by James Enge
Then he saw it. Like a pillar of light standing out from the ocean: an island that seemed made of tal rather than stone. He gazed on/in it with wonder, lost in its intricacy and complexity richer than any mere meaning. The significance of it came to rest slowly into the stretched-out web of his mind. If the Apotheosis Wheel was not here, something else worth knowing about was. With difficulty (intention and execution were so slow! he saw the sun cross the sky twice as he struggled with his thought), he marked the place in the shifting map of the sea, on his own mind, on the mind of the world.
Then he knew he must return to his physical self and his beloved waiting for him on the margin of the sea. He looked down/through the living sea one more time. Fascinatingly, the sea creatures there were arranging themselves in different levels and patterns. The ones with less tal implicit in them were sinking lower; the ones with more tal, brighter in his vision, were rising up, assembling themselves in rank, for all the world as if the sea were the page of a book, with words on it he could read.
And then he saw that it was.
And he saw that the words read, in Dwarvish runes, BROTHER BEWARE.
Suddenly he felt the presence of other eyes in the sky of the talic sphere—a pair of them, grinding on each other like gears, driven by hatred of each other . . . and of him. He felt their particular hatred like a word spelled out in fire, not water. Ambrosius, we hate him. I hated him first. Liar, liar . . .
He fell from vision like a stone falling from the sky. Or: the earth was the stone, falling upward to crush him with matter. His mind was lost, wandering among lightning-crowned atoms as big as fists, and his vision was over.
He came to himself, inside himself, and knew something was wrong. His hands were bound and he was lying on a wooden floor. An oily voice was pouring oily words into his ears.
“. . . even if your companion never recovers, you alone will make an excellent addition to the crew. As experienced a sailor as yourself must know how important it is to match rowers on a crew. Now I have an oarsman somewhat like you, smaller than average, perhaps, but feisty.”
“Please do not tell me,” Aloê’s voice said, “that you think me feisty.”
“But you so self-evidently are! And you won’t lose that after you encounter the Weaver. Indeed you will not. Your will remains intact, but unable to affect your actions. It’s what makes you a perfect sacrifice to the new god.”
“What new god?”
“By the eight legs of Hÿlohyphäntu! I don’t know. But there is always a new god. The ascending heresiarch comes down the Talazh Rame from Kaen. He goes to old Azh in the boat the Weaver makes. And, if he returns, he comes as a new god, and wends his way back up the Talazh Rame. That is the way it always has been, since Kaen first had gods, or so I suppose.”
Morlock opened his eyes. Aloê was sitting, bound hand and foot, looking straight at him. Standing over her was a Kaenish priest. His velvet robe was covered with silver webwork, and his low-crowned priest-hat sprouted eight legs like a spider. His left hand held a knot of gray silken threads. There were seven threads altogether. Each thread went to the neck of a man standing nearby, staring emptily at nothing. The priest’s other hand held a thorny staff topped with a unicorn horn, looking oddly like the tusk of some otherworldly sea-creature.
“Welcome back,” Aloê said, smiling at him. “Sorry about this. They caught me sleeping.”
“I was gone more than a day.”
“You were gone a month, Morlock.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Was it worth it? Did you learn anything?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be sorry, then. This gentleman, who does not give his name, is the sole priest of Hÿlohyphäntu, the Woodweaver.”
“And should I give my name to the twain who have been wreaking havoc all across the wrinkled face of Kaen? I think not. Your names I know. My name you will never know.”
“This cautious gentleman proposes to toss us to his god, who will enslave us by stinging us in the spine. Then we will be human sacrifices for someone who has ascended the Apotheosis Wheel. Do I have the gist of it, oh man-of-mystery?”
“Yes!” cried the shaven priest. “Although,” he added, to Morlock, “I think you will not go to Hÿlohyphäntu. There is a rumor that the Ambrosii are much-sought-after by certain persons of power, and certain other persons may acquire certain powers by certain means which I’m afraid—”
The priest went on for a while without saying anything of content. Morlock glanced around the chamber. One wall was an iron screen painted with runic imprecations and containment spells. Beyond it lay the gleaming hulk of a gigantic spider: the avatar of Hÿlohyphäntu, clearly. Its eight eyes watched the priest without ceasing, while its legs worked incessantly on long unvarnished planks, fitting them together into the side of a half-built galley. The claws at the end of its legs were articulated and moved about their work as deftly as skilled fingers. The legs themselves were bound with chains that glittered with silver-inscribed talismanic symbols. They allowed the god some freedom of movement, but not overmuch.
A god Hÿlohyphäntu might technically be. But it was clearly a captive as well. Was the priest its chief worshipper, or its jailor? Perhaps there was no difference.
Also of interest: mounted on the wall were Morlock’s glass sword and Aloê’s glass staff.
“Got the picture?” Aloê said, when he looked back at her.
“Think so,” Morlock said.
“I tried to do it, but apparently the thing is keyed to your voice.”
“More a specific intention coded into the word. I’ll show you.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It must be me you think is nothing,” the priest raged at them. “I have been explaining certain things which certain people might—”
“Noddegamra,” Morlock said conversationally, exercising a specific intent.
The glass sword fell from the wall, raining down in crystalline shards to the floor.
The priest turned to gape at it.
“Armageddon,” said Morlock, and the shards flew to his hand, re-forming into a sword in midair.
Morlock leapt to his feet and, wielding the sword two-handed, slashed the bonds at Aloê’s hands and feet.
She jumped up, and her nimble fingers undid his bonds in an instant. “Let’s wreak some havoc!” she shouted in his face.
Now the spider-priest had recovered from his shock and stood back toward the iron screen and his captive god. The seven silk-bound men stood forward to attack. Their eyes were still empty, but they held their hammers and saws like weapons.
Aloê dodged behind him to grab her staff from the wall. She spun it to build up impulse in the well, and laughed as she saw the spider-priest cower away from her against the iron screen.
Hÿlohyphäntu had left off shipbuilding and was now hovering close to its side of the screen. It lifted a bristly leg . . . And there was something gray and silken across the clawed hand that served the spider-god as a foot.
But the bristly hair of the spidery leg brushed through the screen and warned the priest of his god’s motions. Now the priest scuttled away from the screen, and three of the captive men moved to stand between the priest and the screen. The caged god hissed in frustrated rage.
“Aloê!” Morlock began.
“Already there,” she said, and struck the corner of the iron screen with the glass staff.
The iron didn’t break but it bent, distorting several of the symbols.
“You fool!” the priest screamed. “He’ll eat all our souls!”
“As long as he starts with yours, Smÿlgondru,” Aloê sang back.
Aghast the priest groaned, “How did you know my secret name?”
“It’s embroidered on the underbrim of your hat, you cunning beast.”
Hÿlohyphäntu was tearing at the corner of the iron screen with five of his clawed hand-feet. Aloê recklessly inserted her staff into the small gap a
nd forced it to open wider.
She was rewarded by the spider-god extruding a clawed finger-toe and striking at her.
She easily dodged the claw, but leapt back.
Hÿlohyphäntu screamed and threw the iron screen across the long room.
The freed god leapt at the closest person, who was still Aloê, coolly spinning her staff to build an impulse charge. Morlock ran to stand beside her.
“Door’s over there, honey,” she remarked.
“Wasn’t sure you knew.”
The spider-god reached out at them with a clawed hand-foot each.
“Your jailor, Smÿlgondru, is over there, Hÿlohyphäntu,” Morlock remarked conversationally.
The spider-god hesitated, stood motionless for a moment, its talismanic chains clanking.
Morlock and Aloê began to edge away.
Hÿlohyphäntu noticed and lumbered forward.
The vocates turned and fled toward the temple-prison door. The spider-god, weighted down with talismans, was too slow to catch them, and his avatar was too big to pass through the doorway.
As they fled into the thin frosty moonlight of a late autumn evening, the spider-god had turned back into the temple-prison and was advancing on his sobbing priest.
“They’ll be after us soon,” Aloê said as they ran. “Where to?”
“How near being done is the boat?”
“It was done,” Aloê cried in despair. “But they burnt it when they captured us. The priest had his bound men tossing torches right into it!”
Morlock wasn’t sure what she was driving at and said, “Let’s go there.”
“I guess you’re right. Maybe there’s something we can salvage.”
They ran on steadily, not frantically, a pace they could maintain all the way to the boat site.
The boat was resting on the beach, bright and unbroken in the moons’ blue light.
“It looks all right,” Aloê gasped, as they drew to a halt on the sand. “But I saw them throwing torches in it.” She turned to Morlock and said suspiciously, “Did you do something to it?”
“I don’t understand,” Morlock said. “Why would anyone make a boat that could be burned?”
“It’s made of wood! It’s sealed with pitch! They burn, Morlock.”
“That’s why I dephlogistonated them.”
“Dephlog— What does that mean?”
“They won’t burn.”
“Champion Morlock!”
Morlock couldn’t tell if Aloê was being sarcastic or not. Sarcasm or enthusiasm seemed equally misplaced, but it was clear that he had much to learn about the art of shipmaking.
“Are there provisions onboard?”
“Only water, unless they drained it. Why—? Oh.”
The drumming of feet in the night behind them was the answer to Aloê’s unfinished question.
“Let’s push her off and get out of here,” Aloê said.
They forced the light craft off the sand, and then Aloê hopped lightly from the water to the deck. She turned noncommittally to help Morlock up after her.
“What’s her name?” Morlock asked. He’d heard it was bad luck to travel at sea in an unnamed craft. His sea voyages had been unfortunate enough that he wanted every protection possible.
“She’s the Fnarklo,” Aloê said, a little defiantly.
“Good. Good.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes.”
Morlock knew little about ships, but it was easy enough to spot the two sets of pedals for working the propeller drive.
Aloê said, “I attached impulse wells to the pedals and charged them up. I based the wells on the ones you put in my staff.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
Each took a bench—Aloê the one by the steering arc—and they began to pedal. The Fnarklo was more than a bowshot from shore before the hulking spider-god and his crew of minions appeared behind them.
Aloê laughed, looking back over her shoulder. “Did you see?” she shouted to Morlock.
Morlock had seen that there were now eight naked minions on strings, one of them plump and hairless, and that the spider-god now held the strings.
“Yes,” he said. “Poor old Smÿlgondru.”
“To hell with poor old Smÿlgondru.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Do you know which way we’re supposed to be going, by the way? A sea is a very large piece of water.”
“Yes.” Morlock closed his eyes. “Over in that direction.”
“What? Port or starboard? How many points?”
“What?”
“Oh, God Sustainer save us. I suppose you should steer, Morlock. Don’t run us into any submerged rocks, please.”
“If they’re submerged, how will I know where they are?”
“Look at the surface of the water. Right? Are we speaking the same language?”
Morlock shrugged.
“I can hear you shrugging, there.”
“You steer. It is east some considerable way. We can be more precise, and you can teach me to steer, in the morning light.”
“Fine. As long as you know where the Apotheosis Wheel is.”
“If that is not the thing I saw, what I saw was at least equally interesting.”
“God Avenger look away from us. What a disaster this is going to be. Why didn’t I grab some of those map-thingies from the temple when I grabbed my staff? They were right by me on a shelf!”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was in a hurry. The spider-god was after me.”
The days were cold and bright, and the breeze was delightfully irrelevant to where they were going. Aloê loved the salt spray of the Sea of Stones, indefinably different from the world-ocean she knew so well. They had only uncooked fish to eat, caught from over the side, but she didn’t mind raw fish. She loved the wooden Fnarklo almost as much as she had loved the canine original, but was always thinking of ways to improve the cunningly made little boat. She occasionally discussed them with Morlock, when he wasn’t puking over the side.
That was the only fly in her ointment, but it was a pretty damn big fly. Morlock was sicker than he had been on Flayer. That made sense: the motion was choppier in the smaller craft. They devised a sea-anchor that absorbed wave impulses—powering the impulse wells and also keeping the ship steadier at night. But she was appalled by how horrible this wonderful experience was for Morlock—shocked by how it never seemed to get better.
He never complained, though. She compared his patience and endurance to every man she had known, even every woman, and couldn’t think of anyone who could match him. Somehow he was the best even when he was at his worst.
One night the wind got a little lively and started throwing the waves and the boat around, and Morlock was especially miserable. The next morning he looked like a drowned man, only not so peaceful: his red eyes ringed by dark circles.
“I love you, you know,” she said to him then, because she could not refrain from saying it any longer.
“I didn’t know.” He looked at her, as if worried she was mocking him, was apparently reassured by what he saw. “That passed, and so may this,” he quoted, apparently trying to give her some kind of hope, as if she’d confessed to him that she had some fatal disease.
“Don’t think so,” she said, brisker than the wind. “It seems to be permanent.”
“Love you too.”
“I know, partner. I’ve known since you were saying dumb things to me on that cliffside.”
“Eh.”
“And every time you say that.”
Despite its name, the sea was wonderfully free from navigational hazards, also, so Morlock took the steering arc. Aloê felt pretty confident they weren’t going to hit anything that would put a hole in Fnarklo. And on the fifth day, they saw the island that Morlock had seen in his visionary journey: a tall spiralled black tooth on the eastern horizon.
“You were right,” she said soberly, watching the sun set behind it. “Whether it
’s the place we’re looking for or not, it’s worth a visit.”
“I thought it would be farther east,” Morlock said doubtfully.
“Telling distances at sea is a tricky business,” Aloê assured him, “even when you’re inside your own skull.”
They didn’t approach any closer that night: Aloê was worried there might be shoals near the island.
In the morning, the island was nearer than ever . . . and farther to the north. The island had at least three distinct points, and it stood at a dramatically different angle to the sun’s path than it had last night.
Morlock looked at the island, the boat, the sky, the sea. Then he looked at Aloê.
She was drawing the sunline with her eye: from dawnpoint in the west to setpoint in the east.
“No, you’re not crazy,” she said. “I think the island moved more than we did.”
“Odd.”
“You are a master of all the arts, Morlock, but especially understatement.”
They made toward the island and circumnavigated it. The high cliff wall was open at only one point, and they landed there, on a beach of black sand and stones.
And bones. The beach was littered with dark decaying human bones.
WELCOME TO OLD AZH was scraped in wedgelike Kaenish letters on the sheer face of the cliff nearby.
“Well, the natives are friendly,” said Aloê, gesturing at the grinning skulls.
“Don’t think they’re natives,” Morlock said. “Kaeniar, maybe.”
“You can tell that from the bones—? Oh. You’re thinking of the boat crews from Hÿlohyphäntu’s temple. That makes sense. What happens to the boats?”
Morlock waved at the wet horizon.
“Oh. The island drifts and leaves the empty boats behind it.”
“Yes.”
“Or the gods can handle a boat without human help.”
“Perhaps.”
“I feel like I do all the work in our conversations, Morlock.”
“Work is good for you.”
“Then—no, never mind right now. But we’re not done with this. Shall we go on into the island?”
Morlock nodded. They went side by side, past the bones into the high narrow notch on the cliff wall. They came upon some stairs and climbed them to the top of the island.