by Tanith Lee
“But where in the name of God—” rounded off Vendrei in a roar, “are we to find two swords?”
A writer’s life, unless he be not only talented but also blessed by fortune, can turn out a scrabbly affair. So it had for Ymil. An educated untypical patron of his mother, the street-girl’s night-time acquaintance, had taken pity on the dishevelled child, and taught him to read and write, and even enough of figures he could add two and two and not make seven. Otherwise Ymil’s existence was uncouth, and by the age of twelve he was acting as both runner for a gambling den and an occasional thief. By inevitable stages, equally he ascended and failed in these unchosen careers. The ascent was due to his knack with literacy as well as his nimbleness and gift of observation. The failure came from his total dislike of brutality. He had seen enough of that in the hovel with his mother. Meanwhile, by the cliché of a solitary candle, he often wrote down stories, political reflections, and now and then even a song or two. Intermittently then he would have the tiny success of selling them, seeing them in print in popular pamphlets, or on the sort of rough paper sheets that circulated among the poor but readerly, and were subsequently often put to use during less erudite functions.
By the year of his majority, Ymil could count thirty- one bits and pieces published, most by then long since destroyed, and none of them having paid him more than the price of a meal that would excite only a mouse.
He kept body and soul in tandem another way.
On the day he boarded the ill-fated ship, Ymil, for almost ten years, had earned his bread by providing his services as a reliable blood-hound. He had discovered, watched and followed, persuaded, tricked and delivered up countless strays, runaways, villains and madmen, to those who wished to have them back, did not know where or how to search, but could pay well one who did.
And it was on just such an errand that Ymil had taken ship at all.
He had been in eastern Europe the winter before, on other business. Then a rich aristocrat summoned him to his palace. It was a grand one, with marbles, silk drapes, gold candlesticks. But Ymil was respectfully unimpressed. By that time he had seen such stuff frequently. “I hear you can find anyone on earth, providing he lives,” had stated the aristocrat, a big man in his middle years who, they said, possessed three houses here, another in Petragrava, and a clutch of estates in the country. In demeanour he was an odd combination of expansive and guarded, but when Ymil modestly suggested tales of his wisdom were exaggerated, the aristocrat ignored that like a hiccup, and told Ymil straight out what he required.
It seemed this man had a son, a very handsome, unusually sensitive and charming son who, four years ago, had been shamelessly jilted by his intended marriage partner. “Less than a day after this shock, my son fell deathly ill—a fever, such as had once struck him in childhood. His hair dropped out as it had then. We believed he must die. Yet he turned the corner that very night, and hopes were high he should recover. Then—horror! Next day he had vanished from the house. Of course instantly I attempted to have him found. It was obvious enough, his mind had been disturbed by sickness. One whole year they took to find him. And then—though by now we knew where he must have gone, and the insane mode of life he had adopted—even achieving unlikely success in it—once again he gave my men the slip. Since that time, any I hire to find him have only detected his whereabouts stupidly to lose him again. Yet he lives still, this I know. I have heard, only yesterday, he is somewhere in the Mediterranean area, having given up at last, it seems, his totally unsuitable and unseemly post in the army.”
The father then described his son in detail. He was slender, white-blond, green-eyed, nearly feminine in appearance, the father added with some embarrassment. “Though doubtless less so now,” bitterly. “Dressed as a soldier and hardened by God knows what adventures. And with a sword at his side with which,” now in distaste, “he has done, I am told, a great deal of damage.”
The name this absconding youth had assumed—which was not his true one—was Zephyrin.
Ymil accepted the assignment. Among the cypress, orange and lemon trees of the Mediterranean sink, he uncovered and set out on Zephyrin’s track. And hence the ship, which Ymil had learned Zeph meant to board at Ghuzel.
Prepared for the assorted results other such cases had presented, Ymil had only not anticipated the instantaneous hatred that sprang to life between Zeph and Mhikal Vendrei.
And not until those last pre-tempest minutes did Ymil figure out that, on this occasion, two and two indeed added up to seven.
In the end it was Ymil, with Dakos and Jacenth, the merchant’s son, who went up into the woods to cast about for provender.
Crazt meantime had rigged a line from various debris—boot laces, one of the widow’s two saved hairpins—and baited it with some small dead sea beast found further along the beach. The old widow and elderly merchant, (who by now were on the first name terms of Maressa and Frokash), stayed as sentries of fire and sea.
Ven and Zeph however, stuck to their prior plan.
Ignoring everyone else, seeming careless at the lack of breakfast, they swore a sort of pact, publically, watched by the rest in mixtures of admiration, irritation, contempt and disbelief.
Both enemies were to walk in an opposite direction along the two arms of the beach, searching there for two suitable weapons, preferably long blades. “Do they think they will find such hung up on the rocks?” pondered Frokash.
“Both are deranged.” said Maressa, not without some enjoyment.
But the two gallants, still splendid even after total immersion, and lacking portions or entireties of certain garments, faced each other, white and adamantine.
“Until this evening then, sir,” said Zephyrin. “When, let us hope, I can curtail your futile life, and thus spare the world further boredom from it.”
“Till this evening, wretch. Delight in your last day upon earth. You’ll find Hell much less pleasant.”
Which said, each of them marched off along the sands, Vendrei to the west, a vision of ruined linen, lace, and icy rage; salt-stained Zephyrin heading east, face set like a mask, wig-saving hat crammed down on head.
4
Vendrei discovered the fishing village with startled abruptness, as if Fate were jesting, playing games.
By then he had gone about ten miles down the shore. The cliffs stood high on his right, and the sand was mostly covered by smooth, round, sea-greened boulders—as if thousands of tortoises had congregated, and been heartlessly turned to stone by some passing gorgon. The precarious walkway had also narrowed to the width only of three or four feet, in places less. Then, slithering and sliding around a bulge in the cliff wall, Vendrei beheld a hitherto hidden bay, a long apron of glassy blue water, a broad amble of sand, where distant fisher-craft were drawn up, and small cranky houses had fixed themselves to the cliff like barnacles.
That the village might be very good news for his fellow survivors did not immediately cross Vendrei’s mind.
He took the village personally to be, not only the joke of Fate, but the provider of swords. Why else was it there in his path at this fraught hour, unless to give most desperately—not sustenance or rescue, but a means to murder his dearest foe.
It was not that the golden prince was a solipsistic dunce, exactly. More that life, and other people, had made him sometimes resemble one.
He had fled from his father’s house in panic at the strictures of a stern parent determined to have his way. This man had treated his only son Mhikal as a possession merely. Very much, let it be said, as he treated also wife and daughters. Yet worse, he valued Mhikal more highly, thought him worth more. What the father ultimately wished from his son nevertheless was, for Mhikal, intolerable. It was horrible, coercive, obscene. It would have meant for him an end to all he valued at that time, or held dear.
But then, Mhikal Vendrei’s resultant resistant act, so he himself came to believe, was not only dishonourable and vile, but in its effect worthy of damnation. He had brooded on it, too.
On nothing else.
Ever since he had spent his life, (truly spent, like cash or blood), in deliberate dissolution and itinerancy. He had been afraid for years to put down any root, to form any lasting attachment. He journeyed, he thought, with less baggage than a herder of camels, and now of course the sea itself had robbed him of all, even of the books he had stolen from his father’s library. And even of his sword which here, of all times, he wanted as a lover wants the beloved—passionately and obsessively.
From the initial instant he had loathed Zephyrin, not knowing why. For Vendrei was neither a snob nor physically unconfidant. Probably, he presently decided, it had been an instinctive forewarning. Zephyrin’s stares and jibes had soon cut deep beneath his skin, long before the final calumny—the lie that he was a cheat and thief—propelled him to claim the satisfaction of a duel.
The worst irony of all, however, was that he had taken ship for the express purpose of going home, to face his demon and pay its price.
The people in the hidden village spoke some sort of oriental Greek that, for all his knowledge of languages, Vendrei could barely fathom. He struggled to grasp their words. To make them understand his. But they gave him a glass of wine with milk curdled in it, and then sat him down on a stone in the narrow street that rambled round the houses up the cliff. After a while an older man came along, garlanded with a vast grey beard.
“Is you to be look for,” so Vendrei guessed the greybeard said, “the drownwards lost off ship-thing?”
“Ah—no—but—are men from the ship here?”
“Some is to be have washed up always into us place, if ship sunken. We have two man-things since of yester here. They am drownward. We have of bury them, as is our way with the drown-made dead.”
“Commendable,” said Vendrei. Repressing an hysterical urge to bellow with laughter.
Did these villagers think no one else ever buried the lifeless? This was a primitive place, but surely—
The wine had gone to Vendrei1s head, straight into his brain. He felt dizzy, and thought of his own near drowning, and that he might have ended by being swept in too, and buried by one of these strangers. He thought that two men, now beyond his help, might well have been, each of them, equipped with a useable blade. Which now lay in the grave with them.
“I should wish—I should like,” he faltered, “to visit the graves.” And then blushed with shame, (a thing he had not done for several years), at his own appalling behaviour. For he meant to investigate the graves, undo them, borrow—oh, borrow of course only, he would return his theft, (cheat, thief), replace their swords. Maybe two gentlemen would not grudge this, in order to settle one like Zephyrin? No, they would be seated in the best seats in Paradise, applauding.
I’m drunk.
But the bearded man was assisting him to his feet.
“You come, and I to you show buried. But a long climb.”
To Heaven?
Yes, for me, now.
Up the wandering street they went and so reached another treacherous path that teetered on up the cliff. Wild blue and topaz flowers, and stunted oleanders, grew along the sides of it. And here and there he saw a shell.
They climbed high above the village, and then the path snagged down. A rough carving appeared beside the track. It was of a long-bearded man with the tail of a fish, who held regally in his left hand the three-pronged trident of the pagan marine god, Poseidon.
An idea of what might be going on attempted to invest the brain of Vendrei. He wrestled with it, then gave up as the greybeard drew him aside into a cool tunnel.
“Below,” said the man. “Step careful. Tall sea come at sun-die. Then go they.”
“They go, do they. Very well. Tall sea.”
The tunnel plainly ran down through the inside of the cliff. Where it led to must be the village burial ground. That was strange enough, for at the edge of the village there had stood the usual church, a ramshackle little stone building with a saint painted above the door. Normally the graveyard would lie handy. Not here, it seemed.
Turning to ask another unwieldy question of his guide, Vendrei saw the man had gone, slipped away slick as a shadow.
Vendrei shook his head to clear it. Which did nothing but make him laugh.
Then he stepped through into the tunnel, stooping a little for the rocky roof was uneven and low. The route had been, most likely, a natural one, but hacked out to a greater space by men. Soon he came to a ledge where rested tapers, flint and tinder. Vendrei had already begun to see he would need light, for as the tunnel descended it grew inevitably darker. He struck flame and ignited a taper. And in that moment a profound sense of the supernormal washed in on him. How long had this death-road existed? It felt to him old as the cliff. How many unquiet ghosts, then, flitted through the shade, attracted to a light like moths but, being already dead, unable to burn. . .
“Steady, you fool,” he said to himself aloud, and the rock surged with a low, humming echo. “Bloody Zephyrin,” Vendrei whispered. “I shall—” Yet here was not a spot to utter maledictions. And Vendrei suddenly remembered the youth of his adversary, his paleness and handsomeness, and felt a terrible pity at what he meant to do to him. But Vendrei reckoned himself damned anyway, what did one more young life matter? What did anything matter. Come on, fool, find the dead and rob them, take their swords, go back and kill the wretch and have done.
Ymil, Jacenth and Dakos returned to the beach in the late afternoon with meat, three plump conies, slain quick and clean by the boy, who was apt with a stone even lacking his catapult. They had plucked red grapes from a wild vine, green figs, and mint and sage for flavouring.
Crazt meanwhile had caught a whole heap of fish, which were now enticingly toasting on sticks across the fire. Maressa and Frokash were playing a game with differently marked pebbles. They had seen no shipping; did not seem to mind.
Of the other pair there was no sign.
“Fell off the land’s edge into the ocean,” said Crazt under his breath. “To both, our fondest farewell.”
This opining was proved valueless however when, as the sun itself reached the brink of the sea, scalding it to carmine, Zephyrin appeared, tramping back along the eastern stretch of sand.
Zephyrin’s hat was off, there was no breeze at all and the fine white wig hung limply. Hollows smudged beneath the green eyes. The captain seemed tired out, tired in the manner of an almost grown-up child. Looking at this, Ymil thought, one might know Zephyrin had been recently ill, or very ill some years ago, and was left weakened by it.
Coming near the fire, the slender figure slumped down a short distance from the others.
“I found this,” Zephyrin said, and rolled a small barrel towards them, “up the beach.”
“French Brandy!” approvingly exclaimed Dakos and the merchant as one.
“Just so,” said Zephyrin. “There was flotsam from the ship, or from some other casualty, all over. I expect you’ll like to go and look, tomorrow.”
And that was all the captain said. In fact all the captain was to say for some while.
Obviously too this one showed no interest in food or brandy, nor in any of them, only in the missing Vendrei. Also obviously, Zeph had not discovered the one (or two) items searched for. No swords,
The sun went down. Lavender flooded the sky, swiftly chased away in turn by the indigo of night. Stars spangled. The company feasted on grilled fish and roast meat, herbs and fruit, and passed the little brandy barrel, and were glad. Only Zephyrin did not join in, ate only a morsel of fish, one grape, went off again and drank sips of water from the freshet pool. Then stayed up by the pool too, sitting there silhouetted against the deep blue and bright silver of the sky.
“How he misses the prince. You’d think he was in love with him,” said Crazt.
“He longs for Mhikal Vendrei’s death,” said Dakos. “Hate is always worse than love, whatever the wise men say.”
“Oh, love is somewhat strong,” said the merchant Frokash. “And sometim
es begins unexpectedly.” (Ymil noted he glanced at the widow when he said it).
Ymil was pleased to see that two people might be made happy from this muddle, perhaps even three, for Jacenth appeared to like the idea of the widow as a future addition to his father’s life.
Mostly though, with a sort of curious dread, Ymil kept one of his observant eyes peeled for Vendrei, walking out of the west like Death himself in the old pictures. Ymil had no doubts the prince would return. None at all.
He arrived about an hour before midnight.
Most of them were asleep. These he woke up, for Vendrei was incandescent with fury, nearly insane it seemed, as he lurched into the firelight.
“God’s stars—” he shouted. “Damnable black foulness!”
He looked dampened more physically than in optimism.
His hair was wet and dripping, the remains of his shirt plastered to his body. Had he been for a swim?
He towered over the six seated or prone persons, and then irresistibly raised his wide and flaming eyes to the figure that now sprang towards him from the pool.
“Oh, can it be,” Zephyrin asked in a silken voice, “the wondrously clever Prince Mhikal has failed to find a sword?” Where there had been no energy to Zephyrin, now there was nothing but. Zephyrin glowed in the darkness, galvanic, a lightning made flesh.
Vendrei snarled.
“There you’re wrong, you sty-rat. I found a sword, by God’s might—”
And here indeed was the blade, flashing fire and starlight as he flung it point down into the sand. Where it waited, quivering also with energy, readiness.
“Then, Vendrei, tomorrow we shall fight.”
“Ha!” bawled Vendrei. What a splendid melodramatic the stage had lost in him, Ymil thought. But already he had reasoned, and was not amazed, when Vendrei added, in a guttural hiss, “No.”