by David Drake
"Aye!" cried another crewman, though he continued to haul back on the loom of his long oar. "We're as good as you are, Vonculo. If we're caught, we'll all hang on the same gibbet!"
Vonculo was in the stern, holding the music box he'd taken from Mastyn's small bundle of personal effects. He'd tilted the box and was turning it so that the light of the setting sun fell across the marks etched on its ivory base. His face was grimly set, and he made no response to the complaints.
"And if we run aground on these shoals we're threading through, Titin," said Chalcus from the stroke oar, "hang or starve is just what we will do. Shut your mouth and pray that Ambian at the masthead can conn us through!"
"Did the Lady wed you in the Shepherd's place, Chalcus?" Titin muttered from his oar. Ilna could hear the comment and doubtless Chalcus could as well; but Titin continued rowing without speaking further.
Titin didn't want a fight. Nobody who'd understood the way Chalcus held his sword would want to fight him.
Merota was watching the chanteyman's back as he rowed. Chalcus had scars from flogging, from weapons, from teeth, and there were a number of marks that Ilna couldn't identify. At rest he looked slim, but his muscles stood out like cables under the stress of rowing.
Ilna laughed. Merota looked up at her. "Ilna?" she asked.
Ilna shook her head curtly. "Not now," she said.
She didn't want to say aloud what had just occurred to her: the rest of the trireme's crew had mutinied and become pirates. Chalcus almost certainly had done both those things in the past; those things and worse.
And Chalcus appeared to be the closest thing Ilna and Merota had to a friend in this assemblage. Though why he should be a friend, or at least act like one... that part of the pattern hadn't formed yet.
"A point starboard!" the lookout called. There wasn't a basket at the masthead; his legs were wrapped around the stayrope he'd climbed, and he took most of his weight on his arms crossed over the mast truck.
The helmsman leaned against his whipstaff, using his weight to twist the steering oars crosswise to the water flowing past the hull. Vonculo looked up from the box. His expression would have had to brighten to be called grim. The red silk cover was tucked under his belt. He tugged it free and began to wrap the box, then paused.
"Mistress Ilna!" he called over the squeal of oars in the rowlocks. "Come here, if you will. We need to talk."
"Go on, mistress," Chalcus said as his arms thrust down and he leaned forward, lifting his oarblade from the sea and swinging it back for another stroke. "The child will be well enough where she is."
He spoke in a normal tone with only the hint of a gasp as he started to draw back on the oar. That showed a degree of control which Ilna could well appreciate.
She grinned. She could appreciate the harsh pride that would make the chanteyman act in such a pointlessly boastful way, too.
"On your honor, Master Chalcus?" Ilna said as she rose, disengaging Merota's hands. The girl nodded and managed a smile.
Chalcus laughed, a gust of sound as he drew back on his oar. "On my sword, mistress!" he said. "That you can believe in."
Ilna sniffed and began working her way aft over the gear bundled down the center of the deck. She trusted the chanteyman's honor, and he probably knew it. Though why he'd chosen to make allies of her and Merota was a question she wasn't prepared to answer.
"A point to port!" the lookout called with new urgency in his voice. "Two points to port!"
The trireme heeled slightly as the helmsman leaned grunting into the whipstaff. Foam spurted not far off the starboard bow. A fish? Ilna thought, but it was the sea itself dancing on a reef. The water was shallow here, and the sun was getting low.
Vonculo watched her approach without speaking. He stood between a pair of burly sailors who each held a bare cutlass. Ilna wondered if they were supposed to guard the sailing master or threaten her.
She smiled dismissively. They'd be as little use for the one as for the other. Standing with her hands crossed into the opposite sleeves, she said, "If you're done staring at me, Vonculo, I'll go back to the bow where the company's better."
"We have a problem," Vonculo said. "We have the sailing directions--"
"A point starboard!" Ambian called. The helmsman shifted his grip and pulled the blackened oak whipstaff toward him. Scores of men had rubbed their skin and body oils into the smooth wood.
Vonculo winced, but he kept his tone level as he resumed, "The sailing directions are here," he said, holding out the music box. "Scratched on the bottom. Go on, take it."
Ilna shook her head; she kept her hands where they were. "I don't know anything about sailing," she said.
She didn't know how to read either, but she didn't say that. Ilna wasn't ashamed of her ignorance--or of much of anything else--but she didn't choose to volunteer information to such as Vonculo.
Vonculo scowled, but he was worried rather than angry. He forced a smile through his concern and said, "Come, mistress, we need to be friends. Will you have some wine?"
He gestured to one of his bodyguards. "Tayguch, break out a bottle of the--"
"No," Ilna interrupted; and then, because the offer had been made politely, she added a curt, "No thank you. The water does well enough for me."
In truth the water had been poor when it was poured into tarred storage jars in Valles, and days sloshing in the trireme's hold had done nothing to improve the flavor. Ilna still preferred the water to wine, and she wouldn't have accepted a favor from Vonculo if it meant she could drink tankards of Reise's best ale.
"You see, the problem is...," Vonculo resumed. He paused to lick his dry lips. "The problem is that the fellow you killed, Mastyn, was the only one of us who'd actually met the rulers of the place where we're going. He said...."
Vonculo looked at the men nearby: the guards, the helmsman, the flautist sitting at the sailing master's feet as he blew time. Even the first few ranks of oarsmen could hear anything Vonculo said unless he chose to whisper it in Ilna's ear, and that wished-for secrecy would be more of a risk to his position--and life--than anything he might say aloud. The crewman who'd gibed that they were all equal now had said no more than the truth.
"Mastyn said he was a wizard, you see," Vonculo went on in a studiedly even tone. "That's how could he get this box--"
He held the music box as if weighing it in his hand. It was a complex piece of workmanship even on the outside, the gold in spirals and the ivory panels carved in floral patterns. Rather too busy for Ilna's taste, but it would do for some, she supposed.
"--to sing the way it did, you see," Vonculo continued. "And Mastyn said that the rulers of the island where we're going are wizards also. So you see, while in many ways I'm not sorry that the fellow went over the side in pieces--"
Vonculo's smile was perhaps meant to be ingratiating. To Ilna, "terrified" would have been a more accurate description.
"--it does leave us with a lack."
"I don't see that it leaves me with anything at all," Ilna said, meeting Vonculo's cringing gaze with her own steadfast one. The sun was below the horizon. The sky was still bright, but it no longer lighted the surface well. Ilna supposed the lookout could see froth against the dark water, but shoals that didn't break the surface would be another matter.
Vonculo inserted the gold key in a slot in the base of the music box and turned it several times against the clicking of a mechanism. When he withdrew the key and lifted the rock crystal lid, pins inside played scales instead of the haunting tune Ilna had heard when Mastyn held the device.
The box ran down. Everyone near the trireme's stern stared at the two of them, but none of the crewmen tried to interfere.
Vonculo held the box toward Ilna again. "Can you make it work, mistress?" he said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.
"I don't care to try," Ilna said. The box seemed harmless and was certainly an interesting piece of workmanship, but she preferred not to get involved in things that she didn'
t understand. "Anyway, I don't see how that would help you; or Merota and me, either."
Vonculo closed the box and wrapped the silk around it with a sailor's quick, sure movements. "They say that you're a wizard yourself, mistress," he said to his hands.
Ilna sniffed. "I've met wizards," she said, "and none of them were in the least like me. And only one of the wizards I've met is someone that I'd be willing to sit down to a meal with."
"A point starboard," the lookout cried. "Two points! By the Lady, two points starboard!"
"Don't you understand?" Vonculo said. His hands were trembling. He suddenly turned and thrust the music box at one of his bodyguards. The sailor clasped the silken bundle against his belly with his left hand--the one that didn't hold a cutlass.
"Listen!" Vonculo shouted at Ilna. "We're going to an island ruled by wizards. There's gold and jewels in the street, I've seen them when the box plays, but they're wizards... and we should have a wizard on our side too. You see that, don't you?"
Ilna sniffed and said nothing. She saw that Vonculo was afraid of the course he'd chosen but even more afraid of going back on it now.
Did the sailing master believe in the gold and jewels? Perhaps. But he certainly believed that if the triremes put in at any port in the Isles capable of supplying their considerable crews, they'd all be hanged; and the provisions aboard would last only a few days at most with so many mouths devouring them.
"What do you think your own chances will be, woman?" Vonculo said, his voice rising. "We've been summoned, but you'll arrive on the island as an interloper! Help me, and I'll protect you and the girl."
Ilna laughed. "You're afraid that you won't be able to protect yourself, Master Vonculo," she said. "And as for us--Merota has me to watch over her, and when I need help it'll be from something more impressive than the likes of you."
Vonculo glared at her in frustration. The guards looked from him to Ilna uneasily. The man with the music box set it on the deck and rose, edging away from the object.
Ilna grimaced. She'd been angry because the sailing master had tried to manipulate her, claiming he and she were allies by virtue of the fact that he'd kidnapped her. Anger was something she had to fight or it would rule her; and besides, she and Merota did have some common interests with the mutineers, however that fact had arisen.
"What I will do is this...," she said. "I will treat you as I'd treat anyone else: politely so long as you behave politely to me, and honestly under any circumstances. We're neighbors, so to speak, and neighbors help one another."
Vonculo made an expression which Ilna supposed was meant for a smile. "We had no wish to inconvenience you, mistress," he said. "Or Lady Merota, of course. But since we're together, it only makes sense that we work for our mutual good."
Ilna nodded, more a dismissal than agreement. She would have turned had not Vonculo suddenly added, "Can you tell the future, mistress?"
"That's a fool's question," Ilna snapped. "You're the one that weaves the pattern of your life. Why do you ask me about it?"
"Wait!" Vonculo said as she would have stepped away. "Tell me how our venture will succeed. Tell me!"
"All right," Ilna said pleasantly. "I'll need some hairs from your beard and threads from a garment. The frayed end of your sash should do very well. And some of the ship's cordage."
Ilna drew the paring knife from her sash and used it to cut off frayed strands of the twine that whipped the mainspar's lifting tackle. She was trembling with rage. She'd let her anger speak, knowing that she shouldn't; but shouts reached Ilna's soul and called up responses that in other circumstances she'd have been better able to control.
When Ilna turned, Vonculo was sawing at his beard with a knife that wasn't sharp enough for the job. "Hold still," she said with a grim smile. She stepped close to snip away half a dozen strands.
Vonculo's beard was reddish and luxuriant, with a scattering of gray. He flinched as Ilna drew her blade past his throat, but he didn't try to jerk away from her.
"Land a point to port!" the lookout cried. "It's big enough to beach on!"
The sailing master hopped to the backstay and climbed it like a frog, hunching on the pull of his arms, then thrusting himself higher on the strength of his legs. Sailors peered from the railing, and some of the rowers slacked their oars despite the curses of the section bosses seated on every fifth bench.
Ilna looked forward as her fingers wove the disparate bits she'd gathered. Merota's hand were folded. She watched Ilna in silent concern. Chalcus, drawing back his oar with the ease of strength and practice, threw Ilna a familiar grin. None of the oarsmen under his immediate direction had stopped rowing.
Vonculo and the lookout muttered at the mast truck. After a moment the sailing master called, "All right, we'll put in here for the night!"
"There'll be no water!" a sailor called from the deck. "That's a sand spit that'll be under water by high tide."
"We'll be away before high tide!" Vonculo said as he shimmied down the stay backward. "By daylight we'll find a place with water. It's spend the night here or spend the night on a shoal, can't you see?"
The lookout and a sailor forward called directions to the helmsman. "Half stroke!" Vonculo said to the flautist as he returned to his place by Ilna.
To her he added, "Sister take Leser for a fool! Does he think we can sail through the East Shoals in darkness?"
"If they weren't fools, most of them," Ilna said without emphasis, "would they have followed you in this hare-brained nonsense?"
Vonculo scowled. "Maybe you're too fine a lady to care about gold," he said. "Men like us who've gone hungry are willing to take risks for wealth like we've been offered."
Ilna smiled with a mouth like a fishhook. "Here," she said, giving the sailing master the design she'd quickly plaited for him. "Hold it where there's enough light to see."
She didn't say that two children left orphaned at age seven in a rural hamlet knew about hunger. Her life was no business of Vonculo's, and he wouldn't understand anyway. Vonculo's sort thought that wealth was the magic balm that made all troubles go away. Even getting rich wouldn't make him see the truth: he'd just decide that more wealth was the answer, because what he'd gotten thus far didn't cure his ills.
"Give me the lamp, Tayguch," Vonculo said. The lantern hanging from the curved sternpost was a complex affair of wood with horn lenses. It drew air through twisting passages so that spray wouldn't douse the flame. The nearer sailor unhooked it and held it close to Ilna's weaving.
"I don't see--" Vonculo said; then he screamed. He flung the scrap of cloth and hair over the side, raising his other hand to shield his eyes.
Tayguch leaped back, the lantern swinging violently. He stepped on the flautist who jumped to his feet, losing the rhythm of his call. Oars clattered together and a sailor cried angrily.
"That's a lie!" Vonculo shouted. For a moment Ilna thought he might reach for his belt knife. Instead he glared at her and rubbed his palms fiercely on the railing as if to clean them of whatever might have clung from the little pattern they had held.
"Get away from me!" he said. "Get forward or go over the side, it's all one to me!"
The other trireme was coming alongside. A sailor stood in the bow with a brass speaking trumpet; sunset turned its bell into a fiery half-moon. "Hold up!" he called.
"Hold the oars!" Vonculo ordered. The flautist blew three long trills, but the rowers had already raised their oars. Ilna scrambled between the lines as quickly as dignity permitted, reaching her original location beside Merota.
"He asked you to tell his fortune, did he?" Chalcus said, grinning over his shoulder at the women. "What did you show him, mistress?"
Ilna shrugged. The girl's hands felt warm and sweaty in hers. "I have no idea," she said. "The pattern was his life, not mine."
Sailors shouted plans and objections to one another across the water separating the ships. At this rate the moon would be near zenith before they came to a decision.
"Ilna?" Merota asked. "Could you see your future if you wanted to?"
"In my experience, child," Ilna said, "the things that come are quite bad enough when they arrive. I don't see any reason to worry about them ahead of time as well."
Chalcus laughed. "Aye, child," he said. "But I think you'll find the future is worse for those who stand in her way."
"And your enemies, Chacus?" Merota asked unexpectedly. "What happens to them?"
The chanteyman looked at her. "Often enough they'd have been wiser to make me a friend, that's so," he said.
After a moment he laughed. He was still chuckling when the flute ordered them onto the looming islet for the night.
Sharina didn't have her brother's gusto for the classics, but she'd followed Reise's course of instruction as an intelligent student and a dutiful daughter. As she picked her way through the time-ravaged stonework, she tried to place it in the context of what she had read.
She couldn't. There were hints in Rigal's epic The Wanderings of Dann and shadowings in Almsdor's equally-ancient The Birth of the Gods. The sources contradicted each other--and in the case of Almsdor, contradicted himself. This palace, this ancient city, was older than myth itself.
But it was real.
Occasionally blocks had tumbled into her path, displaying squared features and intricate carvings to the moonlight, but they weren't a serious obstacle. The trees growing in what had been a plaza were the real barrier, and in some places Sharina found them almost impenetrable.
The buildings to either side of the boulevard were so overgrown that by daylight she wouldn't have been certain they were there except that hills weren't so regularly linear. The moon's white light slipped between the trunks to brilliantly illuminate the stones beneath. Sometimes the black rectangle of a doorway gaped; sometimes a face, stylized but recognizably reptilian, glared out at her.
Nothing remained of this place in Sharina's day. Nothing at all.
Historians--Herfa, Palatch the Hermit, and even some of the lyrics of Celondre--told how Lorcan the First founded the Kingdom of the Isles with the help of a great wizard from a pre-human reptilian race. All that was nearly a thousand years in the past even when Herfa began writing.