough to die here now, beneath the stars, on this ship. Having saved his love, destroyed the greatest threat the world had ever seen …
And found a friend in a former enemy. What a strange life. What a strange, strange …
M’thrilli smiled to him. Beside him, his woman whispered something in his ear, and he nodded. “You have been a great friend to the sea folk,” he said. “And I think we would like to show you something. Come.”
Neoloth was too weak to argue. One place to die was the same as another.
“Good-bye, Aros,” he whispered. “Go and find the life you deserve,” he said. And then slipped over the side and into the welcoming arms of the sea.
FORTY-THREE
Undersea
After he entered the water, Neoloth never completely knew what was dream and what was reality.
He was only semiconscious when he struck the water. He remembered being held above the water, and something slipped over his head by the pod of Merfolk, some sort of membrane like the external skin of a jellyfish. He could barely breathe through it, and then, when they pulled him down below the waves and he was being dragged through the water, he could still barely breathe.
But … to his wonderment, he could breathe.
In all his life, Neoloth had seen so many wonders, had created so many that he thought he could no longer be amazed.
He was wrong.
They took him down into the depths, out into the deeps. He could barely think or feel anything, so overwhelmed with the very fact of being where he was that he drifted into a kind of trance.
It was dark, darker than night. And then … it was not. There was something up ahead, a reef, he thought. It was not a building, or a city, in any sense he had ever known. This was something different. If the creatures of the sea, the things that were of magic, were as those on the surface, not all of them could live together. Some, such as the leviathans and the great tentacled things that had fought beside them, were clearly no part of this … world.
But there were so many creatures, things he had never seen. Melds of fish and man or horse or lion, beasts that seemed more plant than fish or animal. Things that were translucent, with other creatures living within them.
And the reef, a sort of living complex of small creatures creating structures for larger creatures. And it glowed. He could feel it.
This was a place of almost unimaginable magic, as such wonders might have existed when the world was young. Men and gods had squandered mana on the surface, but here the sea denizens had invested it more elegantly. Here diamonds flamed in heaps and acres uncounted, and the magical bestiary swarmed peacefully, living together as men so seldom managed to do on dry land.
Neoloth thought, “What is this?”
And his thought was heard. Or perhaps he spoke and was unaware he was speaking, so dream-like was it all. M’thrilli said, It is not a place for men.
Why did you bring me here? I am a man.
Today you are not, the merman thought to him. Today, you are a friend.
* * *
In and out of consciousness Neoloth flowed; down and down and down they took him into a place beneath the sea—and within himself, which he had never found or suspected.
You are very near to death.
Let me go.
Do you love? Does Neoloth-Pteor love?
Yes, I love.
Then do you not wish to live?
I cannot live. I can feel that something is dissolved within me.
Yes. You can no longer use those spells. You have gone too far.
Then let me go.
But there is one last gift we can give you. But it is a final gift, and you would have to accept a normal life and age as other men do.
To cry underwater would seem impossible, but he knew it was happening. Was there even a chance for a life with Tahlia? To even have a chance?
They were giving him that opportunity, in a moment when he feared he had nothing at all. “Yes,” he said. And he felt as if his skin was peeling away, as if he was a pearl, revealing layers. All of the men he had been, all of the lands he had traveled. So many memories dissolving, until some essential grain of sand, some irritation in the core of the pearl, was revealed.
What was it? What had begun his path toward damnation, that path that had been disrupted in the oddest way. By love. The Red Nun had begun her path to vengeance after a disaster …
Just as Neoloth had been cast from his home by violence …
Neoloth, in a land far away, had had a mother and a father in a life so distant that he had not remembered their names and faces for years. Common folk they had been, living common lives. He recalled that childhood, lived simply and warmly. No disasters. No catastrophes.
Just normal enough for him to feel …
I want more.
That was how he had begun. That was all it had taken.
I want more.
And if he had more, then what? He’d had treasure enough for three kingdoms, adventures enough for a dozen men, knowledge to surpass a university of scholars.
How much is enough? Had he ever had more than what he’d felt just kissing Tahlia’s hand? Had he ever had as much as his parents, in their common lives, with their simple love for each other and their children?
How much is enough?
And something called out from him. One life, one love is enough. And a thousand lives without something meaningful is not.
He made his choice.
And, really, it was no choice at all.
FORTY-FOUR
Exit the Taxman
When Neoloth woke, he was being hauled up from the waves in a bosun’s chair. He looked back down into the water and saw glowing eyes and faint figures of magical creatures as they sank back into the deep, sadness and profound thanks mingling as he realized that he would never see them again.
By the time he stepped up onto the Pelican’s deck, he knew that something was different within him. He felt stronger, more solid than he had in decades.
Friends and comrades were waiting.
“Your face,” Aros said.
Neoloth felt his cheeks and nose, exploring a foreign territory. It was strange to him. A younger man’s face. What…?
He stumbled to the captain’s cabin, still redolent of her scent, the bed still rumpled from when she had last slept there. And above a chest of trinkets, something used to adorn Captain Gold’s daily costumes. A mirror. And in it Neoloth saw something he had not seen in a lifetime.
The younger man, but a different man, as if he had forgotten the toll his life had taken from him, the weight on his soul.
He laughed and laughed, as if it was the first time in a long, excellent life. And perhaps it was.
* * *
Three days later, they touched port. Aros had waited on the deck from before dawn, thinking about the man Neoloth seemed to have become so swiftly and completely, and he knew what was about to happen, even if he didn’t know why.
Neoloth started down the gangplank, then paused and turned. “
We’re here,” he said. “You’re free. More than free. I believe that there are certain honors and riches that are yours now. What was your previous occupation other than thief and rogue?”
“Taxman,” Aros said. “Does that meet the standard?”
“We can do better.”
Aros smiled. “Well, I think I’ll keep those honors on account,” he said. “I know that you’re about to make a play for a princess. That’s not something I want to watch.”
“What? Is that such an unlikely thing?”
The Aztec chuckled in reply. “No more likely than a barbarian who has half the royal households in Shrike indebted, invested, or in bed. You … keep the reward money for me.”
“I can do that.”
“Oh, I think there will be many … interesting conversations between Shrike and Quillia. And a lot of ways for a person willing to position himself properly.”
“A man who sees an opportunity.”
“Well … I haven’t been in love in a while.”
“Better late than never.”
There was something uncomfortable in that silence, something that neither of them wanted to discuss. Neoloth spoke first.
“In another life,” he said. “I think…”
“Yes,” Aros said. “But let’s keep this between ourselves. We have reputations to uphold.”
The two men extended and shook hands. “I have enough friends,” Aros said. “What a great man needs is an enemy of quality.”
“Do you aspire to greatness?”
“Who better?”
Neoloth left the ship, walking down the gangplank with the stride of a man in his thirties, something different than he had ever been. A mortal man, just a man of wisdom and knowledge, who loved a princess.
* * *
Shyena the Red Nun leaned against the rail beside Aros wearing a crimson sheath dress she had constructed in their days at sea. It clung to her curves. “You don’t hate him, do you?”
“No,” Aros said, eyes gliding over her body. “Not anymore.”
“He framed you, you know.”
“Of course he did. But he also trusted me.”
“Yes. And once warned you and saved your life.”
“That … was strange,” Aros said. “He sent me a dream that saved my life. He has powers.”
“That one he needed a little help with.” Her smile was mischievous. Seductive. “I’m not completely without my own resource.”
“How exactly did you help him?” Aros asked, beginning to wonder.
“It’s a long trip back to Shrike,” she said. “I could tell you … or I could show you.”
Aros felt his smile grow wide, and warm. “It is a long trip.”
She had contrived to angle her hip against his, a warm, heavy, luscious weight. “And this noble who waits for you in Shrike. I have heard she is a good woman.”
“She is,” Aros said. “Very. But, as you said, Mijista is in Shrike.”
Aros did not know what was ahead for him. What was behind was strange enough. Today was where he had to live.
The Red Nun looked back at him over her shoulder as she reached the cabin door.
He was just a simple fighting man. Why would he care about magic?
“Well,” Captain Gold asked, chuckling. His friend had appeared behind him without a sound. Their recent success in battle had put a twinkle in his eye, like the old days. The whole world seemed new. “What are you waiting for, laddie?”
“Nothing,” he said, and slapped Gold’s shoulder. “Absolutely nothing at all. How many days back to Shrike?”
“Six, maybe seven.”
Aros nodded and stepped to the cabin’s threshold. He turned and grinned like a shark.
“Make it eight,” Aros said, and closed the door behind him.
TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN AND STEVEN BARNES
Achilles’ Choice
The Descent of Anansi
Saturn’s Race
The Barsoom Project
Dream Park
The Moon Maze Game
The California Voodoo Game
TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN
N-Space
Playgrounds of the Mind
Destiny’s Road
Rainbow Mars
Scatterbrain
The Draco Tavern
Ringworld’s Children
Stars and Gods
TOR BOOKS BY STEVEN BARNES
Blood Brothers
Charisma
Gorgon Child
Streetlethal
Firedance
Iron Shadows
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Larry Niven is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces, and fantasy, including the Magic Goes Away series. He has received the Science Fiction Grand Master Award, the Nebula Award, five Hugos, four Locus Awards, two Ditmars, the Prometheus, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award, among other honors. You can sign up for email updates here.
Steven Barnes is the author of more than thirty novels, several of them science fiction classics. His first collaboration with Larry Niven, “The Locusts,” was nominated for the 1980 Hugo Award. Since then he has won the Endeavor and the NAACP Image Award. In television, he wrote the Emmy-winning Outer Limits episode “A Stitch in Time.” You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1. The Taxman
2. The Talisman
3. The Princess Tahlia
4. Aros on the Docks
5. The Proud Abyss
6. Bad News
7. Wizard at Work
8. The Bargain
9. In the Desert
10. The Grave
11. The Troll
12. Warfroot
13. Boarding
14. All at Sea
15. Mers, Octopi, and Agathodaemon
16. Ashore in Shrike
17. The King
18. The Race
19. Exercises
20. Drasilljah
21. Jade
22. Lord Kang
23. Shyena
24. The Yellow Rose
25. Bad Ground
26. The One
27. Mijista Wile
28. Assassin
29. Messages
30. The Birthday Party
31. The Birds
32. Tunnels Branching
33. The Tower
34. Escape
35. Changing Faces
36. Sanctuary
37. Shadows
38. Debts
39. Tattoos
40. Into the Storm
41. Boarding
42. Waging Peace
43. Undersea
44. Exit the Taxman
Tor Books by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
About the Authors
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
THE SEASCAPE TATTOO
Copyright © 2016 by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Russell Trakhtenberg
Cover art by Jake Murray
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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ISBN 978-0-7653-7873-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6335-4 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466863354
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First Edition: June 2016