The Incompleat Nifft

by Michael Shea

  "Dalissem!" he shouted. His voice was as nothing in the wind. "Dalissem of Lurkna Downs. Approach. Defalk is delivered to your hands!"

  The puny words were erased even as they left his lips, but a freezing updraft followed them like a response, an icy column of wind that pushed against our faces without wavering. Very deep, but directly below the last step's broken edge, there was a small and constant movement. It grew. It was a figure swimming upward.

  And that's how she came to us, Barnar, clawing upward out of the dark, her eyes stark, raving bright, her hair twisting in snakes upon her shoulders, her nakedness like a torch in the pit.

  Here, movement was no labor to her. She sprang upon the foot of the stairs as light and lithe as a winged cat. She stood arms akimbo, and after nodding to the Guide, she grinned at Haldar and me, and seemed not even to see the man we had brought her. He called to her—his voice had a crack in it: "Dalissem! Forgive me, and take me!"

  Even Haldar was surprised enough to tear his eyes off her and look back at Defalk. For my part, when I'd grasped what he'd said, I gaped at him. But Dalissem spoke as if nothing had been said.

  "You have brought him then! I chose my men well. Truly, you two are among the greatest of your brotherhood, to have accomplished this!" (I promise you, Barnar, those were her words to the letter.) "Alas, good henchmen, who will ever believe you, if you tell them of this exploit?"

  Haldar answered her with a tremor of feeling:

  "Lady, for myself, the payment of the exploit is this second sight of you. And I here renounce the Key—let it be wholly Nifft's. Please deign to receive this tender of my chaste and absolute love."

  She laughed. "Chaste and otherwise, Haldar Dirkniss. Oh, I'll receive this tender, and far more! As for the key, there is none to renounce. You were deceived with a simulacrum." She laughed again, with ravenous long looks in Haldar's face, and gleeful looks in mine. She was a beauty in truth, with her fat paps, and her loins' black patch, as charged with energy as a cat's hackles. Defalk made a drunken movement but said nothing. I think he was dazed a bit, with the shame of her ignoring him. I was fairly fuddled myself with a shock that was half recognition—the fulfillment of a suspicion I hadn't known I had.

  Dalissem raised her arms triumphantly above her and grinned skywards: "Oh, how I've outwitted you, King Death! Great Thief, you are not half so sly as poor Dalissem, poor Dalissem dead these seven years, cheated of love she paid her life for. For look now what she's done! She sneaked back, Your Majesty, and stole the love she had a right to. Oh dear little hawk-faced mortal. Your life on earth is at an end. I chose you instantly I sensed you through the portal of my dying-place, and instantly I knew how much you'd love me. You're mine now—admit the truth!"

  "Yes!" cried Haldar, and his voice rang like the harbor bell of Karkhman-Ra.

  Then Defalk cried out in his turn:

  "Dalissem! Will you speak to me? Will you take me? I was less than you thought—you were more than I understood! But take me now. This man is nothing to you. Remember how we were!"

  He looked quite fine then, Barnar, with his one red tear-track, and a new uprightness in his body. He put me in mind of an aging dolphin I once saw sporting, making clumsy leaps out of the water. Defalk's soul was just such a fat old fish, yet here this fleshly fop was managing, with supreme feeling, to heave himself up, and catch a flash of sun upon his back. Dalissem looked at him then. Perhaps she had meant not to, and now gave him this much tribute.

  "Well, it is you Defalk! This is pleasant luck, to find you here. I am as you see me."

  Defalk hung his head. "I was a little man who assumed he was great. I learned better!"

  "But what is this, Defalk. You ask me to take you? You ask me to receive you to my love-in-death? Can it be your spirit does not thrive? Can it be you've weighed your life of kissing arse and crouching before fat purses, and have found it wanting? Can it be that your lady's paintpots and her witless rodent's chatter oppress you?"

  "She is a small woman, Dalissem. I am small, and I have not helped her to be more. I ask you to forgive—"

  She cut him off: "I readily forgive what is forgotten. You are forgotten, Defalk, now that I have the two minor things I wanted from you: your self-contempt and your jealousy. Thus I am released from the shame of having loved you. Now, Haldar Dirkniss, stand nearer, for I mean to take you to me."

  My friend nodded, and stepped down. He wore leather and stout wool, but she put her hands to his chest, and tore away his clothes, and they rent to tatters as easily as dead leaves. She stripped him babe-naked and looked on him with smiling lust and pride. My friend was in a manly state. So, indeed, was I. She gave off desire that pressed physically against you, fierce and steady as the wind. She clasped her hands behind his neck and sprang backwards.

  Her leap carried them both far—impossibly far out over the blizzards of fire. They didn't fall, but drifted out, as if gliding on ice—and he mounted her. Then, coupling, they fell in wide, smooth sweeps, wheeling as they slid, then banking, diving, gone.

  There was a shout as deep as a bull's. Defalk slowly raised his fists overhead. He roared again, wordless, as if merely trying to break the instrument of his voice. Then he jumped out into the gulf.

  Surely the rage of that last cry should have gained him entry into that furious place. But the firestorm did not receive him. As he sprawled out upon the void he did not drift, but hung there, bouncing and jolting and skidding horribly upon the invisible surface of the wind. He could not enter it—the gale's cold, speeding mass erased his substance as he jounced atop it. His hands vanished in a smooth smear of white; his face was rubbed to nothing in an instant; he was gone.

  I turned to face the Guide. Slowly but firmly, I climbed to stand before him.

  "Lord Guide," I said, looking up into the smoky craters of his eyes, "a great swindle had been worked upon two of the age's foremost thieves. One of them is cheated of his life, though he would not describe it so. But as for me, my lord, I believe some further time up in the sunlight still belongs to me, before I must see your face, and your servant's, a second time. Let this much faith be kept, at least: take me back now to the world of living men."

  Part 2

  SHAG MARGOLD'S Preface to

  The Pearls of the

  Vampire Queen

  THIS ACCOUNT IS the work of Ellen Errin (known perhaps equally well as Greymalkin Mary)—something I flatter myself I would know even were the manuscript not written in her unmistakable script, which is both exceedingly minuscule and almost preternaturally legible. For just as distinctive to me as her hand, is her subtle, incessant parody of Nifft's voice. That the two were lovers for many years need not be concealed. Ellen herself certainly regards the fact with outspoken pride, and Nifft always did likewise. It is probably best understood, then, as a lover's liberty that she takes when she invariably, in adopting Nifft's voice, makes him sound twice the boaster that he ever really was. It is never his tone she distorts, but only the measure of his bragging. In the present instance she was sharing the jest with Taramat Lighttouch, who did indeed receive it as a missive from Chilia, where Ellen had been staying with Nifft and Barnar for more than six months before she relayed his adventure to their mutual friend in Karkhman-Ra. In sum, I find I must confess that these gentle parodies of hers always make me smile, for truly, Nifft was never over modest.

  Fregor Ingens, where this chapter of Nifft's career has its setting, is still referred to by certain intransigent members of the cartographic guild as the "fourth continent." It is scarcely a sixth the size of Lúlumë, and it is clearly part of an island system, namely the Ingens Cluster, which lies halfway between Kolodria's southern tip and the Glacial Maelstroms of the southern Pole. But because it is the largest island known, it seems there will always be some contentious souls ambitious to promote it to continental status. In my view these commentators could toil more fruitfully on other ground, such as the amplification of our extremely sparse information on the geography and inha
bitants of Fregor's central highlands, which are spectacularly mountainous—thought indeed to contain several of the earth's highest peaks—and shrouded in perpetual clouds.

  The lowlands of Fregor's northern coast are at least rather better known and it is here, some hundred leagues inland of Cuneate Bay, that the swamplands of the Vampire Queen lie. Indeed, the bay's cities owe their modestly active shipping trade largely to the proximity of Queen Vulvula's pearl-rich domains, which are productive of little else and in consequence draw heavily on the resources of the teeming Kolodrian continent. The swamp pearls—like a ceaseless, glittering black rivulet—trickle northward overland in heavily armed caravans: the Kolodrian merchant argosies river southward from the Great Shallows; the two streams meet in the ports of Cuneate Bay, mingle turbulently in clearing houses and brokerage halls, and resume their flow, the pearls northward overseas, the goods southward overland to the royal vampire's hungry fens and tarns.

  But to speak of hunger is to raise the issue that must be foremost in the mind of anyone who has perused this record of Nifft's Fregorian exploit: can a vampire's rule be a just rule? I confess that the question is still so "alive" for me—that is to say, unconcluded—that more than eleven years of diligent inquiry have left me as destitute of any certain answer as I was when Taramat first showed me the manuscript. Perhaps as close as I have come to any such thing is in considering the case of a realm near Vulvula's which is just as trade-dependent as her own, that of Gelidor Ingens. Gelidor is the second-largest (it is the size of Chilia) and southernmost island of the Ingens Chain. During the season of the sirikons it is only five days' sail from Samádrios, the western-most isle of my native Ephesion Chain. Whether Samádrios' need nourished an infant industry in Gelidor, or Gelidor's natural abundance of the resource in question nurtured Samádrios' inclination to rely on it must rank as one of the most venerable controversies in Ephesion academic tradition. (That it has been so since the Aboriginal Trade Wars suggests—to me at least—that the answer lies either beyond the reach of formal inquiry, or beneath its notice.) But past any dispute is Gelidor's preeminence as a nursery of arms, especially since the decline of Anvil Pastures (elsewhere detailed), and Samádrios' centuries-long dependence on those arms for the prosecution of her interminable bid for empire in the islands of the Kolodrian Tail. And Samádrios is far from being Gelidor's only customer. Her mercenaries are the highest paid in the world. The skill and bellicosity of her army and navy have not only made her mistress of half the islands of the dense and disparate Ingens cluster, they have also caused war to become her prime export. The Hipparch of Gelidor subjects his teeming island to a painful diminution of prosperity—always swiftly and vigorously deplored by the populace—whenever he fails to dispense at least two-thirds of his annual crop of academy-trained officers among the globe's annual crop of red and rampant battlefields. And so we might fairly ask: Who drinks more blood—the Hipparch, or Queen Vulvula?

  —Shag Margold

  The Pearls of the

  Vampire Queen

  I

  To Taramet Light-touch

  Sow-and-Farrow Inn

  Karkhman-Ra

  WARMEST SALUTATIONS, O Prince of Scoundrels! Dear deft-fingered felon, Paragon of Pilferers, Nabob of Knaves—good morrow, good day or good night, whichever suits the hour this finds you! Do you guess who I am that greets you thus? Eh? Of course you do. Who else but your own nimble, narrow-built, never-baffled Nifft—inimitable Nifft of the knife-keen wits!

  Has it been two years since we've been out of touch? That much and more, by the Black Crack! I'm sure you thought me dead or something like it, and I promise you, Taramat, I came close to it, for the haul that Barnar and I made in Fregor Ingens has taken us all of twenty-six months of breakneck squandering to dissipate, and if it had been just a jot richer, we would certainly have died of our vices before we'd wasted it all.

  Haul? In Fregor? But of course—you don't know about it yet! Stupid of me . . . suppose I write you a nice long letter telling you all about it? It's raining here in Chilia where we're visiting Barnar's family. I've got lots of time on my hands, and we won't be getting back down your way till late this Spring. So it's agreed then, and I assure you it's no trouble at all, for I love to reminisce about exploits, especially remarkable ones. Just be sure to share this with Ellen if you see her—you know how she dotes on me and relishes keeping abreast of what I'm doing.

  Well, it was swamp pearls, Taramat—five hundred apiece. Yes. You may well gape (as I know you're doing). You know their value, I'm sure, but have you ever seen one? Black as obsidian, twelve-faceted (the runts have six) and big as your thumb. They are dazzling to behold—nothing less—and we never doubted that obtaining some was worth risking the Vampire Queen's wrath.

  Now we knew that Queen Vulvula's divers go down after them in threes—one pearl-picker and two stranglers. But this is because they are anxious not to kill the pearl-bearing polyps. With a pair of heavies, the thing's palps can be pinned and the picker left free to take its pearls. They attack the polyp's strangling-node only as a last resort, to free one of their team from a lethal grip of one of the palps. But a diver can get sufficient diversion from just one strangler if the man is strong enough and goes straight for the strangling node and squeezes to kill. You try to be quick and not leave the thing dead, as their corpses make a good trail for the archer-boats, but to get by with one strangler, he can't be shy about damaging the things. You know Barnar's strength. I was content to risk the picking with him strangling solo, and he was willing to try it if I was. So we signed up as men-at-arms on a Chilite skirmisher to get passage to Cuneate Bay, and spent three days there in Draar Harbor getting provisions. Then we headed south.

  With good mounts the swamps are about ten days' journey inland. It's bad country, but our luck was good right up through the eighth day. Then, on the eighth night, it went bad. We were in the salt marshes near the mountains that flank the swamps when three huge salt beetles attacked us. Luckily, though wood is scarce there, we'd kept enough of a fire going to give us a little light to fight by. We killed them all, but not before they'd killed our mounts. Worse, their caustic blood destroyed both our spear shafts. We still had our bows and blades, but we would rather have lost these than the spears, which would be the only really useful weapons in the swamps. When you're swimming you can't use a bow, so it's no help against lurks, and it's scant help against ghuls because they're so tough-bodied in all but a few places. And swords bring you far closer than you ever want to be, either to a lurk or a ghul.

  The swamps begin to the south of the Salt Tooth Mountains. As soon as we reached the upper passes of this range, we were looking across a plain of clouds that seemed to have no end. The range forms a wall the clouds can't pass, and the plains below have been a sump of rains for thousands of years.

  Descending the range's swamp side, we were deep in cottony fog most of the way down, but just as we neared the plain we entered a zone of clear air between the clouds and the swamp. In the cold grey light between the cloud ceiling and the watery floor, we could see for miles across the pools and thickly grown mudbars that concealed our illicit fortune-to-be. The bars and ridges of silt are mazelike, turning the waters, which look jet black from a distance, into a puzzle of crazy-shaped lagoons. But the growth on these bars, though thick, is not as lush as you'd expect. It's mainly shrubs and flowers; big trees are rare. The question of cover would be tricky as a result. The place offered many avenues of vision down which a man standing on a flatboat could overlook a dozen lagoons at a glance.

  But when we stood on the bog's very rim, pausing before we entered the waters, Barnar snuffed softly, and said to me: "It's got that smell, Nifft. There could be a great prize waiting for us here." He was right, too. It had that peculiar stink of threat about it. You looked at that low-riding cloudcover, looking torn and dirty as a stable-floor, and then at those endless unclean waters, and you knew that obscene riches lay ripening out there, riches so encumbered wit
h danger that their guards had ceased to believe that they could ever be stolen, not in any big way.

  II

  The waters only looked unclean. Once you were in them you were amazed to be able to see all the way down to your feet—and down to the bottom of most of the pools, none of which, even of the broader ones, was very deep. The reason is the soil of the swamps. If you dive for a handful of bottom silt, and squeeze the water out, you'll find it hefts like iron, and if you kick at the bottom you set up a low boil of mud that sinks down very fast. I've been told since that the polyps need this dense earth to nourish the growth of their pearls. While the light was still at its strongest, grey and bleached though that was, we made haste to cut our teeth in this business.

  In half an hour we were swimming, nudging our packs before us with one hand and holding our drawn swords before us underwater with the other. We had put cork inside our packs and wrapped them in oilskin, and our swordblades were heavily greased. The best way to survive in the swamps is to turn into a water-rat and stay in the water for the whole of your working day, and to crawl out onto the bars only to sleep. For one thing it keeps your water-adjusted reflexes in top readiness. The clarity gives you a few seconds warning when a lurk comes off the bottom at you, but if you're in and out your underwater eye will get fuddled and you'll be too slow to take one of those warnings. For another thing the lagoons are so interconnected that if you swim a mazy path you can go anywhere and almost never risk the visibility of crossing a bar of land.

  The first polyp we found grew alone in a small pool. It stood as tall as a man, its palp tips almost touching the surface. Neither of us knew if this was big or average. It would have been beautiful, standing there in the pool, its blurred redness seeming to burn, if we hadn't had to fight the thing. The palps began to writhe with exploring gestures the minute we paddled into the pool. Keeping out of range we sank underwater to view it. Down at the base of its anchor-stalk, right below where the bouquet of its arms began, was the small cluster of exposed fibres that is called the strangling node, from the use men put it to. At the same point on the stalk, but on the other side of it, were two large lumps—pearl blisters for sure.