The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  Hercól was standing beside a pair of tall, fair women, wearing sky-blue gowns and circlets of silver in their hair. They were twin duchesses from Hercól’s country; he had pointed them out to the tarboys just an hour before. The three were chatting quietly, sipping cups of hyacinth nectar. The Simjan youth was nowhere to be seen.

  Pazel felt rather a fool—Hercól was making pleasantries, like everyone else. But when the sisters took their leave Hercól did not start back to the gate. Instead he turned very casually to face the juniper bushes. Pazel followed his gaze. And to his great surprise, he saw a face.

  The junipers, he realized now, were arranged to hide a section of the iron fence around the gardens. The gaps were few and narrow. But framed in the largest, just beyond the fence, were the head and shoulders of an old but striking woman. She was tall and stern, gray eyes under a gray mane of hair, a face not so much wrinkled as creased with long thought. A royal face, Pazel thought, for he had been looking at royalty all morning; and yet there was something about this face that was like no other he had ever seen.

  Her eyes met the Tholjassan’s. Hercól kept very still, but it was like the stillness of a hunting hound tensed to spring. Then the woman drew a hood over her face and turned away. Pazel saw a pair of large, hard-faced men beside her, gripping her arms in the manner of bodyguards. An instant later she was gone.

  “What in the Pits?” muttered Pazel.

  A hand touched his elbow. It was Neeps, looking rather flustered. “Where’ve you been?” he demanded. “Thasha will be here any minute, and Pacu’s throwing a first-class fit.”

  “You won’t believe what I just saw.”

  “Try me,” said Neeps.

  Before Pazel could say more, a voice cried shrilly: “Here she comes now! Boys! Boys!”

  Neeps sighed. “Come on, before she calls out the marines.”

  They hurried back to the gate. The fact that they were Thasha’s best friends did not matter a fig to Pacu Lapadolma. To her they were just tarboys, born to serve their betters, and nothing short of marrying royalty themselves could change that.

  She snapped her fingers at them. “Get in position! You”—she pointed at Pazel—“must straighten your coat, and your hat, and keep your hair out of sight if possible. And there is a rose petal stuck to your shoe.”

  Pazel raked uselessly at his hair. They had already thought of a dozen choice insults for the general’s daughter. Neeps for his part was only awaiting the end of the crisis to deliver them.

  “Do you have the Blessing-Band?”

  Pazel tapped his vest pocket, where the silk ribbon lay coiled. “Nothing’s happened to it since the last time you asked.”

  The young woman might have snapped a retort had Thasha not appeared just then at the gate.

  “Darling!” said Pacu, seizing her arm.

  Thasha firmly detached the hand. “The last person who called me darling was poisoning my father, Pacu.”

  “What a dreadful comparison, you heartless thing! Syrarys never meant the word, and I love you like a sister. But you’re simply gorgeous, Thasha Isiq! Yes, a sister, that’s the exact sensation in my heart!”

  “You’re an only child.”

  Pacu rescued an orchid that was sliding free of Thasha’s love-knot. She gave an inquisitive sniff, and her eyes widened. “Have you put on some new perfume? Or is it your father’s cologne?”

  “Never mind that,” said Thasha quickly. “Be an angel, Pacu. Fetch me a glass of water.”

  When she had gone Thasha turned and looked at the tarboys. “Darlings!” she said.

  “Thasha,” said Pazel. “You’re swaying.”

  “You’d be swaying too if you tipped left and right.”

  Neeps’ jaw dropped. “Lord Rin,” he whispered. “She’s drunk.”

  Pazel leaned closer, sniffing. “Brandy! Oh Thasha, that was a bad idea.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It took me about half a minute to realize that. But I’m all right.”

  Hercól returned, with Mr. Fiffengurt at his side. “The girl’s been drinking,” Neeps informed them. “Eat something, Thasha. Anything. Rose petals. Grass. Make yourself sick before—”

  “Neeps,” said Pazel. “She’s not exactly falling down.”

  “Ha!” said Thasha. “Not yet.”

  “Don’t joke about that,” hissed Fiffengurt. “You shouldn’t have drunk a blary thing! Foolish, foolish, Mistress!”

  “That it certainly was,” said Hercól. “More than any of us, you need your wits about you. But we must make the best of it now. Perhaps the drink will steady you for the ordeal to come. Hello, Admiral.”

  Eberzam Isiq had arrived at the gate, quite winded. He waved at Thasha in distress. “She has—I objected fiercely—but the fact is—”

  “We noticed, Excellency,” said Pazel. “Don’t worry. Neeps and I will stay close to her.”

  “He will worry,” said Thasha. “And just wait—he’s going to try once more to tell us all what to do, even though he has no idea and will have to make up some useless flimflam on the spot. He’s an old buffoon.”

  “No he’s not,” said Pazel, startling everyone. “Leave off baiting him, won’t you? Think of what Ramachni said: we’re a clan, like Diadrelu’s clan, and we have to work together.”

  “Dri’s clan took her title away,” said Thasha.

  “And we are humans, not ixchel,” said Hercól. “There are worthier comparisons. But Pazel speaks a vital truth. Our enemies bicker; we must not, for whatever advantage we may have can be lost in a heartbeat.”

  At that moment King Oshiram spotted Thasha and her father. He gestured to his guard captain, who sounded a note on a boar’s-tusk hunting-horn: the signal for the march to the shrine. The dignitaries rose and hurried to their places. Thasha looked Pazel swiftly in the eye. It was an involuntary look, a reflex. It was the first time since daybreak that he had glimpsed her fear.

  The road to the Mzithrini shrine stretched for a gentle mile, but some of the older dukes and bishwas had not walked so far in years (or their whole lives, in some cases); and the Templar monks at the head of the procession were much given to their gongs, and stopped dead for their ritual beatings; and the Boy Prince of Fulne was stung by a wasp; and goats defiled the road, leading to an ablutionary summit of all the attendant holy men. So it was that a walk the young people might have finished in half an hour stretched to thrice that time and more.

  Treaty Day was a holiday, naturally. From all over Simja the common folk had come, and from neighboring islands, and well beyond. At first light they had rushed to the city square to watch the Rite of the Firelords, in which masked figures representing the Night Gods were driven back to their dark kingdom by dancers with torches, who then proclaimed Simjalla ready to receive the bride. Later when Thasha approached the Cactus Gardens, the crowd stretched far ahead of her, and so again when she left the city by the North Gate.

  Everyone who had entered the city seemed to have raced out of it again, eager for another glimpse of the procession. Beyond the wall the land was mostly field and heath, but wherever a barn or goat-shed or granary abutted the road it was covered with well-wishers, crammed in the windows and on the rooftops. Others had scaled the stormbreak pines that rose in a thin stand halfway between the city and the shrine.

  But most simply swarmed alongside. They could draw only so near: the king had caused a chain to be stretched waist-high on either side of the road, and the palace guard saw to it that the crowd stayed on the outside. But there were exceptions. Those especially favored by King Oshiram had the freedom of the road. So did certain musicians, city elders, the rich and their voluminous families, children in school uniform, and a few dozen others whose form of distinction no one could recall.

  In the last category was the same pale young man who had conducted Hercól to his meeting with the woman behind the fence. He was alone as before, although he greeted certain of the wealthier citizens with a bow. He trotted along quite close to Thasha’s inne
r circle, hands in pockets, and now and then glanced at them sharply with a bright, knowing smile. His expression suggested a great desire to please. But he unsettled the wedding party, for none of them knew why he was there.

  “If he smiles at me again, I’ll throw a rock at him,” growled Neeps.

  “You do that,” said Pazel.

  “Don’t you dare, Undrabust!” said Fiffengurt. “You stand for your birth-country, and must do proud by her. But what do you suppose that hoppity-smiley fellow wants? It’s blary plain he wants something. Each time I think he’s about to speak he runs off again. And now there’s a dog!”

  For there was a dog: a little white creature with a corkscrew tail, dashing through the legs of the guard (to the king’s great amusement), darting ahead of the monks, spinning on its hind legs before them all, yipping once, and vanishing into the throng.

  The guests roared. “Jolly old Simja! What next?” cried an Ipulian count.

  Thasha and her friends did not laugh. They all knew the dog. It belonged to the sorcerer, Arunis.

  “That cur’s woken, I’d bet my beard,” hissed Fiffengurt. “I reckon Arunis sent it to remind us that he’s watching our every move.”

  “It never speaks, though,” said Pazel. “Arunis said it hadn’t woken yet—as if he expected it to, one day. But it’s a nasty little brute, woken or not. We’d never have been taken prisoner back in the Crab Fens if it weren’t for that dog.”

  “There are woken beasts cropping up everywhere,” said Neeps. “Do you know what the tailors who dressed us this morning were gossiping about, Mr. Fiffengurt? A rabbit. A little brown hare who screamed ‘Mercy! Mama! Mercy!’ as it ran, until the hounds caught up and killed it. And I swear I heard one of those messenger birds talking back to his rider.”

  “And two woken rats on the Chathrand,” said Pazel. “And Ott’s falcon, Niriviel. Five animals in three months. Five more than I’d met in my lifetime to this point.”

  “Or I in mine,” said Hercól, “except for Ott’s bird. That poor creature I have known for years.”

  “Something’s happening to the world,” said Thasha with conviction, “and all these wakings are a part of it. And so is Arunis.”

  Pazel looked at Hercól with alarm. “Could he literally be causing it all?”

  “No,” said Hercól. “He is mighty, but not so mighty that he can light the flame of reason in creatures from one end of Alifros to another. If that were the case, he should hardly need such servants as a prancing dog, or a washed-up smuggler like Mr. Druffle. Besides, why should he wish for beasts to wake? Arunis dreams of enslaving this world, and nothing is so inimical to slavery as a thinking mind.”

  “I’m a part of it too,” said Thasha, “and the Nilstone is a part of me.”

  “You’re drunk,” said Neeps.

  Thasha shook her head, then turned and glanced over her shoulder. “He’s close, you know.”

  The others were startled. Neeps, feigning a stone in his shoe, stepped to one side of the procession and bent down. A moment later he caught up with them. “She’s right,” he said. “Arunis is very close. Uskins is with him, looking scared out of his mind. And Dr. Chadfallow’s between them, talking.”

  “Damn him,” whispered Pazel.

  The remark did not escape Hercól. “The doctor did not choose his walking companions,” he said. “Rose provided a list to the Mistress of Ceremonies, and she decided who should stand with whom.”

  “That doesn’t mean he has to talk.”

  “Nor does talk mean he is betraying us.”

  “Let’s not argue about the doctor,” said Fiffengurt. “He’s lost your trust, and that’s the end of that. You’ve got a mighty task before you as well today, Pathkendle.”

  “One you ought to let me help with,” said Neeps sulkily.

  “Those debates are behind us,” said Hercól. “Look: we are almost to the shrine.”

  Indeed they were climbing the last little rise. The broad, whitewashed structure loomed before them, and the jade-green dome of the Declarion shone brilliant in the sun. On the broad stairs hundreds of figures, in robes of white and black, waited in silence.

  “Thasha,” whispered Pazel with sudden urgency. “Let me hear your vows.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “You know,” said Pazel. “Your vows.”

  “Oh. My vows.” She pushed a drooping orchid from her face. Then, leaning close, she rasped out a string of wet Mzithrini words. The smell of brandy notwithstanding, Pazel was relieved.

  “Almost,” he said. “But for the love of Rin don’t leave out the r in uspris. You want to call Falmurqat ‘my prince,’ not ‘my little duckling.’”

  “Hercól Stanapeth,” said a sudden voice behind them.

  It was the pale young man from the gardens again. Hercól turned and looked at him.

  “Well, lad?”

  Again, that shallow, ironic bow. Then the young man fell in beside them and pulled a small envelope from his pocket. “A gentleman stopped me at the gate, sir, and bade me deliver this to your hand.”

  The young man was looking at Thasha, who returned his gaze warily. Hercól snatched the envelope. It was sealed with oxblood wax and bore no writing. Hercól made no move to open it.

  “What is your name, lad, and who is this gentleman?”

  “I am Greysan Fulbreech, sir. King’s clerk, though my term of employment is coming to an end. As for the gentleman, I did not ask his name. He was well dressed, and he gave me a coin.” He was still looking at Thasha. “This message, however, I would have delivered free of charge.”

  Pazel was finding it hard not to dislike this clerk. “I’m sure King Oshiram’s keeping you very busy,” he said.

  “I don’t get a moment’s rest,” said Fulbreech, not sparing him a glance.

  “Then be on your way,” growled Fiffengurt, “unless you’ve more to tell us?”

  The young man looked at Fiffengurt, and for a moment his smooth demeanor failed him, as though he were struggling to reach some decision. At last he took a deep breath and nodded. “I bear another message,” he said. “Master Hercól, she on whose answer you wait has decided. This winter there shall be fire in the hearth.”

  Fulbreech stole a last glance at Thasha, and left without another word.

  Only Thasha, who had known Hercól all her life, saw the shock he disguised so well. A code, she thought, but who could be sending coded messages to Hercól? She did not bother to ask for an explanation, and was glad to see the tarboys keeping silent as well. Hercól would explain nothing until he judged the moment right.

  But Fiffengurt could not restrain himself. “What in the bower of the Blessed Tree was that all about?”

  “Very little, maybe,” said Hercól. “Or perhaps the whole fate of your Empire. How does the rhyme, go, Quartermaster? Arqual, Arqual, just and true? We shall see.”

  He would say no more, but in his voice was a happiness Thasha had not heard in years. Then he opened the little envelope, glanced at the single line of writing it contained, and the joy vanished like a snuffed match.

  He put the envelope in his pocket. “Greetings from the Secret Fist,” he said. “They are watching us. As if there could be any doubt.”

  The Father stood atop a staircase of great stone ovals, before the central arch of the shrine. His arms were spread as if in welcome, or perhaps to hold back the procession. Here in the sunshine his great age was more apparent, and so was his unnatural vigor. His raiment was black, and the white beard against it was like a snowdrift on a hill of coal. In his right hand he clasped a scepter: pure gold but for a crystal set at the top, within which some dark object glittered.

  His aspirants stood below him, three to a side (Look at them, people whispered, they’re sfvantskors, they can kill you with their eyes shut). Like their master they wore black, but their faces were young: faces of men and women barely out of their teens. Symbols for birthplace and tribe gleamed in red tattoos upon their necks. Those neare
st the Father wore white masks—ghostly against the sable robes. A seventh knelt just before the Father with a silver knife across his lap.

  On the steps below the aspirants stood rows of women—a hundred or more, old and young, light and dark. Below these stood as many men, holding strange glass pipes of many colors, each one dangling from a braided thong.

  Like a wave about a sandcastle the crowd engulfed the shrine, blanketing the low hills on either side of the road. A hush had fallen over them: the old man’s stillness had erased all sense of a carnival from the proceedings. Toil and wind, hard stone, cold seas: these were what they saw in his unblinking eyes.

  “I am nameless,” he said, and his voice carried a surprising distance. “My holy office is my fate: there is nothing more. I am Father-Resident of Babqri City, Master of the Citadel of Hing, Confessor to His Serene Majesty King Somolar. I am the sworn foe of things evil, forever.

  “Two thousand years ago the shrines of the Old Faith stood on every isle of this archipelago, and the Gátri-Mangol, the White Kings of Mangland, presided over an age of wealth and order. Here where we are gathered rose one of the most beautiful shrines of all, destroyed by the rising sea in the Worldstorm. Twenty-six years ago I sent a letter to a monarch, new to his throne but wise beyond his years, and begged a great favor, and he granted it. We of the Faith bow before thee, Oshiram of Simja, first king of these isles to allow the rebuilding of a Mzithrin house of prayer.”

  And with that the Father descended to his knees, placed the scepter with infinite care before him, and bent his forehead to the ground.

  The king fidgeted, cleared his throat. “You’re welcome, Father, very welcome. Now do rise.”

  Slowly, the Father took to his feet.

  “This house is young, but its founding-stones were recovered from the old shrine, and they are sacred. Therefore will I take my place beneath the great arch and bar the path to those whom devils claim. They may not enter here. Let them fear the attempt.”