by David Drake
Liane put a hand on Garric's shoulder and lifted herself close to his ear. “The people in some of those boats aren't human,” she murmured. “There's fur on their faces.”
Guessing from the number of shelters, about a thousand humans lived in this twilight world. Perhaps a hundred had come out to meet the castaways. A similar number waited beside the pair of driftwood thrones standing in front of the largest enclosure, where a bronze gong hung from a gibbet-like crossbar.
“We've made a good haul, Rodoard!” Othelm cried. “This oar's seasoned oak, and there's a lot of iron in the straps, too!”
On the thrones sat a huge man and a statuesque woman who must be in her forties. She was still handsome, but there was a hardness around her eyes that revolted Garric at an instinctual level.
“So, a good haul for our beachcombers this time,” the man, Rodoard, said. “Come closer, boy.”
Garric stepped forward. “Stay close,” he murmured to his friends.
Rodoard wore several layers of silk and velvet clothing. The fabrics were sea-stained and muddy, and the assembled colors would have been hideous even in the sun's pure white light. Real cloth meant wealth in this place; that's all that mattered to Rodoard.
Metal meant wealth also. Rodoard wore a very serviceable short sword, and before him on the brocade-covered arms of his throne was a short-hafted polearm whose heavy blade was sharpened on the inner curve. There was a spiked hook on the back of the weapon.
“Demi-guisarme,” Garric whispered, mouthing the name Carus whispered in his skull. A clumsy double-handful that only a fool would carry in a real fight...
Garric stopped ten feet from the thrones. “I'm Garric or-Reise,” he said loudly. “These are my friends Tenoctris and Liane os-Benlo. We've been shipwrecked.”
The enthroned woman stood and walked toward Garric. With a start of horror, he realized that her long dress was made of human finger bones: dried, drilled through the marrow, and strung on thin cords. They rattled faintly as the woman moved. She gave him a lazy smile.
“Leave him be, Lunifra,” Rodoard said with what Garric heard as a tinge of irritation. “Later, perhaps. If he's a good boy.”
A score of powerfully built guards stood close to the thrones. They carried both swords and spears, and several of them wore bits of armor as well. Even they watched the woman with disquiet.
Lunifra gave a throaty chuckle. She put her hands on her pelvis and pumped her hips in a gesture Garric found as disgusting as if she'd spit in his face. Standing so close, she stank of death.
“You're a sturdy-looking fellow, Garric,” Rodoard said in a jocular tone which wouldn't have convinced even an infant of the ruler's good intentions. “We'll have use for you when we go after the Ersa for good and all. For now, though, you have to give over your sword and your woman. I decide who gets treats here in the Gulf.”
“I'm from Haft,” Garric said. He didn't raise his voice. “We don't own people there.”
“Forget about Haft!” Rodoard said, leaning forward as his right hand tightened on the polearm's shaft. He was probably in his late twenties; almost as big as Cashel and, though puffy in the face and middle, beyond question a physically powerful man. “Forget about all the world you knew, because there's no way back to it. You're in the Gulf, now, and King Rodoard's word is the only law here!”
“As for my sword, though,” Garric said as if he were still responding to the previous demand, “you're welcome to it—if you can take it from me. Do you care to try, Rodoard?”
Rodoard glanced to either side, reassuring himself that his bodyguards were in place. Garric rested his right hand lightly on his sword hilt. In Garric's mind danced a memory from the life of another man, his sword flashing through a mob of goat-footed creatures with bronze weapons. Limbs severed, horned skulls split, and over everything blood that was too red to be human...
Rodoard jerked back in his seat at Garric's expression. He raised the demi-guisarme, then looked at it as though surprised to see it in his hands. He clashed the weapon down across the arms of his throne again.
Garric closed his mouth. His throat was dry and his hands trembled with bloodlust that shocked him even more than Lunifra's bone dress had done.
“Leave us be and we'll serve you!” Liane said. “But serve you as free citizens of the Isles. Do you understand?”
Lunifra was whispering. Her right hand dabbed a translucent wand over the ground. A handful of dirt squirmed upward into crudely human form and began to caper like a bear on a chain.
Lunifra looked at Garric. She was smiling again, but sweat beaded her forehead from the effort of her spell.
Beside Garric, Tenoctris murmured, “Oreobazagra rexichthon hippochthon...”
The figure of mud split in two, in four, in eight—each fragment dancing away from the others, halving and shrinking. In moments a patch of dirt a yard across shivered in ever-diminishing motion.
Lunifra tossed her head in fury. She crossed her arms in front of her to ward off a nonexistent attack. Her wand was the penis bone of a large carnivore, a bear or a giant cat
“Sit down, Lunifra,” Rodoard said. He deliberately lifted his hands from the demi-guisarme. “I told you to leave them alone.”
The king looked at Garric without expression. “All right for now, boy,” he said. “You can go. Josfred, find them some food and a place to sleep if they want it.”
Rodoard's voice was indifferent—and far more menacing than any blustered threat could have been. There was a reason he'd become king of this assemblage of the worst sort of men.
A fellow so short and slender that Garric first mistook him for a child came forward. He and others no bigger than him stood at the back and fringes of the crowd.
“And Josfred?” Rodoard added. “Make sure Garric meets the Ersa. I want him to know what he'll be using that sword of his on shortly.”
The 10th of Heron
Cashel decided he was awake. He lay in a tight-stretched hammock. Intricately carven gratings covered the room's windows, and the vines which were trained across the openings diffused daylight into a cool, green glow.
He sat up. Over him hung a fan of brilliantly colored parrot feathers. The servant who was supposed to be making the fan swing with a treadle noticed Cashel move and began pumping his legs enthusiastically.
“Where am I?” Cashel asked.
Sharina entered through one of the two doorways, smiling like sunrise when she saw that Cashel was awake. “Don't strain yourself,” she said as she stepped to the side of the bed. “Here, hold on to me—or I can get servants, men?”
“I'm all right,” Cashel said. He smiled shyly; that was the sort of thing you said, after all. “I mean, I really do feel all right this time.”
Cashel gave Sharina his hand, though he didn't put any weight on it, and stood up. He was light-headed but only for a moment; his body felt tinglingly refreshed. He had a confused recollection of having held the sky up for what seemed a lifetime; but it wasn't the sky, and it hadn't been his muscles that were doing the work.
He grinned at Sharina's hand in his. She was a tall girl and not frail, but it still looked like he was holding a toy. She must have thought the same thing, because they laughed simultaneously as they stepped apart.
Sharina wore a beige linen tunic with a border of geometric blue embroidery. People in Barca's Hamlet usually wore the simplest sort of wool clothing, but Cashel had learned a good deal about fabrics and styles from living with his sister Ilna. Thinking about it, he supposed Ilna knew a lot about sheep, too.
He looked down at himself. He was in a similar tunic, but his showed signs of having been hastily pieced together from two garments. He smiled. Apparently people of his size weren't common here.
Wherever here was. “Are we on Pandah?” Cashel asked.
A monkey walked into the room on all fours. It stood upright and said to Sharina in a guttural voice, “Come on back. It's your move now.”
“The monkey talks!” C
ashel said.
The monkey drew its lips back in a sneer or a snarl. It was about as big as an average man, though its stumpy legs had deceived Cashel at first glance. The deep chest and arms layered with flat bands of muscle would make it a respectable opponent.
“Are all you humans too stupid to tell an ape from a monkey?” the beast said. “Maybe you should get Halphemos to raise this one's intelligence, Sharina. Though I think you'd do better to start with a dog. Or maybe an ox.”
Cashel burst out laughing. “This is wonderful!” he said. “It really talks and thinks, then?”
“Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” the monkey—the ape—shrieked. It leaped to a window and shook the grate in apparent fury.
Sharina was laughing too. “This is Zahag,” she explained. “King Folquin of Pandah has kindly sheltered us after the—”
Sharina's frown was only a flicker, but her tone was marginally more subdued as she went on, “After the storm wrecked the ship. His court wizard, Master Halphemos, has given Zahag the mind of a human. We've been playing chess.”
Zahag hopped down from the window. “Come!” he ordered, reaching for Sharina's hand. His fingers were grotesquely long and covered with coarse reddish fur. “It's your move!”
The ape's anger a moment before hadn't been playacting. The window grating was made of some hard wood. Zahag's teeth had torn deep gouges on the center rosette.
The wizard's art might have given the ape a man's intelligence, but the creature still had a beast's mind. A Sandrakkan wool merchant had once come to Barca's Hamlet with a pet monkey, but that was a little thing no bigger than a cat. A pet with fangs the size of Zahag's didn't seem a very good idea, and a smart, strong pet that flew into rages was an even worse idea.
“In a moment, Zahag,” Sharina said, twitching her hand away. “Cashel, are you ready to be introduced to King Folquin? There's no rush if you're not.”
The servant—was he a slave?—watched as he continued to work the treadle. To someone watching, the man seemed to have no more personality than the fan itself.
“Now!” Zahag cried. He crouched as though to leap on Sharina.
Cashel, moving as he always did when there was need—faster than almost anyone else—swept Sharina behind him. He faced the ape with the silent resolution of a cliff face, just as he'd faced demons in the past.
Zahag gave a chirp of terror. He hopped onto the servant, flinging the startled fellow backward, and jumped to the fan itself. The suspension cords thrummed at the extra weight; feathers torn from the frame fluttered about like the petals of a giant flower.
Cashel backed away, keeping between Sharina and the ape. She wasn't wearing the hermit's knife today, he nodded. He supposed the weapon'd be out of place in a palace.
Zahag dropped to the floor of polished, dovetailed planks. He scratched himself nonchalantly, though he still watched Cashel with sidelong care. He muttered, “Well, the game can wait, I suppose.”
Cashel cleared his throat. “Sure, I'd like to thank the king,” he said.
They walked out of the bedroom with Sharina leading by a half step and the ape capering behind. The servant was holding the treadle-rope firmly to stop the fan's flailing.
Zahag's emotional swings were more of a worry to Cashel; but so long as he was around, Sharina didn't have to worry at all.
“How do you tell time here?” Liane asked as Josfred led them along a trail away from the settlement.
Garric guessed he'd slept a full twelve hours for his muscles to have recovered so well from their straining during the storm. Nothing in the sky or forest had changed since he collapsed from exhaustion in the shelter of woven saplings to which Josfred had led the three of them.
The guide shrugged. “You outsiders always ask that,” he said. “Time doesn't mean anything in the Gulf. We can't understand you, the ones of us who were born here.”
The track had once been a broad avenue skirting the lagoon, but shrubs like wormwood (though soft-bodied) had begun to cover it. Garric didn't know how fast vegetation grew here in the Gulf, but the diminution in traffic must have come within the past year or two.
“There!” Josfred said. “There's a bunch of Ersa harvesting plums. I don't suppose we ought to go much closer, but they probably won't give us any trouble. You've got a steel sword, Master Garric.”
Bitterness dripped from the guide's voice. Garric wasn't sure whether the rabbity little man envied him more possession of the sword or of Liane. Josfred didn't seem to have any conception of women as people. Garric had to assume that the guide's attitude was more or less representative of everybody here in the Gulf.
Though...Lunifra wasn't anybody's chattel, not even Rodoard's.
A dozen lightly furred humanoids picked dark blue fruit from waist-high bushes planted in regular rows. The ones Garric had eaten before he and his friends went off with Josfred were fist-sized and neither looked nor tasted anything like real plums; even the color would pale in real sunlight. Human castaways had given familiar names to the vegetation of the Gulf, but nothing else about “the plums” was familiar.
The Ersa stopped working and unslung the baskets in which they'd been putting fruit. They moved together, their eyes on the humans, while the males took up spears and clubs. The wooden weapons had points and edges made of shells from the lagoon.
The largest of the Ersa—Garric's height but more lithely built—had a spear whose slender iron tip had been forged from a nail. He waved it at Garric and said, “Go away, men.” His accent was easier to understand than Josfred's.
“We'd better leave,” the guide said nervously.
“I need to talk with them,” Tenoctris said. She entered the field, stepping carefully between the waist-high bushes:
Garric opened his mouth to protest, then started after the wizard. Liane caught his arm. “Take off your sword,” she whispered.
“I should've thought of that myself,” Garric muttered. If he strode forward armed, he'd look like a threat even though nothing could be further from his mind.
He undid the sword belt. That wasn't a simple task: the buckle had two hooks and the tongue, left deliberately long, was looped about the belt proper. It was the way King Carus had worn his sword...
“What are you doing?” Josfred said, his voice rising with concern.
Garric ignored him. He thrust the weapon into Liane's arms and hurried to join Tenoctris before she reached the scowling Ersa.
“This is our field,” the leader of the Ersa said. “If you try to take our food, we will fight you.”
From a distance Garric had thought the Ersa's features were catlike. Close up they didn't look like any animal he'd ever seen—nor did they look very much like furry humans. In fact, their gray-brown fur was one of the least unfamiliar things about the Ersa.
Their faces were round. Their ear openings were simple holes, but they signaled now among themselves with membranous external ears the size of a man's hand. Their mouths opened and closed sideways; and besides horny lids, nictitating membranes wiped their eyes in a quick, constant shimmer of motion.
“We aren't your enemies,” Garric said. The Ersa looked alien, but they were clean and dignified—virtues in short supply in the human portion of the Gulf. “We mean you no harm.”
“We've just come here,” Tenoctris said. “Our ship was destroyed by a force that was new to me. Did you or your ancestors arrive in the Gulf the same way?”
The Ersa's eyes were closer to the sides of their skulls than a human's were. Like sheep, they could see in a broad arc behind them. Their ears fluttered in wordless speech like bunting in a windstorm.
“Our fathers made this place to escape enemies, the leader said at last. “We lived here alone for many generations. When the first men arrived, we let them stay. All was well for many generations more. Now new men have come with new weapons and take our fields. Humans, we are rulers here!”
He shook his spear in front of Garric. He had four fingers on each hand, two opposing two inst
ead of fingers and a separate thumb.
“Go back now or we will kill you!” he shouted.
The stance of the whole group shifted slightly. King Carus was a presence in Garric's mind, analyzing the situation. An individual man would generally be a match for an Ersa, but a group of Ersa would fight in a united fashion that not even the most disciplined human army could manage.
“Thank you for speaking with us,” Tenoctris said. She bowed low. “We will come and speak with you again.”
Garric bowed also. Careful of the crops, he followed the old wizard back through the field.
“An Ersa wizard must have created this Gulf,” Tenoctris said quietly to her companion. “There's no record of the Ersa, not even in the almagests of great wizards who searched all time for no better reason than to increase knowledge. Cadilorn and Mansel of Eyre; Uzuncu the Skull, too, if she wasn't just a myth like the Yellow King she served.”
She smiled wanly at Garric. “I would have been one of that company if I'd had the power,” she said. “Which of course I didn't. But because I'm with you, Garric, I'm learning things that not even Uzuncu knew.”
Tenoctris laughed, a pure, cheerful sound that made the changeless day brighter for Garric. “Perhaps the folk who claimed it's better to be lucky than wise were correct,” she added.
“I don't see that it's very lucky to have come here,” Garric said. He was uneasy at the thought that their presence in the Gulf was because of him. “Especially if no one can leave once he's here.”
“It's possible to leave,” Tenoctris said with assurance that had nothing of bluster in it. “I don't know that it'll be possible for me to get us out, but I think I know how a sufficiently powerful wizard would be able to succeed.”
They'd reached the others. Liane squeezed Garric's hand as she returned the sword.
Josfred had been shifting his weight from one leg to the other and back again. “You shouldn't have done that!” he blurted. “They might have killed you, and then what would Rodoard have said?”
“Nothing that would have been of any concern to Garric,” Liane said, taking out some of her own previous nervousness on the guide. “And there's no point in talking about things that didn't happen.”
