Kallista

by David Bell

  He had no memory of coming back through the woods to join the others near the river’s mouth, but there he was. The sun had barely moved in the sky and the archers still had their bows stringed.

  “You’re back soon,” said Namun. “Did you see anybody, any Water People?”

  “Luzar, where’s Luzar?”

  “He came back just before you and he’s gone off again with Tessias, to collect something, they said. I’m surprised you didn’t see them on the way.”

  Sharesh got up and walked back to where the trees began. Tessias, and Luzar, came into view, each carrying a heavy-laden basket. Luzar stopped by Sharesh as Tessias walked on to greet the others.

  “Water People spoke to you. Showed the mystery to you.”

  “Did they show you the mystery, Luzar?”

  For the first time, Sharesh saw Luzar smile, but he did not reply.

  They lay side by side on the bow deck, blankets drawn up to the chin against the chill that a clear sky can bring, even after a hot day. Sharesh told Namun what had happened while he was in the woods.

  “What a yarn! You must have been daydreaming. Did Luzar give you anything to drink? You should be careful of him. Don’t you get the feeling he knows more about the Water People and places like this than he’s telling?”

  Sharesh smiled to himself and felt for the pipes at his waist. Tessias had found them at the bottom of his basket, under the leaf-covered parcels of dried boar’s meat. Sharesh had another song now in his store of songs to sing.

  As he was drifting into sleep, Namun spoke to him.

  “Listen, do you know what one of the Alefisia men said to me? He’s the one as lights the beacon when it has to be done. He said he knows nothing about any Keeper.”

  SIKELIA

  “Our two Taphians know the sea lanes to their own island and some way beyond, but neither has made the passage to Sikelia. The headman here is vague about the seas but the fishermen know more. Before his wife made him stay closer to home, one of them served on a cargo ship that made the run to Sikelia and, he says, a trading post on the far shore where his ship picked up copper and obsidian. How far he can be trusted, I do not know but we have nothing but his word to go on and this is what he told me. We put the river mouth directly astern of us, stand well clear of the cape of Akynthera and the weather coast, and hold course all the way to Sikelia: three days sail, less if the weather holds. Lady Mother permitting,” said Potyr, making the gesture of supplication.

  “Take care, Captain, you risk sounding enthusiastic,” said Kanesh. “The sky should stay clear enough tonight for you to take the height of the star.”

  “I have done so already, last night, to set the gauge. It needs only a small change once we have Akynthos astern of us.”

  “With your permission, Sharesh should see it done and learn the skill himself. He is keeping note of our passage every day on the tablets as you instructed him. Writing in the heights of the stars’ times when it is known where the ship is, will one day be of some use should we pass the same way again.”

  “Writing on a clay tablet is better than memory?”

  “It can last longer.”

  “Send him aft when the time comes.”

  “You know the tale about the waters of the river flowing through the sea all the way to the island off Sikelia?” said Kanesh. “Our jars hold some of that water, so we should find the place.”

  Potyr smiled back at Kanesh. “When I can see them, I follow the stars.” He turned to Typhis. “Up anchors, helmsman, let us be on our way.”

  “Look! Over there, no there, near the tall rock with the cave in it,” said Mirtias. “That’s the mast of the last ship that hit those rocks.”

  “They have boiling pools on Akynthos and some with black blood bubbling up,” said Namun importantly.

  “Who told you that? It’s not black blood. It’s the same stuff you use to daub on things to make them watertight.”

  Namun kept quiet but he didn’t believe him. He’d spent enough time pressing the black stuff between the planks of this ship and Naudok had told him where it came from and it wasn’t out of boiling pools. He believed Naudok.

  “He said there’d be Taphian girls at Alefisia,” said the rigger to Kerma, “but there weren’t enough to go round.”

  “There’s always widows in ports. Look for one of them. Never fails.”

  Late in the afternoon of the second day out from Alefisia, Namun called from the bow that he could see land on the horizon. It was the smallest dark streak but certainly land, not a cloud. Potyr felt reassured they were on the right course. The sun sank into the sea ahead sending a final blazing flash into the sky and the first stars began to flicker in the twilight. Potyr sighted his gauge against the star and told Typhis to steer farther to larboard. He looked into the face of the risen moon. She would be full three nights hence. He went into the stern cabin, satisfied that all was as well as could be expected.

  “The headman in Alefisia seemed less than certain of our landfall on Sikelia,” said Kanesh. “He had not heard of Katane. I will see what the Taphians have to say.”

  “I know the narrow sea beyond Taphis,” said Tessias, pulling steadily on his oar, “but I have sailed this passage only once and then I was a only a boy.”

  “What do you remember of it?”

  “A black mountain with fires on its top.”

  “There was that fisherman in the tavern,” said Myrtias. “He was drunk but he said something like that.”

  “I heard him. As far as I could make out, he said steer for the black mountain but don’t go near it. What does that mean? Could be anywhere.”

  Kanesh repeated what he had been told to Potyr. “Where have you seen a black mountain before?” he said. The captain looked at him thoughtfully and slowly nodded his head. They decided there was nothing to do but wait and see what dawn would bring. At the darkest and quietest time of the night they were both called on deck by a report from Sharesh, now at lookout on the bow, and saw a glow in the sky far away ahead of the ship. After a time it faded, then disappeared.

  “Ship on fire,” said the rigger. “Gone under now.”

  “Lord Potheidan save us,” gasped his mate. “Are there pirates in this sea as well?”

  The coast before them stretched as far as they could see in each direction. Fine on the starboard bow stood a high blunt headland, rising inland towards snow-tipped mountain peaks. But directly ahead reared a much greater mountain, black and on fire. Dirty white smoke rose in plumes from its lower slopes and drifted slowly away along the coast to larboard forming a streaming pall, driven by the wind. From the snow-capped summit huge clouds of white smoke mixed with brown billowed high and, caught by the same wind, flowed away in a thick, boiling stream in the same direction as the pall below. Stretching down to the earth from the highest cloud was a dense black aphanitic curtain that blotted out all sight of the land beyond. The ship stopped and wallowed in the waves as the oarsmen left their benches and crowded to the bow to stare in silent amazement at what they saw as the very earth itself ablaze. Suddenly, the summit cloud flashed red as flames climbed through it, raining down black specks as they rose, fell back and died away. The men flinched at the sight and again, moments later, as a faint rumbling sound swept over the ship.

  How like mountains he had seen in Anadolus it was. Their fires had died down long ago and their slopes were green with grass and trees, but the fire never died out completely. It re-kindled itself in another place. “There is our black mountain that the Taphian saw, sure enough,” said Kanesh. “I see now what the fisherman meant by steering for it but not going near it.”

  “We must go near. We need a pilot who knows these seas,” said Potyr.

  “Then Katane is not for us. The place will be choking in that cloud drifting along the coast. We must find anchorage upwind.”

  Luzar stood beside them. “I saw this mountain sleeping, not on fire.” He pointed in a direction fine on the starboard bow. “Good harbou
r there.”

  Kanesh gave Potyr a speculative look. “It seems we have our pilot, Captain, and the harbour is upwind.”

  “For the time being,” replied Potyr. “First, let us see if Tessias remembers this place and if he does, helmsman, get the crew back to their places. Lower sail and alter course to starboard. Our pilot will take us in.”

  Typhis’s bellowed orders soon had the men back to their oars and put a stop to the murmurings of those reluctant to venture close to what for them were clearly the signs of gods, or devils, at work and angry too. Sharesh was a little surprised to find the helmsman’s roar curiously comforting. Luzar already stood beside him on the bow.

  As the ship drew closer to the coast Sharesh could see that between the headland to starboard and the shore they were approaching was a gulf that narrowed away from them.

  “Sail there to another sea,” said Luzar, without looking. “Harbour there.” He pointed dead ahead.

  Closer now, the burning mountain towered over the ship, the shoreline, the sea, everything. Draped below the clouds black dust rained down like a vast sheet, darkening the sky as it slowly fell to earth, covering everything downwind from the mountain’s summit. Luzar piloted the ship into a deepwater cove between a spit of land ending in a rocky island on one side and a wall of white cliffs on the other. There were no other ships in the harbour but on a flat ledge above the shore were several stone and wooden buildings of the kind that usually belonged to a trading post, with a track leading from them down to a narrow black beach. As the oars were back paddled to hold the ship steady for lowering the anchors, a figure came out of one of the huts and after hesitating, made its way to a small boat dragged up on the beach.

  The man paddling the boat was small, squat and very dark-skinned. He was wearing a dirty, ragged tunic and looked as if it had been a long time since his last wash. Namun caught the rope painter thrown up to him and hitched it to the rail. The man raised his arm and Kerma lifted him onto the deck with one hand. He looked round, saw Potyr and Kanesh on the stern deck and went towards them.

  “You come at a difficult time, Captain,” he said in a wheezing voice. To their surprise he spoke in a Keftiu tongue. “Kydona,” said the Captain of Archers in Kanesh’s ear. “I am Kalidas, controller here. What ship are you, sir, with the Lord Potheidan’s horse on your bow? She’s like no other ship I’ve seen hereabouts.”

  “Davina, out of Alefisia and Keftiu before that; a Merida ship. I need water, wine if you have any that is good, and a pilot. Is there such a man here?”

  “Merida? Merida; I know the name. You can fill your jars at a spring round that headland if you take my boat. All the wine has gone. As for a pilot, there’s nobody left here but me. They’ve all gone, because of that.” He jerked his head in the direction of the black mountain. “It’s been going on for days, covering everything in black dust, poisoning the streams, killing off the grass and corn so all the goats and sheep are dying and the grain is lost, choking everybody with its stinking breath. Look at me: I don’t think I’ll ever be clean again. Once this harbour was full of ships, fishing boats and big ships, calling in for supplies, trading anything. They don’t come any more. You’re the first for moons. Everything’s ruined. It was the same last year and the year before that. The people have had enough. Farmers, smiths, fishermen, they’re all moving away to find some land the mountain doesn’t hate.” He stopped and hung his head. When he looked up again there were tears tracing lines through the dust on his face. “What have we done?” he almost wailed. “Why has the Mother done this to us? We’ve sent up our prayers, we’ve made all the sacrifices, our best sheep and a bull – somebody even said we should sacrifice a child, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do that. Nothing! We are not being heard. Thing is,” his voice now a miserable croak, “we don’t know what we’ve done wrong.”

  “The dust is falling on the other side of the mountain,” said Kanesh, not unkindly. “Perhaps the people there are the ones being punished.”

  “The dust falls here when the wind shifts direction. Look at the beach. It’s black now but it used to be clean and as yellow as the crocus. There’s nothing here for you. I advise you to set sail again as soon as you can.”

  “First we will fill the water jars,” said Potyr. “I thank you for the offer of your boat.” He turned to Typhis. “Send some men, helmsman, smartly now. How can we pay you?” he said to the man.

  “Take me with you. There’s nothing left for me here. You can set me down on the far shore. I will look for my people there. I know where they will be going. I can be your pilot. I know the waters of the strait. You cannot follow the coast when the smoke and dust cover it like it does now. You will run aground on one of the reefs. You must brave the strait.”

  ***

  “I want the man Kalidas on the bow with Namun to keep a close watch on him,” said Potyr to Typhis. “He has yet to prove that he is the pilot he says he is.”

  The anchors were raised as soon as it was light enough to make out the difference between sea and sky. The Davina had barely drawn clear of the cove and turned larboard to follow the coast, when the sky astern glowed as brightly as if the sun had risen and a fiery light flashed over the oarsmen, reddening their staring eyes and terror-stricken faces. The sound came next, rumbling and thunderous, making the mast sway and the ship quiver like a nervous deer. She leapt ahead with a jerk as the oarsmen pulled harder and faster than they had ever done, to put the terrible burning black mountain as far behind them as they could. But it stayed there, in their sight, as dawn and daybreak came and went, and all through the day that followed, and the next day and the next, flinging its showers of blazing coals into the sky and streaming its banners of thick dark smoke over the land. Early in the afternoon of that day, as the Davina drew level with the great headland that lay on the other side of the gulf she was entering, Kalidas sent Namun to the stern with a message that their anchorage for the night lay just beyond a spit of land they were approaching.

  “Have the man come aft,” said Potyr to Namun.

  A nervous-looking Kalidas climbed up to the stern deck. ‘We anchor here until the time comes,” he said.

  “There is a good half day of sailing left,” said Potyr. “How long must we wait?”

  “And why,” added Kanesh.

  Kalidas rubbed a grimy hand across his brow and licked dry lips. “Until tomorrow, we must wait here until tomorrow, wait for the current.”

  “We waste time. We have fair weather and the need to flee the burning mountain. We must be on. The sea is calm. What is this current you speak of?”

  Kalidas looked up at Potyr’s austere face. “The current… the lady Mother sends…,” he stammered, lost for the right words. He looked about him and down at the deck below. There he saw something he needed and his face relaxed. He scuttled down the ladder, grabbed a shallow dish the Leptos brothers used to hold live bait, sloshed some water into it and climbed back up the ladder. He held the dish of water out for Kanesh and Potyr to see. He tilted it one way, then the other, spilling out water each time.

  “You see?” he said. “Lord Potheidan sends water from one sea into the other and then back again. Now he sends the water this way. When it turns back, it will be dusk, not enough time to clear the strait before night. You see? We must anchor here. The water will come at dawn tomorrow.”

  At daybreak the Davina stood ready to sail, anchors raised, every man at his oar, Kalidas and Sharesh at the stem post. But it was Luzar who gave the first sign that the Davina should put to sea. Kanesh saw the look in his eyes and put his hand on Potyr’s arm. Typhis had already called out the order to dip oars and pull before Kalidas pointed excitedly out to sea and screamed “Water runs!” The first few strokes of the oars sent the Davina smoothly through the calm water offshore on a heading towards the coast dimly seen across the gulf. Potyr always carefully watched the oarsmen at their work. He knew them to be as good a gauge as any of the movement of the sea, feeling it with their oars
as they did. He saw the strain of hauling fade from their faces and the veins in their neck and arms settle below their skin again. Typhis had not eased the stroke: the ship was being carried along by the sea. Potyr could feel her turning stealthily to larboard as the current took hold, although as yet the water showed no sign that it was at work. Kanesh was watching Luzar who raised his eyes at that moment and looked directly back at him: change course to starboard, aiming off towards the coastline; row hard now across the current before it flows too strongly to resist, the message came. Kalidas’s waving arms quickly thereafter sent the same message, but Potyr had already wasted no time in giving the instructions to Typhis and the men’s backs and faces soon showed how they were feeling the strain. By mid morning the ship had passed the middle of the channel but now the current was running so quickly that, although Typhis and Kerma at the tiller held her head in line with the far coast and the oarsmen worked their hardest, she was slowly but surely losing steering way and being carried past their landfall.