by Sylvia Kelso
realized, as rain or snow might, between the faces of small
resurfacing stones.
* * * *
Beyond the portal we met the first actual gust, blowing up out of the south-west in a rush very nearly warm. Instinctively I unfastened my weather-canvas, and Therkon put back Nouip’s cloak. As he shifted Hvestang’s harness to his other shoulder, I saw that the hilt had been scorched brown, but remained intact.
By the time we reached the hill foot the snow was melting like a mirage, bedraggled grass and bushes swimming up through the mid-winter white, sterile purity dissolving into earth ochres, reds, browns. And suddenly, green. A bud sat on the lowest bush on the open sward. A single dot of color upon naked brown twigs. But beneath, incredibly, impossibly on the still-dark earth . . .
Therkon and I broke stride together, exclaiming in chorus, “Crocuses!”
They were only buds, but already the colors announced themselves, brilliant little sheath-rims of purple and gold. They would open in a few days, in a day or two. Perhaps, in this sudden
enchanted termination of winter, this very day.
Already grass stems, old, bedraggled, but shot with dull, faint green, showed between the town cobbles. Water was running down a street center, and sound rose everywhere, the tinkle and rattle and burble of water freed in thaw. However unlovely the wreckage that thaw released.
And as we came out at the quay-end, a bow-shot from where Anfluga lay, half a dozen plump, short-legged brown-mottled birds suddenly materialized among the headland stones.
We both stopped: it was impossible not to stop, not to absorb the first moving life in Hringstenn, to stare, no longer with disbelief, but irresistibly, with joy.
The birds scuttled and scurried amid the beach pebbles. One of them began calling as we looked. Tuck-tuck, it cried, sharp as a rock-hammer. Tuck-tuck, tuck-tuck
“Turnstanes, down on the beach, tuck-tuck, tuck-tuck . . .”
For the first time I began to weep.
Chapter XVII
I cried again when they carried Rathi’s bier of oars and spare
canvas out onto the now muddy waste of quay. But after the bearers had set him down, and slowly withdrawn to join work on the yard, Segil came over with a roll of spare canvas and the sailmaker’s awl and palm. As he began to measure the bundled shape, I said, startled, “What are you doing?”
We had come back without their captain, with a story beyond incredible: yet they had accepted our attempts to tell it with what seemed miraculous quiet. Perhaps they had seen or sensed more than any would admit. Perhaps it was Therkon’s wounded hand, or my unstoppable tears. But when we had stumbled to silence, there had been a long, dead pause. Before Segil, massive and
silent in the midst, cleared his throat.
And after another teetering hush, rumbled, “Yfar, Vanri, we’ll fetch t’skipper. Ruilf, get started on t’ yard. Gylf,” his eyes moved, and I realised they were on Therkon’s hand, nursed in his other elbow crook. “Fettle that. Lass, ye come wi’ me.”
At that moment we had all accepted his leadership without question. Now he looked up, in mild surprise, to resolve my fresh puzzlement.
“Too far to bear him home.” To burial back in Munen, I understood. And we had none of the ingredients for a rough-and-ready sea-preservation, even a firkin of rum. “We’ll take him out in t’Hvalwrast.”
And return him, in death, to the place where he had most truly lived. The sea.
To its black nether depths, the reality of the nightmare that had haunted me. To the killing water that had swallowed Deoren, and Verrith, and Azo.
“Make him a pyre,” I said, too sharply. “We can take the, we can take home his ashes, can’t we?”
Segil’s hands stopped. In a moment he said, “Aye. We could. But. Lass, what could we burn?”
In a derelict town, snowbound, its remaining timber now sodden as the surrounding fields? Where would they find kindling, let alone sufficient wood? And how long before it dried enough to light?
But suddenly it was vital that Rathi’s earthly husk should pass amid light and warmth, not in the black waters of Tiran’s realm.
“Find the fuel,” we said. “There will be flame.”
Segil’s eyes actually grew almost round. Then he said, just above a whisper, “Aye.” I could hear the bitten-off “m’lady.” He set the sailmaker’s gear down and nearly hurried away.
* * * *
And there was fire, roaring, leaping into the lampless twilight, fast and vehement as if it burned in summer-parched grass. As Two and I had Seen, with past glimpses of broken doors and shattered shutters and rotting planks matched to the extrapolation of a day’s scavenging amid Hringstenn’s debris, and then added to the scope of our present powers: we had fire enough to kindle even sodden wood, and fuel sufficient for the task.
We all watched from anchor off-shore. Segil had informed me firmly that the coals would ward Rathi till dawn: if two seals had appeared in the harbor, and all of us had heard sporadic but joyful bird-song, by dusk the rapid scuttle of vermin was all too visible in the debris-ridden streets. “I’ll stay for m’skipper,” Segil decreed, “but I’ll no’ take off Hringstenn’s rats.”
Thankfully, Therkon’s burn proved wide and horrific in
appearance, but he had reacted so fast it was not deep. Moreover, the snow poultice seemed to have limited much of the actual
damage. That afternoon Gylf, Anfluga’s second starboard oar and closest approach to a healer, had anointed Therkon’s palm with something he called “burn potion,” a clear fluid from some plant I never heard of, bandaged the hand lightly, forbidden Therkon to use it, and turned him loose. Indeed, remembering back over the day, worrying about both him and Rathi, I took far longer going to sleep.
I woke to gulls crying, the high, clear whistle and mew that was the essence of the Isles. But there was something strange about the rest.
I sat up, by the gunwale as usual. Except I had kicked off the blankets, tossed away my weather-canvas, even shed my Iskardan cloak. And before my eyes were truly open, the shadows of my boots, of Hvestang propped against the side, of Therkon’s sleeping head, stood sharp as cutouts in a brilliant light.
The clouds had broken. Overhead hung mighty towers of gold and alexandrite and grape-shadowed smoke. Between them, over the stones above Hringstenn, up into the zenith’s indigo and amethyst abyss, far out to the invisible east, light spread like a great golden-rayed wheel: the sun was coming up.
I leant by Segil in the stern, watching the gulls swoop and plane like light-stained snowflakes as the day opened round us, till even Hringstenn glowed like amber in its decay. As morning widened, as the world accepted the ransom that we, that all of us had bought.
Then a gull shrieked by under our very noses and Segil gave an indignant grunt. “Away wi’ ye, ye brazen sweep. We’ve naught to give t’ye, an’ ye’ll give naught tae us but feathers an’ shit.”
At which I laughed so hard the whole crew woke.
* * * *
The gulls had fish guts by midday, tossed by the volunteer cook who took a line around the cape, while everyone else worked on the yard. Scavenging for the pyre had unearthed half of another broken spar, fit, the sailmen judged, to protect our own break. “Nay, lass,” Segil corrected me almost indignantly, “no’ a splint. That’s for human beings.”
And by the time the fish cooked, the pyre had cooled enough to approach.
“A flotskyll, aye. He’d like that,” Segil observed, fetching
another handful of ash and charcoal and things I did not want to identify, and tipping it carefully into the wide-mouthed
canvas bag. Round the drawstring was embroidered a neat
running-feather pattern in red, and on the side, less skillfully, something that bore Anfluga’s name. “A seaman’s carry. An’ Ruilf’s at that.” He glanced at the port
stroke, still busy round the yard. “Mither’s brither-son, ye ken.”
Kinfolk, then, close kin as they count it in the Isles. That, at least, was fitting enough.
And with both the yard and Rathi salved, by late afternoon Segil was ready to sail.
“There’ll be naught in Hringstenn worth eatin’ till summer. We’ve hard-tack’ll get us to Hamair, an’ this time, we can fish. That is,” he glanced from me to Therkon and back, “if ye can thole the rations. An’ ye’re no’ in haste.”
The slower the better, I desperately did not want to say. While I tried to keep my face noncommittal, Segil looked at Therkon again.
And Therkon moved his bandaged hand and inclined his head and said, “At the best speed you choose. I can deal with the hard tack. I think,” with that slight, consciously charming smile, “I can manage the fish.”
If not, we still had the vial of imperial spice. I thought that Segil had caught more than a little of the crown prince, from the way his brow cocked before he nodded and said, “I’ve a mind to make for Sule. That’s north o’ Rangar, mind ye, an’ we’ll have no bogle speedin’ us now. But t’will save a mort o’ questions, aye? We can provision there. An’ the Mither smile, we’ll make one more long leg to Munen, east-about Sandouin.” When he glanced at me I caught the old, sardonic glint. “I take it ye’ve no mind to pass by Skall.”
When I shuddered, he nodded too. “Well, then,” he was hesitating perhaps between “lass” and “lady,” and perhaps some title for Therkon. “If ye’re willing, we’d as well go now.”
So we cast off, hoisted sail gently to test the yard, and slid away from Hringstenn on the warm, strong south-westerly. I watched till the last as the ruined streets, the gulls and seals in the harbour, the great black burn mark on the empty quay, and eventually, the coronet of stones on the hilltop, with the other great stain that I knew lay beneath them, dwindled into the cobalt evening sea.
* * * *
I woke inside a huge, fathomless bowl of dark: but this bowl was lit from rim to rim with the splendour of a moonless ocean night.
For a while sight was enough. I traced the glitter of familiar constellations in their unfamiliar places, Winejar and Sickle, Hunter and River’s Queen. Then, through the equally familiar swash of water and rope-creak, voices began to impinge.
Segil, I realized. And Therkon. A hot spurt of jealousy rode atop the concern. Did the hand pain him, had his stomach started to misbehave, was it another bad dream? And how had I not
woken too?
But the voices were quiet as the note was contemplative. Two men, acquainted but just coming to know each other, changing thoughts in a ship-deck night.
“. . . not remember much,” Therkon was saying, “myself. Chaeris was—there—the most.”
“But ye’d remember something?” Segil pondered. “A man’d remember something, after bein’ tangled so, eh? Wi’ the likes o’ the Mither. An’ Tiran.”
The word he had not used hung in the starlit air between them. With the gods.
When Therkon answered he sounded remoter than the very stars.
“I do not think what we call the Mother, or in my country, the River-lord—is more than our picture of them. Our hopes, perhaps. Our fears, yes. But what They are,” I could hear the capital this time, “I doubt we can ever comprehend.”
“Ye’re sayin’ they’re a lie?”
“No.” It came flatly as the blade of a sword. “They exist. Something exists. Chaeris’ father must change his thoughts on that. But what it is . . . I think, what we—see—or wish, or propose about Them—is only a tip of the reality. A guess. Even a distortion. What They truly are . . .”
Segil let that lie a very long moment before he spoke again. “Nothin’ like what we’d expect?”
Therkon made a sudden little puffing noise that might have been a laugh.
“If I had to use words at all, I would have to speak like the people we call philosophers. No. What we call the Mother is
nothing like our images. They are much, much more. And much less. Nothing we could pray to, and expect an answer. Nor even something that will judge us, let alone watch over us. A, a force of nature, perhaps. More than wind or fire. They have some kind of, of sentience. But one that must—comprehend—the world,
reality—in ways we cannot imagine. That might perceive one of us for a moment. Pick us up, perhaps. Even, maybe, do something like, work through us. But not, not like a puppet. Or even a tool. Not in any way I can put into words.”
He stopped. The wind hushed. Segil was silent. When he spoke again Therkon sounded bleak as winter itself.
“It is not in their nature to feel or to think like humans. In our way—They do not care.”
I could make out the line of his profile now, very still and very distant, against a flower spray of stars. He did not look round. But presently Segil said, “D’ye think t’was just that one? Tiran?”
An angle of Therkon’s shoulder lifted. “Or Sthassamaer? If there was a difference, between them, or from the Mother, I cannot tell. Or remember. Nothing It—whatever inhabited my body did—was my own.”
When Segil did not speak, he added curtly, “Except with Rathi.”
His conscience again, I thought. Still. Under all this philosophy, over all this bleak retrospect. I ached to rise and intervene, but something warned, This is between them. Let be.
But I waited through a very long pause, before Segil spoke.
“He’d have thanked ye.”
“What?”
“If the—if Sthassamaer took him. Tried to work ill through him. Tried to harm the lass. He’d have thanked ye to stop it. To be set free.”
Therkon said half a word and stopped himself.
“He liked her,” Segil was almost murmuring, shielded in the starry dark. “Called her a brave, canny lass.” A flick of his own humour surfaced. “Aye, well, he’d no’ call her ‘wee’.”
“She liked him too.”
Therkon’s voice was so raw it would have silenced me.
“An’ ye like her fine, y’rself.” When he did speak, Segil’s voice had changed. Now he sounded almost unnaturally casual. “That’s no’ always certain, among kin.”
Waves swashed and the salvaged yard creaked. I caught the lift of Segil’s head against occluded stars. He had relaxed again before Therkon replied.
“You surely know otherwise.”
Segil’s pause was almost as long. “Aye,” he said at last. “Some’s been thinkin’ it. But, kin or no kin, seems ye like her still.”
“Chaeris is . . . Chaeris.” I could feel Therkon swallow. “Brave, and loyal, and, and, ‘canny,’ yes: clever, cunning. Wise. And I owe her my life, and—I swore I would protect her with mine.” And with a bitter twist. “That I have not done so well.”
“Ye’re alive,” Segil said. “Ye never saw her when she thought it might be otherwise. If ye like her well enough, t’is more than sure she likes ye.”
Therkon’s shadow froze. Before he could answer, Segil went on.
“An’ here in the Isles, we like her more than fine. Canny, aye. Bountiful as the Mither. An’ kind. Paid our passages, bought Ve Pool herrin’. An’ stood for us, before—Sthassamaer. Before Tiran. Whatever ye feel or think about Them, t’is those names we know. In Munen, my mam’s a Teller. When we come ashore, if the lass wills, if she’ll bear to say it out, mam’ll make it a tale. An’ we’ll remember. The lass’ll no’ have to speak it again.”
Therkon’s body language had glossed throughout: wariness, some pleasure at the compliments to me, harsh memories. Concern and doubt, and at the last, relief. Telling Anfluga’s folk had been hard enough. He knew how I dreaded having to rehearse it all again.
“An’,” Segil’s voice was still soft, but the note had changed once more, “always, we’ll keep watch an’ ward for her. Wherever she might be.�
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Therkon drew one sharp breath that became an equally sharp involuntary cough of a laugh. But he did not say, You have no idea of who we are, of where we come from, let alone how to get there. You are an unlettered South Isles fisherman. And you think to protect her? You think you can threaten me?
What he said was, “Chaeris. I think the Isles’ kindness will mean much to her. Very much indeed.”
“What does it mean to ye?”
Therkon stopped short. The undernote in that soft question had my own hand on a sheath.
“I guess well, in y’r own land ye’re more than a merchant man. Or even a lord, mebbe. At least, as we count Lord, in the Isles. So I’ll ask again, wi’ us both mindful o’ that. What does our kindness mean to ye?”
To the man, I was ciphering desperately, or to the lord, the figure of power? How much does Segil guess? What is he trying to do?
Water hushed and rose, and passed. One wave, two, three.
“I have already sworn to guard Chaeris, with my life. To her own folk. To those even closer than . . . the Isles. However grateful to the Isles . . . we, both of us, will always be.”
Amid the pauses, the careful threading of word-choices, I caught more than a hint of imperial affront. Do not, I prayed, poker up and invoke your rank here. Not with Segil.
“Y’r life, aye.” As I expected, Segil was not impressed. “An’ no doubt ye’d lay it down for her. But what about the rest?”
“What rest?”
“The harm,” Segil said very softly, “ye y’rself might do.”
When Therkon spoke this time it held a menace I never heard even from the hatchet man.
“Are you suggesting that I—”
“Ye’d ne’er debauch her, nay. Ye’ve too much thought for that. An’ honor. Separate beds, separate rooms. Ye tender her like a brither. But d’ye see? She’s but a lass, an’ a young lass. A maid, I’m fair sure. An’ whatever ye are, she’s a lovin’ heart. Already ye’ve the most of it. D’ye ken what harm ye can do, if she fixes it all on ye?”