Kavin's World

by David Mason

  Men came, saying that the slower ships were in sight, and that the first of them was even now entering Astorin harbor. There would be more food, though more mouths too, and powder for the guns. But no horses, I thought. How can one fight riders on foot?

  The north wind touched my face with a cold puff as I stood on the wall. Then I remembered.

  In Dorada, in this autumn season, the wind rises strongly and flows down the valley, from the mountains toward the sea. For days, sometimes, the wind blows so strongly and steadily that ships must tack about and wait before entering the harbor, or be drawn in by oarsmen. And the voice had spoken of the north wind.

  But there had been no word at all from Granorek, the fortress at the head of the valley of Dorada, nor any sign that it was still in the hands of Doradans. My uncle Malvi was not a man who would have given over Granorek easily, though. There were more than a hundred men of fighting skill there with him, maybe more if some had come in before the flood of invaders swept them up. The place would have been stored better than the city; Uncle Malvi was like that. To reach Granorek… but I heard someone call my name.

  “Prince Kavin.”

  He came up the stair to the wall, fat as ever, grinning like a frog which he much resembled. Thuramon the magician, my old teacher.

  “Thuramon! You look in good health,” I said, frowning. “Unlike most others hereabouts.”

  “Now, what value is there in magic art if a man’s to starve or fall ill?” Thuramon asked, stroking his beard. “Surely I would be no more than a charlatan if I were to come here to you thin and weak.”

  “You’ve been in the city through the whole siege?” I asked.

  “Where else?” he said, chuckling. “Though I sometimes found it convenient to walk invisible among the enemy. A little trick you could not seem to learn, I recall.”

  “An untrustworthy trick, for me, I remember,” I said, smiling in spite of all. “Damn it, Thuramon, that ointment smelled so vile that none needed to see me who had a nose. And when I tried to use the trick, I could be seen, though not well. Such half-invisibility is less use than none.”

  “Ah, that was because you would not learn to hold your mind in check,” Thuramon said. “More than half of all magic rests with the magician himself, not with the spells or the potions. Well, some day you may learn.”

  “I could use such witchcraft now,” I said, staring out over the walls. “If Granorek still holds… how to reach it?”

  “Granorek still holds,” Thuramon said. “And reaching it… well, there are more ways than one to be invisible. I can conduct you there, if you wish.”

  “Thuramon!”

  “Wait. For all magic, there’s a price.”

  “I found that out yesterday,” I said, grimly. “I thought you a friend, Thuramon. What’s this talk of price?”

  “And I thought I had taught you the Three Laws,” he said, looking hard at me. “Even between friends, the Laws hold. No work without price.”

  “And what will you have?” I asked. “Yesterday, I would not pay. Today… well, what? My right hand, possibly?”

  He looked at my forehead, and I saw he had noticed my iron-gray hair.

  “Yes, I see you paid something,” he said. “Well, this price is not like that. I have an enemy. Your enemy, as well, I think… or you’ll discover it so. I cannot reach that enemy, but you can. I want your word that before all else you will seek him out, no matter how long it may take, nor how far a journey, and slay him.”

  “For this promise, you’ll aid me in all ways, magical and otherwise, to clear the riders from Dorada?” I asked.

  “Yes. By the holy names of the Two who stand on the West and on the East, I do swear that,” Thuramon said, and I knew he would keep his word on that oath.

  We went at once to the quays, where my Luck lay once more, back from her night journey. I noticed, as we passed the prow, how Thuramon made an odd gesture at the figurehead, and I asked him why.

  “I know that lady,” he said, and that was all.

  Once aboard, in the cabin, he repeated the gesture before the curtained niche where the smaller figure was hidden. He had never been aboard the Luck before, and I did not ask him how he knew she was hidden there.

  I had already given my orders to the crew; we would lie at the quay while my sailing master brought round an oared fishing galley, a small craft which lay nearby. On deck, there was a thumping and clatter, as the men prepared to transfer a gun and other arms, down to the valley.

  I opened a jar of good wine, of which I knew Thuramon was more than fond, and we shared it in silence for a while.

  “You asked nothing about my payment,” he said at last.

  “You have my word,” I told him sipping my wine. “No more’s needed.”

  “You asked for no name,” he said. “You were never so restrained when you were my pupil.”

  “I was much younger then,” I said. “My curiosity’s edge grows dull with hacking away at the walls of wisdom.”

  “Excellently put, Prince. And good wine, too. Well, I shall tell some part of the matter… not all, but some.” He leaned back, his eyes on the curtained niche where the goddess Tana lived. “Tell me first, my Prince: when you found this ship, and what was concealed aboard her… did you find aught else beside that pretty figurine?”

  I had never mentioned anything of my various finds, to anyone. I cannot say why I kept the matter so secret, but for some reason, I did. Had Thuramon asked me then, I would have gladly shown him the things, but he did not ask.

  The oddments, the box of wizard’s tools and the other things, still lay in a chest, here in the cabin. I rose, and went to the chest, opened it and laid the contents out. Thuramon turned each object around, touching delicately with his curious stubby fingers, smiling to himself.

  “Yes… yes,” he said, playing with the carved block. “All this… will be very useful. Very useful indeed. Tell me, Prince, know you the use of these small blocks of wood?”

  “No,” I said.

  “They are made so that ink may be smeared on them, and pressed against paper. Thus, a picture… or a word… may be written over and over, many times.”

  “Now, what would be the use of that?”

  “It may have a use, some day,” he said. “Not now, not here. But in the place where these came from, they had use. The tools of magic, now… these were the tools of one whom I knew well, the man called Dragon, because he kept one near him always. He lived in an island, far from here, where dragons breed.”

  I had never seen a dragon, except a great skin and skull, kept among my late uncle’s curiosities. From that evidence, I had no special wish to see one, either. Thuramon went on.

  “Such tools work best for him who made them, but another may use them too. And we shall… we shall.”

  At that moment, a seaman knocked on the cabin door, to say that the prisoners we had taken were being brought aboard; I had given such orders earlier. The elder and the boy had been kept in one of the lower dungeons of the castle while I slept, but I had given orders to feed them. When I went out on the deck, both of them looked well enough, though sullen as caged ferrets.

  They stood between armed men, chained at hand and foot, as I had ordered. I did not wish to lose either one just yet. I had some hopes of use for them.

  “Thuramon,” I said, calling him to me. “I know you have wide knowledge of strange languages. Do you, perhaps…”

  “I do,” he said, grinning at them. “Oh, but I do know their tongue, Prince. Many years ago I rode with their fathers for a while.”

  He stepped forward and spoke in harsh gutturals. There was an exchange between Thuramon and the elder prisoner, words whose sound was unpleasant. Thuramon turned to me, smiling more broadly than ever.

  “You have a prize, truly. This is the High Chief, Kakk Marag, and his son, Marag Mik. He is the greatest one among all those who ride your land, out there. Incidentally, he says you are a brave man, and he will personally eat your l
iver one day.”

  “I can spare such compliments,” I said. “Ask him if his life is enough payment to take his swarm home wherever they came from.”

  Thuramon shook his head. “He will not. These people care nothing for their own lives, and they came here partly out of necessity. Anyway, they would not obey him if he did order them home. Their grasslands are dry, and their cattle dying.”

  “He cannot take them back, then?” I said, fury rising in me. “Does he value his son’s life, if not his own?”

  “He might,” Thuramon said.

  “Or even better,” I looked evilly upon those two, whose tribes had eaten Dorada, “tell him, if he does not go out on the wall and send his tribes back to the north, that I’ll have the boy castrated, and keep him as a slave, to clean latrines for the rest of his life. Try that tale on him.”

  Thuramon delivered my words, with a grin as vile as my own. Of course, the horrible details were a lie: our laws forbid such filth. But I hoped this barbarian would believe the story, and surrender.

  He did, apparently. He spat sentences back at Thuramon, and looked gray about the gills.

  “He says he will speak, but he says they will not listen,” Thuramon said. “He asks for your word that if he fails, you will not harm the boy.”

  “His brat’s safe, as long as he does as I ask,” I said. “Come, bring them along to the walls.”

  As we went, Thuramon spoke to me, quietly, out of hearing of the guards who brought the pair along behind.

  “He speaks truth, I think,” Thuramon said. “We must go on with our other plans. The tribesmen will not go. Not while there’s hope of loot here, and nothing but hunger behind.”

  “We can try,” I said.

  “I already knew this tale of his,” Thuramon went on, trotting swiftly beside me. “His people are but the unknowing tools of another. There is an evil thing abroad in the world… the enemy I spoke of.”

  “So,” I said. We were climbing to the wall top, near the rubble-filled gate now, amid the stench of death from the piled corpses in the square below. It was not a pleasant odor, but this Kakk Marag must have found it even less so; they were his own, after all.

  “About that enemy…” I said, as we came to the parapet, “I would hear more. But later. Call a trumpeter to me.”

  We put the old man up on the parapet, with a man holding his chain so that he could not jump. The boy, watching, snarled at us like a young dog, which he much resembled. Bowmen nocked their arrows, aiming at the man, if Thuramon should hear him speak anything he should not.

  The trumpeter blew, a long blast, and then another; and on the far ridges, we saw a stirring. Riders came nearer, and word must have gone back swiftly, as to the man’s identity. Other riders came from the ridge, and a group of twenty came toward us, at a trot.

  They were elegantly gotten up, with feathers and horns, and most surely were lesser chiefs. They rode closer, and I flushed with anger when I saw some of them rode Doradan horses; worse, there were scalps, fresh ones, dangling from their lance shafts. Then they drew rein, under the walls, and one bellowed up a question.

  Thuramon cocked his ear, as our prisoner answered; and nodded, satisfied.

  “He tells them we are magicians, that the city is strong and well armed,” Thuramon said. “He says there is loot elsewhere.”

  There were more shouts from below.

  “They cry out against him,” Thuramon said. “They say their folk will not give in. That they will eat us all, and free him. Now, he pleads further. He says that they will soon starve here, too, that winter comes. That there are fat lands and cattle beyond the hills to the west… I wonder how he knew that, by the way. Someone told him… ah, they seem to be weakening, arguing among themselves.”

  We had all of us, to a man, fixed our eyes on the old one who stood up there; even the guard who held the boy’s chain listened and watched, to his ill luck. The boy’s face was scowling blackly as he listened. Then it happened.

  The boy twisted, snatching, and caught the guard’s dagger from his belt. He slashed like a wildcat, deep into the man’s neck. Leaping free, he hacked at another man, and bounded to the parapet. He hung over, shrieking in his harsh language to the men below; then, as we tried to grapple him, he kicked free, and howled a wild phrase. Still howling, he sprang out, and down, into the ditch below, striking with a thump on the muddy earth.

  The old man yowled too, desperately trying to break free, but was yanked back, as arrows spattered against the stone wall from the riders below. He lay kicking like a stranded shark; bowmen sprang to the wall, and our own arrows sang down.

  The clump of riders flew apart, in every direction, some galloping away, and some feathered with arrows, to pitch to the ground.

  Now there was no one below at all; only the crumpled figure of that mad boy, at which I stared, sickened.

  “Wait!” I called out. “Look at that. The brat’s alive.” He had moaned, and scrabbled at the mud beneath him.

  “Drop a rope, there,” I ordered. “Fetch him back.”

  I have no idea why I did it. Perhaps because of some faint hope of future use for the ill-favored brat, or only because I would not let his own tribes have him. I’m sure I felt no pity for either the boy or his elder, who now snapped with his teeth at the guards who held him.

  The guards, who were only men after all, handled the young beast with more gentleness than I might have expected. They laid him out on a blanket, and sent him down to the Temple, where, if he could live at all, he might be healed. I doubted that he would live, myself, tough as he seemed. He must have broken half the bones in his body in that fall, and he did not seem to have much chance.

  The father, groaning and spitting, I sent after him, to watch the healing or the death, whichever came. Thuramon waited at my elbow.

  “The boy’s words slew any chance of peace,” he said. “He told them his father had been tortured, that they must not believe anything, and to come into the city and slay.”

  “Filial devotion,” I said bitterly.

  “No,” said Thuramon. “The boy probably believed you would slay or enslave them both anyway. He could not bear to see his father weakened by fear for him. It was bravery.”

  “He’s left us with no hope of talking to his kind, not now,” I said. “Well, he’s paid for it. If his wounds don’t kill him, the plague will. And his fool of a father goes over the wall on the end of a rope when I return. We’ll have no food to spare a useless prisoner then.”

  “Pledge no deaths,” Thuramon said. “You need luck.”

  “I have luck,” I told him, meaning two things. “But—well, we’ll see if I can afford mercy, later. Let’s see if all’s ready at the waterside.”

  The boat we had selected lay ready, a large scow with a shallow draft, eight oars to a side. We loaded it deep with food, since Granorek might be a hungry place by now. There was barely room for three casks of powder and two of the culverins, which we clamped to a forward rail. We took out the mast for room, since the wind would be against us all the way, and crammed a full two-score men into the craft, a tight fit.

  When night came, we pulled out and round the south sea-tower, into the river’s mouth. We were sure we had not been seen. But Thuramon made ready with certain things that had been in the sorcerer’s box, and other things of his own.

  He fixed a bronze lamp, an ancient, clumsy thing of twisted ornament, in the prow; midships, he set a huge jar made of green clay and painted with serpents. Then he sat down beside the jar and waited, smiling to himself. At times he lifted his head, sniffing at the air like a mare downwind from a stallion.

  We rowed on, as quietly as we could, Thuramon waited, and we watched the black river banks flow past.

  Then Thuramon chuckled low in his throat.

  “I hear horsemen,” he said, and lifted the cover from his green jar, muttering words too low to hear.

  A faint mist rose from the jar and thickened. In a moment, the fog that rolled ou
t was so dense that we could no longer see, and it continued to flow steadily. Thuramon crawled forward, stumbling over knees and casks. When he reached the prow he struck flint, and lit the queer old lamp.

  Suddenly, a strange light glowed about the bronze lamp, a sea-green light that spread so far that we could see the banks of the river on either side, although the mist still flowed impalpably about us. That light was almost as bright as day.

  On the nearer bank, half a dozen skin-clad riders had halted, and stared out at the river. They were only a spear-cast away, and we could see them clearly. But they could not see us, as was quite evident from their actions.

  “They see only fog, and sea mist, coming up the river.” Thuramon said. “The lamp is for our eyes alone. Row, now, and make haste. The mist will not last forever.”

  All that night we rowed, by relays, steadily, with no fear of discovery. As the sun rose, we were halfway to our goal, and the mist still spread obediently about us; our lamp still lit the way, though the sun glowed dimly through our fog.

  We saw no riders, now; they must all be either down river at the city wall or gathered near the castle Granorek. Nevertheless, Thuramon glanced anxiously into the jar, from time to time, and added sprinkles of a black powder there. Sometimes we saw the riversides too clearly; black bones of peasant villages, dead cattle, and human dead. There were blackened fields, and foulness, everywhere. I watched, bitterness rising in me until I could taste it.

  “They are fond of fires, these scum.” I said quietly. “Fires they shall have, till their bellies are full. Row, damn you all! Pull!”

  Then Granorek tower was clearly seen at last, but near it stood those black tents again, like filthy mushroom growths on the green earth. And the green jar still flowed, and we were still unseen.

  The castle lay on a crag jutting into the river which bends about its foot. One side is protected by a deep ditch, which we now saw was filling with dead. But nearer the water the crag was lower, and here the invaders had chosen to work. They had lifted a ramp of earth, nearly to the curtain wall, and now were busy with scaling ladders, while arrows flew in sheets from both sides.