The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  Just as plainly, Lanius understood him, for he turned red. “Well, yes,” he confessed with no great eagerness. “You were right about that.” He did have integrity; not many men would have admitted as much. But then, with a certain edge of his own, he inquired, “And how was Pelagonia?”

  Grus remembered that he hadn’t named the town in his letters north. He hadn’t wanted to remind Estrilda he was anywhere near it—or near Alca. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Lanius had seen through his ploy; Lanius saw through all sorts of things. For a moment, he thought of talking about the town and not about the witch. But Lanius had given him a straight answer, and he supposed he owed his son-in-law one in return. With a shrug, he said, “It’s dead. I didn’t know if it would be, but it is.”

  He said nothing about Alauda. He most especially said nothing about the baby Alauda would have. Word that he’d been carrying on with a new woman down in the south might eventually reach his wife. Since he hadn’t brought Alauda back to the city of Avornis, Estrilda might not—he hoped she wouldn’t—get too upset about that. He’d been in the field and away from her for a long time, after all. But she wouldn’t be happy if she found out he’d sired another bastard.

  Suddenly worried, he wondered whether Lanius knew about Alauda. The other king gave no sign of it. Lanius wasn’t usually very good at keeping secrets off his face. That eased Grus’ mind—a little.

  And there was the palace, and there, standing in the doorway waving to him, was Estrilda. That eased Grus’ mind, too. His wife kept her own counsel about some things, but not about his other women. She didn’t know about Alauda, either, then, or not yet. Only when Grus was already hurrying up the steps toward her did he wish those last three words hadn’t occurred to him.

  Lanius studied the harvest reports that came into the capital with even more attention than he usually gave them. Ever since that one dreadful winter, he’d worried that the Banished One would wield the weather weapon once again, and wanted to be as ready as he could in case the exiled god did. This year, though, he also eyed the news from the south with unusual attention.

  It was every bit as bad as Grus had warned him it would be. Half the dismal harvest reports from the regions the Menteshe had ravaged asked for grain and fodder to be sent to towns whose governors insisted their populace would go hungry and animals would starve if they didn’t get that kind of help.

  Grus examined the reports from the south, too. He’d seen what was going on down there with his own eyes, and was grim about it. “We’ll have hunger,” he said bluntly. “I’ll thank Queen Quelea for her kindness if we don’t have famine. And if the nomads keep coming up over the Stura year after year, I don’t know what we’ll do. They hurt us badly.”

  “Didn’t we hurt them, too?” Lanius asked.

  “I hope so,” Grus said. “I hope so, but how can I be sure? They’re so cursed hard to get a grip on.”

  “We drove them back over the Stura,” Lanius said.

  “No.” Grus shook his head, as relentlessly precise as Lanius was himself most of the time. “We drove them back to the valley of the Stura. They went over by themselves. If Ulash hadn’t chosen that moment to drop dead, we would have had another big fight on our hands.”

  “I do wonder what’s happening on the far side of the river,” Lanius said. “Sanjar or Korkut? Korkut or Sanjar? How will the Menteshe choose? How long will it take them?”

  “How much trouble will we be in once they do?” Grus was also relentlessly practical.

  Since Lanius preferred not to dwell on trouble, he asked, “How did Pterocles fare against the nomads’ wizards?”

  “Fair,” Grus said, and then shook his head, correcting himself. “No—better than fair. If he hadn’t woken up during that one night attack the Menteshe tried to bring off, it would have done us much more harm. Oh!” He shook his head again. “He also says he’s full of new ideas about how to cure thralls.”

  “Does he?” Lanius wished he could have sounded more excited. As he’d seen in the archives, Avornan wizards had been full of new ideas about how to cure thralls ever since the Menteshe sorcerers started creating them. The only trouble was, very few of the new ideas did any good. “And what are they?”

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you,” Grus answered. “I never even asked, not in any detail. I don’t care how he does what he does, though I wouldn’t mind watching him try. All I care about is whether he can do it.”

  How fascinated Lanius almost as much as why. He almost asked the older man how he could be so indifferent to it, and why. After a moment’s hesitation, though, he decided not to. A straightforward insistence on results also had its advantages.

  Lanius did say, “You wouldn’t mind watching him? You really think he has a chance to bring this off?”

  “I think he thinks he had a chance to bring it off,” Grus said, and Lanius smiled at the convolution. His father-in-law went on, “And I think he’s earned the chance to try. How are we worse off if he fails?”

  He’d intended that for a rhetorical question, but Lanius had no trouble finding a literal answer for it. “How are we worse off? Suppose the Banished One kills him and the thralls try murdering us again. That would be worse, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maybe a little,” Grus allowed. Lanius yelped indignantly. Grus said, “We’ll be as careful as we can. You made your point there, believe me.”

  “When will the wizard try?” Lanius asked.

  “When he’s ready,” Grus answered with a shrug. “He has to have all his spells ready before he begins. If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t even try. You’re right about that—this could be one of those things where trying and failing is worse than not trying at all. Or do you look at it differently?”

  “No, I think you’ve got it straight,” Lanius said at once. “Throwing rocks at the Banished One isn’t enough. We have to make sure we hit him. We have to make sure we hurt him.”

  He listened to himself. He sounded bold enough. Did he sound like a fool? He wouldn’t have been surprised. Could he and Grus and Pterocles really hurt Milvago’s plans? We’d better be able to, Lanius thought. If we can’t, we’re going to lose. Avornis is going to lose.

  It was more than a week later that Grus hauled Lanius off to the chamber where the thralls were kept. “Where were you?” Grus asked irritably while they were on the way. “I looked for you for quite a while, and it was only luck we ran into each other in the hall here.”

  Lanius had been sporting with Zenaida. He didn’t feel like admitting that to Grus. He just shrugged and answered, “Well, you’ve found me. Pterocles is ready?”

  “He says he is,” Grus told him. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

  “So we will,” Lanius said. “One way or the other …”

  Half a dozen armed guards brought a thrall from the room where the not-quite-men were kept to the chamber next door. The guards looked scornful, plainly wondering why Grus had ordered out so many of them to deal with one unarmed fellow who hadn’t much more in the way of brains than a goat. The thrall glanced around with the usual dull lack of curiosity of his kind.

  No matter how dull the thrall seemed, Lanius eyed him suspiciously. The Banished One could be peering out through those almost unblinking eyes. Pterocles was giving the thrall that same sharp scrutiny. The haggard expression the wizard wore said he knew the risk he was taking. Lanius nodded to him. He wouldn’t have wanted Pterocles to try to free the man from thralldom without bearing in mind the danger of failure.

  “Are you sure you’re ready?” Grus asked.

  “I’m sure. We’re here to find out whether I’m right, which is not the same thing,” Pterocles answered. “I think I am, Your Majesty. I aim to—” He broke off. “No, I won’t say what I aim to do, not while this fellow’s ears may pass it on to the Banished One. I’ll just go ahead and try the sorcery.”

  At first, whatever he was doing didn’t seem much like magic at all. He stepped over to a window and took a small
crystal on a silver chain from a pouch on his belt. Idly, he began to swing the crystal back and forth. It sparkled in the sunlight streaming in through the window. The glitter and flash drew Lanius’ eyes to the crystal. He needed an effort of will to pull them away.

  Looking at the thrall helped keep Lanius from looking at the crystal. The thrall didn’t look at the king. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, following the swinging, flashing chunk of clear rock.

  “You are an empty one,” Pterocles said quietly. “Your will is not your own. You have always been empty, your will never your own.”

  “I am an empty one,” the thrall repeated. His voice sounded empty—eerily inhuman, all emotion and feeling washed from it. “My will is not my own. I have always been empty, my will never my own.”

  “Queen Quelea’s mercy,” Grus whispered to Lanius. “Just listen to what the wizard’s done.”

  “What do you mean?” Lanius whispered back.

  “I’ve heard plenty of thralls down in the south,” Grus answered. “They can talk, a little, but they don’t talk as well as that, not usually they don’t. Pterocles has managed something special to get even that much out of this fellow.”

  “I don’t know,” Lanius said dubiously. “I think the thrall was just echoing the wizard.”

  Pterocles waved impatiently at the two kings. Lanius nodded and fell silent. Grus looked as though he wanted to say something more, but he too subsided when Pterocles waved again. The sorcerer kept on swinging his shining bit of crystal. The thrall’s eyes kept following it. It might have been the only thing in all the world with meaning for the filthy, scruffily bearded man.

  Softly, Pterocles asked, “Do you want to find your own will? Do you want to be filled with your own self?”

  “I want to find my own will,” the thrall droned. “I want to be filled with my own self.” Did he understand what he was saying? Or was he only parroting Pterocles’ words? Lanius still thought he was, but the king had to admit to himself that he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “I can lift the shadow from your spirit and give you light.” Pterocles sounded confident. How many Avornan wizards over the years, though, had sounded confident trying to cure thralls? Many. How many had had reason to sound confident? Few. No—none. None yet, anyhow. Pterocles went on, “Do you want me to lift the shadow from your spirit and give you light?”

  “I want you to lift the shadow from my spirit and give me light.” By what was in his voice, the thrall still wanted nothing, regardless of the words he mouthed. Or was that so? Buried under the indifference, was there a terrible longing struggling to burst free? For an instant, Lanius heard it, or thought he did. Though he doubted himself again in the very next heartbeat, a sudden surge of hope warmed him.

  “I will do what I can for you, then,” Pterocles said.

  “Do what you can for me, then,” the thrall said. Pterocles blinked, then grinned enormously. Lanius realized the wizard hadn’t expected the thrall to respond there. If the man did, even if the response was just another near-echo, wasn’t that a sign he was trying to escape the shadow on his own? Lanius dared hope it was, anyhow.

  Pterocles began to chant, very softly, in a very old dialect of Avornan. Lanius fancied himself a scholar, but even he had trouble following what the wizard said. Beside him, Grus looked altogether bewildered.

  Pterocles also kept swinging the crystal in the sunbeam. It cast rainbows on the walls of the chamber—more and more rainbows by the moment. The chant went on and on. It got more insistent, though no louder. Ever more rainbows sprang into being—far more than a single bit of crystal had any business extracting from an ordinary sunbeam.

  Suddenly, the wizard said, “Let them be assembled.” Lanius understood that very clearly. Pterocles made a pass, and all the rainbows, still glowing, came off the walls and began to spin around the thrall’s head. Lanius exclaimed in wonder—no, in awe. Those same two qualities also filled Grus’ voice. They were watching both the beautiful and the impossible. Lanius couldn’t have said which side of that coin impressed him more.

  Even the thrall, who was supposed to be hardly more than a beast, took notice of what was going on around him. He reached up with his right hand, as though to pluck one of the spinning rainbows out of the air. Was that awe on his dull face? Lanius would have had a hard time claiming it wasn’t.

  The king couldn’t see whether the swirling bands of color went around the thrall’s hand, whether they slipped between his fingers, or whether they simply passed through his flesh. In the end, what did it matter? His hand did them no harm, which was all that counted.

  “Let them come together!” Pterocles called out in that archaic dialect of Avornan. And come together the rainbows did. Instead of swirling around the thrall’s head, they began passing into it. For a moment, even after they entered his flesh, they kept their brilliance, or so it seemed to Lanius’ dazzled eye.

  “Ahhh!” the thrall said—a long, involuntary exclamation of wonder. His eyes opened very wide. By then, Lanius had thought himself as full of awe as he could be. He found out he was wrong. Unless his imagination had altogether run away with him, the thrall’s eyes held something that had never been in them before. They held reason.

  Grus said it in a slightly different way—he whispered, “By Olor’s strong right hand, that’s a man there”—but it meant the same thing. If this wasn’t a cured thrall, maybe there never would be one.

  Little by little, the rainbows faded. No—the rainbows became invisible from the outside. Lanius was convinced that, in some way he could not fully fathom, they went on swirling and spinning inside the thrall’s mind, lighting up all the corners over which darkness had lain for so long.

  Chief proof of that was the way the thrall himself reacted. Tears ran down his grimy cheeks. He seized Pterocles’ hand and brought it up to his mouth and kissed it again and again. “Good,” he said, and, “Thank you,” over and over. He didn’t yet have all the words a man might have, but he had the feelings behind the words. The feelings, up until this moment, might as well have floated a mile beyond the moon.

  Pterocles turned to Grus. “Your Majesty, what I have said I would do, I have done.” He bowed, then seemed to remember Lanius was there and bowed to him, too. “Your Majesties, I should say.”

  “You have done it.” Grus still took it for granted that he was the one to speak for Avornis. “But the next question is, how hard is the spell? Can other wizards learn it and use it in the field?”

  “I don’t see why not, Your Majesty,” Pterocles answered. “Putting the spell together, seeing what had to go into it—that was hard. Using it?” He shook his head. “Any halfway decent wizard ought to be able to do that. I’d like to experiment with the rest of the thralls here in the palace to be sure, but we’ve seen what can happen.” He pointed to the man he’d just cured.

  “Yes,” Grus said.

  “Yes,” Lanius echoed. The two kings looked at each other and nodded. With any luck at all, they had a weapon they could use against the Menteshe if Avornan armies ever went south of the Stura. Avornis had been looking for a weapon like that for a very long time. Lanius asked, “Do you want to cure those other thralls now? How wearing, is the spell?”

  “It’s not bad at all, Your Majesty,” Pterocles replied. “I could do more now, if you like. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to wait a day or two instead, so I can incorporate what I’ve learned just now into the spell. I think I can make it better and simpler yet.”

  “Good. Do that, then.” Lanius spoke with the voice of royal command. Grus didn’t contradict him. Even though he knew Grus could have, for a little while he felt every inch the King of Avornis.

  “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” Someone pounded on the door to Grus’ bedchamber. He opened his eyes. It was still dark. Beside him, Estrilda stirred and murmured. The pounding went on. “Come quick, Your Majesty!”

  “What’s going on?” Estrilda asked sleepily.

  “I don’t kno
w, but I’d better find out.” Grus sat up in bed. “If it won’t wait for daylight, it usually isn’t good news.” He raised his voice and called, “Quit that racket, by Olor’s teeth! I’m coming.” The pounding stopped.

  When Grus went to the door, he went sword in hand, in case whoever waited there wasn’t an ordinary servant. But, when he opened the door a crack, he recognized the man. The servant said, “Come with me, Your Majesty. It’s the thralls!”

  That got Grus’ attention, as no doubt it was calculated to do. “Take me to them,” he said at once. “What’s happened?”

  “You’d better see for yourself, Your Majesty,” the servant answered. Grus swore under his breath. He might have known the man would say something like that.

  They hurried through silent corridors lit only by guttering torches set in every third sconce. From that, and from the feel of the air, Grus guessed it was a couple of hours before dawn. He yawned as he half trotted after the servant, the sword still in his hand. The mosaic tiles of the floor were cold against his bare feet.

  Around the chamber where the thralls were kept, all the sconces held torches, and all the torches blazed brightly. The door to the chamber stood open. Grus stopped in his tracks when he saw that. “Oh, by the gods!” he said. “Have they gotten loose?” That could be a deadly dangerous disaster.

  But one of the guards standing in the hallway outside the open door shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. They’re in there, all right.”

  “Then what’s happened?” Grus demanded.

  The guard didn’t answer. Neither did any of his comrades or the servant who’d fetched the king. Muttering, Grus strode forward. The stink of the thralls’ room hit him like a slap in the face. Doing his best to ignore it, he walked in … and found the last two thralls brought north from the Stura lying dead on the floor.

  They had strangled each other. Each still had his hands clenched on the other’s throat. The chamber was no more disarrayed than usual. By all the signs, the thralls had both decided to die and taken care of the job as quickly and neatly as they could. But, unless Grus was very wrong, the thralls hadn’t decided any such thing. The Banished One had.