I walked over to where a small, wiry woman was selling scandal sheets, bought one, and walked back. When I returned, Iranda was deeply engrossed in conversation with a grizzled old sea-hound.
"He's been running people out to Eel Island," she said to me. "He takes them out, lets them watch the operation, and brings them back for a flat half-levar fee."
"My boat is safe, clean, and spacious," the sea-hound began. I shut him up by handing him a levar on the spot.
"My friend is going to play for the Eel Island fisherfolk," Iranda said, an explanation that explained nothing. "And maybe for the Zhir divers and sorcerers. Do you think they'd like that?"
"They don't have time for that," muttered the man of the sea. "They're having a bad day, they are. We leave in five minutes."
Just like that, we had our ride to Eel Island. I didn't even take time to kick myself for not dickering. Our co-passengers were four nobles named ola Randiza, just a rich family out seeing sights. I smiled grimly to myself. Maybe one of theirs was the life I was supposed to save. Then, horrified, I felt bitter tears come to my eyes.
Life and death. Life and death. Life and—
We settled onto our benches below decks. The captain gave us his name and that of the boat (I forgot both instantly), told us that we would be half an hour in the traveling, and said with a smile that the bumper-spell on the bow would keep us from colliding with all but the most determined rocks. Hearing this, I felt foolish for a second. The ola Randizas were in no danger. Besides, nobody knew the harbor waters like a small-boat pilot.
But somebody's life and death depended on my trip to Eel Island, and the burden hung heavy over my head.
We'd been on our way not more than five minutes when the old woman who seemed to be the senior ola Randiza asked for a song. I strummed a D chord, cleared my throat, and began "Eel Island Shoals," hoping Iranda would come in on the harmonics. And she did, but her voice was a little shaky, and her timing was off.
If Iranda was convinced that my life wasn't in danger, my life wasn't in danger. But I wasn't going to let her tell me she wasn't worried.
The ola Randizas applauded politely and began to play a game of tatters. That left me free to read the Cat Street Crier. Ah, there it was: "Talks between His Scarlet Eminence and the Zhir ambassador to Liavek, Velt, son of Famar, have been halted. Calornen's Stone, still believed to be in a safe aboard the Praluna, is ten fathoms deep in water off Eel Island. Velt insists that a sorcerer must be hired by Liavek to raise the Praluna. His Scarlet Eminence has said that if the Zhir ever had the Stone and plan no treachery—both of which are in doubt—the Zhir must hire the sorcerer themselves, the better to keep their promise of returning the Stone.
"Meanwhile, attempts at raising the Stone are being performed by the crew of the Praluna, most of whom are being quartered on Eel Island for the time being. Your correspondent watches these attempts with interest.
"In the Levar's Council today—"
Then the boat hit a wooden piling with a thud and a scrape, and I realized we had arrived at Eel Island.
My first thought upon sticking my head above decks was that I'd never seen such a rickety dock in my life. Then I took a good look at the island itself and realized it was even worse.
A huge barren expanse of what seemed to be mud mixed with gravel stretched backwards from the dock to the horizon. On the shore side, a motley collection of shacks cluttered up the view. Poor folk indeed must be those who lived in those decrepit wooden buildings! Dirty children played on the beach near the dock. If I'd been a Zhir off the Praluna, I'd have let myself drown rather than swim to such a desolate harbor.
Then I climbed a rope ladder to the walkway of the dock and took a better look. Here, a proud new porch stretched forward from a building at least a hundred years older; there, light blue trim marked another building's windows; and—yes—behind another building there was one lone olive tree, recently transplanted, by the look of the ground around it. Maybe my ballad could start with a verse about good fishing, and how the Eel Islanders were spending their new-found wealth.
Iranda climbed the rope ladder and stood alongside me. I smiled. Then something crossed my mind and I clutched at her arm in sudden panic. "Iranda? My being here is a matter of life and death. How do you know I'm not supposed to kill somebody?"
Her eyebrows lowered. ''That doesn't seem likely."
"It's His Scarlet Eminence we're talking about! How do I know if it's likely or not?"
Suddenly Iranda had one arm around me and was pulling me toward her. My cittern hung in the way of her other arm. Still, all of a sudden I felt very thoroughly hugged. "I know you're frightened," she whispered. Then she let go, and was suddenly all business. "Come on," she said. "Let's go watch the salvage operation."
We walked to the beach and looked around. What salvage operation? All I saw were two filthy children rolling dice at my feet; three sailors of the Levar's Navy walking erratic beats to my right; an anxious-looking woman with an arm in a sling, staring at the horizon; and, a ways out to sea, a large rowboat with a line over the side. Maybe that was the salvage operation, and maybe not.
The ola Randizas wandered off to the left, where most of the shacks seemed to be. Iranda touched me on the wrist briefly and strolled after them; maybe they knew something we didn't. I was betting on the rowboat, myself. Waves splashed on gravel at my feet as I walked toward the navy guards.
The oldest and tallest one noticed me. "Ho, sailor," I said with a jauntiness I didn't really feel. "May I go out there and play for the Zhir divers?"
"Leave them alone," said the sailor gruffly. The other two stopped their pacing and looked at me curiously. "They have enough problems."
"Beg pardon, Enkis," said another. "Admiral Tinthe said to make sure nobody kept the Zhir from working. He didn't say anything about entertainment."
"There isn't room on that boat for you," said Enkis uncertainly. "Besides, how would you get out there?"
"Maybe I'll just wait right here until they come in for a break," I said. "Meanwhile, it won't hurt anybody if I practice, will it?" I swiveled my cittern around to proper playing position.
I sing of Calornen, the wizard Levar,
Sing Tazli, Tenzli, Ozle, and Ben,
Of history, mystery, near days and far
And the stone in the circle will not come again—
"Aaaah," snarled Enkis, making an abrupt hand gesture. I stopped playing. "They were singing that all last night. Go on through and talk to the magician. She needs some cheering up."
Magician—oh, the woman with the sling. It had to be. I nodded, thanked Enkis, and walked on past.
She was standing on a little spit of land and staring out at the boat, looking like a mad goddess of the wind. I guessed her age at anywhere from thirty to fifty. I walked toward her, feeling a little shy, not knowing if she even spoke my language. "Excuse me," I said, "but could you use a little music?"
She turned to look at me, and her face showed utter exhaustion. "Companionship, maybe," she said with only a trace of Zhir accent. "Diversion. Anything to ease the waiting."
"What exactly is going on here?" That's right: Get information. And then turn it into a ballad for His Scarlet Eminence. Oh, but I was a sly one! At least she was willing to speak to me.
"There are two wizards," she said, "and we are taking turns." She gestured with her good arm at the rowboat. "Sestin has practice with the usual spell for divers," she said. "Sometimes he casts the spell that binds air to a diver's head, and sends the diver down to scrub barnacles off the hull of the ship. Once we lost a man overboard, and Sestin dived in after him, finally binding air to his head in time to keep him from drowning. But then we had Thung's own time getting the two of them back on the ship." She chuckled, but it didn't sound mirthful. "Sestin casts spells quickly. but they are not very powerful."
Was there a ballad hiding in there? Sestin the spellcaster binds luck to air. gives life to divers to use as they dare…. There were times
I was impressed with my own skill with words and music, but this was not one of them.
She continued, "Sestin has been casting the spells as well as he can, while one of our young sailors goes down the rope in search of the Praluna. Every time so far, the sailor has been down only a few minutes before the pressure at that depth collapses Sestin's spell, and we have to pull the sailor up as fast as we dare to keep him from drowning." She blinked, and I realized that her eyes were wet with tears. "I don't know why Liavek won't help," she went on unhappily. "We meant only friendship. "
I'd been told that my coming to Eel Island meant life and death. But I didn't see any matters of life and death. All I saw was one exhausted woman, miserable because her people had tried to make a peace offering and had been scorned. How long had it been since she'd slept? (And what business did I have holding her up to ridicule in a humorous ballad?)
"Tell me about your magic," I said. "Do your spells work the same as Sestin's?"
"One is quite similar," she acknowledged. "But most are very different. I know a pathfinder-spell." I must have looked blank. "If I know enough about an object, I can cast a spell that will locate it. In Ka Zhir, I found Calornen's Stone, cast in the base of a brass statue. And you've seen the fording-spell used on rivers?"
Actually, I hadn't, but I knew it existed. She sighed and kept on with her speech. "Or the spell for pushing back underbrush in dense forests, or the spell for parting a crowd so an old or sick magician can get through. They are all the same. The pathfinder-spell to show us where the ship is located, and then the fording-spell to part the waters. I work my two spells. Then Sestin works his. Then I work mine again, and so it continues."
So this was a wizard, and this was spellcraft. Two tired amateur magicians casting spells that didn't work, over and over again, keeping on because there was nothing else to do. "But the sea collapses your fording-spell before it can reach the ship?"
"Exactly," she said forlornly. "It is a more powerful spell than Sestin's; but the Sea of Luck is more powerful than both of us together." She shaded her eyes. "Sestin's waving—it's my turn."
I looked over the sea. It spread, green and uneasy, out to the horizon. Whitecaps rolled in and broke on the shore. Near the rowboat, I could just barely see sunlight reflecting off a partially submerged rock, probably the rock that had sunk the Praluna. Yes, I could believe the sea to be powerful.
But all my life I had believed sorcery to be a powerful thing. I had dreamed of being a wizard. Yet here was one wizard—and out on the boat, there was a second—reduced to helplessness in the face of something as natural, as everyday, as the sea.
It's a matter of life and death, Liramal. Life and death.
Then she smiled, or tried to. "I do not mean to bore you with my troubles, minstrel boy," she said, and I could tell she meant it. "Play me a song."
"Gladly. And—could I watch you cast a spell?"
"Magic is not for show," she said. Then she smiled again. "But we shall see. Play for me."
Reflexively, I turned to look for Iranda; a harmony singer could add a lot. She was in sight, arguing with the three sailors standing guard. I could stop talking with the sorceress and go add my voice to Iranda's, trying to get them to let her pass. Or I could play a song.
I could sing better than I could argue. I broke into "The Dry Well of Dondar."
The caravan road to Tichen
Has ended at Dondar's dry well,
But throwing the dice yet again
May lead us alive out of hell.
My cittern felt alive under my grasp. I could practically feel Dondar's dry well appearing off to my right:
The meadows of Dondar are dry;
The wind whistles doom to our sleep,
And thirst whispers, "Here shall you lie,"
But earth whispers hope from the deep.
I saw a whirlpool.
It was about twenty feet out in the water, and it was spinning as though someone had poked a hole in the bottom of the ocean. Seaweed and driftwood were pulled toward it. Above it, the air was suddenly hazy.
First toss gave us meadows of sand,
And fortune is turned into fear;
But Navar holds luck in his hand,
And hope whispers "Water is near."
Suddenly there was no whirlpool. I was staring down, down a dizzying cliffside. Rocks and dried seaweed were visible just for a second; then those were gone, too, and I was staring at bare seabottom. Where the whirlpool had been, a waterfall shot upward, magically upward, to the sky.
Off at my left, my intended audience, the Zhir magician, was staring intently at nothing in particular; her one good hand was moving in a rigid pattern, and her mouth was moving in patterns that bore no resemblance to the ones I was singing. She was praying—no, she was working magic!
Instinctively I drew back. I did not understand what was taking place here, but I knew it was beyond my control.
And besides. all I had to do was take a few steps forward and I'd fall to my death.
Silent and slow gather 'round,
For thirst is a catch in the breath,
And hope is a hole in the ground,
And fear whispers, "Failure is death."
Silent and slow gather 'round—they were doing it. A crowd was gathering at my right: Iranda, Enkis and the other two sailors, the ola Randizas, the boat skipper.
For thirst is a catch in the breath—it is the curse of some singers to feel each word of the songs they sing. Thirsty I was; I felt the dry mouth of the honestly terrified. Yet I could not stop to take a drink. The magician's gestures seemed to weave my song into the whirling water and neither it nor I could pause.
Once I had met a woman who climbed mountains in the Silverspine; she had told of deciding she had climbed enough for a lifetime. Unfortunately, she'd been halfway up a rock wall when she decided that; she'd had to reverse her decision, either to climb up or to climb down. Like her, I was trapped in the middle of a song.
And hope is a hole in the ground.... Or is hope a hole in the water? I saw plenty of hole. The ground dropped off rapidly here; deep sea, reef, shoals, and Eel Island itself seemed to mix in no apparent pattern. The hole was doing nothing but feeding water to the sky, and showing off the mysteries of the ocean floor. But— Glory to the Twin Forces, if the hole gets big enough, we can walk to the Praluna and take the Stone!
Not only could we do that—if we could get a team of boatwrights out from Liavek, we could probably salvage the whole evil-damned ship.
And fear whispers, "Failure is death." Failure at what? I could feel forces around me so overwhelming that I was dwarfed by comparison. And I knew that, if I had never played "The Dry Well of Dondar," those forces would never have been summoned. So I would simply have to keep playing my song, contributing to those forces as best I could.
Except—what was I contributing? I wasn't a wizard!
The waterfall was a thick pillar of water now, pointing straight up into the sky. Yet it didn't seem to go up forever; somewhere, a hundred man-heights up, it simply ended. Water was going up into the sky and vanishing—but where was it going?
The water is lost in the past,
And time is the master of all,
But if Navar's magic should last,
Then time—for a moment—may fall.
Light white stuff began to fall from the sky. I had seen snow once, but it had not looked like this. I let a chord hold for one beat to lick a white patch on my right arm. Salt.
The water was lost in the past—the well at Dondar had given water for one hundred years. And suddenly, I knew where the water had come from. But how much water would the Eel Island shoals have to sacrifice, to give Dondar water for a hundred years?
So luck hazards time for a throw;
A new game, with Navar the dice,
While water waits silent below,
And time whispers, "You are the price."
His Scarlet Eminence had been right after all. This was a matter of l
ife and death. I knew whose death was involved, too: Navar's.
So I'd come on my mission of life-and-death importance. And by being here, by playing the song I was most likely to play, I had guaranteed that death would take place on schedule. Now, to escape with my own life. And once that was assured, I could go back to searching for my true purpose.
But I had a purpose! I was playing "The Dry Well of Dondar," while magical forces cascaded around me, while water shot into the sky and the past to save the lives of Navar's caravan, while ill-equipped but willing Zhir divers followed a ship's hawser to the captain's safe....
While His Scarlet Eminence waited for me to write a ballad. Well, he might get one, and he might not.
For death waits on time's other hand,
And luck wins and loses the day,
For Navar lies still on the sand,
And time flows like water away.
I looked out past the waterfall. The Zhir rowboat, beached on a sizable rock, was effectively stranded. Below, at the end of a line that seemed to go on forever, a man in a loincloth stepped gingerly across what had been seabottom, but was now desert. Before him, a small sailing ship, badly holed near the bow, rested at a slight list. The Stone was within reach. And I was going to live.
The desert will blossom again
With water, the life Navar gave;
And we take the road to Tichen,
And flowers will cover his grave.
And if ever I took the road to Tichen, I would certainly put flowers on Navar's grave. Meanwhile. water was shooting toward the sky in a sheet that seemed to go on forever. Iranda was standing close to me now, near my right elbow; she was watching in amazement. The crowd around us was several dozen strong. The men, women, and children who were the Eel Island fisherfolk, some tired-looking men who had to be Zhir off the Praluna, were all watching intently. The Zhir magician, incantations done, was yelling at me, but the sound of the upward-bound waterfall drowned her voice. I put a nice neat ending on the song and listened with all my strength.
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