by Jan Siegel
Fern said nothing, unconvinced.
She knew she had traveled one of these subterranean passages before, on the day of her arrival, and it ought to worry her that she had no memory of such a journey, no recollection of carrying either torch or lantern; but it was too late now for minor anxieties. Even the confusion in her head seemed trivial now. In front and below she saw the paler slot of an opening, not daylit but filled with a lighter gloom, gray against black. They emerged at the back of a store, apparently untenanted, fumbling between suspended nets and tumbled lobster pots toward the exit. Outside, it was dim with nightfall or stormcloud: lamps and cressets flung a ragged glow across the quayside, light flickered on dark water. There were people on the wharf, drunken mariners looking for ships, fleeing citizens offering preposterous sums for their fare to the mainland, a smattering of beggars and thieves who took their charity or snatched their purses, only to enjoy a final taste of meaningless prosperity. “We should have picked up some of those jewels,” said Rafarl. “It would have made Ipo feel less of a mug for waiting.”
“If he’s waited,” said Fern. “Here—” she pulled him to a halt “—take this. I don’t need it now.” She drew off the chain, hung it around his neck. Her smile shivered. “There is no jewel in Atlantis worth more.”
“You may need it,” Rafarl protested. “Besides, I have no Gift to use it.”
“You have now,” said Fern. “My Gift to you.” She felt that this was significant, symbolic or essential, a part of some greater plan which she could not see, only sense. The Hermit had read fate in the stars but the stars were obscured now and she must read without light, by touch. “It might help you—or protect you.”
“What about you? Don’t you need help and protection?” There was sarcasm in his voice, a mockery born of bewilderment and emotional quandary.
“I have your mother’s veil,” she remembered, taking it off as she spoke, binding it round her as Uuinarde had done. She did not mention the nymph or her death: it was too near, too painful, too pointless.
They hurried along the quay, almost running now, past uncoiling cables, unfurling sails—the shouting and the pleading, the orders and the panic—looking for a boat that might have gone long before.
In the corridor of the Rose Palace, the body of Ixavo lay inert on the floor, a snake of blood winding down its neck and across the pristine marble. Presently, the broken head jerked up, the open eyes focused. Awkwardly, like a puppet controlled by an invisible and unskilled puppeteer, it got to its feet.
The Norne was there. The mainsail was unsheaved, trailing from the yard, swelling and sagging in the erratic wind which scurried round the harbor. Random gusts hustled those vessels still at their moorings, flaring or extinguishing every unshielded lamp. The rigging vibrated with an uneasy music, a pervasive hum rising to the whine of a hundred banshees. Waves slapped at the jetty, breaking into gashes of spume. Ipthor was waiting in the stern: yellow teeth gleamed in his smile, brighter than his eyes. Beyond him Fern saw the shoulders of Gogoth and a dozen unknown faces—faces wan as tallow or tobacco-dark, hook-nosed or broken-nosed, hairless or stubble-jawed, one very old, one very young, marked with fear, bravado, slyness, rashness—but all watchful, all, in that instant, watching her. “So you found her,” sighed Ipthor. “Passengers are paying for deck space in unstamped gold, or with the signets of their ancestors, or the jewels of their wives. Someone offered me an emerald as big as my fist: I would have accepted it, but I think it was glass. Must we take her along?”
“I’ve paid,” said Fern, curiously unperturbed, and: “She’s paid,” said Rafarl. “The ransom of Atlantis would not cover the price of her fare.”
“Not funny,” snapped Ipthor.
“Not a joke,” said Rafarl. He swung Fern down into Gogoth’s arms, vaulting across the gap after her. A handful of would-be refugees, seeing them embark, hastened along the wharf to join them, but the motley crew had already sprung into action, unanimous if not coordinated, unexpectedly competent. Mooring-lines were jettisoned, hands seized the oars, impelling the Norne toward open water. A woman on the quayside was holding out a small child, infant or toddler: Fern reached out to her, responding mechanically, only to be restrained by Ipthor. “No,” he said. “We can’t take the extra weight.”
“A baby?”
“They should get to high ground. They’ll be safer there.”
“Would you have taken him,” she accused, “for a necklace of diamonds?”
“Of course. I could always throw the brat overboard. Don’t be stupid: he’s better off where he is. Our chances aren’t good.” He added, pointedly: “We left it too late.”
They were well out into the harbor now. The sheer walls of the prehistoric crater reared up, an encircling barricade against any invasion, though no such eventuality had been feared for many long centuries. The pool of sky above was obliterated, lost behind all-smothering cloud: the stars were asphyxiated, the moon drowned. The only light in the whole world seemed to come from their own lanterns and the lamps along the receding wharf, their tattered glimmer initiating a brief, futile struggle against the overpowering dark. The Norne felt suddenly very alone. The few ships riding at anchor out in the bay skittered nervously in the wayward surges of a sea normally calm and still. No one else was preparing to leave. As Fern stared back toward the quay she saw a tall figure materialize and stand close to the edge. She could distinguish little at that range but she thought the head was shaved. “Raf!” she called. Her tone was barely above a whisper but he heard—heard and recognized the note of not-quite-panic, compelling as a scream. He passed the helm to a companion and joined her, Ipthor at his side. The figure on shore was moving now at something between a swift walk and a kind of gliding run. Its legs swung so fast they appeared almost to blur. He turned onto a wooden jetty where a galley lay in wait, an ocean-going bireme with its oars shipped and single sail bundled against the yard. They saw him spring down onto the deck, saw the mooring-ropes unloop from the bollards, the double row of oars extruded and dipping into the water. The ship crawled away from the jetty like a huge millipede. Cressets flamed in prow and stern: a ruddy glow cupped the hairless skull of its solitary occupant. “There must have been slaves already chained in the hold,” Ipthor said uncertainly, and: “He’s dead,” said Rafarl. “I killed him. You saw he was dead.”
“The spirit that drives him isn’t human,” Fern said. “There’s something else in there, something . . . darker. Very old. Very strong. Empty. Evil is always empty. It isn’t finished with him yet.”
She added: “It doesn’t need slaves, only oars. It has a power beyond the Gift.”
“How fast can he go?” asked Rafarl, but the question was answered for him as the galley accelerated toward them, thrusting a phosphorescent wake through the water. He was back at the helm in a few strides, using the vocabulary of the street to exhort his crew to greater effort. Fern turned to watch him for a moment—just a moment: his hair flaring in the wind of their passage, the shirt whipped around his thin back. A moment to hold on to, to fill her eyes forever. She said to Ipthor: “Tell him—,” but she could think of nothing for him to say, nothing but goodbye, and that was the one thing she wanted to leave unsaid. This was their third final parting, and she knew it was final indeed, but she had no time to think about it, no time to hurt.
“What can you do?” Ipthor said, sensing her resolution, his expression torn between doubt and skepticism.
“I’m the one Ixavo wants. You know that.” He wants the key. But by the time he knows I haven’t got it, it should be too late.
“You’ll be killed.”
“It doesn’t signify,” she said impatiently. “Not now.” There was a world of meaning in that now. Not NOW. Here at the end of things.
She swung her leg over the gunwale. He removed the knife from his waistband—a big ugly knife, notched and re-sharpened, serviceable and mean—and thrust it into hers. No more words passed between them. She did not look back at Rafarl
—all the stories say, you must never look back—only smiling at Ipthor, in the millisecond before she jumped. She thought: This is my friend—thoughts are far swifter than speech—and then the water rushed over her, colder than before, and when she resurfaced the Norne was some distance away, entering the channel under the bridge of stone, and the bireme was almost on her, the plunging oars dangerously close. She tried to evade them but the ship was too near: even as the blades lifted clear of the water she was swimming beneath them, under a canopy of oars, and in a moment they would come crashing down on her—but the canopy was raised, and in a few strokes she was at the stern, and Ixavo threw her a rope and hauled her up while she clung on with sliding hands, smashing ankle and knee against the side of the ship.
“I knew you’d come to me,” he said. His physical deterioration had affected his voice: the grainy tone had become a scrape, and there was an echo behind it as if it were resounding in some vast hollow space. “I called you, and you came.”
She had not heard him call, even in her mind. She tried not to look too closely at him but she could not avoid seeing the caked blood running down from his scalp and the way his disfigurement appeared redder and angrier, perhaps inflamed, as if the very flesh had boiled, bubbling against the bone. He turned, striding for’ard; his lifted hand loosed the huge sail; the ropes grew taut and thrummed; the oars, briefly eluding his control, slipped in the rowlocks. It was as if the entire ship were a living organism and he was the brain commanding its musculature and its motion. Yet he was clumsy, his attention distracted by her presence. As they passed under the bridge the Norne was already well ahead, breasting the wild sea beyond. Ixavo had lost interest in pursuit. She realized that the more power was transmitted through his mind, the less he seemed able to think. As if the strength that drove him was destroying his physique, overloading his cerebrum. From the back the slash in his head was all too visible: his skull looked misshapen around it and the ripped skin was peeling away from the wound, but very little fluid oozed out. She thought she could see the pale glint of bone in the gap.
The sail filled; beyond the bridge sky and sea opened out. The waves were rising, their spines curving upward and then sinking down again like restless monsters circling the ship. Great siege-towers of cloud were advancing out of the east; a long drumroll of thunder attended them, battered to and fro across the sky like an echo in a narrow gorge. Livid flashes played around the summit of the clouds: double-pronged lightning stabbed below. One struck the massive natural arch behind them: there was a rending crack, and the bridge that had stood since Atlantis was made plummeted seaward, vanishing in a soaring sheet of spray. The shock-wave, rushing athwart contrary currents, swept them on; in front she glimpsed the Norne again, lifted on its keel, teetering on the crest of a breaker. She had grasped the ship’s side to maintain her balance but Ixavo seemed to have no problem, swaying slightly from foot to foot to hold his own against the tilting deck. It was almost as if he was not standing on the deck but simply resting on it, sustained by some other equilibrium, merely simulating his response to gravity. “Steady the helm!” he called back to her. “I need everything to fill the sail. Steady it. Use the Lodestone.” And: “What’s the matter with you? You have the Gift. Use it now!”
She didn’t react, didn’t answer. Ahead of her on the fore-deck the helm spun out of control. He rounded on her, crossing the space between in three long paces: the ship lurched but he didn’t even stumble. “Do you want to ruin us?” His voice was a snarl that seemed to come from many throats. A lightning flash illumined her with glaring clarity: over her bodice, only the wet veil clung to her chest. For an instant she saw his face convulsed; his eyes appeared to be full of blood. “What have you done with it?” he shrieked, seizing her by the neck, shaking her as if to rattle the key from its hiding place among her bones.
“I lost it when I dived in the sea. I threw it away. I gave it away. You’ll never have it!”
He thrust his face closer: the lightning showed his skin green with death, his eyes red without iris or pupil, blind with blood. “You’re my creature—” the words were spoken through his voice, not with it, in a whisper deeper than the storm “—you cannot betray me. Ten thousand years in the future I put my thumb-mark in your mind. Your strength is too new: you could never erase it.” His blind gaze was groping in her brain like a ray of dark, probing, stabbing—recoiling at last unrewarded. “He did this, didn’t he? Caracandal the charlatan—Caracandal the dispossessed—he touched the key and the Stone paid him in power. But I’ll take it yet and see him damned. Where is it? Tell me, or I’ll split your mind open like a ripe fruit, I’ll spill out your thoughts like seed. You gave it away—is that it? To the vagabond—the vagabond sailing that flimsy carrarc ahead. The vagabond!” He flung her aside and turned, crying to the ship in the many tongues of the sea, the scream of birds long extinct, the booming groan of the kraken stirring, the howl of tempests that raged in the ages before Man. A great wind bellied the sail, straining at the halyards: the waves gaped into a trough before them, the clouds arched into a tunnel above. Fern was sprawled half stunned against the boards but she pulled herself onto hands and knees and crawled to the ship’s side. The deck no longer swayed: drawing on all his power, Ixavo held the ship suspended, every plank, every rope shuddering with the force that drove it onward. Closer and closer to the wave-tossed, storm-beleaguered shape of the Norne. But Fern had gone beyond all feelings now save one: the urge to win. Against fate, against Ixavo, against whatever demon inhabited him. The impetus that had carried her through the past few days—something often little more than a reflex, instinctive as programming—had hardened, knuckling itself into a resolve. Her head spun and her physical strength was almost gone but another strength rose in her that was more than physical, clearing her brain, tensing her sinews. A strength that was neither the Stone nor the Gift, but only her . She tugged Ipthor’s knife from her waistband and hacked at one of the halyards anchoring the sail.
The knife was sharp, the rope taut: it snapped almost at once. The sail whipped free and was rent between stormwind and werewind, one useless shred flying like a banner while the other wrapped itself around the rigging. Ixavo’s cry of fury was the raptor’s screech, the clamor of primordial sea-beasts —but it did no good. Without the sail, the power had nothing to take hold of, no instrument to control. Will alone could not propel a vessel of that size through such a sea. The walls of the trough collapsed, reassembling into rocking heights on which the ship bucked like a wild horse. Ixavo, his power flagging, clutched at the mast, trying to bind himself to it with his sash. Something must have struck his head: the wound had opened wider and a section of his scalp was hanging loose, like a piece of ripped cloth. Fern held on to severed rope and sodden timber, eyes narrowed against the splashback of incessant waves, peering ahead through a blackness of spray, wondering in which direction ahead lay. And then they were lifted up, and there was a second, less than a second, when the lightning showed her the Norne, far away now, careening from wave-peak to wave-peak, running with the true wind. They’ll make it, she thought, they’ll ride out the storm, I’ve won—but the ship dived down and the Norne was lost to view, and even the lightning was blotted out. High above, the arching clouds had bowed into a vault, the darkness had turned from black to a somber red. She saw the spire of a tornado reaching down from the rim of the cloud-vault, but its outline was oddly fixed, unwavering, and there was another away to her left, like gigantic fangs scything toward the sea, and the storm-tunnel had become a throat, half as big as the sky, and they were being sucked into it in a vast mouthful of ocean. Ixavo screamed, a human scream— The Nenheedra! The Nenheedra has woken!—and his hands tore at the knots he had made, but the flesh was slipping from his skull and his fingers would no longer coordinate. Fern saw an enormous globe of moisture, darker than rain, dropping toward her: it struck the deck inches from her foot, shearing through the planks, leaving a hole whose charred edges seemed to smoke even in the wet. And
then—as in an occult room beyond the reach of memory—she was soaring up and up, the sea was rising through the sky, the tempest fell away beneath. The great Snake reared its head above cloud and lightning, slowly closing its yawning mouth, and the ocean streamed in waterfalls from its jaw. The ship listed and Fern half tumbled, half plunged over the side, and was swept away—away and away—eluding the descending fangs, borne over the lipless jaw, falling endlessly through the turmoil of the sky. Her last gleam of thought was a fleeting exultation, because she had evaded both demon and serpent, and she would die in the Sea.
Epilogue
The Unicorn
There was something pressing against her cheek, a hard smooth surface, faintly textured. She thought about it for a while and realized she was lying on her side, and the hard smoothness was beneath her; when she opened her eyes she could see it stretching away, shining dimly silver in the darkness. She had the impression of more light above, and the shadows of unseen mountains, and low waves breaking over her, though she did not seem to be wet. And then she knew where she was. She sat up, and the endless beaches at the margin of being extended on either hand, curving into infinity, and every star in the universe crowded the midnight sky. She inhaled the glittering air, listening to the breathing of the sea and the hissing of the stars. Looking down, she saw she was dressed in rags; between them her bare legs shone like pearl. How she came to be there, or why, was not so much unknown as unimportant. She was there, and in being there she was herself, nameless and eternal. A cool peace filled her. When he came, she knew she had been waiting for him. He nuzzled her with his nose; his horn gleamed more brightly than her starlustered limbs. Then suddenly he tossed his head, and his dark eyes were wild with hurt. Unicorns love jealously: they will not share. He would have run from her but she sprang to her feet and wound her arms around his neck. “Stay for me,” she said, “once more, just once more. Then I will let you go.” She mounted: he bucked and reared, but her hands were meshed in his mane, and she held on. Then he leaped away, streaking along the sand, and the night streamed around them. “Take me home,” she said. The stars frayed into long tassels of light, and the world glimmered into nothingness, and when the nothingness had faded the sun was shining, and the grass was green beneath his hooves.
