The Sea Peoples

by S. M. Stirling

  Pip blanched, and saw that the others did too. “Rangda? The demon queen of the Leyaks?”

  I really wish things in folktales would stay there! On the other hand, I just turned into a lion . . . except this is all a collective dream . . . oh, bugger.

  “If that’s what she is,” John said, draining the rest of the lemonade. “She had this mob of little . . . things with her. Like pygmy humans, with faces like a withered apple and big eyes. And blowguns.”

  “Kuro-i!” Deor said.

  They all looked at him, even Thora. He shrugged. “I collect tales. The kuro-i are goblins of a sort. Haunters of the deep jungle, takers of heads; not quite human, and full of malign hatred towards our breed. Some of the scholars I’ve spoken with in Bali thought they were a memory of a tiny folk who first inhabited the island world before true men came south in their canoes very long ago.”

  John nodded, and then winced as he tried to shrug his shoulders. Pip and Toa gripped them and began to knead, both familiar with injuries and their care. John went a little white around the lips, but stifled the groan that tried to burst out between clenched teeth. When he could speak he went on:

  “And the Pallid Mask was there. Like the one in the mask we fought in Baru Denpasar’s harbor, but not . . . quite the same . . .”

  The man chained to the wall stirred, clanking his fetters. John nodded to him. “This man’s one of ours, from Montival. Boise, I think—I’ll tell you about that later. We need to take him out of here.”

  At their hesitation—and Pip’s unspoken thought that they had enough to do with John—the young man’s face firmed.

  “House Artos doesn’t leave their own behind.”

  “Fair enough,” Toa said, and walked over to the man. “Who’re you, mate?”

  The man’s face turned up. “I’m . . . I’m not sure. I think . . . I think I’m from Boise, as he says. I think I was taken here when . . . when . . . when I read a book. But I don’t know.”

  Deor moved over, knelt, and looked the man in the eye. Now that she had a chance, Pip’s brows went up—that was a handsome man, more so than almost any she’d ever met. Something very lost and sad about him, though; and that was not the type who’d ever attracted her, even if John hadn’t been right here.

  She felt a hand grip hers, and looked down into John’s eyes. His smile quirked up one corner of his mouth, and they shared something wordless. Toa snorted and moved back a little, rolling his eyes but smiling fondly himself. Deor’s hiss brought her back to the moment, and to the one who’d shared John’s imprisonment.

  “This is a great evil,” he said quietly, moving his free left hand in a gesture she knew drew a rune in the air, though she hadn’t the slightest idea what it meant.

  “Part of this man’s being has been rent away and imprisoned here, while the rest is . . . split, in the waking world. So that he is neither here nor there, and so is enslaved in both, without even fully knowing it—and so cannot fight it.”

  John moved, and she helped him sit upright, working his hands doggedly and wincing as he did so.

  “He seemed a good enough sort,” he said. “We . . . it’s hard to explain . . . there was this man named Hildred—”

  The four rescuers exchanged a glance.

  “And this man here and I, we were somehow seeing things through his eyes sometimes. As if we were riding in his mind.”

  John smiled again. “And I got to know him fairly well, even though he doesn’t know his own name.”

  He shuddered, and a haunted look came into his eyes. “And there was this cat . . . I hope it doesn’t spoil cats for me forever . . . anyway, let’s get him out of those bonds. I’m not leaving anyone here.”

  Pip looked, peering through the gloom. “Can’t pick those, I’m afraid. They’re not locked, they’re riveted—see there? A soft-iron rod put through and then peened over with a hammer. You’ll not get that open without a cold chisel or a good hard metal-file; it’s how slavers fasten coffles in the hold of a ship fitted out for it so that they can’t get loose.”

  Thora looked at her. “That’s true,” she said neutrally. “How exactly did you find out?”

  “Mummy told me, and she had a broken set of them, it’s still over the mantle back in Tanumgera Station. She and Uncle Pete and Aunt Fifi took a Suluk corsair that had been raiding in Sulawesi once, and they had the devil of a time getting the fetters off the cargo.”

  “What did they do with them?” Thora asked.

  “The fetters? Threw them overboard, mainly, with the pirates wrapped inside yelling their heads off. Oh, the cargo; took them home. And got a nice little reward from the sultan there: cloves, mostly, and some really good coffee, miles better than the Papuan variety. The Darwin and East Indies Trading Company has a factory there now.”

  Deor thought for a moment and nodded. “Can you break these chains?” he said to Toa.

  The big man walked over to the Boisean, whose handsome features were suddenly alive with hope.

  “Well, I can rip ’em out, if I have to,” Toa rumbled. “Looks like mild steel, and not too thick.”

  John seemed to be recovering quickly; he estimated the strength of the thumb-thick links and shaped a silent whistle of respect.

  Toa examined the edge of his shovel-spear. “Better yet . . . you got good nerves, mate?” he asked the man sitting on the floor.

  “Right now, yes. Even hell yes,” he replied.

  “Good-o. Put your hands up above your head on either side of that staple the chain’s run through. That’s right. Keep the chain tight, backs of yer hands flat on the plaster. Now, let’s hope me eye’s in, eh?”

  He grinned like a friendly ogre, eyes and teeth white in the gloom, and drew the massive tool-weapon back. Then he whipped it forward, and back again for another strike in the space of one ordinary breath, precise as a machine-tool in a foundry. There was a hard ting sound, twice repeated, and the man slumped forward as the chain was split—a single link now dangled from each of the cuffs. He held up his hands before his face in wondering joy.

  “Thank you, friend,” he said softly.

  Toa grinned. “Welcome,” he said cheerfully, then wiped his forehead. “Took more graft than I thought it would—must be getting old.”

  Deor shook his head. “Those were more than chains. They were symbols. Remember where we are! You did more than break metal.”

  “I want to get back to where things make sense,” John muttered.

  Pip opened her mouth to reassure him, then remembered what lay between them and where they’d started . . . and remembered what awaited them when they woke up on that bed.

  Then she gasped. There was a sense of pressure, as if things creaked around her without noise.

  “Gather,” Deor said, his thin clever face drawn. “Something wakes. It is part of this place, but beyond the appearances we see, from deeper down in the . . . the structure. And it comes in wrath.”

  He paused, seeming to see beyond the grubby, cracked plaster and lath of the walls.

  “It hunts.”

  Thora and Toa lifted the man he’d just freed under the arms and dumped him unceremoniously near John. Deor looked at the long knife he still held in the gauntleted hand.

  “Fitting,” he said, and began to inscribe a circle around them, alternating a precise line with runes. “This blade was meant to sever that which is connected.”

  Toa stood easily with the shovel held loosely in his hands; the long shaft and his long arms put the door easily within his reach.

  “Quiet out there, but we shouldn’t overstay our welcome,” he hinted broadly.

  John looked up at Pip. “This is going to be an embarrassing bit in my chanson about all this,” he said.

  “What, because I rescued you?” she said. “Well, made a good beginning on it.”

  “No, that’s fine.
It’s because I haven’t told you I love you or asked you to marry me yet,” he said. “I’ll have to be careful or I’ll look like a cad, and we can’t have that, can we? Marry me, my beloved, and make me the luckiest man on Earth!”

  Pip sighed. “Damn you, John Arminger Mackenzie, I thought I was immune to charming musicians! All right, take the three words as said, and . . . doesn’t your mother have any say in who you marry?”

  “Not a word,” he said cheerfully. “In any case, I don’t have to go home for a while yet. My sister’s High Queen in three years, but I don’t inherit the Lord Protector’s throne until my mother passes . . . and she’s only forty-five.”

  He crossed himself. “God and His mother and all the company of the Saints preserve her.”

  “Amen!” Pip said. “Plenty of time to fossick about, then.”

  Wait a minute. Did I just agree to marry him? Pip thought suddenly. Well, I suppose I did. I’m going to have to watch this one; he’s a charmer!

  Their hands met, clasped and squeezed.

  “We must retrace our steps,” Deor said as he worked. “Remember that your gear will shape itself to your surroundings and your own wishes. And remember your protectors . . .”

  He looked at John. “Yours is Raven, my Prince; She above all others wards your House. And yours . . .”

  The Mist Hills scop looked at the anonymous man they’d rescued.

  “Yours, I think, is Coyote, man of many names and none. A strong Power, but a chancy one. Call on no God you are not sure of.”

  “Hold on—wouldn’t what we did here change what those other places were like?” Thora said. “We were traveling back along the history of this world.”

  “It’s not that simple, oath-sister,” Deor said. “This is a story many times retold, and each telling a cycle of the universe, from the void of Ginnungagap to the fires of Sutr at Ragnarok. What comes later is . . . may be . . . the product of many, many retellings, not of a single one. We’re deep in a . . . a sheaf . . . of cycles that this Power here dominates.”

  “Do you actually understand what you just said, old friend?” Thora asked.

  “No. I don’t think even the High King did ken it fully,” Deor said frankly. “Perhaps Lady Juniper, if she’d had the Sword as well. Or perhaps only a God might, and while I sing of them, I’m as mortal as any in Midgard.”

  “The next part is likely to be sort of alarming,” Pip said to John. “But it ought to get you out of those ragged pants, at least.”

  “I hope it gives me a metaphorical bath,” he said.

  “And I wasn’t going to say a thing, darling!”

  The blue-green eyes of the nameless Boisean were starting to glow a little with hope; it probably wasn’t something he’d had much of before.

  Deor completed his work and stood back, looking at it critically. “Not as elegant as Lady Juniper’s work, but it will have to do.”

  There were voices outside the hidden door, and crashing sounds, as if someone was knocking books onto the floor. Toa flashed a look at Deor, and the scop nodded, drew a deep breath and shouted.

  And the world changed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW

  For a moment John Arminger Mackenzie felt nothing but sheer relief. It was as if everything that had happened since the tower fell at the siege of the Carcosan fort had . . .

  Not never happened, he thought, reveling in the feeling of health and strength and youth. Just happened long ago and I’m fully recovered.

  The Boisean was looking more cheerful too—understandably so, since the fetter-cuffs were gone. He was dressed—

  We all are, John thought.

  —in a tough-looking uniform of yellow-brown khaki, with plenty of pockets and pouches, and found himself carrying a rifle.

  So am I, John thought.

  Information poured through his mind, and the memory of it kicking against his shoulder and the feel of cartridges stripping out of a clip into the magazine under his thumb, all as familiar as using a bow or a crossbow. All of them had them, except Deor, who had a massive revolver in a leather holster at his waist. Thora and Pip had Medical Corps in badges on their shoulders, and Toa had a nonsense-word in the same place: Suanee Auxiliary Force. It was all visible, though only just; the light came from cracks in the wall, and it was as red and flickering as an open fire in the hearth.

  Then the rest of what was around him really sank in. The air stank of burning and rot, and the room was canted—the floor buckled, but the walls out of true in ways that suggested the whole building had been knocked off its foundations and twisted. The only thing he knew that could do that was an earthquake, but that didn’t seem to be what had happened, somehow.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Deor said, coughing in the smoky haze that filled the room.

  “Right,” Toa said.

  He slung his weapon over his back—on second glance it wasn’t a rifle, and the translation supplied machine gun, a name he belatedly recognized from his studies—and began to press on the spot where the door’s outline rested. For a long moment nothing happened except the Maori’s long exhalation of breath as he strained motionless, like a statue labeled effort in some allegorical set piece.

  Just before John thought they’d have to look for something to act as a battering-ram or a lever, Toa gave a long guttural:

  “Huuuuuuh!”

  There was a long crackle and crunch, and the door swung outward. Deor pulled the long knife from his belt in one gloved hand and pushed forward, with Thora flanking him. John fumbled at his rifle.

  Pip noticed. “Just imagine you’re drawing a sword,” she said, and coughed as she worked the bolt of her own weapon. “Or loading a crossbow.”

  John did, and felt his fingers move automatically through a series of motions that brought a click-clack-clunk sound, and a knowledge of what the weapon he gripped could do, and how to do it. He raised it almost to his shoulder, ready to snap-shoot. It wasn’t altogether unlike a regular crossbow, except that he knew there were ten more rounds in the magazine and that all he needed to do was work the little side-lever again each time his finger pulled the trigger.

  Plaster gritted under his boots, and then glass amid a heavy stink of medicinal alcohol as they went into the next room.

  “This was a study, a room for books, when we came through,” Pip said. “Part of Wilde’s chambers. I think that was long ago by local reckoning, generations.”

  It had shelves around it now as well. They held glass bottles and flasks, with things in them. John swallowed and let his eyes slide out of focus as he realized that most of them had been bits of people. A sign on one wall advertised Conversation Pieces and Devotional Objects.

  “There’s a body in the corridor,” Thora said.

  They all followed. The man was lying down curled into a ball, surrounded with a sticky pool of dried blood and other fluids; John thought the man had been dead for four or five days, though there hadn’t been as many insects as he’d have expected, mostly flies drowned in the pool. It was unpleasant, but he’d seen worse.

  Then he looked a little more closely. All the man’s hair had fallen out, except a patch over one ear, and there were bubbly lesions and sores over much of the visible skin. It didn’t match any disease he knew of, but there were no other signs of violence. He’d crawled here, puked and bled—from every orifice—and then died with his hair falling out and teeth falling out and skin sloughing away.

  “Leave it,” Deor said.

  Thora nodded. “We haven’t the time. Whatever killed him, our best chance is to keep going. When we get back, we’ll be . . . in our real bodies again.”

  Pip murmured in his ear. “Though what happens to us here can hurt our real bodies. Through the soul to the flesh; psychosomatic, the old word for it was.”

  They went out throu
gh another room of ghastly things in glass bottles, or their smashed remnants glittering on the floor like stars of red fire, and out into a new corridor. That had more light, because most of the roof and attic above had been smashed off the house, though parts had fallen in. Thick black soot like snowflakes filtered down slowly, and more black was above, like low clouds underlit by fire.

  “You came to me through this?” John said. “Thank you!”

  Pip shook her head. “It . . . it wasn’t like this then. I think whatever happened was just after we came through this . . . this version of 1998.”

  “The year of the Change?” he said.

  Deor paused as he clambered over a pile of wreckage, testing each piece of footing. “It’s a time that resonates across the cycles, I think,” he said. “Catastrophes cluster around it. Now quickly. We must reach a point where we can make the next step, and soon. This is not a good place to be.”

  “You don’t bloody well say! And here I thought I was our Queen of Ironic Understatement,” Pip said dryly.

  John felt himself almost grin as they clambered over the pile of shattered timber and splintery lath and roofing tiles and brick. They found the remains of a staircase and descended it one by one, sticking close to the wall. John found himself covering their back-trail on one landing, rifle to his shoulder and the Boisean close behind him facing the other way.

  “She’s your intended?” the man asked.

  “Evidently,” John said quietly.

  “I think . . . I think I have someone. She’s tall and fair-haired . . . I think. But I don’t know her name any more than I do mine. I’m . . . I’m thinking a bit better, but it won’t come clear.”

  “Well, we’re headed back to the real world, friend,” John said. “St. Michael, aid us! And when we’re there, you’ll have a friend.”

  He slapped the man’s shoulder; they hadn’t actually spoken much, but they’d shared more than human beings generally could.