by Hugh Cook
'Low light. . . cool. . . was warmer outside . . . stairs . . . going up . . . cracks . . . some brown stuff. . . stain? . . . bones beyond invisible . . . no, not like air . . . bit blurred . . . push . . . yields . . . slippery . . . cold ... no shadow . . . fits to wall... no visible seam . . . wall same block-pattern as stairs . . . except . . . yes . . . plate of white metal set in wall ... no rust . . . pattern of five raised circles set on metal plate . . . raised circles are . . . are moveable . . .'
As Drake fingered the raised circles set in the metal plate, something changed. What? He stood absolutely still, listening. Then realized a faint hum, which he had dismissed as a noise within his own head, had ceased to be. He could hear ... a tiny creak from his own knees . . . the complex sounds of deglutition as he swallowed some saliva . . . and that was it.
Drake mobilized some more saliva in his mouth, then spat.
His spittle splattered against the skeleton's skull. Reaching out, he found the invisible barrier had gone. He glanced at the metal plate in the wall, and the raised circles he had fingered. Cause and effect. Yes.
'Score one for theory,' muttered Drake.
With reluctance, for he hated to concede anything to Gouda Muck - or, indeed, to any other of that age group.
'But I'll give him this,' muttered Drake. 'Even if he was mad, the old bugger did make bloody good swords.'
And he took a couple of steps forward.
Then stopped.
He could hear something. What? Yes: that hum.
'Oh no,' said Drake. 'Oh no, tell me it's not so.'
But, on turning and trying to retreat back downstairs, he found the invisible barrier barring his way. He did another Investigation, a comprehensive one. There was no magical cause-and-effect device on this side of the barrier. Now he knew why the bones were there.
'The poor old sod starved to death,' said Drake.
And, looking at the yellow bones, had a sudden intimation of his own inevitable death. Even if he got out of this alive, he would die some day. For the first time in his life, he truly understood his own mortality.
'That's the trouble with bloody-well being sober all the time,' said Drake. 'You gets some weird old thoughts breaking loose.'
Yes. The sooner he got back to civilization and got decently drunk again, the better. If he stayed here much longer, brooding about Knowledge Theory and Mortality and such, he'd be a regular mad philosopher by the time he escaped. Stokos had had two of them, and a sorry old sight they were, too.
'Onwards!' said Drake boldly, appropriating for his own purposes the motto of the Guild of Navigators, which was not strictly his to use at all.
He swiftly found himself in a machine-cluttered room at the top of the tower. He could not tell what these amazing devices did, or where they were from, or what they were worth - but none attacked him, so he didn't rightly care.
What he wanted was a way out. Which he found, soon enough: a square hole in the ceiling. So up he went. And, after he had gazed again on the desolation of the Deep South, he started wondering just how the hell he was going to get back to ground level. If he had a rope, it would be easy.
Otherwise . . .
The walls were sheer, impossible to climb. If he jumped, the odds for breaking something were excellent. If he broke something, he was dead.
'Hoy!' shouted Drake. 'Anyone here?'
He listened, but heard only a faint hissing, which could have been the sun trying to weld his shadow to the roof. Shading his eyes, he scanned the landscape. Nobody. The clifftops lay only half a league away. From this height, it scarcely looked any distance at all.
Then came the blue of the sea, and, to the north, the humped mass of the island of Ko. There was something odd about Ko. Yes: its ends were curling up in the hot sunshine, floating above the sea. Drake squinted, trying to bring them into focus. No change.
He was horror-struck. It was his fault! He must have somehow unleashed some enormously evil power which had been lurking in this tower. Perhaps that power was, right now, making all the lands and islands of the whole wide world turn up at the edges and curdle.
'Nonsense,' he said to himself. 'Impossible!'
Yet: some of those ancient Causes were known to have amazingly grandiose Effects.
'Well,' said Drake, 'we'll worry about the world when we're free in the world to worry. Right now we need a rope.'
And, without waiting to worsen his sunburn, he went below decks to make another Investigation.
He found nothing remotely worth having, but for twenty-seven identical amulets. Each, together with its necklace-chain of smooth-flowing black links, had the weight of a walnut. Each amulet was a cool, glossy lozenge of jet black. On one side, a golden sun disc. On the other, raised silver decorations in the form of seven stars and a crescent moon. On Investigating the silver stars, Drake found the amulets could be made to talk.
'. . . strong voice,' muttered Drake. 'Man's voice . . . strange ... no language I know . . . worth a pretty, I bet . . . magic, perhaps? Spells, perhaps? . . . well ... no harm trying . . .'
He took the amulets downstairs. Crouching by the yellowed skull of the long-dead stranger, he let the invisible barrier listen to each amulet in turn, knowing well enough that many such charms had magical powers. The barrier held firm. Drake attacked it one last time, thumping it hard with his fists.
No good.
'Still,' said Drake, putting the amulets round his neck for safe keeping, 'these charm-things will be worth something if I ever get out of here. Yes, wizards would pay for them, if nobody else.'
He was right about that, for each amulet contained the voice of Saba Yavendar himself. The great poet of the days of yore had once lived in this tower for half a millen-ium, and had whiled away some of those long years of exile by making multiple recordings of all his early works, including his Winesong, Lovesong and Warsong.
Wizards valued such things, and the High Speech of wizards was near-identical to the Stabilized Scholastic Standard which Yavendar had recorded in.
'Still no rope, though,' said Drake.
But, before he slung the last amulet around his neck, he tested its strength. It was beyond his power to break it.
'With enough of these woman-fancy faggots,' said Drake, 'I could make a chain to get me out of here.'
So he resumed his Investigations, but with no more success than-before. He got angry.
'You see, Muck?' he yelled. 'You see, you groggy old bugger? You can't make rope from Investigations!'
Then stopped yelling, for his throat started hurting. Thirst. Yes. That was it. He was going to thirst to death, and soon. No doubt about it. Since he was definitely doomed to die, he was all the more bitter about those afternoons wasted studying the Theory of Knowledge, the Theory of Lists, the Reductive Crisis of Categorizations and all the rest of that pretentious old rubbish which never yet helped put a sharper edge on a sword, and never would.
'Missed out on all those sacrifices, too,' said Drake, gloomily.
The human sacrifices organized by the temple of Hagon had mostly been in the afternoons. Everyone agreed they were top-notch religious experience, but because of his schoolwork, he had never managed to see one.
'All those days breaking my brains,' muttered Drake.
Arid hit a machine with his fist, hard. Then kicked it, but hurt his foot.
'Ganch,' said Drake, viciously.
The machines were obviously built to last. Otherwise he would have relieved his feelings by smashing them to pieces. Breaking. Smashing. Yes, that rang a bell. What was it? Yes ... the final Rule of Investigation:
'The last Test of Limits is Destruction.'
At first he was chary of breaking the place up. After all, something was making Ko island curl at the edges, and the only thing he could put it down to was his own Investigations. If he started some Destruction he might end up in serious trouble.
'But there's no other way,' muttered Drake, picking up the lightest available machine. 'Don't take this the wrong way
, little thing - it's sanctioned by the Theory of Investigations, don't you know.'
And he hurled the item against the wall. It was fragile, having been designed only to store, sanitize and dispense tooth-brushes. It shattered. A toothbrush (perfectly preserved for millenia by a low-grade stasis field) fell from the wreckage.
'A little jewel-cleaner of some sort,' said Drake, frowning. 'What was that doing in there?'
And he Investigated, carefully, looking for jewels. There was none. But there were some thin, finely woven metal wires, sheathed in pliable jackets of different colours.
'Hmmm,' said Drake. 'Maybe the last rule is the best of all. . .'
And he went downstairs to retrieve the larger bones of the skeleton, thinking to use them as levers to help pry apart the larger machines.
He was still hard at it when night came. He got little sleep, for the topmost room of the tower became amazingly cold by night. By the time dawn came, his stomach was seething with acid hunger. His mouth was thick, dry, furry. He sucked on the knucklebone of a long-dead man, generating saliva to ease the dryness of his throat.
'To work,' said Drake. 'To work . . .'
By noon, he had smashed every device in the room, and had woven a rope of wires which reached almost to the ground. Now he had to climb down.
'No sweat!' said Drake, using an ugly vernacular expression meaning 'easy'.
He was swiftly disabused of this notion, for in his weakened condition - he had lost a lot of water to the sun - he found it hard-going. By the time he reached the ground, he was in a state of wet-faced exhaustion.
He still faced the half-league walk back to the vent he had exited from. Half a league? In this spasmodic terrain, rough as a storm-chopped sea, his undulating route would stretch the journey out to nigh on three thousand paces.
Be a man.
With a third of the journey done, he slipped, fell, and ricked an ankle. Broken? Even if it was, he still had to walk on it. With his dirk, he cut himself a hefty stick to lean on. Up. On! He almost swooned from the pain - but continued.
A shadow flickered across the ground.
The buzzard?
Looking up, Drake saw something far, far above. High through the blue empyrean it flew. A great bulky body and a long, long trailing tail. It was a hundred paces long if it was a fingerlength. As Drake watched, it vanished into cloud.
What was that?
It was, he decided, a hallucination. Nothing which flew could be so big. Surely. But then, dragons - no, it had not been a dragon. A monster of the Swarms? Impossible. The Swarms were an invention of wizards, part of a bluff to keep the world from the riches of the terror-lands . . .
Again a shadow flickered over the ground.
Again Drake looked up.
It was a buzzard, that was all. Probably the same one which had been hungering after him the day before. Well, it was right out of luck, for he had no intention of dying. Not today.
'Not ever, in fact,' said Drake.
As the purple shadows of evening were spreading across the terror-lands of the Deep South, Drake gained the vent which led into the depths of Ling. He was too tired to be happy. He stumbled to his quarters, drained a bowl of water then fell onto his bed and collapsed.
'Our visitor has returned alive from the Forbidden Tower,' the Watchers reported to the Great One. 'How can that be?'
'Omnia puris pura,' said the Great One, or words to that effect. 'He found no evil there for no evil lives within him. We must increase our efforts to incorporate him.'
Drake spent two days in bed, utterly exhausted. His ankle, fortunately, was only badly bruised - but, even so, he knew there was no escape for him on foot.
It was a good few marches to Drangsturm, with no wild water on the way. Even if he met no monsters, thirst would finish him for certain. He remembered the buzzard circling overhead; he shuddered. Even if he reached Drangsturm, he would be on the wrong side of that prodigious flame trench. Did it run right into the sea? If it did, how far would he have to swim to get to safety?
Forget it! He would have to steal a canoe, yes. And, while stealing a canoe, he might as well go for some pearls. What did they really look like, those 'beads without holes'? Men deemed them fabulous wealth, but what made them so special?
Drake's desire to learn about canoes was amply satisfied in the days that followed. On showing himself interested in the sea, he found plenty of tutors eager to learn him all its aspects. (And also to seduce him - though, fearing more torture, he resisted all their blandishments.)
They taught him paddling.
They tolerated his fondness for collisions.
And then the Ling made a decision which would shortly allow Drake to satisfy his curiosity about pearls.
Drake had lately taken to pointing at Ko, and making strange noises which were clearly meant to be questions. Obviously he wanted to go to the island.
'Being pure,' said the Great One, 'he does not want to live as a parasite. He wishes to share our labours.'
Which was how Drake got to be taken to the pearl-fishing grounds at Ko.
'It's all right,' he said with relief, when they got there. 'It's not melting after all. It must've been some trick of the sea making it look so. We can go back now.'
But the smiling Ling still confessed to no Galish. Instead, they set a bushel of pearl-oysters in front of him, and showed him how these were opened.
Soon Drake knew why pearls were so precious: because in days of oyster-opening, in which he was sure he killed more oysters than all the world could have eaten in ninety generations, he found but one small pearl, and even that was misshapen, squashed almost flat. He had plenty of examples to compare it with, because the Ling were indulging in a positive orgy of pearling, diving from dawn to dusk.
'I'll try diving,' said Drake. 'It's got to be easier.'
It wasn't. It was exhausting. But, as he got good at it, he relished the fierce pleasures of physical mastery. To be good at something, to be excellent - yes, that was what made life worth living.
Down in the depths of the sea he dived, swimming sinuous through translucent seas where sunlight sieved down through the blue-green fathoms, where fish flickered away into the mists of distance, or dawdled at weightless leisure between floating weed and plump red sponges.
They dived, some days, near an underwater cliff which fell away to cold, cold, black-green depths. Once, Drake swam out above that unfathomable abysm, for the sheer pleasure of terrifying himself. Once was enough.
In waters less deep, he joined the play with the big, lazy black-winged rays, ferocious in appearance but near enough to harmless unless hooked or speared. He broke open sea urchins for the pleasure of moray eels, which fed from his naked hands. When exhausted by the sea, he slept on rock ledges in the leisurely heat of the afternoon sun.
'He spends less and less time bringing up pearl-oysters,' complained his comrades.
'Doubtless he has a religious connection with the sea,' said the Great One. 'He is engaged in her worship. Let him be.'
'Oh,' said the Ling.
It seemed there was much to learn about this strange, saintly son of Jon Arabin, who looked young and virile, yet refused every offer of the pleasure of the flesh.
What the Ling did not learn - for they were very innocent, and not much good at arithmetic - was that Drake was robbing them blind. He massed a hoard of twenty pearls - a fortune in other parts, if sailors' stories were anything to go by. And he dreamed sweetly about what such wealth could buy him in civilization.
Each evening, as night settled on Island Ko, he sat by a driftwood fire sucking the flesh from the claws of giant crabs, staring into the flames and imagining the soft breasts of women, the sighs of a swooning lover, the hearty laughter of a tavern, the chink of gold in a casino, the generous smiles of flattering faces admiring his silken elegance.
Finally, the pearling on Ko came to an end. The divers shifted back to Ling. And Drake was ready to escape.
He chose a c
anoe: one small enough to paddle himself. He scavenged a single waterskin, which he filled from the ever-replenished Inner Pool which supplied the whole community of Ling. Food was no problem: there was any amount of dried oyster flesh for the taking.
He had more than a few doubts about the voyage. It was a hell of a long way to paddle.
'But,' said Drake, 'I don't have much bloody option. If I can get back to Stokos, I can likely be king. Or a priest, at least. What's the choice? To stay here and rot, that's what!'
Ling, as far as he could tell, was ignorant of both booze and gambling. And as for sex - he knew well enough that he would be tortured to death if he so much as laid hands on any of the young flesh which delighted in tantalizing him.
So early one morning, while it was still dark, Drake launched his canoe. It was, in fact, Midsummer's Day -the start of the year Khmar 18, and the first anniversary of the Martyrdom of Muck.
Drake was far out in the bay when the dawnlight, diminishing the dark, revealed a ship. A ship oncoming, a stately sight, all sail set to bear her along in the light winds of dawn. Drake stopped paddling, and sat there, hoping. The ship had green sails, yes. And - a dragon figurehead! It was the Warwolf! Shouting, weeping and whooping, Drake jumped up and down to such effect that he upset the canoe and precipitated himself into the water.
'I wonder,' said one of the elders, observing him from the heights, 'why our young guest was out on the waters so early in the morning.'
'Because,' replied the Great One, who was standing beside him, 'he has the Power. He knew his father was returning today, so set himself forth to meet him.'
'He will, then, leave us.' 'Doubtless.'
'What then do you see for his future?' asked the elder. The Great One deliberated gravely, then said: 'I see him changed to a sail.' 'To a sail?'
'Why not?' said the Great One. 'We each of us start as a fish in the womb. Is it any more miraculous to be changed into a sail?'
'Well. . . what else do you see?'
'Monsters . . . many of them . . . and ... a woman. Red skin. Red breasts. Her name - no, her name eludes me.'
'Is this woman then to be the mate of our noble visitor?
