The Ruling Sea

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “I’m not a mage,” said Pazel.

  “But you will be,” said Arunis, extending his hand. “Come, Pazel Pathkendle. I am the home you’ve been looking for. I am your natural ally. Not a coarse island boy like Mr. Undrabust. Not the doctor who lusts after your mother. Not the vixen child of the man who laid waste to Ormael.”

  “Who—who do you … ?”

  “Thasha, you simpleton, the girl who laughs when she beats you with sticks.”

  “Don’t you try—” Pazel shook his head with tremendous effort. “—don’t you dream of turning me against her, damn you, I—”

  He broke off. Why were they even talking? Why wasn’t he shouting for help?

  Arunis looked at him thoughtfully. When he spoke again, his voice was quite changed. “I would never try to turn you against Thasha,” he said. “Oh no! You misunderstand me entirely. Do you think that we mages plumb the secrets of the several worlds, yet remain ignorant of the noblest of all human feelings? Do you think us so stupid and cold?”

  “C-cold—”

  “No matter. Tell me of your feelings for Thasha Isiq. It will do you good to speak of them.”

  But Pazel shook his head again.

  “I understand,” said the mage. “You are protecting what is new to your heart, and I shall ask no further. But you must let me help you.”

  His tone was sharply aggrieved. Pazel felt a sense of guilt creep over him, stealthy and quick. He felt suddenly as though he had spat on the efforts of a kindly uncle.

  “Tomorrow we shall make landfall on Bramian,” said Arunis, “and there—surely you know this already, deep inside?—the two of you must depart. For not a soul on this ship, myself included, will ever see the placid eastern world again, once we enter the Ruling Sea. It is a mission of death, my boy. Why sacrifice yourselves? Why betray Thasha, and the bliss of a life together, before it has truly begun? Tell me, as one man to another: have you not sensed the possibility of such bliss?”

  Pazel was lost, in a cold, enveloping fog; and Thasha was the only point of warmth. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I have.”

  “Then you must hold true to that feeling, Pazel Pathkendle, no matter what you are told. Run off with your Thasha! Hide from the savages until your Gift begins to work again. Then approach those forest men and address them in their tongue. They will not only spare your lives, but worship you, and lead you to their river strongholds, and serve you like slaves. Become Lord and Lady of Bramian! There are wonders in her interior meet for a clever lad like you to discover. And you could find no safer place in Alifros to sit out the coming war.”

  Pazel gazed at him in wonder. After a moment, he said, “Leave. With Thasha.”

  “Just so,” said Arunis. “And who could blame you? Both of you have been cruelly exploited by the Empire. But instead of seeking revenge you actually helped them, risked your lives for them, over and over. They cannot ask you for more.”

  “How would we get ashore?”

  Arunis smiled. “That will be my gift to you—a small gesture of amends for the feud we’ve overcome. Merely give me your hand, and think your promise to depart. Give it to me now; I shall hold your promise in my fist, and tend it like a seed, and before we reach the island my spell will be ready. Then bring Thasha to my cabin, between midnight and dawn. Ask her to trust you—as she will all her life, when she is yours alone—and when we three join hands I shall send you to Bramian in an instant.”

  The sorcerer extended his hand. “This should be an easy choice—between death and a strange rebirth, between loneliness and ecstasy. If you have the courage to change, that is.”

  He made as if to withdraw his hand, and Pazel’s heart leaped. He extended his own, desperately—then pulled back at the last instant, torn with doubt. How could this be true? How could they have gotten so much wrong about Arunis?

  A spasm crossed the sorcerer’s face, but he mastered it. “You realize,” he said, “that she’s going anyway.”

  “What?”

  Arunis nodded gravely. “Rose means to be rid of her, but he dares not kill her, because of Ramachni’s spell. How to be sure she lives, and yet tells no one of the conspiracy? Why, by giving her to the savages, people who fear and detest the outside world. They will bear her away to the heart of that gigantic island, and keep her, and make her one of them. Rose has decided already. He knows the trouble a lovely girl may cause on a ship full of desperate men.”

  Pazel clutched at the ropes. The cold had reached his fingertips, the roots of his hair, his brain. And as he gazed at Arunis a vision rose before his eyes. He saw himself and Thasha, dressed in a strange finery of wool and parrot feathers and animal skins, standing before a great wooden lodge on a high hill over the jungle. Birds teemed in the treetops, and the sea glittered far away, and purple, snowcapped mountains rose at their backs. Strange men in the clearing below the lodge glanced up with fearful reverence, but kept their distance as befit the servants of a lord. He and Thasha were older, taller, and she was more beautiful than ever, a woman full grown and splendid, and his arm was about her waist.

  Arunis was leaning close to him. “If she is not yours, and soon, she will be another’s. She will give her love to a man of real courage, be it a sailor or some beast of the Bramian jungle. Is that what you want?”

  Pazel clung to the knotted ropes. He was a coward, a fool. Thasha was escaping him, slipping through his fingers. She was almost a woman; he was just a tarboy from a conquered race. This was his one chance to have her, his one chance to know love. And it seemed as he extended his hand that it was not Arunis he was reaching for but Thasha herself.

  Then something extraordinary happened. Under the skin beside his collarbone an ember of warmth sprang to life. It was distant, but real. And somewhere far away in the hollows of his mind a voice was calling, echoing, like a strange girl’s voice from the depths of a cave.

  Land-boy, do you forsake me?

  “Klyst!”

  Arunis straightened, dumbfounded. “What’s that? Klyst?”

  The voice was already gone, and the heat from the murth-girl’s shell was very faint. But that touch of pure longing from Klyst—still with him, still following the Chathrand!—gave Pazel the strength to tear his eyes away from Arunis’ own.

  The dream of Bramian vanished. The cold retreated, and strength returned to his limbs. Then Pazel saw the strain in Arunis’ face, and the sweat on his brow. The spell had cost him great effort, but it had failed.

  And now Pazel was angry—angry as he’d never been before in his life. He glared at the sorcerer, who stood swaying across his path, doubled over, drawing labored breaths.

  “What’s it all for, Arunis?” he demanded. “You want to rule the world—why? You’d still be a rotten beast full of hate and lies and ugliness. You’d still be you.”

  Arunis sagged against the ropes, but there was an odd gleam to his exhausted eyes. “No I wouldn’t,” he said.

  But Pazel was no longer listening. “You’re the one who should get off at Bramian. The greatest mage in Alifros! Go on, get out of my way.”

  Swaying feebly, Arunis shook his head. Pazel could stand it no longer: he leaned forward and grabbed Arunis’ fingers, prying them easily from the rope.

  “Nauldrok!”

  The mage’s voice whiplashed through Pazel’s mind and limbs. He felt himself driven backward. He seized desperately at the ropes, stumbled, caught himself on the bowsprit proper—and there he froze. His fingers went numb, his body weak and lifeless. The heat from Klyst’s shell was gone.

  Arunis looked even worse than Pazel felt. He might have been a man afflicted by a wasting disease, too weak to do more than prop himself up on the ropes. Yet triumph shone in his eyes. After a few more gasping breaths, he found his voice.

  “You are about to die, maggot. I would prefer to strangle you, but that would be noticed, and you have caused me difficulties enough.”

  He forced himself upright. “I am what I claimed,” he said. “Who is grea
ter than Arunis? Your mother, who turned you into a convulsive? The mighty Ramachni? But they show no signs of coming to your aid. And where, for that matter, are Neeps and your lovely Thasha? It appears no one is thinking of you at all.”

  Pazel knew where Thasha was—in her cabin, reading the Polylex and comforting the still-frightened Marila. She would not be looking for him, true enough—he had been rude to her again, unable to forget Oggosk’s threat. Neeps would not come either: he was too irritated with the sailors who had spurned their aid. And if those lookouts or the men on the spars were watching, as surely they must be, what would they notice? Arunis had not laid a hand on him.

  “Ah!” said the sorcerer. “Take heart, Pathkendle. You are not friendless after all.”

  Pazel just managed to raise his eyes. Up the forecastle ladder was climbing the last person on earth he wished to see: Jervik. The older tarboy stopped to speak to the lookouts, and glanced warily at Arunis.

  “You will soon lose your grip,” said the mage, “and plummet into the sea. By then I shall be in my quarters. But I have a few thoughts for you to ponder ere you fall.

  “It was your own pride that doomed you, of course. Did you feel protected by Ramachni’s spell? Idiot. You were safe, until you touched me of your own volition. By doing so you let me see through you like a glass. Now I know that you are not the spell-keeper, and I risk no harm to the Shaggat by killing you.

  “Consider this as well: your friends will know agony. What Thasha suffered by that necklace is but a foretaste. She will become the plaything of the Gurishal lunatics, or of the Shaggat himself if he wants her. She will bear children who will be taken from her and raised in the knowledge that their mother was a whore. Neeps Undrabust will be lowered into tanner’s acid, gradually, until his screaming stops. Fiffengurt will be blinded and abandoned to the lepers of Ursyl. Hercól’s queen will be devoured by wolfhounds before his eyes.

  “And then there is your city. When I rule this world through the Shaggat, I shall finish the job Arqual began five years ago. Ormael will be razed, the adults taken into the Straits of Simja and drowned, the children scattered to other lands and made to forget their language. All this I shall see to personally—in memory of you, Pazel Pathkendle. Goodbye.”

  The mage departed without a backward glance. As he passed Jervik he made a sharp gesture in Pazel’s direction. Jervik nodded and hurried to the bowsprit.

  “Muketch,” he said, in a low, gleeful voice. “What’ve you got yer brown arse into now?”

  The lookouts were back at their designated spots on the port and starboard rails. Pazel tried to speak, but only managed a feeble moan. With each pitch of the ship he felt his fingers loosening.

  “Quiet, eh?” said Jervik. “He said you might be. Tha’s all right. I can sit here as long as you like. But if you try somethin’ I’ll deck you proper, s’help me Rin.”

  With immense effort, Pazel shook his head. Jervik grinned, his face like a wide-mouthed frog. Then, with a glance over his shoulder, he pulled something from his shirt and held it up for Pazel to admire.

  On a leather cord beside his brass Citizenship Ring hung a thick gold bead. It might have weighed as much as eight or nine Arquali cockles, and been worth ten times that, if the metal was as pure as it looked.

  “I’m rich,” he said. “I’ll have one o’ these every week I do his biddun.”

  Pazel was finding it difficult to blink. A few more pitches of the bow and he would drop like a stone.

  “What’re you doin’ out there, you daft pig?” said the older boy after a moment. “Get in here. I’m s’posed to watch you, is all. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  He stepped forward. He was getting annoyed at Pazel’s silence. And all at once Pazel understood the part Arunis had in mind for Jervik.

  You poor imbecile.

  There was no way to warn him. When Pazel’s head lolled down to his chest he could not raise it again.

  “I said, get in ’ere!”

  Jervik cuffed the back of his head—signing his own death warrant (for murderers at sea were hanged from the yardarm, no exceptions); if he only knew. Pazel barely felt the blow, but with the next pitch of the Chathrand his arm slipped from the Goose-Girl. Jervik gave a sort of woof of surprise. Pazel was looking head-down at the churning sea. Then, as the bowsprit rose again, he fell.

  Onto an outstretched arm.

  Belesar Bolutu was there, shirtless, wrenching Pazel out of his fall and against his black chest. The man had leaped past Jervik and straddled the bowsprit, clinging for dear life with his legs. An incoherent howl escaped his tongueless mouth.

  For a hideous moment Pazel felt them both sliding into a fall—he lifeless as a sack, Bolutu with his arms locked around his chest. Then the lookouts dived on Bolutu with cries of By the board! By the board! and hauled the two of them to safety.

  Dimly, he felt hands stretch him out on the deck. The forecastle was suddenly crowded: others must have flung themselves down from the rigging the moment his fall began. The voices were far away.

  “Another fit! The boy’s a menace to himself!”

  “He was pushed! Jervik Lank did it, the dirty bastard!”

  “Are ye sure it was Lank? What about that damned Arunis?”

  Sudden silence. Pazel wheezed, and they all looked down at him thoughtfully. Somewhere in the depths of the ship the white dog began to bark.

  “Arunis didn’t lay a finger on him,” said one of the lookouts. “He just talked and went his way.”

  “Why don’t the muketch say nothin’?”

  “He jumped! He jumped! Didn’t he, Brother Bolutu, sir?”

  A pail of seawater struck his face. Pazel gasped, and found he could move again. Even as he struggled to sit up, Neeps and Thasha pushed their way through the crowd.

  “Pazel!” cried Neeps. “Burning devils, what’s happened to you now?”

  “I’m all right,” he said, letting them pull him to his feet.

  He was very dizzy. Scores of off-duty men surrounded them, but only Neeps and Thasha held his arms. “What did you want to die for, Pathkendle?” asked one of the lookouts.

  “Oh shut up!” said Thasha. “Pazel, it was Jervik, wasn’t it? That vicious thug, I’ll—”

  “No,” said Pazel. “Not this time.” He took a stumbling step, and the crowd parted before him. “Where’s Bolutu gone?” he said. “That man just saved my life.”

  “Brother Bolutu took off near as fast as he got here,” said the watch captain, hitching his thumb at the ladder. “Didn’t say a word. Oh, but then he can’t, can he?”

  They left the gaping men behind. Pazel’s hands shook on the ladder, and when he had descended to the topdeck he found himself short of breath. He steadied himself against the wall of the forecastle house, blinking gratefully at his friends.

  “Arunis … is spying on us,” he gasped. Despite his exhaustion he knew the spell was fading; already the warm tropical evening had driven the cold from his limbs. He told them of the mage’s attack and the part Jervik had played. But he could not bring himself to confess how Arunis had exploited his feelings for Thasha.

  “At least we know he’s still weak, still recovering from Dhola’s Rib, or even before. He can still cast spells, obviously—but it cost him something terrible. I doubt he could have managed the second one if I hadn’t touched him.”

  “Not likely he was shamming, either, since he thought you’d be dead,” said Thasha.

  “He’s afraid of you, Thasha. He wants to get you off this ship. Maybe he really is weak, right now. He didn’t want anyone to know that he had killed me, so he left Jervik to take the blame. That fool doesn’t know how close he came to earning a jump from the mizzenmast.”

  “With a noose for a necktie,” said Neeps. “And I for one wouldn’t have shed a—Thasha, what’s wrong?”

  Thasha’s eyes were gleaming with sudden realization. “Chadfallow was right,” she said.

  Neeps looked at her, then started. “Blow me down
. So he was.”

  Pazel looked from one to the other. “What do you mean? Right about what?”

  “There was a fight on the berth deck,” said Thasha. “Half the crew ran to see it. The crowd was so thick you could hardly move.”

  “What sort of a fight?”

  Neeps shrugged. “Plapps versus Burnscovers, that’s all we ever heard. It started in the mess hall. Dastu took a few nasty hits—seems he tried to keep the peace, and nobody thanked him. Marila’s with him right now in sickbay.”

  “By the time we arrived the fight was getting ugly,” said Thasha. “Hercól was tossing men left and right, shouting at both gangs to come to their senses. I could have helped, but Marila grabbed me around the waist and wouldn’t let go. Then Neeps got knocked over and she had to let go of me and grab him before he jumped in and got himself killed.”

  “Stubborn little devil, that one,” muttered Neeps.

  “The next thing we knew Chadfallow was shouting at us from the edge of the mob: ‘On your guard! This is not a coincidence!’ That’s when we asked ourselves what had happened to you.”

  “A diversion,” said Neeps, “the whole blary fight. Arunis didn’t want anyone watching the forecastle.” He looked at Pazel sharply. “And you’re a daft one, aren’t you?”

  “Daft?” said Pazel.

  “As a dicky-bird!” said Thasha. “How could you just sit out there with your back to the ship? Do you have any idea how foolish that was?”

  “And it’s not even the worst part,” said Neeps. “He grabbed Arunis by the hand! Rin’s chin, mate! Why didn’t you just hand over your old man’s knife and say, Stab me?”

  They began a lively quarrel over the signature moment of Pazel’s stupidity. Pazel, who thought of both friends as outrageously devoid of fear, was alarmed to realize how badly he’d shocked them. What he’d done was idiotic, to be sure. For some reason he recalled a question Chadfallow had thrown at him as a challenge, years ago, at their dinner table in Ormael: What’s the real tragedy, lad? To fall from a cliff and perish—or to be the sort of man who cares so little for his life that he risks it?