"But it's my move, and I'm going to take one of yours, I think. I've got my choice—no, I don't. Captain, you're supposed to have a wizard there by the door, protecting that other white soldier, but we don't have anybody left to play the wizards."
"We have one," Noen told her. "Baldy, you're a wizard. Take your choice of positions."
Baldy walked to the square to the left of the black statue. "If this goddess knows where Amail is, I want to hear it."
When the little temple was no longer filled with the sound of shuffling feet, the silence became oppressive. Dinnile fidgeted and coughed, then pretended he had not.
"Great goddess," Oeuni pronounced. "Black warrior woman and precious helper, I, too, am a woman warrior. I beg you to reveal the fate of Amail Destrop to us and aid us against the slayers of our fellow mariners."
There was no reply. Outside a monkey screeched, swinging away through the trees until it could no longer be heard.
Noen cleared his throat. "I'm Windsong's captain, and I'm in charge here. We've done what we think you want. Now we'd like your help. If you want something more, just tell us what it is."
Nothing happened. The statue did not move; no voice was heard in the temple.
"Captain, I'm afraid it's not going to work without—"
"What is it?"
"—the wizards! Noen, don't you see? Everyone kept saying three wizards, three wizards, Marin and Baldy and Nordread and even you. But there aren't three wizards, because Baldy's a wizard, too, and that makes four. Four wizards for the shah board! We have to get the other three, and it won't work without them."
A new voice, deep and eerie, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, echoing from the bare white walls: "You have one." The taIl, black-cloaked man who strode into the temple looked old, his face lined with wrinkles and his long beard gray where it was not white; yet his eyes seemed to glow under his slouching wizard's hat, and he stood as straight as any rapier. Saluting Ler Oeuni with his crooked staff, he took the square beside Nordread.
"Goddess!" Oeuni cried to the statue. "Behold! Aren't two wizards enough? We've given you your shah's wizard, as well as your own."
Nordread stepped forward and touched her shoulder to get her attention. "Three, actually, Lieutenant," the deep-voiced player rumbled, and pointed. A third wizard, smaller than the second but dressed in much the same fashion, stood at Dinnile's right hand.
Noen roared, "Where'd that man come from?"
The burly second mate touched his forehead. "I dunno, sir. I was watchin' you 'n' Oeuni, and then he was there."
"One more," Oeuni said. "If we had the last—" She stopped because something uncanny was taking place on the square black stone behind and to the left of Syb, the seaman who portrayed Marin's warrior's soldier. A cloud that was black and yet not smoke swirled there, as though a waterspout had somehow formed over the dry floor. Then it was gone, and the fourth wizard grinned at them, rubbing his hands and chuckling.
"Now, goddess!" Oeuni called.
Noen, Oeuni, and Dinnile, every sailor and every player watched the statue; but it did not move nor speak, nor give the slightest sign of magic or of miracle.
As the awful silence lengthened, it brought a sense of hopelessness.
"Maybe we have to continue the game," Oeuni sighed at last. "My warrior there takes Marin's soldier." She pointed to the player in question. "That's you. You go over there, and she goes"—Oeuni hesitated—"outside, I guess."
The player remained where he was.
"You heard me!"
He looked embarrassed. "I did, ah, Lieutenant Oeuni. But I can't. I can't go."
She stared at him, and Noen asked, "Are you paralyzed, man?"
"No." The player lifted one foot, then the other. "But I can't go over there. When I try, nothing happens."
"Sir...?"
It was Syb, and Noen turned to face him. "What is it?"
"Cap'n, when that wizard there started to appear like he did behind me, I tried to run, sir. Only I couldn't. Just like him." Noen whirled to Nordread. "You walked over to Lieutenant Oeuni and touched her a moment ago. Do it again!" The theatrical company's menace nodded, lifted one foot, and put it down where it had been.
"Noen," Oeuni's voice trembled, "are you frightened?"
He was, but he shook his head stubbornly. "Why should I be? We're getting somewhere at last."
"Well, I am. And I'm not afraid to say so. We said we were the shah players, Noen. You were supposed to be white and I was supposed to be black. But we aren't really, or we could move the pieces, couldn't we? Are the real ones good and evil, Noen? Or the Black Faith and the White? Or what?"
Dinnile's wizard said, "It would be better, perhaps, if you were not to ask to know too much." His speech was soft, so low that only the utter silence of the temple made it possible for them to hear him.
"Who are you, anyway?" Oeuni asked. And then, "Why didn't we ask that before?"
The wizard only repeated, "It would be better, perhaps, if you were not to ask to know too much."
Noen said, "We won't ask you any more questions, but I would appreciate your advice. Tell me what to do, and we'll do just as you say."
There was no reply, but Nordread and Baldy gasped. The statue, the black sultana. had begun to move, rocking ever so slightly to the right and to the left, like the pendulum of a metronome that had almost run down.
Slowly it slid from the black square upon which it had stood to the square in front of Nordread, and then to the square beyond that. It was only then that Noen realized the black square where it had been was not a stone at all. but a dark cavity in the floor, a pit or a sunken vault.
There was a sudden cry, unearthly and utterly evil, and some dark thing streaked from the dome over their heads and vanished into the pit.
Baldy and Nordread turned, white-faced, to stare after it. Oeuni, only a step or two farther from the pit than they, threw down her sword and dashed to it, dropping to her knees beside it and reaching inside with both her arms. Her hook emerged with an emerald necklace caught like some shining fish, her right hand with a handful of gold. She reached in again; as she did, a hideous face topped with such a crown as the Levar herself could not boast emerged. It seemed almost a skull, but flames blazed behind the sockets of its eyes, and the fangs of its mouth were smeared with blood.
At once the missing black stone appeared, sliding swiftly from the wall to seal the pit. The hideous face ducked, the crown toppling from its head. Noen called, "Look out!"
He was aware, even as the shout left his lips, that it had come too late. The sliding stone clicked to a stop against Oeuni's iron hook.
At the same instant, the gliding statue reached the wall opposite the door. It seemed to Noen that it must crash into it, crash and perhaps even shatter, for it had been picking up speed, accelerating faster and faster as it moved. It did not. For the black sultana the solid stone seemed no more than a mist. The statue entered that mist and was gone.
He knelt beside Oeuni. The point of her hook was against the edge of the floor, actually driven some minute distance into the stone; the bend was jammed against the slab. Her other arm vanished into the dark crevice that remained, which was about the width of his own hand.
"Noen," she gasped. And then again. "Oh, Noen..."
"Let go!" he told her. "That hook could break." Bracing his feet against the edge of the floor, he heaved at the slab with all his strength; it did not move.
"Noen, I can't let go! It's got me, that thing, that devil—it's got my hand!"
He pulled at her arm until she cried out. Across the room, Dinnile raged against the confinement of his square, but neither his curses nor his frantic gestures freed him. Nordread had drawn a rapier, but could not thrust into the pit. Baldy muttered words that sounded like spells—and the reality of the situation altered not at all.
The demon's face appeared at the crevice. Noen fired both barrels of his pistol point blank, the shots deafening in the bare stone chamber
; if he had fired instead into a raging sea, his bullets could have been no more futile.
"Noen," Oeuni gasped. "It's got me. That thing!" Bright tears filled the eyes that never wept.
The hook slipped. Its movement was slight, and yet Noen saw it and felt it too, for he was standing upon the slab. The demon's hand emerged from the crevice, groping for his ankle. He jumped back, drew his sword, and slashed at the scaly wrist with all his strength; the wide blade broke like glass, and he flung down the hilt.
"Now you will die, all of you." It was the voice of the fourth wizard, of Marin's wizard. "She because she cannot get away. You because you will not leave her. They because they cannot leave their squares. But not I. Kakos is mine, you see, my crowning achievement."
Then voice and wizard were gone, not vanished, but crushed to a broken doll whose crimson blood splattered Syb and the unfortunate sailor standing before the player who was Marin's tower. The black statue had reentered its own temple through the door like the figurehead of a galley that flies before a gale, and it had struck him like that galley's ram.
The demon's shoulder followed its arm. Narrow though the crevice was, it oozed through it like clay through a potter's fingers. Oeuni cried, "Noen!" Her body writhed with effort, the muscles outlined beneath her thin shirt like cables.
The hook came free. The slab slammed the edge of the floor as the weighted jaw of a rattrap crashes down when the rat pulls at the bait, and it left the demon's arm squirming at Oeuni's feet.
"You all right?" It was Dinnile, panting, sword drawn, leaning over Noen as Noen leaned over Oeuni. Freed from their squares, the rest. sailors and players, clustered around.
"My hand," Oeuni said, gripped the bent iron socket that had held her hook.
Noen said, "Your hand is fine," and touched it to prove it.
"But—"
He took a deep breath, feeling that when he had explained she would want him to explain more, and knowing that he could not. "When you dropped your sword, it was from your left hand. But when you reached into there the first time and brought up that necklace—here it is—on your hook, the hook was on your left hand. It can't be an illusion, because your left hand couldn't have held back the slab; I don't know what it was."
Nordread and Dinnile, Baldy and Marin and a dozen others were all speaking at once, but Noen paid no heed to them. Leaning close to Oeuni, he heard her whisper, "It's right, what they say. I had to choose. Lose my other hand, or the demon would have killed you and Dinnile and everybody. It wouldn't have killed me—it told me that."
Baldy had taken advantage of his small size to penetrate the crowd. "Let me see it," he said, and examined Oeuni's right arm. "Ha!" He tugged at the iron cup. "This is a prop."
Noen grasped him by the shoulders. "What did you say?"
"It's a prop, Captain. I may not be much of a wizard, but I'm a pretty good stage manager, and the properties come under my jurisdiction. That is, we use one just like this in The Pirates of Port Chai. See, the player sticks her hand in it and holds the handle, and it looks like she's lost it. But it comes off. That is, this one won't because it's dented in."
At that moment it did. The hand that emerged from the metal cup was Ler Oeuni' s own, slightly larger than most women's and much harder, though by no means so hard as iron. She flexed her fingers and stared at them, laughing and crying at the same time.
"Cap'n?" It was Su; she and another sailor were holding the tall wizard, one at each arm. (Noen suspected there was a dirk at his back as well.) "Cap'n, this 'un's still here. We asked that tower woman if he was the real 'un, and she said she didn't think so."
Noen turned away, sorry to part from Oeuni's joy. "Well," he snapped, "are you?"
"No," the wizard admitted. His voice was as resonant as ever, and loud enough to be heard over the tumult around them. "If my good wife will but remove my hat and my beard (carefully, please, my dearest, though I think perspiration has somewhat loosened the gum), she can tell you who—"
Nordread's sword clattered to the floor. "Amail!" Her embrace might have broken the ribs of a bear. Noen looked across the room to the white flagstone where the third wizard had stood beside Dinnile. It was empty, save for a single black feather lying upon the graven symbol of a wizard's hat.
•
That night, aboard the Lady of Liavek, Rekkue asked, "Was it Amail Destrop who buried the old wizard?"
Oeuni nodded. "He found the body, and he thought if he made himself up as Xobbas, whoever had killed the real Xobbas might attack him. Then when he heard that the false Xobbas was trying to get the players to go inland, he scared them so much they didn't. Only Lady's captain took the wizard's bait." She paused. "We don't usually think of actors as being brave, but I suppose they are, sometimes."
Marin, who had been leaning on the rail listening to them, said, "I think what Nordread did was braver."
"Who was the wizard?" Rekkue asked. "Did the captain ever find out?"
"Not really," Oeuni told her. "Noen thinks he was a Pardoner who'd found the temple earlier and stowed aboard Lady in Cyriesae because he saw that Destrop's theatrical company would be ideal for staging the shah game. His pet devil had to be fed every day, but he made it spare the players. Of course he raised the storm that brought the ship to Temple Bay, and made sure she went aground. And now I'd better see..." Oeuni glanced toward the quarterdeck, where a midshipman stood watch.
Rekkue wailed, "Please, Oeuni! One more thing, or I'll go stark mad. That statue and the game, I don't understand them at all. How—why did it come out of the wall like that?"
Oeuni paused, looking from the sea to the sky, then at the trim of Lady's sails. "Noen and I, and sometimes Noen and Dinnile, play conventional shah, using a flat board with sides. But there's another game; you pretend the board's a cylinder, that it wraps around the whole world, so to speak. Then a piece that goes off one side diagonally appears in the next row on the other, the way the black sultana did. You see, while we thought we were playing conventional shah, the gods were playing cylindrical shah. I think there's a message there, though I'm not sure I know what it means. Anyway, that's why I left the emeralds around the statue's neck—as a gift for the player, whoever that is."
Marin said, "You were right, and you were right about me too, that night by the fire. You see, I often take female roles, and when I saw Captain Noen thought Nordread really was a man, I couldn't resist showing off."
Oeuni took her hands from the rail and started aft. Marin tried to follow her, but Rekkue caught him by the arm. "Passengers are not permitted on the quarterdeck," she said sternly. "I, however, am off duty."
Marin grinned. "Hello, sailor. New in town?"
"The Ballad of the Quick Levars" by Jane Yolen
(Sung to the tune of "Eel Island Shoals," or, if in an upbeat mood, "Pot-Boil Blues")
'Twas the season of Buds, when the Cat overran
All her banks with a horrible miaou,
That the infamous year of Quick Levars began—
Though to this day no one knows how.
Number one was Azozo the Ancient-of-Days
Who became a Levar as a crone,
And she died the first moment that her antique bum
Touched that cold and implacable throne.
Next Bukko the Baby, still toothless and small,
Whose drools were considered so wise
That even before he had learned how to crawl,
He'd conspired in his own demise.
Then Cruski the Crabby whom nobody liked,
Her unfortunate death no one mourned.
And Denzzi the Deadhead who nonetheless hiked
To a wood against which he'd been warned.
And just a day after, Emmazi the Eager
Was caught in a bedroom that caved
In, and Froz-Factual died of a meager
Supply of the trivia he craved.
Gondo the Ghastly was popped in an oast
As the joke of a baker who drank,
When she tried the same baker to thank.
Oh, the rota is endless; it took a whole year
Of quick deaths and destruction and doom,
Till nary a niche remained empty, I hear,
In the fabulous Levar's Great Tomb.
The bright line of succession by now was quite gray
So the nobles who ruled such affairs
Passed a law that no Levars of less than a day
Could pass on the Great Throne to their heirs.
"The Ballad of the Quick Levars" was a favorite in the dirty drink-holes of Ka Zhir for the half century following the unfortunate incidents touched upon in its endless and scurrilous verses, only eight of which are reproduced here.
The gutteral dialects of Ka Zhir permit no easy rhymes, but rather a slanting reference to assonances. And, of course, before the Year of the Quick Levars, the rulers were known as Levars (pronounced Lay-var), not Levar. The change in pronunciation was suggested by Andrazi the Lucky from one of her many Shift Dreams as a possible way to manipulate luck. In order to attempt a more historically accurate translation, I have used the old pronunciation throughout. Modem readers may find they have to read a line several times in order to apprehend the proper scansion. The eight verses translated above have been tidied up and some of the more base references have been deleted. (Emmazi the Eager's bedroom preferences, for example.)
To be fair, it must be admitted that all of the Levars mentioned existed and were, indeed, part of the horrible death-prone year of 2929. However, Azozo lasted for longer than it took to sit on her throne. She died of heart failure slightly later on in the long investiture ceremony. Age and excitement were too much for her. Bukko did indeed die young, choking on his own rattle, the head of which had been loosened by—some say—a Tichenese provocateur. The unfortunate Cruski was so disliked that no references to her other than her death have been noted. Denzzi, born vacant-eyed, fell off a cliff in the Endless Woods which are endless only to those who do not stay on the path. But it is a base lie to say that Froz, one of the finest minds of his generation, died of a dearth of information. According to the physicians, his bride-to-be threw a rather large tome at his head and it cracked his skull.
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