“You were a fisherman once,” I said. “You said that’s when people started realizing you had the call to be an Evocator.”
“It was.”
“Return to that time, or anyway, that manner of thinking. There are hooks and lines here. Maybe you could start fishing. Let your fingers remind you of your thoughts all those years ago, when you always came back with a rich catch.”
Gamelan nodded excitedly, and then he smiled, and I realized it was the first time I’d seen him smile for weeks.
He said, “Yes. Yes. You can always tie a knot or splice once your muscles learn how it’s done, even though if you try to remember how the line twists you’ll end with a tangle. Maybe . . . maybe . . .” He stopped, and I thought I saw wetness in the corners of his eyes, then he turned away from me.
I motioned for one of the soldiers who companioned him, and told her to get fishing lines and bait and anything else he might need. And when I told Gamelan I must be about my duties, he nodded, barely hearing, his lips moving as they led him into the past.
When I went below that night he and the two Guardswomen were still up, silhouetted in the bows. I remembered the love of his life, Raina — the woman denied him. I thought of what I’d heard whispered of sex magic, and how strong a spell that could create. For the briefest instant I wished one of my women, perhaps one of his companions, was of a nature attracted to men, then shook my head. It was foolish. And I’d done the best I could.
* * * *
It was after evening mess, and I was on deck, helping some of my archers make arrows. I was carefully cutting peacock feathers to the precise angle, and trimming the quill exactly to the instructions of the corporal with the gluepot. Corais was nearby, lapping a bowstring with silk thread. About the time my taskmaster decided we’d made enough arrows to riddle a regiment, Corais finished her own job. I went to the rail with her to enjoy the sunset, one part of seagoing I never tired of.
Corais still had her bow, and as we talked of this and that, she rubbed it up and down, letting the oil from her palm work into the fine yew. I realized she’d had the bow since we were raw recruits, and never knew where she’d gotten it. I asked if it was a family treasure, and she shook her head, then looked surprised as she realized of all the secrets we’d shared this was something I knew nothing of.
“I made this bow myself,” she said. “It took me five years, and I started when I was only ten. There was this man in our village who fascinated me.”
“A man fascinated you,” I joked. “And weren’t you the eager young stripling with desires beyond your years? No doubt you were perverted from your true nature not much later, just as so many priests and men would have it.”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “As you know, as I’ve told you time and again, my village was created boring. Beyond midsummer festival, harvest home, and the winter solstice, the most exciting thing was to watch the turnips grow. All we had were farmers, the priest, a cheating shopman, and . . . this fellow. His name was Sollertiana, and he was a bowsmith.”
“Now I understand your fascination.”
“Not quite,” Corais said. “Certainly there were the gleaming lengths of wood in his shop that slowly became singers of death, and the long rows of gray-goose-feathered shafts. But Sollertiana himself held me, not just for the stories he’d tell, nor for the customers that’d ride long distances from the city just to order one of his bows that would require a year or more’s wait. I’d just begun to realize I wasn’t like the other girls, and playing their little games of squeal and be chased and maybe let a boy put his little pigtail in me and wiggle it. Somehow I knew Sollertiana was different, too. When I was fifteen, after the bow was finished, I knew I’d been right, seeing him look out the scraped-skin window over his bench when a young lad strode past, recognizing the same longing I felt for one or two of the village maids.
“But where I had been able to find a little happiness, even though one claimed she’d been asleep and the other she’d been drunk, Sollertiana knew better than to indulge his passion. Our priest would’ve raised a mob to burn him and his home if there’d been any suspicion.”
She snorted. “Of course that same priest also gave scant comfort when a woman was beaten by her husband, or even when a man thought he had the right to take all the women of his household, adult or babes, to wife. Priests!” Corais spat overside, then went on.
“Once a year Sollertiana went to Orissa to buy silk and peacock feathers, and I hope he found a measure of comfort there. I always wondered why, since he was what he was, he didn’t move to the city. I asked him once, and he just said that he couldn’t breathe when he couldn’t see the sun’s journey from dawn to dark, and in the city the buildings strangled him.” Corais shrugged. “I see I’ve gone astray from my story. But that was why I felt a kinship with Sollertiana. Not only that he was different in his desires as was I, but he also showed me the way I must take. I knew I couldn’t remain in that village and either be an old maid, or pretend passion for a man and have to spend my life under his sweaty grunts.
“This bow came from a bunch of three heavy old red yew trunks that grew close enough to the sacred grove that they’d been permitted to reach great age, yet not close enough so that cutting them was sacrilege. When I told Sollertiana I wanted a bow, he looked at me for a long time. I expected him to just say ‘go away, child, I’ve got work to do,’ like most of the adults did. Instead, he nodded, and paid me no more mind. A week later, he took me to this grove and pointed out the yew trunk. He cut it down with a handsaw, taking over an hour at the task. He sawed the log carefully in two, and kept the half that had grown on the inside of the clump. It had no twigs or pins or knots to it. He took this cutting high in the hills, where a stream ran clear, and he tied the plank securely in the water.
“It sat there for three months, until some of the sap had been washed from it. Then he put it in a damp, dark shed, keeping it in the rafters above the ground for over a year. I wonder if he thought I’d forget about the wood, but I never did. Every day, I visited what would be ‘my’ bow, and thought I could see it change and dry. I even dreamed once I could see a bow’s sleekness hiding there. Little by little, Sollertiana moved it to drier places. The last year before we shaped it spent in the open wind and air under the eaves of his workshop.
“All the time it was drying Sollertiana was working with it, tapering it bit by bit after he’d gently peeled off the drying bark. Then he used a succession of rasps, broken glass, pumice stone and then powder to shape it. As it took form, he trusted me more and more to do the work. Finally, I held what almost looked like a bow in my hands. Then came the most dangerous part. He cut the wood into two billets, and I almost died, sure he’d ruined all our work. But he cleverly shaped, fitted and then glued the pieces together, and . . . it was a bow!
“He waxed and varnished the wood, and fitted these tips I’d carved from the horn of a stag I’d stalked and killed in the heart of the winter with another bow. Then it was mine.” Corais regarded the bow lovingly. “It was the first thing I’d really ever owned, besides a couple of dolls my mother’d given me that had been hers as a child.
“Not long after that, Sollertiana died, and I left for Orissa. And that was when we met.”
Corais stroked the bow once more. “As much as I let myself dream about the future,” she said so softly so I had to crane to hear her, “which is foolish for a woman who deals in blood, I’ve always wanted to have a small shop like Sollertiana’s one day. Making bows and fitting arrows to them. I’d probably never be as good as Sollertiana, but then I don’t need very much. That’s one thing soldiering teaches you.”
“Where would you live?” I said quietly, not wanting to break into her dream. “In a city?”
“No. I’ve seen enough of cities, between Orissa and Lycanth. Everybody thinks I’m a great one for the bright lights and all, but really I’m still the barefoot child in a frock with pigshit between her toes. I’d go to the country. Not in that
damned village I came from. All I hope for them is a good sacking by three or four sets of barbarians. But somewhere people aren’t so quick to look down their damned noses and make judgments.
She sighed. “Maybe it’ll be that village you told me about, the one your mother came from where the girl on the panther saved them and they learned better. Maybe I’d be a good reminder of what they’d better not forget.”
I’d forgotten I’d once told her where my name came from, and realized yet again how little any of us really knew anyone else, knew what was important to them, what struck the sounding board in their soul.
“Maybe you’d come visit,” Corais said. “You and whoever you settle down with, after we’ve all gotten too creaky-boned to play soldier. Now that’d be something, wouldn’t it? The grand Antero lady, who’ll probably be a Duchess or something by then, coming to this little midden. We’d drink the tavern dry and try to corrupt any virgins still around.”
The sea blurred to my eyes a little, and I don’t know why. “I think I’d like that,” I managed. “I think I’d like that a lot.”
“Anyway,” Corais said, and her voice went flat, “that was where my bow came from . . . and what I used to dream.”
I came back to reality. “Used to?”
Corais didn’t say anything at all, but slowly shook her head from side to side. Her hand crept up and touched the bit of The Sarzana’s robe she still wore tied around her upper arm. There was a smile, but not of humor, touching her lips.
I might’ve asked on, but there came a commotion from the bow, and I heard shouts: “I caught one! Gods, I drew him to me!”
It was Gamelan, and a smile nearly split his face in two. I swear I could see a flash of merriment in his unseeing eyes as we hurried to him. One of his companions held a great flapping fish, some kind of cod I thought, high in the air, then dropped it to the deck and killed it.
“I could feel him out there, Rali,” and I wondered how he knew it was me standing in front of him, “and I drew, him, I could feel him. He’d come up from the deeps to feed, and I kept telling him the bit of cloth flashing in front of him was the sweetest morsel he could ever dream of, and then he took it in a great rush and he was mine.” His smile disappeared. “Rali . . . is it coming back?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, forcing conviction into my voice, and trying to feel it in my soul. “Of course it is.”
* * * *
That night, I went to Gamelan in his cabin, and told him I thought we were sailing too close to the enemy to be as blind as we were. Like him, I had no great faith in the Konyan wizards, and needed more information. He tugged at his beard for a moment, muttered something about the risk being too great, caught himself and apologized.
He said, “I don’t know if the spells will work. Sending your spirit abroad is not the simplest of magics, and one not even a journeyman Evocator is recommended to undertake. But these are parlous times, and who’s to say anymore what can or cannot be done? What we need is a creature for you to shape yourself after. I hope you understand that you really don’t become that creature — unless one of Janos Greycloak’s theories is true, that we are all different manifestations of the same force. That’s an idea I’ve grappled with, but still puzzles me.”
“Why not just send my spirit out? That was how The Archon came on us. I’d rather be invisible than in some disguise.”
“The problem, my dear friend, is sending you as a pure spirit, assuming the spell would take and hold, is you are extremely vulnerable in such a form. No, it’s better to give you the similitude of reality. Perhaps it’s safer because the fact you’re real binds you more closely to our world, and gives you strength. I don’t know for sure, but that’s my theory. It’s better to worry about some sharp-eyed sailor spotting you as, say, a dolphin and reaching for a harpoon than to be sniffed out by a wizard like The Sarzana or the Archon.
“If they have the proper magical nets set out, your spirit would shine as clearly to them as a rising moon. A master sage, and both of them are that, could then cast a striking spell in seconds and snap that thread between you and your body. Then your doom would be to wander the worlds as if you were a ghost, never finding rest.”
I shivered, remembering how my poor brother Halab had been tricked into testing his talents to become an Evocator, and had been trapped and destroyed by Raveline of the Far Kingdoms. There’d been no body for the rites, not ever, and Halab’s ghost had been laid to rest finally only after Amalric slew Raveline in a demon-haunted ruin.
I turned my mind away. “What kind of creature, Gamelan? An albatross?”
“Never.”
I grinned, pretending injury. “And why not? Wouldn’t I make a sleek great bird? I’ve always fancied them, floating high above the world and the seas, only landing for sleep and to feed.”
“You fancy them . . . and so does every other beginning thaumaturge,” he said. “Why not pull a banner hooked to your tailfeathers that says I AM RALI THE SPY? We could save the time and trouble casting any protective spells to accompany you.”
I saw what he meant. However, after some further talk, we developed a plan that appeared a bit more subtle, and his two companions and I went out to procure the necessary items for the conjuration. I told Xia my intent, and she began to protest, then stopped. She hastily nodded, then could hold firm no more, and darted below to our cabin, sobbing. I didn’t follow, for there was nothing I could do. Sometimes it’s harder to love a soldier than be one.
I told Corais and Polillo little of what I was intending, but put them in charge of the Guard. It wasn’t necessary to say any more about lines of succession. They were soldiers, so they knew. Polillo scowled, and started to say something, then clamped her lips closed. I knew she had probably intended to warn me to be careful of sorcery, that art she feared more than a regiment of enemy soldiers.
It was past midnight when we had the necessary bits and pieces together, which Gamelan said was good. That’d put “me,” or whatever it was that would be riding the spell, where The Sarzana’s forces were supposed to be near dawn.
Gamelan had his tent set up on the foredeck, and guards surrounding it to keep away the curious. I’ll go into some detail on this spell, since it’s a good way to show magic sometimes takes damned near as much trouble as doing the job with “real” labor. Part One of our spell was simply getting what Gamelan called my spirit, although he added that wasn’t quite what it was, not the elemental soul the word implied, to travel a week or so sail’s distance in a few hours.
“There’s another thing apprentices don’t realize,” he said. “Mutter some words, and PISH, you’re a fish. And you promptly expire because you’re out of water. Or else you get dumped overside, and then have to swim for two weeks before you reach your goal. Sometimes,” he said, taking an injured tone, “it sets my teeth on edge when people think magic can do anything.
“The first part of your journey will be made on the wind. You’ll be nearly as vulnerable as if you were a pure spirit, but not quite. Once you close on The Sarzana’s stronghold, then our cunning plan will take effect. Or I hope it’s cunning, anyway.”
He ordered me to strip bare, and coat myself with a salve I’d made earlier under his instructions. It made my skin burn, and Gamelan said that was one of its intents — to make the spirit want to walk free from the body. It was made of certain herbs, including Blue Vervain, ginger and hyssop and oils from his kit, plus some leather from one of the ship’s now-empty magical wind bags that’d been ground to powder, intended to carry the essence of the wind and the spell that snared it. There were other things ground into the oil, things intended to aid the second stage of my journey.
A low fire glowed in Gamelan’s brazier that stank even worse than most incantatory pyres. Gamelan explained a bit of an old sail was the centerpiece of the fire, and would hold the wind and lift me free. Among the herbs burning were peppermint, hemp and myrrh.
I had prepared the words to recite, and said them as I sto
od there naked. Gamelan sat silently nearby — I’d wanted him to help, but he was afraid his still-absent talent might overshadow the spell and ruin it. First I began by reciting over and over the names of ten of the local gods and goddesses who might have power in these circumstances. There was the god of storms, the goddess of the sea, godlets who danced the winds, some zephyr-nymph’s name remembered from Xia’s childhood, and so on.
I don’t list them here, although I think I could remember them all, because according to most magicians a minor god’s power only extends to lands where he or she is worshipped. Someone wishing to try this spell should use their own deities, or none at all, keeping in mind what I believe is the nature of gods in the first place.
Then I began the spell itself:
Feel the wind
Touch the wind
Be apart from yourself
The wind is your sister
You must roam free
Float up, float up.
As I spoke, I let bits of paper drift down across the brazier. I’d written the same words on the paper before ripping it apart. The smoke caught and carried them up, and I felt my head swimming, as if a high fever had struck. Then I was lifted above myself, and I was looking down at my body. Then the physical I slumped down to a sitting position, then sprawled. But I had no mind nor time for that body, because the top of the tent had suddenly opened, and I heard the whisper of the cord as Gamelan pulled it away, and above me was the night sky and the stars and I was free.
I was hurled up and on, high into the sky and I caught a glimpse of a constellation and knew I was being borne south. I was not on the wind, I was the wind, and I felt my heart singing. My body was far below me, and far behind me, but my spirit could feel her ghost-hair blowing back as I rushed on and on, and the sharp stinging of the night air, just like when one comes from a sauna in the depths of winter and plunges into an icy pool.
It was if I still had a body, but then again, I didn’t. I didn’t have to turn my “head” to “see” our galleys far behind and below, their masthead lights gleaming against the dark seas, nor further back to the star dots that were the Konyan shiplights.
The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2) Page 44