by David Duncan
* * *
He was senior. He spoke the words of farewell for Polini. At the end his voice cracked, and he asked Nnanji to perform the office for Arganari. As he listened his eyes began pouring tears, he trembled, he struggled desperately not to let the sounds of his sobbing escape into the night.
He watched the River boil and hiss as piranha consumed the bodies in instantaneous frenzy.
They said no words over the assassins, but the River boiled as hard for them as it had for honest men.
Then Wallie clawed back to self-control. "What will you do with the boat?" he asked Tomiyano. "Leave it. Someone will find it."
That seemed out of character, but Wallie knew that a sailing ship could not tow another vessel, and to put a prize crew on her would divide the family. So Sunflower would be left for the Goddess.
Wallie climbed miserably into the dinghy for the return. A foggy spark of light showed where Sapphire waited.
The sailors rowed in silence, and slowly.
Wallie sat with his face in his hands and let the tears flow again.
It was all his fault.
He had not heard the message... No, he could not have stopped Polini leaving. He could not have kept the Fifth on board Sapphire without a challenge and almost certainly a fight. Polini would not have made obeisance. He would have accepted an impossible match against a Seventh, would perhaps have refused to yield even after Wallie had wounded him. Then Wallie would have had no choice but to kill him.
He could not have stopped Polini leaving.
But he could perhaps have changed the man's mulish, pigheaded mind about something else, had he insisted.
Then the deaths would not have been necessary.
He had not seen why that meeting had been ordained. He had failed. Six men and a boy had died, so that Nnanji could have a hairclip.
Why, O merciful Goddess-why?
A hairclip?
††† † †††
Brota was holding a lantern. Wallie had not known that there was such a thing on the ship. One by one the would-be rescuers stepped to the deck and were greeted by the ring of solemn faces, shining gold around the circle of light. The story was told, briefly and in hushed phrases. There was no comment. The World was a bleak place-sudden, senseless death was no stranger to Sapphire, but it would never be a familiar friend.
Wallie laid a hand on Nnanji's shoulder. "I'll take your watch tonight," he said. An hour ago that would have been cause for ribaldry. Now Nnanji merely nodded and put an arm around Thana to lead her away.
Some wedding night, Wallie thought bitterly.
His kilt was damp against his thighs. He was drenched in blood, a figure of horror. He was perversely proud of it, hating it and yet determined not to wash it off until morning. Childish, of course: See what you have done, Goddess?
He walked up to the poop, alone. Behind him, the lantern was extinguished.
How could he serve such gods? Where was faith now? Before him in the darkness the face of that solemn, dutiful boy hung like a blazon of shame. The tuneless adolescent voice echoed still in Wallie's ears.
Why? Why? How could I have known what You wanted of me?
Loyalty to the gods-loyalty to anything... The sorcerers were killers, also.
But were the swordsmen very much better?
Whose side was he on?
There was the big one, the greatest of his worries. If he could have leadership of the tryst for the asking, did he even want it?
The last part of the god's riddle:
Finally return that sword,
And to its destiny accord.
He would return the sword to the Goddess at Her temple in Casr, and its destiny could be to lead the tryst. Let some other butchering swordsman win the leadership and have it-Shonsu would stay with Sapphire and be a water rat.
Yet even as he made the resolve, he knew that he was deceiving himself. Bearing the seventh sword was like owning the Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal. He would never be able to part with it, not if the Goddess Herself were to rise from Her River and demand it back. He could go to the temple, but he would still be carrying the sword when he left. When he had lain wounded on the ship, Nnanji had guarded it for him-and would have died to save it, had that been required of him. Given such an opportunity, almost any other swordsman in the World would have vanished at once, taking the sword with him. Nnanji, of course, would not even have been tempted.
So Wallie would die holding it, as he had promised. In a few years, when his speed began to fail, then the challenges would start. The ambitious and the greedy... they would come forward, and one day one of them would succeed.
Jja emerged from the darkness, holding a cape. He muttered thanks and slung it over his shoulders to keep out the dank chill of the fog. It was growing thicker. That made his watch easier, for even pirates could not find their way through such a murk.
"You will come below later?" Jja whispered.
"No," he said. "I'll bunk down in the deckhouse. You go to bed now."
"Yes, master." But she did not move.
He had told her never to call him that... but he had also vowed never to give her another order.
He kissed her forehead. "Please go to bed now."
He turned away. He did not realize she was still there until she spoke again.
"Jjonsu? Shona?"
He spun around and gripped her shoulders. "Are you sure?"
"I saw a midwife in Tau."
Then they were embracing and did not stop until he discovered that she was weeping.
"Why?" he said. "Aren't you happy?"
"Oh, yes!" She sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her hand. "Too happy! I so want to give you sons, my darling master, and nothing seemed to be happening. So happy... and they will be free?"
"How could you even ask?" he said. "And daughters will be welcomed, also."
So then he promised that he would come down to the cabin when his relief came and he persuaded her to go to bed.
And was alone with his thoughts once more.
A child? Biologically Shonsu's, of course, not Wallie Smith's. Yet that would not worry him. Vixini called him Daddy, and he loved the little tyke. Any child of Jja's would be dear to him. But what sort of world would these children inherit?
Technology-it would tear the World apart. The sorcerers were a thousand years ahead of the rest of the culture. So far they had done a good job of keeping their secrets, but it could not last-not now they had emerged from their remote refuges. Firearms and distillation, even writing itself... those would escape. Change would explode upon a world that did not know how to handle change. Chaos and upheaval, then war, then famine... Surely this was the danger that the Goddess foresaw, that She wanted Wallie Smith to prevent. The demigod, Her messenger, had said it was important. Wallie had not then dreamed how important.
And yet...
And yet the sorcerers were not so very far behind the Earth he had known, a few centuries at most. There was the temptation, for if they had such trivia as gunpowder, then they could not be far from anesthetics to relieve suffering, and antibiotics to succor sick babies, and steam power to supplant slavery. Even a simple written register of ship ownership could stamp out the piracy that plagued the River. Three hundred years, or four... The sorcerers held so much promise! They were even trying to foster trade in their cities-an idea that the swordsmen would treat with contempt, but one to appeal to a Wallie Smith, erstwhile citizen of a mercantile culture.
Whose side was he on?
His mission, obviously, was to drive the sorcerers back into the hills and restore the rule of swordsmen in the seven cities. Now that he knew what it was, he also knew why his divine master, the demigod, had been so chary of defining it. What would Wallie have replied, on that day when he received the sword, had he been told: "Go forth, Shonsu, and make the World safe for barbarism!"?
Whose side was he on?
A whisper: "My lord?" It was Honakura, frail as a dry leaf hi the f
orest darkness.
"Go away!" Wallie said harshly. "I want none of your priestly dissertations tonight."
"But, my lord-"
"None!" Wallie shouted. "Yes, I know all the standard palliatives. You can soothe all hurts and calm all misgivings and have me laughing and giggling inside ten minutes. I must not judge the gods, you will tell me. I do not know all the story, you will say. The boy may have a brother who will make a better king than he, we may surmise. He may be rewarded in another life, very likely. Stock phrases, old man, threadbare promises! Just the old excuses that men make for gods."
He should have known that he could not scare Honakura away. The little priest merely stood there with his head bowed until Wallie ran dry like a water clock. "It was my fault, my lord."
"Yours?" Wallie gaped. Then: "No! It was mine. Do you know why it happened, old man?" He dropped his voice to a hiss, remembering in time that mere were portholes below him and there would be many folk not sleeping well this night on Sapphire. "It happened because your precious gods wanted Nnanji to have a hairclip!"
"I know."
"A silver hairclip, very old. It belonged to the great Arganari. Nnanji will love it! I can't think of anything in the World that would please him more, A generous wedding gift for a loyal... you knew?"
"Pardon, my lord," Honakura said, "I must sit..." He tottered over to the helmsman's bench. Wallie followed with suspicion, wondering if this was some ploy for sympathy. But the old man had been unusually subdued these last few days. Sparing a thought for something other than his own troubles, he now realized that Honakura had seemed very gray and shrunken lately, more so even than normal. He was incredibly old, of course, and this was not his former serene life of pampered luxury.
The priest settled on the bench, an indistinct hump in the darkness. Wallie stood before him, keeping a wary eye on the River beyond.
"My fault, my lord," he wheezed. "The god said that you could trust me... but I did not trust you, you see."
Obviously! Wallie waited.
"I have known many swordsmen, my lord. So I did not trust you. You remember the curse?"
"What curse?"
Honakura coughed as if coughing hurt. "When you first met Adept Nnanji-Apprentice Nnanji, then. He could not fight his way across an empty courtyard, you said."
"Yes, I remember."
"Why, my lord? Did you ever wonder why the gods had laid a curse on him?"
Wallie believed that Nnanji had laid that curse on himself, a mental block caused by his ambivalent feelings toward the corrupt swordsmen of the temple guard-but this was no time to start discussing Freudian psychology. "Why?"
Another racking cough. "He would have been a threat, my lord."
Wallie tried to imagine the young Nnanji without that impediment. He would have shot up the ranks of the guard like a cat up a pole, even with the inferior instruction, a swan among the ducks. And Nnanji was incorruptible.
"Tarru?" he said.
"And Lord Hardduju," the old man agreed in a whisper. "They would have killed him. So the Goddess protected the only honest swordsman in Her guard, by hiding his talent. Seniors can impede good juniors. I have seen it happen, my lord, many times. In the case of swordsmen, the impediment may be permanent... I did not trust you."
"Nnanji?" Wallie scoffed. "Nnanji a threat to me? But we are oath brothers now! He would not hurt a hair on my head. He was willing to throw his life away to avenge me... You thought that I was frightened of Nnanji?"
The fog was moving in thicker around the ship and over the deck. Honakura rasped another half cough.
"Nnanji is no threat," Wallie said. "He fancies himself as a Sixth, but he isn't there yet. Another couple of years and he'll be a Seventh and a damned good one. But not yet-and I'm not worried about Nnanji anyway. Not my oath brother!"
"Not worried, my lord, no," the old man persisted. "But I thought you might become jealous. That was why I would not tell you the tale of Ikondorina's red-haired brother. I only thought you might be envious."
So he was going to tell it at last, was he?
"You saw the hairclip?" Honakura asked.
"Yes, I saw it."
Again the old man coughed. "I have not. But I had asked Adept Nnanji to recount the meeting in Tau, my lord, when Master Polini came aboard-like you, I thought it strange. Of course he gave me every word, and I heard of the hairclip."
"A silver griffon," Wallie said beginning to understand.
"The royal symbol," Honakura agreed hoarsely.
"Nnanji a king?"
Wallie's mind reeled. Of course, Nnanji was still so young. It was hard to imagine him five or ten years hence.
"I believe so, my lord. I don't think the prophecy has anything to do with your quest. I think it happens afterward. That was what I hinted to Apprentice Thana today-that Nnanji is too good to remain a free sword. The Goddess will have greater plans for him. The clip was a message to Thana, not to you."
Now Wallie understood the old man's machinations. But Nnanji as a king would take a lot of thought. He was conceivable as a revolutionary, perhaps, but not as a ruler. Like a dog chasing a car-good sport, but what did he do when he caught it? It was not hard to see Thana as Lady Macbeth, though, urging him on.
Wallie joined Honakura on the bench. The fog had thickened until the water around the ship was invisible and even the old man was hard to distinguish. All that guards could do in this weather was listen. There would be two of them on the main deck and another up on the fo'c'sle, standing in silence. Even to pace up and down would make noise-better to remain still and let possible marauders float by, unaware of a juicy prey lying in the gloom.
"So tell me the prophecy," Wallie said quietly.
"If you wish, my lord," the old man croaked. "But it is even more trivial than the other, it does not even rhyme."
Ikondorina's red-haired brother came to him and said, Brother you have wondrous skill with a sword; teach me, that like you I may wrest a kingdom. And he said, I will. So Ikondorina taught, and his brother learned, and then Ikondorina said, I can teach you no more, now go and find your kingdom; and his brother did so, and his realm was more vast and much greater.
Indeed?
"Had I told you sooner," Honakura whispered, "then you would have recognized the significance of the clip when it was first offered..."
Sutras could be long or short, complex or simple, banal or inscrutably devious. They could contain epitome, episode, and epigram, or any combination of those. But Wallie had never met one quite so puerile as that. A nasty worm of suspicion began wriggling around inside his mind.
"That is all?" he demanded.
"That is all," the old man wheezed.
"You swear that?"
After a pause, Honakura asked, "What oath will you have me swear, my lord?"
And Wallie's suspicions collapsed in a heap of guilt. Every craft had its oath, except the priesthood. A priest must never lie, not ever. For a priest even to compliment the chef was perjury, if the meal was bad. Honakura was as devious as a waltzing snake, but he would never tell an outright falsehood. Hastily Wallie begged forgiveness for his doubts.
King Nnanji? Obviously the old man had been correct. This was Nnanji's destiny, after the tryst, after the sorcerers. It had nothing to do with Wallie at all.
He discovered that he was relieved to know that-and so he had been worried! That was perhaps why he had been so relentlessly chewing at his other troubles: He had been keeping his mind off Nnanji and his griffon hairclip.
Then Honakura began to cough again, and Wallie's conscience sank its teeth into him. It was unkind and very foolish to keep the old man there in that cold dampness.
"Come, my reverend friend," he whispered when the attack had passed. "I shall guide you down the steps. This weather is not for you."
The fog was thicker now.
* * *
Wallie saw Honakura safely to his cabin and returned to his post. When Holiyi came to relieve him, he fulfilled hi
s promise to Jja and went to her.
She was awake and waiting for him. They made love to celebrate her good news, and Jja, who had great skill in such matters, made sure that it was a long and very strenuous session of love-making, rousing her owner to innumerable peaks of passion and superhuman accomplishments of joy, finally wearing him out so thoroughly that he slept, when he had not expected to.
In the next cabin but two, Adept Nnanji had consummated his marriage with dispatch, expertise, encores, and vast satisfaction. He slept, also, while his young bride lay awake at his side, pondering their future.
Three cabins farther aft lay Novice Katanji, in Hana's bed, where he had no right to be, dreaming of Mei, whom he had visited earlier.
While in yet another cabin, Honakura, priest of the seventh rank, spent the rest of the night on his bony knees, weeping softly and begging his Goddess for forgiveness.
* * *
And in the morning the fog had lifted, and Sapphire was anchored about seven lengths offshore, at Casr.
BOOK TWO:
HOW THE SWORDSMAN
MET HIS MATCH
†
The virtuous Huli, priestess of the third rank, came striding along the riverfront at Casr with the hem of her brown robe swirling around her ankles and dark thoughts churning over in her mind. The sun was warm, but the wind tugged and jostled at her, throwing dust in her eyes so that she hardly knew whether her tears came from the dust, or from anger and frustration.
The city had become a madhouse, an asylum for the criminally insane. There were no bars to restrain the inmates, and more of them were arriving every day. She passed a fruit seller's barrow on one side as two young swordsmen strutted by on the other, openly helping themselves to apples as they went. Not only did they not consider paying, they did not have the grace to thank the owner or even send him a nod of acknowledgment. So far as those two louts were concerned, the poor man did not exist-and he likely with eight or nine children at home to feed.