by Andre Norton
’Tamisan!” Starrex’s voice was one to bring her out of the dull anguish of her failure. “This dream, remember, it may not be a usual dream after all. Could another world door be opened?”
“Which world?” At that moment her memories of reading and viewing tapes were a whirl in her head. The voiceless call of the Itter hounds to which this Tamisan was attuned made her whole body cringe and shiver and addled her thinking even more.
“Which world? Any one… think, girl, think! Take a single change, if you must, but think!”
“I cannot. The hounds, aheeee; they come, they come! We are meat for the fangs of those who course the dark runnels under moonless skies. We are lost.” The Tamisan who dreamed slipped into the Mouth of Olava, and the Mouth of Olava vanished in turn, and she was only a naked, defenseless thing crouching under the shadow of a death against which she could raise no shield. She was…
Her head rocked, the flesh of her cheeks stung as she swayed from the slaps dealt her by Starrex.
“You are a dreamer!” His voice was imperative. “Dream now then as you have never dreamed before, for there is that in you which can do this, if you will it.”
It was like the action of that strange-scented air in the ship; her will was reborn, her mind steadied. Tamisan the dreamer pushed out that other, weak Tamisan. But what world? A point, give me but a decision point in history!
“Yaaaah!” The cry from Starrex’s throat was not now meant to arouse her. Perhaps it was the battle challenge of Hawarel.
There was a pallid snout about which hung a dreadful sickening phosphorescence, thrust through the screen of brush. She sensed rather than saw Starrex fire the laser at it A decision, water beating in on me. Wind rising as if to claw us out of the poor refuge to be easy meat for the hunter. Drowning, sea, sea, the Sea Kings of Nath! Feverishly she seized upon that. She knew little of the Sea Kings who had once held the lace of islands east of Ty-Kry. They had threatened Ty-Kry itself so long ago that that war was legend, not true history. And they had been tricked, their king and his war chiefs taken by treachery.
The Ill Cup of Nath. Tamisan forced herself to remember, to hold on that. And, with her choice made, again her mind steadied. She threw out her hands, once more touching Starrex and Kas, though she did not choose the latter, her hand went without her conscious bidding as if he must be included or all would fail.
The Ill Cup of Nath—this time it would not be drunk!
Tamisan opened her eyes. Tamisan, no, I am Tam-sin! She sat up and looked about her. Soft coverings of pale green fell away from her bare body. And, inspecting that same body, she saw that her skin was no longer warmly brown; instead it was a pearl white. What she sat within was a bed fashioned in the form of a great shell, the other half of it arching overhead to form a canopy.
Also, she was not alone. Cautiously she turned somewhat to survey her sleeping companion. His head was a little hidden from her so that she could see only a curve of shoulder as pale as her own and hair curled in a tight-fitting cap, the red-brown shade of storm-tossed seaweed.
Very warily, she put out a fingertip, touched it to his hunched shoulder, and knew! He sighed and began to roll over toward her. Tamisan smiled and clasped her arms under her small, high breasts.
She was Tam-sin, and this was Kilwar, who had been Starrex and Hawarel, but was now Lord of LockNar of the Nearer Sea. But there had been a third! Her smile faded as memory sharpened. Kas! Anxiously she looked about the room, its nacre-coated walls, its pale green hangings, all familiar to Tam-sin.
There was no Kas, which did not mean that he might not be lurking somewhere about, a disruptive factor if his nature held true.
A warm arm swung up about her waist. Startled, she looked down into sea-green eyes, eyes which knew her and which also knew that other Tamisan. Below those very knowledgeable eyes, lips smiled.
His voice was familiar and yet strange, “I think that this is going to be a very interesting dream, my Tam-sin.”
She allowed herself to be drawn down beside him. Perhaps, no, surely he was right.
PART TWO:
SHIP OF MIST
I
Tam-sin, she who had been born Tamisan, the dreamer, stood in the narrow slit of the craig tower. Below the sea washed, tossing a lace of foam up so near that she might lean forward to gather the salt spinning into one hand. This was going to be a wild storm-troubled night. Yet, for all the rage growing in the lash of water below, she felt no fear, rather excitement, as heady as thorson wine, warmed her scantily clothed, pearl-fair body.
Behind her lay the room of her awakening, its nacre-coated walls, its shell bed, its hanging draperies and carpet of green-blue as much a part of the sea world as the people of the Nearer Sea were akin to the element guarding and encompassing their islands. Their sea was life, and what one feared the breath of life?
“My lady…” The voice came drowsily, lazy from that same shell bed, “it would seem that you seek…”
She turned slowly to face the man who still lounged at ease, the silk coverlet half drifting from his body.
“My lord,” she raised her voice to a pitch above the ceaseless song of the waves, “I am remembering Kas.”
His green eyes narrowed and that satisfied content which had been a part of his smile was gone. In his face, this new face, she saw the elements which perhaps only she could see: the stoical repression of Starrex, the bewilderment of Hawarel, those he had been in past and now must still carry in his mind.
“Yes, there is Kas.” Now his voice had lost its first warmth, sounded tired as if he had been awakened from a pleasant half dream to take up once more some burden.
Half dream? Now what held them now was more than any dream. Tam-sin knew dreams; she had been able to summon and dismiss them at her own will, they and the people in them had been but toys with which she could play at desire. Until she had dreamed for Lord Starrex and plunged them both into such a venture as she could not control. Fleeing that she had somehow brought them here: to new identities, new adventures, and doubtless, new dangers. But where was Kas, her Lord’s cousin and his enemy, who had striven to put an end to them both in two times, two worlds, and who must also have been wrenched with them into this, though not in their company?
The man sat up in the bed. His skin was as palely fair as her own. Where the cover lay against him that soft fabric seemed to impart a green reflection to his body. His hair was the red-brown of living seaweed, even as she could see her own in a polished mirror of silver metal on the wall.
“I am Kilwar, Lord of LockNar,” he said slowly, as if to assure himself of the truth of that identification. “What dream have you wrought this time, my Tam-sin?”
“That of the world in which the Ill Cup of Nath came not to the lips of these, our people, Lord.”
“The Ill Cup of Nath, the betrayal of the Sea Kings.” He frowned a little as if it were an effort to remember, not with Kilwar’s memories but those of Starrex. “So that piece of black doing did not engulf Nath?”
“So I desired, Lord.”
He smiled. “Tam-sin, if you can alter the writing of history then you are indeed a mighty dreamer. But I think that I shall find LockNar closer to my taste than was the world of Hawarel. Still, as you have said, there is the matter of Kas. And we shall have no easy dealings with that one. You did pull him with us?”
“We were tight-linked, Lord. We could not have come here was he not drawn with us.”
“But it would seem not so closely,” Kilwar stood up. His body was not as sturdy as that of Hawarel, and the gill pockets on his throat formed a half collar of loose skin. Yet there was about him, bare bodied as he now stood, the same aura of command which had been Starrex’s. “And,” he added, “I do not altogether relish the thought that Kas is not here where I can keep an eye on him. Could he have gone back to the beginning?”
“Not so,” Tam-sin was sure of that. “His dreamer awoke there, before I drew him through. No, he is linked too closely with us.”
&nbs
p; “My lady of power!” He crossed to her in two strides and her body melted against his, joyfully, in a way as if they were designed to do so by the very power which had given them birth. “You are very lovely,” his breath was warm against her cheek. “And you are Tam-sin who has chosen life united with me.”
She surrendered to his caresses, aware that Tamisan, the dreamer, now faded, that she was indeed Tam-sin and he desired her. Within her was a warm content His lips touched her closed eyes gently, right and then left. Then the spell of their closeness was broken by a mournful, hooting call.
“The signal shell…” He loosed his hold upon her. He was no longer lover, but Lord of the hold as he reached for shell-set belt and kilt of scaled skin. She held ready his sword, wrought from one of the huge, murderous saw snouts of a spallen, its toothed edges hidden in a sheath of the spallen’s own tough hide.
As he belted it on, she herself tidied her short, sleeveless robe pulled thread loops about the pearls of its breast fastening, took up her dagger of curved taskan tooth. While they dressed thus, hastily the boom of the shell horn sounded twice more, echoing through rooms carved from the very stuff of the sea cliff.
The part of her which was Tam-sin told her that the summons was such as might be a forewarning of danger. And with that thought came again a wondering concerning Kas and what mischief he might be about.
He had striven with such power as she had hardly been able to meet to kill his cousin during the first dream she had been required to set. With Starrex gone the fortune and power he held would fall to Kas. But in the Ty-Kry Tamisan had first dreamed Kas had failed. Would he find here some more potent threat?
She followed Kilwar from the chamber. The walls beyond lacked the smooth casing of the living quarters, were rather rock, rough and natural, with narrow, twisting inner ways between the larger rooms. They descended steps worn into hollows by centuries of use. And the rock carried through to them the vibration of the waves beating beyond the wall to their left.
Tam-sin knew they were now close to sea level and she was close on Kilwar’s heels as he passed through a tool-smoothed portal into a vast space which was rock roofed overhead, but into which the sea washed, forming a long ribbon between two level areas above the highest reach of the tides. A small ship rode the water there. Though the Sea People were at home in the waters, yet they also needed ships for the transport of their trade, and such a one was this. Men dropped from its deck, leaping expertly to the natural docks between which it now was anchored.
And other men, armed, yet with their swords and water guns still sheathed, saluted Kilwar as he passed through their lines to meet the seamen from the ship. They were all of the Nath, for though Land traders came, those did not use in the inner harbors. Their leader held up his hand in a greeting which Kilwar acknowledged in turn.
Only four of them, that was not a full crew. Yet no more showed from beneath the deck. And there was about them a strain which Tam-sin picked up as easily as if they had come shouting alarm.
She knew that captain, Pihuys. Not a man easily shaken. A hunter of spallen in their own waters was not one to know fear as a side-by-side comrade. Yet that uneasiness she had sensed, it held the substance of fear.
“Lord…” Pihuys spoke that one word and then hesitated, as if what he had to say was such that he could not find the proper words with which to tell it.
‘You have come,” Kilwar moved to drop clan-chiefs grip on the other’s shoulder, “with some news which is dire. Speak, Captain. Do the Land people show their teeth? But that would not rouse one who commanded at the Battle of the Narrows.”
“Land scum?” Pihuys shook his head. “Not in whole truth, Lord. Though there may be some witchery of theirs behind this thing. It is thus…” He drew a deep breath and then spoke, with one word tumbling over the next in his haste to explain.
“We were examining the reefs off Lochack, for there were reports that spallen have come inward to those shallows for some reason. There was the mist as comes then before the true day and in the mist we found a deserted ship. It was one of the Land traders, and its cargo hold was full, sealed. I think that it had drifted from the eastern lands. Salvage it was, for there was nothing living on board. Yet the small boats were all in place. Since the land scum cannot live long in the water they would have taken those.
“Within there was even food from which men had risen hastily yet there were no signs of any battle, nor other trouble, no battering as if a storm had hit them. We thought that Vlasta had smiled on us, the ship being sound in every way and heavy laden with goods. So I left on board four men and we looped a tow to the Talquin.
“The mist continued very thick and, even though we held the ship in tow, we could not see her as we went, only the rope which held her. I had told Riker, he who I left in command on board, to sound the shell at each turn of the sand glass. Three times he sounded; then, Lord, there was silence.
“We hailed and got no answer. Thus we swam back and boarded once again. Lord, my men were gone as if they had never been! Yet if they had taken to the sea there was no reason they would not have come to the Talquin. We found only the shell horn lying on the deck as if dropped.”
“And the ship?”
“Lord, for the second time, I made an evil choice. Wund, who was brother to Riker, and Vitkor, his sword-companion, demanded that I let them take up vigil and discover what manner of strange thing this boat was. And to that I agreed. Once more we were mist-hidden and the horn stopped. Once more the men were gone.” Pihuys opened his hands in a small gesture of helplessness. “So I swore that I would bring in this ship that those of LockNar could examine it. But when we went once more into the Talquin and the mist closed… Lord, it sounds beyond a man’s belief, but the rope went slack and when we pulled it aboard it was cut!”
II
“A Landsman’s ship,” Kilwar repeated thoughtfully. “I know you must have searched her well each time.”
Pihuys nodded. “Lord, any place a man could go within, that we sought. And the cargo hatch was sealed with an unbroken seal.”
“Yet somehow, Captain, there is an answer to your mystery!”
The voice was high pitched and so unpleasant was its tone that Tam-sin looked over her shoulder to where another man had come out upon the cave dock. He walked clumsily, with a sidewise lurch, and his face had a petulant twist. Under that there lay a resemblance to Kilwar. And Tam-sin, with the part memories of this time, knew him, Rhuys, Kilwar’s brother, whose injuries during the winter hunting of two seasons ago left him sour and sharp of tongue.
There was another stir of knowledge within her mind. In the craig castle Rhuys was her enemy. Not openly, but with such an ill will as any sensitive (and above all a dreamer had to cultivate such sensitivity) could read. He did not even glance in her direction now, rather limped on to stand with Kilwar facing the Captain.
“Lord Rhuys,” Pihuys’s voice was far more formal in tone, “I can only tell of what I saw. We searched the vessel from bow to stern; the small boats hung in their lashings, there was naught living aboard.”
“Naught living?” Kilwar echoed those words. “That is said, Pihuys, as if you have some explanation which is not of the living world.”
The Captain shrugged. “Lord, we have lived in, by, and of the sea for all our generations. Yet do we not still come upon mysteries none of us, nor our records, can explain? There are great depths into which our species cannot venture. What may lurk there: who knows?”
“But this,” persisted Rhuys, “is not a tale of the Great Depths, but rather of the surface, and of a Landsman’s ship. They do not deal in any of our mysteries; they fear us.” Tam-sin thought there was a thread of pride in that statement. Perhaps, because he had lost so much in his life, Rhuys clung to the thought that their race was feared by others.
“I tell only what I saw, what I heard, what happened,” Pihuys repeated stolidly. And he did not look in Rhuys’s direction at all, rather made a point of speaking dire
ctly to Kilwar. Rhuys was not greatly cherished within the hold of LockNar; his peevish temper too often flashed to life.
“I would have your chart, Pihuys,” Kilwar said. “Perhaps the ship still floats free. You say the rope was cut, could it have been the work of a spallen?”
Pihuys half turned, gestured to one of his seamen. The man leaped back to the deck of the anchored vessel, returned with a coil of heavy rope slung over his shoulder. The Captain caught at the dangling end and held it out for their inspection. Even Tam-sin, knowing little of the ship’s equipment, could see that end was cleanly cut, and it must have taken a sharp knife or hatchet to accomplish that so easily.
Kilwar ran his finger over the severed end. “This took strength,” he commented, “as well as a sharp edge. Was it cut on board the ship, or when the rope lay between you and it?”
“Close on the ship, Lord, by the measurement,” Pihuys answered at once. “There is no roughage as one would find at a saw-through. No, it was done by a single blow.”
Rhuys laughed spitefully. “It could have been cut by a man who determined that the cargo was worth the risk of losing his comrades. If the Landsmen’s ship was as intact as you say, it could easily be sailed to Insigal which, as all men know, is inhabited by those who are not too honest.”
Pihuys, for the first time, faced Rhuys squarely. “Lord, if there had been any man hidden on board, him we would have flushed out. We know ships and on that one we even sniffed into the bilges. And if it is suggested that my men thought of playing such a trick…” The glare he turned now on Kilwar’s brother was one verging on the murderous.
“Not so, Pihuys.” Kilwar broke in. “No one would suggest that you or your men might be responsible for a ship taken to Insigal so that the salvage came not into our hands.” He was frowning, but he did not glance at his brother.
Tam-sin sighed inwardly. Some time Kilwar would have to see Rhuys for what he was: a soured man, a troublemaker who stirred up many fires and depended upon Kilwar to see that he was not scorched when those burst into open flame. She could urge nothing on her Lord, that she knew. Rhuys was persuasive with Kilwar when he wished, and he hated her. She must allow no wedge to be driven between them.