He debated sharing his search with Tessa, not that he was unable to trust her but that she would not believe him. Certainly she did not understand his need for privacy when he was off watch, and Varian imagined that she was wondering when he would get around to noticing her. Really noticing.
But there had been other things to occupy and educate her mind. The passage through the Straits of Nsin was as mysterious and fogbound as ever, and Tessa was entranced by the towering white cliffs on the southern side of the Straits where the great Guns of Kell still loomed as a reminder of the power of the past. The lights of the Voluspa Beacon, just off the coast of the philosopher’s city, guided them safely into open waters, where they sailed by their charts and instruments until the coastline of the Isle of Gnarra was cited. Tessa very much wanted to see the port of Cybele and the population of necromancers, which she had heard lived there. Varian was amused. She had spoken of Cybele as if wizards and sorcerers teemed in the streets like rats in a tavern alley.
There had also been a brief encounter with a Behistar raider—a small, but fast, frigate which tested the strength of The Courtesan’s cannon. It had been the last engagement for the small black ship.
And now they were putting into port at Ques’ryad. Almost twice the size of any other port on the Aridard, Ques’ryad was a sprawling center of trade, adventure, and cultural exchange. The harbor was filled with ships of every port, flags of every nation cracking in the stiff sea breeze, the docks aswarm with men and exotic cargoes from every corner of the World. Dried meats from the Shudrapur, pelts and furs from trappers north of the Scorpinnian Empire, diamonds from the mines of Kahisma, tapestries and pottery from Asir, musical instruments from Sanda, ironwood from the Kirchou forests, glass sculptures from the Slagland. The riches of the World flowed and swirled like water about the wharves and piers, loaded and unloaded, changed from one ship to the next. Ques’ryad was the nexus, the interchange where all things and all men seemed to eventually converge.
That evening, their first in the port city, Tessa was enthralled with the idea of exploring the town. Varian accompanied her through the winding streets, down the long boulevards, and through the vast parks and gardens. They were surrounded by the spires and obelisks of the city. Temples and museums, monuments and other edifices of great age loomed everywhere. The air was filled with the languages of men of every color and size and belief, almost crackling with the smells of roasted nuts and meats, of flowers, and liquors.
As the midnight hour approached, even Varian felt fatigued, and he begged Tessa the opportunity to visit a tavern for a soft chair and a warming mug of coffee and rum. She smiled and agreed as Varian immediately headed for a favorite roosting place in among the smaller streets, off the beaten pathways of the principal boulevards and commercial routes. On the intersect of two smaller, twisting streets, crowded with shops, was an inn called The White Donzell; it was adorned with a large swinging sign with a painted fresco of one of the beautiful horned creatures beneath the letters.
Inside, there was a large open area where long oak tables had been arranged in orderly rows. The walls were yellowing brick trimmed in brown beams and covered with tapestries and paintings from every country and every age. There was a fine patina of dust and tar from the billowing clouds of burning bac which covered everything, imparting a mellow, lived-in aroma to the place. The floor was covered with sawdust so thick that it was like moss in a shaded forest. There was music—a small ensemble of stringed instruments in a loft above—and, of course, a long bar where three barkeeps were kept eternally busy by hundreds of men and women drinking, laughing, smoking, living.
Varian and Tessa entered, dressed in inconspicuous clothing which tagged them as merchant seamen. No one took more than token interest in their entrance, and they walked uninterrupted to a table next to a large crowd of people who were listening with rapt attention to the tales of a large, loud man dressed in a cloak of silver-gray fur.
“This is a beautiful place!” said Tessa. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Varian looked at her. She was bubbling over with wonder and love—love of, the magic in the world. She was like a child, and he was beginning to like her very much for it.
They spoke of their day in Ques’ryad, occasionally having to half-yell their words over the music, the explosive laughter and banter of the crowd at the next table. It was not long before Varian found himself paying more attention to the rough, slightly high-pitched voice of the old man in the fur than to Tessa and her continuous exclamations about the city.
Rather than be rude, Varian tried to draw her into his sphere of interest. “Look at that fellow,” he said, pointing to the man.
“He is quite a character, isn’t he?” said Tessa, laughing.
The man sat at the far end of the table, wearing his fur cape like a royal cloak. He was surrounded by a semicircle of ardent listeners and it did seam that he was holding a kind of narrator’s court with them. His face was tough and baked by the sun like the wrinkled surface of an almond. His hair the same silver-gray color as his animal-pelt cloak, and his eyes were a fiery blue that seemed to belong to a man much younger than his obvious years. He had a large hawkish nose, bent and beaked and probably broken more than once, above a large full mouth which was unobscured by a carefully trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He was loud, but he spoke with careful emphasis on just the right words so that he kept the attention of his audience always on the edge. He had the knack of the storyteller and he reveled in it.
By the man’s side was a much smaller and younger man, who listened with rapt attention to everything the old fellow said. Occasionally, the old man would nudge him or ask him to recall with pleasure a certain facet of a story, and the short man would nod and wink and laugh with the intimacy of a true sidekick. Varian studied him for a moment, wondering if he looked familiar, trying to place the face with a name or a location. He was short, but very stocky, musculature in evidence beneath the thick clothing. His eyes and his hair were jet black and his skin shone with oily perspiration. He had an engaging smile, very white teeth, sharp, angular nose and jaw. He was handsome, but in an unfinished, crude kind of way.
Varian noticed, however, that the small sidekick, while very animated, did not speak. This was either out of deference and respect to his master and chief storyteller, or else the man was mute.
“. . . and the mutations are still goin’ on in the Baadghizi Vale. Three winters back, Raim and I were there—weren’t we, my small fellow?—and we saw cockroaches the size of your boot, walkin’ around like they owned the place. And they do! But it’s not the roaches that’ll get you, no sir. It’s the lizards, by the gods, it’s the friggin’ lizards!”
Someone took the bait, asked about the lizards, and the man was off again.
“Big, ugly, scaly things! They’re slinkin’ and screwin’ in the Vale to beat all! Pretty soon they’ll be so many of them, they’ll be crawlin’ over each other’s back, spend their whole lives never touchin’ the ground. And I mean they’re big, too. Some of them are learnin’ to stand up on their hind legs like a man. Get to be five or six ems high, and they can outrun you and have you for breakfast before you can say Ben Hurlendsesk!”
“How’d you get away?” someone asked with a smile.
“Me? I’ll get away from everything, ‘cept Mr. Bones!” The man in the silver fur threw back his head and laughed. “No, you see, them lizards are big and fast and hungry, for sure, but they’re godsawful dumb, too! You can fool ‘em with tricks that even a hangclaw wouldn’t fall for. In fact, I caught a big one in a trap I’d set, brought back the head to a king north of the Scorpinnian. Called himself Richer the Third, he did. Funny-lookin’ little fellow with a withered arm, but mean as a cat! Gave ‘im that big bugger’s head and took off from there. That’s when Raim and I, we teamed up with an expedition on the Sunless Sea. Ship was The Pea-Pod, ever heard of her? No, I’d feature you haven’t, but she was a fine-rigged thing. Captained by a crazy man the
name of Ajax. Raim got into a fight with one of the gunner’s on board—a big illustrated man, forget his name, and they cut some new pictures into each other’s flesh, didn’t you, my lad?”
The man laughed again and gestured for the small, dark Raim to display the knife wounds on the left side of his chest. After an appreciative round of ooohs and aaahs, the old man continued his tale. It was a nonstop, rollicking sea story, and Varian was caught up in it, despite himself.
Varian had heard variations of these stories for years. You did not sail the World, frequent the watering holes of every fellow nomad, and not hear them, but there was something different about this man’s delivery, his style. And most important, his appearance. He looked as if he had done the things he said. Varian’s keen eye for detail did not miss the thick, calloused palms, the “character” lines in the face, the young, vigilant eyes, and the heavy musculature of the shoulders and the neck. This old man was a man of action and experience; his knack for the well-turned tale was only a colorful talent, an added attraction.
“What’s wrong?” asked Tessa, reaching out and touching Varian’s sleeve.
“Oh, nothing. I was just watching him, listening. . . .”
Tessa laughed and sipped from her stein. “You don’t believe him, do you?”
“No, not everything. I never believe all that any man says.”
“But some things, yes?”
“Of course.” Varian gestured at the old man. “Just look at him. I mean really look at him. He’s real. He’s been there—wherever it is. He’s like Ques’ryad itself: there’s the smell and the look of adventure about him, and danger, too.”
“Varian, I think you do believe him!” She smiled, gave him a mock reproachful look.
“He is an interesting fellow, you can’t deny that,” said Varian, looking once again to the table where the narration continued.
“. . . and some say they were golems, but they’re probably not livin’ things at all,” said the old man, his eyes gliding suspensefully back and forth in his sockets. “For my money, they were robots!”
Someone in the crowd laughed, followed quickly by the guffaws and doubting remarks of others. Varian felt himself tense at the mention of the word.
“So don’t believe me! What hang do I give? I know it could be a robot, ‘specially since I seen one myself!”
More laughter and general loud commentary. The crowd believed that the old man was now openly playing with them, slipping from the mode of tall-tale teller to that of jester, buffoon.
Everyone laughed but Varian. In an instant he was swept back to the moment on board The Courtesan when the . . . the thing pulled back its robes and revealed its amber-glass chest, the sparkling patterns of the printed circuitry and LEDs.
“No, it’s true, I tell you!” said the man. “You can ask Raim, here. He saw him, too!”
Raim nodded his head solemnly.
“I was comin’ back from the wilderness north of the Shudrapur. Raim and me, we were lookin’ for First Age pieces for this merchant in Borat. Didn’t find a thing so far, when we stop at this outpost near the borders—about five hundred kays from Babir—and we get to talkin’ with some of the villagers. You learn to listen to what them village people have to say. They might not say things as nicely as we do, but they make a lot of sense, and they ain’t got nobody to impress. What I mean is, they don’t lie . . . got no reason to.”
The silver-furred man paused to drink from his large stein, and Varian could feel the apprehension and the anxiety in the air. He could feel the expectations of all who listened to the tale. Tessa reached out, touching Varian’s wrist, and he flinched.
“So, anyhow, we get into the outpost, and one of the trappers, he tells me there’s been a monk, or somebody like that, passin’ through and askin’ for me! Now, I got to think this is pretty odd, ‘cause there ain’t hardly no one knows I’m out there, or what I’m doin’. And surely there’s no monks that know me. I’m not what you’d call a religious man.” He paused and looked skyward, then made a halting sign of the star on his breast. Everyone laughed and he waited for it to subside before continuing.
“A few days go by, and Raim and myself, we’re just restin’ up, gettin’ some good cooked food and like that. I snoop around a bit and find that the fellow’s been lookin’ for me—his name’s Cartor Fillus, and he’s supposed to be a messenger from my employer, Marduk, the Salasan of Borat. Now I am confused! We’re thousands of kays from Zend Avesta, near impossible to track down, and Marduk’s supposed to be sendin’ me a message. It was crazy, see? So I decide to wait it out in the village to see if this fellow shows up, ‘cause now I sure as shit want to talk to ‘im.”
Varian was now only half listening to the narrative. He knew now that the old man was not lying. There was no coincidence so close. Kartaphilos. Cartor Fillus. No, it was the same man, the same thing. What did it all mean? For the first time in his life, Varian felt as though he were losing control of things, as if he might be being manipulated by forces greater than he could understand.
“. . . and it’s night, see? Raim is sleepin’ and I got the watch. There’s nothin’ but dark and cold all around our tent, and sure enough I hear somethin’ out there. I have a 9-mil sidearm that’ll put a hole in a man the size of a pie pan, right? So I pull it out and aim out there. I always fire first and talk about it later. And I’m about to squeeze off a few rounds in the direction of the noise when I hear my name bein’ called . . . real formal, like I was in the House of Salasans: ‘Stoor of Hadaan, I greet you. I come in peace.’ So I tell him to come out into the light, and out steps this old man in a robe, a hood up over his head, sure as shit lookin’ like a monk. ‘Cartor Fillus?’ I asks, and he nods his head. So I bring him into the camp and offer him some drink, but he didn’t take none. We make small talk awhile, then I asked him how he found me way out there, and he won’t say exactly, says he has ‘his special ways.’ I figured that meant he wasn’t about to give away any trade secrets, so I let it go. Then he tells me that he don’t really work for Marduk. I also figured that, but I wasn’t about to tell him. . . .”
The old man paused to drink again, and Varian studied the faces of his audience. There was everything there—disbelief, amusement, rapt attention, drunken ignorance. Yet they all listened.
“. . . but then a funny thing happens, and I know this is going to sound like I rigged it up in my dreams, but listen up: I hear a sound out in the darkness, some big branches breakin’ quick, like there’s somethin’ out there, moving real fast-like. But before I can raise up my 9-mil piece, there’s this big shape flying out of the black woods.
“Old Cartor, he stands up and catches the thing right in the chest. It was a cragar, the biggest, meanest one I ever saw, almost three ems long! Hit old Cartor with its claws out and fangs ready to chomp. I expected the old man to be torn pretty much in half before he hit the ground, but it wasn’t like that.
“The cragar’s on top of him, ripping and slashing like they do, right? I got time, only a second or two, but that’s all I need to squeeze off two rounds. Wango! The cragar’s head’s gone! Pieces flyin’ all over the place.
“But that ain’t the end of it. I walk over and kick the carcass off poor old Cartor Fillus, expecting to see a meat market, right? And he sits up, trying to gather up the folds of his robes. ‘Thank you,’ he says to me.
“By this time I would have normally fell out, ‘cause there’s no man alive that could have taken that kind of hit from a night-stalkin’ cragar. . . . But, you see, I already knew that this Cartor Fillus was no man at all!
“That critter had torn up his clothes bad, and while he tried to gather them up, I saw what was underneath. Metal! And glass! So thick and clear, like it was topaz! And underneath, it was ablaze with light and power!
“I step back as he tries to pull his clothes up about him, but he knows and I knows and by now even Raim knows—’cause he heard the cragar coming out of the woods. So we all stand there lookin’
at each other for a minute or two, then the robot says: ‘I would have told you eventually that I was not human, but I suppose this demonstrates that a bit more dramatically.’ And I told him it sure did, and what, by the way, did a robot want with me, trackin’ me down in the wilderness, especially when there weren’t supposed to be any robots around anyway?
“Well, he sat back and he told me a story, which he made me promise not to repeat to anyone—and naturally, I promised, since I am a man of my word, and—”
The crowd had burst into laughter, thinking that old Stoor had reached a punch line of sorts. He could not, of course, tell the robot’s story because there was no robot. A tall tale, then, to be enjoyed by all.
“Wait a minute! You got this one wrong! This ain’t no story. . . .”
But everyone continued to laugh and wink at each other, nodding their heads knowingly. Several of the number drifted off to refill their steins, others turned to each other for smaller, more private conversations. As if by some unspoken signal, Stoor’s turn in the spotlight had come abruptly to an end. The old man stared at his short, dark-haired companion. They shrugged at one another, stood up, and headed toward the bar.
As they passed the table of Varian and Tessa, the merchant marine touched the old man’s sleeve.
Stoor looked down at him quizzically.
“I believe you, old man,” said Varian.
“You want an award, maybe?” Stoor turned to go but was stopped by the hard, fast grip of the young sailor.
“Please,” said Varian. “I am serious. I know you tell the truth . . . about the . . . the robot.”
Stoor smiled and looked at Raim. “And how might you know that?”
“The Guardian,” said Varian. “He came to me, and he told me about the Guardian.”
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