Skalda concentrated on setting one sandaled foot ahead of the other: step, pause, step, the rhythm like that of a bride’s procession. Ahead waited the soft darkness of an eye larger than herself, a darkness she knew was her future, one final payment for her people’s rescue.
The end of the plank, and the world she knew. Skalda had traveled from her body in magical learnings, had swum beyond light’s reach in the ocean, and known the dream plain. This great eye was another doorway, she told herself, dismissing the natural fears of her body. She stepped through its dark disc, into the warm, black core.
Welcome, Summoner, throbbed reality.
****
Expansion. I flowed around instincts and passions, explored terrors and lusts, searching for the common purpose of the Summons. There.
Destruction.
Was that all?
****
Her hands and touch, her mouth and breath were no more; almost worse, her legs prickled as though asleep. Skalda gained then lost her sense of self repeatedly. Finally, she refused the effort and focused on what was here-sight.
And such sight. As part of the Quiet God’s eye she could see the regrouping of the Enemy fleet; at a thought that vision sharpened so she could see the foreign shape of their sails and swords, the exotic pallor of their skin. Otherwise, they were men and women like any others she had known. The realization was disquieting. Never had she considered them so.
If she relaxed her vision, glints appeared on the periphery of the immense lens: Rathe and Agnon, she knew without understanding how. She concentrated, trying to ignore fear and wonder-neither were helpful-and focused on uttering a spell without a tongue.
The effort drained her but was not forbidden. A link was forged between the dir-priests, as well as their host.
Skalda… she felt her name, wrapped in vibrations that identified the source as Agnon. What are we? Are we dead?
We are the Aim, Rathe stated, less voice than a pressure on what once was skin.
YOU ARE THE AIM, agreed some vastness. I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED. WHERE MUST I GO?
The minds of the dir-priests focused in an instant. There was no sense of motion, yet the Enemy fleet seemed to leap closer.
Skalda’s view also included the Pride as a coral-crusted flipper tossed it aside, the long planks of her hull scattering over the water like so many sticks.
****
I accepted their guidance, almost blind in this drier, brighter world. Their rage had a color, hate another. Fear for self was there. As was regret. I’d felt all of this before.
They aimed me at frail craft filled with men and I obeyed, my passage sending more to the Depths, carried down by their armor, limbs given grace by the water, to enrich the great flocks below.
****
WHERE DO I GO? boomed that incessant voice, not impatient, Skalda could tell, but rather a plea like a plaintive cry from a child. She still shuddered over the ease with which the P’okukii fleet had been wiped from the ocean. Their magic, their weapons, and their numbers had availed them nothing.
Almost. There’d been one attempt at defense and one loss. A harpoon had penetrated one great eye. Agnon’s presence was gone.
There’d been no pain along their link. Only a skewed view of the harpooner, lips drawn back in a rictus, his skin so white his face was already a skull, the desperate eyes black pits.
She could scarcely believe they’d won the battle. What she could believe was how many were now in the Depths. It was as if she’d had to look into each and every face as they died, share their fear and horror. None sought the sea willingly. Was it worse for the P’okukii to die here, away from their beloved earth?
No matter the cost. It was done and they had saved their people. But what now?
She had tried the Spell of Departing; they’d not been fools to summon unknown magic without being able to dispel it again. But Agnon wasn’t there to support her. And Rathe had found a home for his hate.
WHERE DO I GO? wailed the God.
She couldn’t keep out the punishing demand. Rathe’s response was a matching crescendo of torment. To their ports! Crush their homes as they crushed mine. Kill them all!
No, Skalda objected, horrified. The Enemy is defeated. The Cove is safe.
SAFE?
Almost instantly, her memories of her home were exposed like shells on a beach, carved free from sand by the icy winds of winter. She could somehow see each one as it was torn from her: views of moon through the arched windows of her bedroom, tall to the child she’d been; breathless glimpses of the royal barges from a hiding place high on her aunt’s balcony; the cool, musty darkness of the underground passages interrupted only by spells of light; the prismed beauty of fireworks overhead as she swam in the warmth of the cove.
Then, as abruptly, nothing. Skalda wept without tears or eyes, feeling the loss of her home more intimately than the loss of her physical form, the longing to return so intense she knew with horror it wasn’t hers alone. The Quiet God felt it too.
It was a feeling and intention Rathe didn’t share. To their ports, he insisted, rage coloring his presence so Skalda felt she looked through heat shimmers as she watched the empty ocean ahead.
This, she realized suddenly, was why there had to be three to Summon and Aim. With just two of them left, there was no consensus, no clear voice to guide the God. She wondered how long it would take them to drive the God insane.
****
The pain was new, a novelty I would as soon excise from my body. All I could do was close the damaged eye. My flippers drove into the water on either side, there being no reason given to stop moving. My lips cracked open, shedding even more coral. Warm ocean flowed over them, healing, soothing, reminding me of greater things than now and here and me.
But the Summoning locked me to the surface where I could not seek them.
****
Skalda… Skalda
Once, well, more than once, she’d dozed over the parchments; the stuffy room and hours of close reading making a poor combination. Each time, she woke not fully aware, her eyes glued shut until she rubbed them free of sleep, her mind slow to rouse from its subconscious exploration of the words of the Great Spell. This might be one of those times, she thought, on the edge of a dream.
Skalda.
Her name drew her back to reality, a reality encompassing the loss of friends, the agonizing defeat of an Enemy, and the sure knowledge of her own doom.
Rathe, she replied unwillingly, but aware that even his insanity was more human than anything else here.
He was in one of his calm states, almost reasonable, as if this was one of their innumerable practice sessions in the Council Chamber. They foresaw this, you know, he said to her. The P’okukii foresaw it all.
The soothsayer. The
ir fear of the east and superstition. Skalda would have wept if she could. Rathe was right. The Summoning Spell had been cast before-she knew it now. The Quiet God had risen at their whim and blood, destroying their Enemy so that the island states could grow and flourish. They had forgotten, attributing lifetimes of prosperity and peace to long ago human heroes and human magic. But the P’okukii, terrified of the sea, terrified of the east, had better memories.
In a sense it didn’t matter, Skalda thought. Many things in the world moved in vast cycles, unnoticed until one’s life was ground into insignificance by storms, famine, or drought. That they had had a part in this one was merely proof that the Depths showed her power however she chose.
We must end this, she urged Rathe, unsure how much he could understand.
We must kill them all, he replied, still soft, still reasonable.
****
I burned. The sunlight lost its beauty without the lens of ocean. Fish, large and small, tossed themselves ahead of my wake without recognition. The Summoners fought constantly, their purposes bright and conflicting. When they dreamed, I had no peace, only longings for a place. The Cove.
****
THE COVE. The darkness confused her only briefly as the longing woke her. Skalda focused and saw stars spilled overhead. Stars she knew.
Rathe, she wailed. It’s taken us home!
Kill them all, he sang softly. More gifts for the Gods.
KILL.
No! But her protest wasn’t helping. She could sense confusion. Alone, she wasn’t strong enough to overcome Rathe’s madness.
There was another way.
****
The entrance to the Cove was narrow. I struggled through the rocky barrier, heaving myself half out of the warm sea with reluctance, driven.
Look! Look there!
The Aiming was imperative. I turned my head upward in time for the mass of jagged stone to smash into the side of my head. Then I could no longer see the color of rage. I could no longer see at all.
Except through one eye.
****
Without Rathe, the Spell of Departing would work, Skalda knew. Yet she hesitated. The Quiet God waited too, stopping up the channel into the Cove. The ships within looked like a school of tiny fish startled by a shark, scattering at random as galleys rowed, others with sails filling with bespelled wind.
The balconies? They were filled with people as well as flowers, equally beautiful and as still. They were waiting too.
WHERE DO I GO?
Where you will be safe, she thought, releasing all claim on that world outside. Where we will be safe.
****
Shafts of sunlight disappeared, reappeared; they filled at times with flower petals, twirling downward. At night, the stars were doubled by closer, smaller flames, floating above us to outline the dark hulls of ships.
We were content thus, to gaze upward through the great lens of our eye into the living magic of this place and see that which belonged here. The great flocks came, seeking the richness of the new reef, dancing in the light. Others swam among them, taking as was their need, sometimes just to dance.
If this is sleep, we sometimes wondered, surprised by bursts of fireworks, or touched by the hands of children, perhaps we dream the world.
****
The Thief of Stones
Sarah Zettel
As I have been bidden, I will tell of how the sorcerer Merlin Ambrosius came to the shores of Ireland, and what he did there. Ambrosius was sometimes called No Man’s Son, but because of these deeds I am to tell you now, he also had a third name, and that was the Thief of Stones.
He came alone to the shores of the blessed isle. Some say he flew there, having power over the wind as he had over the earth, but this is not so. Merlin Ambrosius was child of the west lands and its ragged coasts. He traveled in a boat of reeds and skins, with a brown sail to catch the winds and a stout oar to steer him through the rough grey waves of that sea. Autumn spread rust and gold over Briton’s lands when he left there, and he came to the green shores on a day of chill rain and mist. It is often so in Ireland, and that is why her waters are deep and her fields more green than any others on the earth.
He drew his boat up on the sands and as he did, down from the hills there came two warlike men in the striped cloaks and tightly-tied trousers favored on those shores. They marked well the short sword on Merlin’s hip, as well as the white staff in his hands. This was in his younger days, before Merlin became the ancient sage of Arthur’s court. He was tall, then, and broad in frame. His clothing was well-made, but simple, being a blue tunic belted in bronze, green trousers, and a stout cloak of brown wool. His beard was short, and more brown than grey. His hair flowed in curling locks across his broad shoulders held back in a band of bronze chased with the images of falcons. His eyes were clear and blue, and all about his person spoke of one who is strong and bold.
Because of all this, the soldiers addressed him most courteously, inquiring whether he was the one they were sent to meet by their king, who was Berach Ui Neill.
“I am the one,” Merlin answered them. “And I am ready to go with you at once to meet your king.”
They were surprised at this, as it was a hard journey from the land of the Britons. They expected to linger on the coast for a time allowing him to rest. But they did not doubt his word, and led him straightaway up into the deep green hills that ring that land’s coasts, now dark and tinged with brown as autumn settled in. It was a steep way. Rising mist sometimes hid the narrow tracks. But Merlin easily kept the pace the two soldiers set, and they were much impressed.
Merlin himself had good reason for his haste. He left behind him his king, new to his power, and that king had given him great charge. “It is only you, Merlin, who can save me from my brother’s fate,” he had whispered in the deepest darkness when there was no other awake to listen to the fears of the new king. “Go where you will and do what you must. Do not leave me to die as he did.”
Merlin had knelt before Uther Pendragon and sworn it would be done. He’d left him with his heart singing in its fullness. He had already seen the greatness of his king, seen it in Uther’s eyes and his deeds, and seen it in the stars overheard. He, Merlin, No Man’s Son would have his last vengeance. He would raise up this man and the age to follow over those who had once sought to take his life.
Burning with this ambition, Merlin walked lightly over the chill, green hills of the blessed isle.
It was near half the day before they came to the lands and houses held by Berach Ui Neill.
In those days, the men of Eire built their houses of round frames with thatch roofs of a conical shape. Simple pens held the cattle and other animals. That these were a prosperous people was evident, for the least among them wore bright gold. Even the blind man squatting by the darkened door of the smallest house had a golden ring on his thum
b. As Merlin passed among the houses, all the many sounds of life and work stopped as all turned to wonder at this stranger.
The king’s high house differed little from the other dwellings that clustered around it, save that it was larger in its compass, and foundations of stone bolstered its mud, lime and withy walls. But Merlin knew well it was the house of a king, and he entered it humbly and with courtesy.
A messenger had gone ahead of Merlin and his escorts. Thus warned of his coming, King Berach Ui Neill sat on his great wooden chair illuminated by a fire in the round stone hearth at center of the room, as well as the golden light of no less than ten torches set in sconces on the walls. His hair and long mustaches were the color of red gold, and his saffron tunic was banded with scarlet. A golden torque adorned his throat and a broad golden belt encircled his waist. Four great black hounds collared with gold lay at his feet. His three sons stood before him, all clad yellow tunics and cloaked in red and blue, with gold rings on their arms and gold-hilted swords hanging from belts that were studded with jewels. Behind the king stood his wife and four daughters, all dressed in softest wool striped in every color of the rainbow. So much gold flashed on their hands, about their throats and on their brows it was as if the whole wealth of the island had been brought there to bedeck their beauty. Many of the ornaments were etched or embossed with the sign of the cross amid the workings of knots and ribbons for which that country was famous, saying that this was a people that had converted to the ways of God and Christ.
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 39