by Dave Freer
"He did, did he?" said Groblek, thoughtfully. "And so, what did he tell you about me, little human? Don't lie. I have no liking for liars."
Meb knew she was a very poor liar, and anyway she had no idea what to lie about. "He said you were a giant. Or a mountain or a troll. And some other things I didn't understand. He said to make you laugh."
Groblek's lip twitched. "He knows a great deal. Too much for it to be honestly acquired knowledge. So: make me laugh. I'm waiting."
"Um. Can I juggle?"
"I don't know. Can you?"
She nodded. "Yes. Finn taught me. I . . . I want to be his apprentice."
Groblek smiled, showing enormous square teeth. "Very good. You almost made me laugh then. Well, show me. And then your merrow friend can see if he can do as well. Or is he not a juggler?"
"Er. I don't know. I . . . don't think so," admitted Meb, wishing that she was less tired, fumbling in her sling-bag for balls . . . and only finding rubies. They were a little small for her purposes.
"Well, merrow? Do you? Or what other way can you come up with to amuse me?"
"I don't juggle, Lord of the Mountains," answered the merrow.
The mobile eyebrows twitched. Meb decided they might have a life of their own. "I haven't been called that for a while," Groblek said, mildly. "So what do you do, besides swim and chase fish? Merrows are not something that I see here too often."
"I play the pibgyrn," said the merrow, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "But it's not a thing I do in public."
"Too bad. I don't have any supper for those who fail to entertain."
"And there isn't any other food in the place, or a way out of here without him," said Finn.
Groblek fixed him with a chilly stare. "I thought I told you not to talk?"
"Consider it unsaid."
The gigantic Groblek shook a finger at him. "And that trick won't work to get you out of here this time."
Meb realized, looking around, that she couldn't see the door they'd come in through. The place was shadowy. When she turned her head there were things she almost seemed to see, just out of the corner of her eye. There were vast, shadowy vistas there. She screwed up her eyes and blinked. The room was bigger than it could possibly be. She'd seen it from the outside.
Groblek noticed her staring. "It is much more complicated than it looks," he said smiling a little. "Mountains are. There are distances folded into them."
Meb's inner person had one of those moments of epiphany—this place was what mountains were. Not what they looked like. This was the spirit of the mountains. And Groblek was somehow part of it as well as living in it. He looked big and solid and quite . . . ordinary, in a giantish way. But she suspected that he wasn't, any more than steps into the air, or this room that had subtly changed and hidden the door was. A part of Meb was very afraid, at dealing with things so far beyond her little village. And another part of her was fiercely delighted to find that her dreams were true. That the world was really infinitely bigger than that narrow window onto it that she'd had. That part of her took control, took a deep breath and said: "I need something to juggle with. And this is a very wonderful place."
Groblek nodded. "Yes. Not many realize that straight off. I normally juggle boulders myself, but they might be a little large for you. Hmm." He scratched his head. "Ah." He reached out. His hand went . . . somewhere else. Meb could see his arm, shimmering and at a strange angle, fading away. He drew it back and brought out a handful of snow. Then he squeezed it down to a round hard ball just bigger than her fist. "How many do you want?"
"Um. Six?" she said. That was the best she'd ever done, really. But she had a feeling this needed her very best.
"You have done this for many years?" he asked, reaching into the strangeness, bringing back more snow, and shaping it.
"Uh, n . . . no." admitted Meb. "I started a few weeks ago."
The mobile eyebrows showed his surprise, but he said nothing. Meb was very doubtful about the snowballs . . . it had rarely snowed at sea level and her memory of the soft flakes had been that they melted quite quickly and were, well, relatively soft.
These snowballs weren't. They were surprisingly heavy and hard. She gave them a few experimental tosses to get the feel and weight . . . and realized that they were all slightly different. Terrible to juggle with. But she wanted to succeed. She'd do Finn proud. She began her throws, going for a simple sequence first, and then increasing the number of balls she had aerialised. And realizing to her horror that they were really cold. Finger-numbingly cold. There was nothing that she could do about it but to ignore the pain and toss them higher. To divorce herself from worrying about them slipping or her losing grip, and pretend that she was somehow outside herself watching the gleeman throwing his brightly colored balls in increasingly complex patterns . . . And suddenly she realized that the ball she'd just flung up in air was not snow. It was the brightly colored ball in her mind's eye. It was startling enough to make her totally lose concentration and for the balls to come thudding down around her as she gaped at it. Then she realized what was happening and tried to catch and toss the remaining balls, and slipped on one of the balls on the floor, nearly fell on her face . . . tossed the next ball up, slipped again and landed hard on the seat of her trousers. She sat there, and the rest of balls landed neatly in her hands amid the thunder.
It wasn't thunder. It was laughter. "Oh, very clever," said Groblek, "you misled me very well."
Blushing to the roots of her hair, Meb bowed her head. Finn helped her up.
"I think the pupil just outdid the master," he said. "And yes, Groblek. I had to say that."
"I'll let it pass. Although she may have caused snowstorms and avalanches across twenty worlds. You need to be careful with magics here, human-child." He seemed just at that moment vast and old, but the next he was just a giant in a leather jerkin with a great deal of wild hair again. "You've earned a bite or two of supper. I don't get to laugh often enough. Now, merrow, will you or won't you play for us?"
"I don't play in public," muttered the merrow.
"Ah, but this is hardly public," said Finn.
"That is the final word from you," said Groblek to Finn, in such a way that she knew this time he really meant it. "But it's true enough. Consider this the wide open spaces. An alpine meadow."
And briefly, it was. But the moon that shone down on them was bigger than any moon Meb had ever seen, and there was a second moon, low in the sky. The she-bear feasting on the berries there plainly saw them and took fright. She lumbered away into the darkness.
"It'll be tricks of shadow that you're playing on me," said the merrow. "But very well. On your own head be it then." He dug into his shoulder-pouch and produced an instrument—a chanter with a horn mouth-piece and on the other end a curved horn bell—cut so that the end formed a mouth of ferocious teeth. It was polished, carved and beautiful. The merrow blew a few notes, and then began to play. Meb found her feet tapping almost immediately. He was good, better than any musician she'd ever heard.
Actually, she soon realized, he was better than just very good. The sound, haunting and compelling, was moving her . . . physically. She was swaying in time to the music. Then, with those sharp merrow eyes shining wildly, he changed tune. Now, it was fast and staccato . . . Meb knew the tune. It was one that the sailors danced to. And now it was one that they all danced to, with varying levels of grace. The giant's dance made the floor shake and sounded like thunder, although there was a certain enormous delicacy and precision about the way he crashed his feet down. But it was a thunder far too close for comfort!
The merrow lowered his horn mouthpiece from his lips. "Have you had enough?" he asked, defiantly. "I can play all night if you be willing."
Groblek panted . . . and laughed. "I deserved that. And I enjoyed it too, little fish-man. You play well. But the mountains need a rest from the snow and the thunder you've caused between the two of you. Now, we will dine."
"And not on us, with luck," sa
id Finn.
"I hardly ever eat guests who make me laugh," said Groblek.
Meb was not sure if he was joking or not.
Fionn had watched very carefully when Groblek had reached through the dimensions to give her snowballs. Looking at it again, he felt that he was just on the brink of understanding what Groblek was doing. Groblek was reaching outside of Tasmarin. In fact, Fionn was sure that he was reaching outside of the entire cycle of worlds that had been drawn from to make Tasmarin. Fionn had known the others existed, but it was just this ring that he was responsible for. Tasmarin still needed to be destroyed because it was damaging the rest, upsetting their polarities. It was also a trap which prevented him from seeing to his work in the wider cycle. He was stuck here and that would spell disaster for them all. Besides that, he found it intensely frustrating to be trapped here, knowing work needed doing badly out there. It ran counter to his purpose not to do it.
He had tried to get Groblek to explain it to him last time. But the giant was not someone you could force to do anything he did not want to do. In times before Tasmarin's building, back when Fionn had still roamed the fractal planes of existence, fixing imbalances across the ring which had been his responsibility, he had seen traces of the giant, from time to time. Huge bare footprints in deep snow. Footprints that came from nowhere and led to nowhere. Then, when he'd been trapped here the first time, he'd been foolish enough to contest Groblek physically. Fionn had learned: you cannot fight a mountain. You can only work with its natural bent, and try to out-think it.
Chapter 27
As fortune would have it, Haborym was as close to Yenfar as he dared to go, without the slow leeching of his life-energies affecting him enough to kill. The rocky caves of the little islet a few miles off the coast were much used by smugglers, and Haborym did a great deal of business with them. Even here, he could feel the effect of the magical wards . . . and then, abruptly he could not.
"I need your ship," he said to the smuggler-captain he'd been discussing the price of a shipment of untaxed tar with, moments before. "Now. I must go to Yenfar."
The captain looked at him in puzzlement, possibly because he'd dealt with Haborym for some years, and this was the closest his business associate had ever come to the island. "But the cargo is still on board. It'll take us a couple of hours to shift it, Beng."
"Beng" was the name Haborym used when he assumed the illusory image of a human. It pleased him. He considered briefly. He could cross the ocean on his own. Not being a thing of mere flesh, he could drift above it, but his kind had an uneasy relationship with water. Instead he concentrated his will on the hapless captain. He did not care if the stinking tar-barrels were on board. He quite enjoyed the smell. A few minutes later the smuggling galley was nosing out to sea, heading for the coast of the larger landmass, her frightened crew pulling hard, driven by their still more frightened captain.
It was near moon-set when Haborym left them at a small beach hemmed with cliff. He did not need to find his way through the network of caves they used. He drifted up the steep rock walls instead. So: here he was—at last able to hunt their prey here in this, the one place on Tasmarin that had been denied to his kind. It was sweet. But first he had work to do. Lesser species might call it murder. But it was what augury required. Blood. Blood of her kind. He drifted on, coming soon enough to the walls of the town his smugglers hailed from. This was Yenfar: they were unprotected against the smokeless flame.
It did not take him long to find what he was looking for. She was getting old for the flesh-trade, which was probably why she was still out at this time. He performed the rite with practiced skill. It would fill the locals with horror. The results of the augury filled him with horror, although the deed did not.
She wasn't on this island. And neither was the merrow treasure.
Haborym knew fear. He knew how the strict hierarchy of his kind apportioned blame. He looked at the blood and filth and the patterns of invoked power, and knew his own end would be worse, if the human mage was dead. He hissed with rage and fear. Couldn't the sprites do anything right?
After a brief reconsideration of the augury he headed away, towards the mountains. He could, hopefully, at least work out if she had escaped the island—a faint hope—or if she was dead. Destroying the merrows' treasure was a small task compared with the need to take her, alive. The hierarchy of flames had plans. Those involved the attempt to recreate this folly of a plane of dragons—with all the attendant effects that it would have on the rest of this interconnected ring of planes.
There were fewer limits on Haborym than on creatures of flesh. Walls were no impediment—at least walls without protections against the nonmaterial. Roads too were more directional indicators than surfaces upon which to walk. And he could move as fast as a running man, without tiring the way a man would. Of course moving used up energy, but not in the same way that using a cloak of illusion did, or did other magical exercises. But the darkness was an adequate shield, for now. By dawn he had traveled many leagues. He did not like daylight, but the fear drove him on . . . until he came to a landslip that had completely blocked the road, and indeed, the river. It would have stopped most men, and possibly anything except a dragon. But Haborym crossed the shifting, precarious loose rock and headed past the temporary dam it had created. There was a solitary sentry there. In the normal course of things there should have been a fair chance that he would have been aware of the fire-being and able to defend himself. But the Loftalfar blood ran thin in this one, and he did not expect Haborym, who overpowered him and put him to the question. Haborym knew that he would have to kill him afterwards and dispose of the body carefully. The alv knew it too, and resisted as best he could. It was a contest of will and of pain.
Finally the alv told him what he needed to know. "The last of the human thieves were driven into the high places. But the hunt was put to flight by the giant."
It was enough to startle Haborym into a moment's inattention. The little Huldralfar squirmed and broke free, and ran as only one of the alfar could, and donned a glamour among the wet trees.
Haborym did not try to catch him. He might have succeeded, and that would have been desirable, but he would probably fail. A sprite would have had the alv out of there in no time, but the dripping woods were no place for fire-beings. Not even to conflict with a badly injured alv. Instead he moved on with as much haste as he could muster, heading for the high peaks beyond their white city.
It was not somewhere you could follow a road to anymore. And soon, as he gained altitude, there was worse than the wetness. There was snow. Haborym kept going, although it took a great deal more energy than he liked.
If the alvar warrior lived, they'd be hunting his kind and barring them from entry into various places. He doubted that the alvar still had the strength or the allies to set a spell that would bar his kind from the whole island again. In the meanwhile . . . it was possible that the accursed little human quarry had fled from this plane entirely. His only satisfaction to that was that it would appear that somehow, the human magic worker had fallen in with his thieves, and they'd taken the merrows' treasure with them. The merrows' oceans would die without it. And with that would go this frozen wet stuff. The place would warm to a habitat suited to his kind.
Chapter 28
Meb remembered the food well enough, even if the rest was a little vague. A huge hot crusty loaf, big enough for fifty . . . or Groblek and them. Thin slivers of a salted meat. Some fresh curd cheese. Bilberry preserve. She'd loved that.
"It's good, eh?" said their host, when she asked.
"It is just the best thing I have ever eaten," said Meb.
Groblek beamed. "Little berries. About the size of your little finger's first joint, where I gather them. And they don't grow in bunches, but in ones and twos on a stalk. A lot of work, but they go well with the cheese."
Meb had to wonder how his great big fingers could ever handle such tiny berries.
And of course, there was beer.
Meb drank cautiously. Nearly as cautiously as the merrow ate.
"Don't you like my food, little fish-man?" asked Groblek.
"It's of the unfamiliar kind," said the merrow. "I'm more used to fish, if you take my meaning. So far I'm liking it, especially the red salty stuff, but I've a feeling that I would prefer not to know what it was. It's a little like marlin, a little like mako, except that something's lacking and different."
"It doesn't taste of fish," said Meb, nodding.
"That's a bit unnatural, to my way of thinking," said the merrow, seriously. "But understandable up here."
That amused Groblek, rather than offended him. "I get salmon and trout and some eels. But I am more familiar with the harvest of the high places than the sea. But if you have had enough I'd not say no to some more music. Without quite so much dance to it."
The merrow scowled. "I can't but play the dance with the music. I've tried, to be sure. But it is as much part of me as the playing is."