When he returned, his eyes were gleaming with interest. “That was more fun than I’ve had in years,” he told Palli. “If they come back again, I will eat them!”
Palli had expected the Litan to go back to sleeping in the Deeps, but instead he spent his time gliding dangerously up and down the coastline, menacing the fish and sunning himself in the harbor. The pirates tried to come back, and the Litan chased them off again.
Palli wasn’t sure, but she thought she might be dreaming less frequently now. Perhaps she only forgot her dreams. She thought that she dreamed of the pirate fleet approaching a smaller fleet up a wide muddy river; but she also dreamed that they were sunk by a combined force of tan-kilted warriors and giant crocodiles. While this was possible—she had seen winged cats and horses made of wind, after all—she had never known creatures out of myths to cooperate so closely with groups of mortal men.
Gubla slept, the barrier of thorns growing thicker and higher with every year, like a great dome between the city and the sky. In time, the city was forgotten.
Chapter 5
THE THIRD AND YOUNGEST son of the King of the Four Quarters did not go to the feast at his father’s new palace. He had not been invited.
At the moment he didn’t mind this a bit. How glad he was that he had gone out for a walk instead of joining yet another lion hunt!
Prince Nerbalatan flung himself down on a rock, laughing. “Mercy, mercy! I need a moment to breathe!” His beard itched as if a mess of tiny scorpions had come to nest in it; the fringes of his robe, which had been soft and colorful this morning, were dusty and full of burrs.
“Eh—you’re old, Neriya!” his new friend accused him, swinging his throwing stick. “I’m not tired!”
“I am old,” Neriya agreed calmly. He certainly was in comparison to this boy (who couldn’t have been more than ten), although his own older brothers still teased him about the sparseness of his square-cut beard.
“Ready yet?”
“Not yet,” said the prince, dropping his own throwing stick. He didn’t think the boy would attack an unarmed opponent.
The lad bounced up and down then jumped up onto a rock, brandishing his stick overhead like a mace. “I am Karduniash the Great!” he shouted with a flourish. He pointed the stick at the prince. “Who are you?”
“Prince Nerbalatan,” said Neriya, taken by surprise.
The boy lowered the tip of his stick and frowned. “Who’s he? I don’t know any tales about a Prince Nerbalatan.”
Neriya realized his own mistake, but explaining would mean telling the boy that he was truly a prince, which was not a fact that had ever done Neriya much good. So instead, he said, “There aren’t any tales about him, because he was not a hero and could never be a king.”
“But why couldn’t he be a king, if he was a prince?” asked the boy, scowling ferociously.
“He had older brothers?” Neriya suggested.
“Well, he could kill them, couldn’t he?”
“Hmm.” The prince hid a smile. “That wouldn’t be very brotherly.”
“Lots of princes do it,” the lad said breezily, swinging his stick and looking willing to cut down any number of older brothers.
“The real reason he could never be king is because he had a birthmark on the right side of his face, which showed that he was inauspicious.”
“What?”
“Bad luck,” Neriya tried. “Nobody wants a bad-luck king. He’ll attract demons, and none of the gods will ever bless him.”
“He had a mark like you?”
“Er, yes,” Neriya said, unconsciously lifting his hand to his cheek. His beard covered only half of the mark, which was even darker than his skin.
“I’ve never heard of him. Be someone else,” the boy commanded imperially.
Be someone else. It was a tempting thought. But a man’s place in the world was not so easily changed. “I’ll be your faithful herald,” Neriya decided. “O people of the whole universe! Harken to the might and wisdom of Karduniash! Master of the Black-Headed People! Keeper of the Hundred Gates! Linchpin of the Heavens, the Four Quarters, and the Underworld!”
“You’re good at this,” the boy said, his face lighting up with approval.
“Thank you,” said Prince Neriya.
Later that evening, Neriya wound his solitary way through his great-grandfather’s palace. The old palace was practically deserted tonight; he caught sight of a few servants scurrying here and there, carrying off some of the nicer movables to the new palace, but that was all.
He walked slowly through the maze of halls and into the audience court. The stars above gave just enough light for him to walk across the room without running into any of the date palms in their pots.
The carved reliefs on the walls were barely visible, but Neriya’s memory supplied the pictures where his eyes could not. As a child he had always loved to look at the pictures and make up stories about the people from far away.
Arinna . . . He ran his fingers gently over the name carved just under someone’s foot. A northern kingdom, wasn’t it? But you’ve been gone a long time. Perhaps a hundred years. Is that long? To the stone of this palace, not long at all.
If the Arinna man carved here were alive, I wonder what he would think about everything that’s happened? Neriya wondered then shook his head. I know what he would think. What could he think about the fall of his kingdom? He put his hand on his heart sadly then walked on.
The stone watchers loomed out of the dark. Great winged bulls with human heads, they wore noble crowns and stared always straight ahead, their carved faces set in slight smiles.
“What do you think of all this?” the young prince asked companionably, patting one watcher’s shoulder. “I’m afraid you will have a great deal less to watch, now that the King has finished his new palace. No more long audiences on hot days, with people coming from all over the empire. But I daresay the birds will still nest in the date palms. Maybe that will be enough. Perhaps you’re tired of people.” He rubbed the thick neck with its carefully carved garlands of hair. He always expected the watchers to turn and answer him, they looked so alive. He wished they would answer. He wished . . .
“I wish,” he said to the stars and the date palms and the stone watchers-at-the-gates, “I wish there were someone I could help without bringing down curses on his head. I would like to be of some use in the world. A useless prince is a sorry thing.”
Are you a prince? asked a voice like murmuring water. Neriya jumped, tripped over his own feet, and caught himself against the stone watcher’s carven shoulder. He looked up. Sitting—or floating?—on the back of the huge winged beast was a shifting shape—something like a girl in a gauzy gray veil or a dove with fluttering gray wings.
“Yes,” he said. “Who are you?”
I am the Guardian of Gubla’s beauty. Do you know where Gubla is?
“No,” he said, not missing the fact that she hadn’t given him her name.
We have slept so long! The faint shape flickered in distress. And I dream so rarely now . . . God Who Answers, you promised . . .
“Can I help?” Neriya asked, stretching up on his toes for a closer look. The shape was plainly not that of an ordinary person; surely his expected bad luck would not affect her?
Help? The shape was suddenly still, and its shifting edges settled, like a bird’s feathers smoothing. Will you help?
“I will,” he said. “I promise. What do you need me to do?”
Come to Gubla. Wake it from its curse.
“How?” He had never heard of the place. It might be in the third heaven, for all he knew.
The coast—we sleep on the shore of the sea to the west of here, south of what was once called Arinna.
“Near Uzu?” he asked, casting about for the name of a place on the coast.
North of there. Come! I will try to guide you. Suddenly the shape lifted from the watcher’s back and vanished with a sound like a sigh.
Two days after his stran
ge meeting in the old palace, Neriya found himself on a battered old barge being rowed slowly north against the current of the Great River. Wide, slow, and shallow, the River was still the fastest road north from his father’s city.
Neriya hadn’t told any of the bargemen who he was, but he thought some of them might know. They gave him a wide berth and never asked him to help them row.
“Can I help?” Neriya asked the captain.
The captain eyed him warily then offered a polite grimace. “Noble lord, it would not be fitting.”
It was a long trip north, with nothing to do but watch the banks go by.
It was too long a trip.
The little gray dove—in his memory, his strange visitor looked most like a dove—had seemed frightened, her plea urgent. This was taking too long!
“Is there a road from here to the sea coast?” Neriya asked every time they stopped at a village.
The captain always gave him a strange look. “You’ll have to wait until we’re farther north, lord. There is no caravan road through here. Do you see those mountains?”
Finally, Neriya asked one of the village people, a young man who had come to help the bargemen unload their cargo.
“There is a road through the pass—there,” said the young man, waving toward the foothills. “But you don’t want to go that way, lord. There are masterless men in the mountains. Robbers.”
“I don’t have much to steal,” the prince told him, staring toward the purple-hazed hills. “Do you know where I can buy a donkey? I need something to carry my gear.”
“If you have a donkey, they will steal it, lord,” the village lad told him, frowning. “If you don’t have enough for them to steal, they may kill you. Or eat you.”
Neriya’s mouth quirked. “Eat me?” It sounded like a story to frighten children. He didn’t believe there were cannibal bandits in these hills.
Two days later, Neriya thought about changing his opinion.
The robber band had come right up to his camp in the middle of the night. In hindsight, the fire had been a mistake. But he had never been anywhere dangerous before! He had thought the flames would be hidden well enough, camped as he was in a narrow part of the pass. Now the bandits were going through his saddlebags and laughing, while the donkey’s haunch roasted slowly over the fire.
Somehow he had expected that the bandits would be small men, thin from starvation, glad to take his silver and run away. These were not small men. They were giants, or Raffa, such as Neriya had thought existed only in stories. Each one stood head and shoulders taller than Neriya and had coarse black hair tied back in a ratty tail . . . and each one had twelve fingers instead of ten.
“Ah, little patron,” smiled one, baring his teeth. He whacked Neriya heavily on the shoulder. “You have made our moon a good one! Are we not rich men, my brothers?” The others laughed.
“Aren’t you worried that the king will send soldiers against you?” Neriya asked. It was worth a try. Didn’t his father send out soldiers to protect travelers? Perhaps this was a little far away, but in his father’s palace, no one would have questioned the king’s ability to send armies to the far end of the world. “Don’t make trouble for yourselves. Let me go on my way peacefully.”
“What king?” one asked through a mouthful of meat. “The King of the Wall? He will not come for you, little patron. No one important comes through this pass.”
“Then why do you rob travelers here and not go somewhere else?” Neriya asked. The smell of roasted meat made him hungry, but he remembered the donkey’s patient eyes and felt guilty for even thinking about it.
The giants growled. “Ah, do you think yourself wise?” mocked the leader, who wore a band of silver around his throat. “Why ask us such questions, dog?”
“What kind of fool comes through this pass?” one muttered to another. “Is this a trap of the Wall King? Or some move of the King of the Gate?”
“He must be a spy! We should warn the Prince of the Hinterland. If the kings have planned to move against him, he may pay to know it!”
Neriya did not know any of the kings and princes they spoke of, but he did know the kind of treatment a supposed spy could expect. He had to find a way to escape!
“We will take this dog along with us and see what knowledge we can wring from him,” stated Silverband. “As soon as the sun rises, we will go.” He leaned down to grab the prince’s throat, hauling him to his feet. “Sleep by the fire, where we can see you.” He threw Neriya down; one of the prince’s hands went into the fire, and he stifled a yelp. This was not the time to complain about being hurt. Instead, he lay still and hoped they wouldn’t think to tie him up.
Now the giants were sleeping, all except one sitting on a ledge some distance up the cliff. Neriya, lying with his face to the stars, sometimes saw a glint of light reflected from the giant’s eyes. He was sure that the robber was watching him.
Ahead of him the pass continued to rise; it might be another day or week through to the other side, for all he knew. His best chance of escape was back the way he had come. At least he knew how far away help would be. But with the gray shadow’s plea ringing in his mind, he hated to take a single step back.
Is that you? a voice asked softly. Neriya thought he dreamed it. But then he looked up and saw a faint gray glimmer in the air.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Am I going the right direction?”
You are going so quickly in the right direction, it took me a long time to find you. And now you’re in danger. I’m sorry.
“Don’t worry,” he breathed. “I’ll get away somehow. Unless . . . can you do something, little dove?”
I can touch nothing. If these Raffa should wake, they would not even see or hear me.
“Doesn’t everyone see you? Then how can I see you?”
You saw me because you were looking and because you did not think me impossible, she told him in her voice like a sigh. Children see me, but no one else does.
The wind rose, howling through the pass and sending a gust of burning ash from the fire. Neriya ducked his head under his cloak until the wind died. “If only the wind would go down a little,” he murmured ruefully. The giants slept sensibly in the shelter of the cliffs; only he and one or two others—the lowest of the band—were unprotected here.
Wind, he heard. The gray shadow described a thoughtful loop in the air. Don’t be frightened. I’ll go for help.
“But if no one can see you—”
She was gone.
Neriya kept himself awake all night, staring up at the stars with weary eyes. He was not sure that her soft voice would be enough to wake him if he slept. But she did not come back.
Palli drifted far and far above the hills, chasing the wind. It was hard to dream so long. She felt the edges of things beginning to dull, and deeper sleep lurked around every hillock. I can’t . . . but I must go on!
She had spoken to the prince. The first grown person to hear her in many a year! And now he was in danger of his life. Palli had never meant for that to happen. He was not a fierce man like Etlu-kashid or her father; she didn’t think he would be able to rescue himself. He might be her father’s height, but his shoulders were narrower, and his dark eyes were as bright and earnest as a child’s, his squared beard still thin with youth. His hands were peaceful hands, not hands that had known hard work and harder fighting.
Her vision blurred, and she could no longer tell up from down. Mother of All Horses! she cried, as the dream faded. Come as you promised and help Prince Neriya!
Even if she could not catch the wind, perhaps the horse-of-wind could hear her.
In the morning, Neriya could hardly stand, he was so stiff. The little gray dove had not come back. I’ll have to rescue myself, he decided. Besides, if he was to free her city from a curse, he would have to deal with more than a double-dozen of giant bandits.
In a heroic poem, he thought ruefully, he would bash a few giants’ heads together, wrest their weapons out of their hands, and
kill them all in a few short stanzas. The Hero of the Forest would have had no trouble with these robbers.
Neriya eyed the Raffa. He wasn’t even sure he could reach some of their heads, let alone bash them together. He was going to have to try something different.
“Peace to you, may you receive good news,” he said politely to the leader of the band. “May I say a word?”
Silverband, who was tying his packs over his broad shoulders, gnashed his square black teeth. “Speak quickly if you speak at all, little dog!”
“I am not a servant of any of the kings you spoke of last night,” Neriya told him. “I have no interest in reporting anything to anyone, except that this pass is dangerous, which the local people know already. Take my goods, take my cloak, but please let me go. I am travelling toward the sea, because I have seen a vision of a—a flying being that asked for my help. I am only trying to help her, O commander.”
“Not a servant of any of the kings?” another sneered. “Where does anyone see such fancy beards as among the servants of the King of the Wall?”
They’re going to condemn me because of my beard? Neriya thought numbly.
“But the worm sounds more like a son of the Gate,” another argued.
“He’s trying to trick us! Kill him!”
“Shut your lips!” the leader snapped. “A flying being? What are you saying? Do you say that a goddess appeared to you? Was it the Bloody Maiden?”
“No, no,” Neriya said hastily. He did not know who the Bloody Maiden was; there was a warrior goddess in his father’s kingdom, but “maiden” was not the first word one would use to describe her. “Not a goddess, certainly not a goddess.”
“Oho! Been speaking to demons, have you?” said Silverband. “As the Thunderer thunders, if I let you get away from me with such a story! If you are lying—well, then you are lying and deserve whatever I might do to you. And if you are telling the truth, you are a sorcerer!”
Five Magic Spindles: A Collection of Sleeping Beauty Stories Page 11