by Dave Duncan
At first the walls of the alley held alcoves where artisans and merchants displayed their wares. Weavers wove and tailors stitched; goldsmiths tapped and potters threw; all of them at the same time chattering and arguing with the onlookers. Face averted, angry that she dared not linger, Inos pushed by the knots of haggling bystanders. One of the stalls was a bakery, and her stomach informed her there that it had repented and was ready for business again; she shuffled past with her mouth watering.
The steps grew steeper, the alley narrower. The little stores disappeared, and only forbiddingly massive doors broke the sweep of lime-washed masonry walls. All the windows were stoutly barred. Porters and veiled women, children in rags and laden donkeys—Inos was jostled repeatedly, and at times forced to stop and wait until the way had cleared. Krasnegar was steeper, but she had never carried a sack of meal up the hill there, and the ropes were cutting into her skin.
Even the ever-present Arakkaranian breeze could not penetrate the canyon; the air was stuffy and yesterday's heat still radiated from the walls. Krasnegar had many passageways such as this, but most of them were roofed, and none was so filthy or so thickly inhabited by insects. Every crevice in the walls and every crack between the cobbles seemed to form part of a separate subsystem of alleys for the use of ants and beetles.
From time to time the way divided or crossed over other ways, but always her instructions to climb gave her one obvious choice of route. Strange noises and smells drifted in from the side streets: the hammering of coppersmiths, the odor of boiling goat, or onions, the crowing of poultry, or the scent of the inevitable coffee. Dark, sinister archways led off into mysterious courtyards, which she had no desire to explore. And there were many little alcoves and nooks fitted with benches or seats where a line of men would be taking their ease and gossiping—never women. They sometimes exchanged loud comments on her size and shape.
She was going very slowly now, puffing hard, sweating; also cursing the chafing of the damnable ropes. She had not expected to climb so far. She thought she must be drawing nigh to the palace, but the high buildings cut off any glimpse of it. The harbor, also, was invisible, and must be very far below her now. An absurd fear of failure was niggling at the back of her mind. She had been told to turn left at the minstrel, but suppose she had missed the minstrel in the crowd? Suppose he had taken his fee and gone elsewhere, or just grown tired of waiting for her?
Suppose—worse—that Rasha had detected the conspiracy and was now playing cat to Azak's mouse? All those mysterious, taciturn guides might have been agents of—or even guises of—the sorceress herself, and she might tease and torment Inos for hours, making her trek to and fro, up and down, until she collapsed from sheer exhaustion, or until the fiendish torment of the ropes cut off her arms and they fell to the ground at her feet.
Where an ancient building abutted an even older one, the angle of a doorway provided a small refuge, and there Inos stepped aside to rest while a string of panier-bearing mules minced by. As the clop of their feet died away, she heard a cithern twanging faintly up ahead. Hoping that this signified the missing minstrel, she gave her sagging meal sack a surreptitious heave and stepped back into the throng to begin climbing again, feeling every muscle in her legs ache.
She had almost gone by another of the sinister dark archways when a familiar voice said, "God of Pilgrims.''
The two men standing there were indistinct in the shadow and muffled in robes, but one was very tall. She stepped out of the crowd and smiled up at him before remembering that he could see little of her face.
"And may the God of Childbirth grant you safe labor," he added.
"And you also, Cubslayer. What minstrel?"
"Just another mirage to divert pursuit." Azak flashed one of his rare smiles, and it seemed less tinged than usual with mockery. "Come in and relax, then. Here you will be secure, and safe even from the power of the sorceress.''
Beset the road:
Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§80, 1879)
SEVEN
Dawn of nothing
1
Morning had come at last, and Rap was still alive, or at least he thought he probably was. He had been conscious a few times in the night, but more often not, which was better. His head felt as if it had split into two unequal halves; there was a lot of dried blood in his hair. His left ankle was swollen even bigger than the larger side of his head.
He had fallen down a steep slope at the bottom of the hill. There was a very narrow gap there, in back of a house, where the rock had been quarried away to make more room. It was cluttered with roots and branches and old rubbish. Overhead a patch of sky now showed through a chimney, a hole he must have made as he came down on his way to a pit that seemed to be part of an abandoned cesspool or tank of some sort, lined with rotted bricks. Whatever it might have held in its prime, it was now stuffed with mud and sodden leaves and Rap.
There was some stinking water, too, and around dawn he'd been desperate enough to drink from it. Walking was going to be the problem. He had never noticed how many bones there were in a man's ankle, and now he could count two more in his left one than he could in his right.
After throwing off the layers of debris that had followed him down and more or less buried him, Rap hauled himself to his feet. He whimpered aloud at the pain, leaned against the wall until his giddiness passed, and then fumbled in the muck to retrieve a missing sandal. Forcing his limbs to move against pain was much harder than he had expected; he cursed his own faint-heartedness. With maddening slowness, he clambered along the narrow canyon that separated the back of the building on one side from crumbly rock on the other. Both of them seemed to lean to the left, but that was just his farsight a little mixed up, that was all.
He reached a corner and a gap between two buildings, so narrow that he had to turn sideways to squeeze through. The planks were rough, but he was able to reach overhead and find handholds in them, and thus keep most of his weight off his ankle. Then he came to the road, and those acrobatics wouldn't take him any farther.
He should have brought along a stick or a branch, to use as a cane, and he had been too stupid to think of it.
He stood on one foot, wiping mud off himself as he contemplated the harborfront of Milflor. It was already bustling, but less busy than the market had been. The sun was up, although still hidden by the high ground of the cape, where the proconsul's palace lurked behind its occult shielding. He wished he had more control over his farsight, for it kept trying to snoop among the fishing boats at the jetties, or the taverns and merchants' establishments along the landward side of the road. It still gave everything a marked tilt to the left.
Soon he began to realize that there was something sadly wrong with his eyes, also, a foggy jumpiness. Partly they were full of tears because he was in pain, but there was more to it than that. Everywhere he looked he saw a glare of sunlight, as if the whole world was made of water, and reflecting. He let his fingers investigate the bump on his head. They came away red, so the gash was still oozing. Bad! Nothing would be more conspicuous than blood.
A road with only two directions to run was not a healthy place for a fugitive, but he couldn't run anyway. To his right was the palace and the sorcerer's tower, and the headland would be a dead end for him, so he should probably head left. If the cape was an arm and the mainland a body, then he was in the armpit, alongside the small-craft jetties. He'd find it easier to hide if he went left, landward, but the big ships were moored off to the right, just about at the giant's elbow, and directly below the sorcerer's tower, which Thinal had called the Gazebo. The only way out of Faerie was in one of those big ships. God of Pity, he was hungry! His headache was getting worse, and he suspected he was confused.
When his good leg began to complain
that it couldn't hold him up all by itself forever, he decided to start by getting himself cleaned up. There was a whole ocean of water right across the road from him, and it must be warm, because he could see kids playing in it. Right!
He took a deep breath and lurched forward, intending to limp across to the waterfront itself. He must have made it because in a little while he discovered he was sitting on a stone bench there. Someone was hammering red-hot nails into his ankle all the time, though, and he was sweating hard enough to wash the mud off without any water at all. He did not remember arriving. Could a man walk in a faint?
The sun was above the palace ridge now, and already the sea was a richer color than he had ever seen it at Krasnegar; but the fishing boats looked much the same, as did the sea gulls—just as cheeky and noisy and graceful in flight. The smell of salt and weed and fish was not too different, but there were a lot more barrows and carts and wagons rattling and clanking along the road at his back.
Feeling homesick was not going to help at all.
The tide was in. The road stood about a fathom above the water, built of massive blocks of white stone. They looked old and worn, but of course the docks at Milflor could well be just as sorcerous in origin as Inisso's castle and causeway in Krasnegar. Fishing boats were tied to some slimy old wooden jetties.
Just to his right a stone staircase ran down to the sea. Five or six boys were playing there, jumping headfirst into the water, then running up the steps to do it again. It looked like good fun for rich kids; at their age Rap had been mucking out stables. That thought took his gaze to the white beach and big houses on the landward side of the bay. Children and some adults were splashing in the water there and playing in little sailboats.
This sea was not the Winter Ocean! Rap rose and hopped to the top of the stair. Leaning on the handrail, he worked his way down, step by step, to the water. The boys gave him startled looks, and soon afterward he realized that they had departed. Without removing his clothing he went down far enough to sit in water up to his neck, and it was marvelously refreshing, soothing his scrapes and scratches. He ducked his head, wincing at the sting of salt on his cut, but soon that stopped. Easing himself up and down on his arms while the little waves went by, he watched the barnacles and floating weed and wished his head would not throb quite so hard, and that his eyes would attend to their duties. His farsight still said that the sea had a tilt to the left.
He must have gone to sleep, because suddenly he was choking and thrashing, in danger of falling off the steps and drowning. Who would come to his rescue? Probably no one in Milflor would believe that a man couldn't swim.
He hauled himself up by the handrail and hopped back to the stone bench. Already it was hot as a griddle, so that he was glad his clothes were wet. He must rest his ankle for a while and wait until his eyes began behaving. His head pounded with every heartbeat, his vision flicked in harmony. But at least he seemed to have stopped bleeding; his tattoos were aimed safely seaward, away from the passersby.
He sat on the bench for quite a while, wondering when he would cook himself to death, when someone would come and investigate a solitary man being idle while everyone else was busy, and when he would die of starvation. Why, oh why, had he gone and broken his ankle?
For the first time in months he was truly alone, and the feeling was unexpectedly unpleasant. He had lived by himself for days on end when he was herding; why should solitude bother him now? Lonely lost boy had better start behaving like a man pretty soon!
He discovered he was mourning Little Chicken and told himself not to be crazy. The goblin had been dedicated to killing him in the nastiest ways possible, so his death should be good news, not bad. Perhaps Rap's sorrow was only guilt at having left him to fight alone, but that suicidal assault on armed men had been Little Chicken's own decision.
Or had it?
How many soldiers had the goblin dealt with before they, in turn, disposed of him? Why had those particular men broken ranks to come running down the path? Rap's scalp prickled as he considered the occult possibilities. Legionaries had ravaged the fairy village. The one surviving fairy had died in telling Little Chicken something, probably her name, and certainly a magic word—and for no apparent reason. The goblin's natural talent had been physical strength, which had been sorcerously magnified, and now a group of soldiers had rushed to their own destruction at his hands. Might those very men have been the perpetrators of the original crime? Could Faerie magic seek out its own vengeance like that?
Things on the water were very hard to see, and his farsight was growing blurry, also. The head coming toward him had to be a seal, he decided. Then he squinted, shaded his eyes, and decided that it was a man swimming.
He had never watched swimming being done. It was obviously slower than walking and must be hard work, for when the swimmer reached the steps and clambered out, he was audibly gasping. After a moment he came plodding up, still stooped and puffing and wringing water out of his hair—pale blond hair hanging to his shoulders. He was short for a jotunn, but broad.
Although Rap had accepted that this was a warm climate where men might go around bare-chested even in a town, he was still shocked by the newcomer's scanty rag. That was indecent! Nor was it very practical, and when the man moved to sit on the other end of his bench Rap called out a warning. "Careful! The stone's hot!"
The man stopped and turned to stare at him over a silver mustache large enough to sweep out a stable. The rest of him had been put together from knotted rope, brown leather, and wet polar bear combings. His eyes were pale as an arctic sky, fog gray with only a hint of blueness—but they gleamed at the sight of Rap's scrapes. "Too hot for me, but not for you!"
"No! Sorry, sir! No, I didn't mean that at all, sir."
"Ah! You mean I'm being stupid?"
Rap had never expected to sweat any harder than he had been doing a few minutes earlier, especially not when feeling ice-cold, as he did now. "Not at all, sir. I should have seen that you have bare feet. I mean, that you know exactly what you're doing, sir. I meant well, sir, but I was wrong to presume to advise you—sir!"
The jotunn shrugged, disappointed. He sat down, deliberately leaning against the backrest and spreading his arms along it, carefully not flinching at the heat, while all the while keeping watch on Rap, as if inviting comment.
Even the homegrown jotnar at Krasnegar were dangerously touchy, even Rap's personal friends like Krath and Gith. He should have remembered that the nomadic sailor types were all homicidal maniacs, especially when fresh ashore after a voyage. Dockside taverns in Krasnegar spilled more blood than beer. Even to get up and leave now could be taken as an insult.
It would be nice to have Little Chicken handy.
Keeping his blurry eyes innocently pointed at the little boats sailing in the bay. Rap studied his new companion out of the corner of his mind. Jotnar turned pink in summer and shed skin in sheets; he had never seen one so bronzed, to about the same faunish shade as himself. To assume that a male jotunn was a sailor by trade was usually a safe bet, and quite certain in this case from the pictures tattooed on the man's arms and hands, all of which were either obscene or erotic, or both. He was regarding Rap with the open curiosity of a man who could choose to be nosy—hard and heavy. His knuckles were badly twisted by old breaks; his angular jotunnish face was ominously unmarked.
"What's that 'round your eyes, boy?"
"Goblin tattoos, sir."
"Make you look like a half-wit raccoon."
"Oh, I agree, sir! I didn't want them. I was unconscious."
The man sighed. "You haven't been fighting."
"No, sir. I fell."
The sailor groaned and looked away. For a while there was peaceful silence. Gradually Rap began to breathe more easily. Even when he was feeling his usual self, he had no interest in brawling as a sport.
Then the jotunn began studying him again. "You're not pure faun. That's a jotunn's jaw if I ever saw one."
Tell him it was non
e of his business? "My father was a jotunn, sir, my mother a faun."
"Rape, of course?"
"Probably. But he married her later, sir."
"Lucky girl." Resignedly the sailor clasped his hands behind his neck and turned his gaze on the harbor. Rap would have enjoyed being furious, but anger would be a dangerous luxury at the moment. Besides, this man might be of some help if he would ever accept that Rap did not want to fight.
So this time it was Rap who resumed the conversation. The jotunn had dried already and he glinted all over as if he were swathed in gossamer.
"My name's Rap, sir."
Elbows and arms pivoted like the wings of a banking gull. Faded eyes regarded him with bored contempt. "Who cares, halfman?"
"Sorry, sir."
A grunt. "But I'm Gathmor, first mate on Stormdancer."
"Sir . . . I'm seeking passage back to the mainland."
"Where on the mainland?"
"Zark, if possible, but anywhere will do."
The weatherbeaten skin around the sailor's eyes crinkled in amusement. "Then you'll walk to Zark?"
"Yes, sir."
"I hope they're not keeping your dinner warm?"
"Sir, I don't mind working. I'll row, if I have to."
"I bet you would! Nice try, though."
"I don't understand!"
"Excisemen can count, lad." He lowered his hands, as if about to rise.
"Sir? I still don't understand! I can't sign on as a sailor?"
Gathmor regarded him curiously. "You banged your head harder than I thought. Or else you haven't been here very long. There's a big—no, a huge—tax on exporting slaves from Faerie. Or importing them, for that matter. I use the word 'tax' loosely."
"I'm not a slave!"
"Of course not! Slavery's illegal within the Impire, we all know that! Terrible thing, slavery. Which is why you ran away, and why the excisemen know exactly how many we had in irons when we arrived and how many officers, and why they'll make sure we leave with no more and no less." He paused, as if asking if Rap was now satisfied.