Farslayer's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  The lady was unperturbed. “Then we shall walk.”

  Gelimer switched his attention to his other guest. “And you, young man? Do you seek Truth as well?”

  “Yes,” said Zoltan, and paused. “But not only that. Tell me, good hermit, do you know anything of a race of merpeople living in or near these waters? I have seen several of their kind far upstream, but no one there seems to know where they come from.”

  Gelimer looked at him, and thought carefully again. “Aye,” he said at last. “There are mermaids in these waters. Hardly a race of them. But there have been a few such folk, whose homes are not all that far from where we sit. All maids, fish from the waist down. Their fate is a result of magic directed at certain fishing villages, by enemies.”

  Zoltan’s eyes lit up at the discovery.

  “Whose magic, and why?” Yambu asked at once. Suddenly she seemed almost as interested as the young man.

  Gelimer heaved a sigh. “It is a long story,” he said at last. “But if you are interested—I suppose you should hear the main points of it anyway, if you are going on downstream from here by foot—the journey, you must realize, will not be without its dangers.”

  “Few journeys are,” said Yambu calmly. “At least among those which are worthwhile.”

  “When you have finished eating and enjoying your tea,” said the hermit, “you must come outside, and we will climb up on a rock. From there we will be able to look downstream for many kilometers, and see the land on either side of the river, and there I will tell you something of the situation.”

  Presently, when their modest meal had been consumed, they were outside again. Gelimer took them to a promontory a little above his house, a place from which they could look to the south and west and see where the Tungri eventually lost itself among distant hills.

  Gelimer waved his right hand to the north. “The land on the right bank is, for as far as you can see from here, under the domination of a clan called the Senones. The land on the left bank, whereon we are standing, is ruled by the Malolo clan. The two clans are bitter enemies, and have been so for many generations. The mermaids you have seen upstream were girls from one of a handful of small villages on the Malolo side, down there beyond the place where the river widens—you can barely see it from here.

  “Their strange, unnatural form is a result of Senones magic, a bitter and destructive curse that was inflicted upon people in the Malolo territory several generations ago. Sometimes the girls deformed by the curse are sold into slavery as curiosities. I have heard that traveling shows and the like buy them. An evil business.”

  “Yes. I see,” said young Zoltan. He was shading his eyes, and staring very intently and thoughtfully at the village barely visible in the distance. “And has no one ever found a cure for this particular curse?”

  “It would seem that the Malolo at least have never been able to find any.”

  Zoltan was silent, gazing off toward the horizon. It was left to the Lady Yambu to ask their host some practical questions about the trails.

  Shortly after he had imparted that information, Gelimer was again left without human companionship. His guests were on their way—long hours of sunny daylight still remained, and both pilgrims, the young man and the older woman, were eager to be gone.

  The hermit, looking after them when they had vanished down the trail, still could not quite decide what was the relationship between them. The young man seemed more true companion than servant. And if that woman had really at one time been the Silver Queen … having talked to her now, Gelimer found he could believe she had.

  Eventually the hermit, frowning, turned back to his hermitage. Hiding the Sword had really done nothing to relieve him of its burden. He still had matters of very great importance to decide.

  Chapter Three

  The sun had nearly disappeared from sight behind the tall trees of the valley’s forest before the two pilgrims again came in sight of the small fishing village they had glimpsed from the crag above the hermit’s house. Now they were walking close beside the river, and were almost on the point of entering the settlement.

  At the point where the trail they had been following emerged from the forest, on the south bank, Zoltan paused and turned to look over his shoulder to the northeast. He thought that he could see that crag again, still clearly visible in the light of the lowering sun. Now, of course, those heights were much too far away for him to be able to make out whether the hermit or anyone else was standing there.

  He faced forward again, and with the Lady Yambu at his side approached the village. The pair of them advanced slowly, wanting to give the inhabitants plenty of time to become aware of their arrival. Three or four of the fisherfolk were visible, garbed in heavy trousers and jackets. The place seemed quite ordinary for a settlement beside a river. It consisted of twelve or fifteen bark-roofed houses, some of them raised on stilts along the shoreline, and actually extending over the water. Thin columns of smoke from several fires ascended into the air. Just behind the village the forest rose up dense and tall, beginning to be clothed in the new growth of spring. One or two of the trees loomed impressively, being of the same gigantic species as the one that had formed the hermit’s house.

  The hermit Gelimer had told the travelers that this was one of the handful of villages, all within a few kilometers of each other along the Tungri, whose inhabitants lived under the mermaid curse. Those few who were now visible to the slowly approaching travelers had nothing out of the ordinary in their appearance —not, Zoltan supposed, that there was any reason to think they would. Three or four fishing boats were tied up at a dock, and only a few patches of ice were visible along the shore. At this lower altitude the ground was completely barren of snow.

  “Remember, Zoltan, how the hermit warned us,” admonished Yambu, watching her companion closely. “In my opinion he advised us well. You should say nothing at all about mermaids while we are among these village people, at least not until we have gained some understanding of their attitude on the subject. It must be a matter that they are not inclined to treat lightly.”

  “I understand. I agree,” Zoltan answered shortly. He was having a difficult time trying to control his impatience, and he supposed the difficulty showed.

  During their long day’s hike down the mountain and through the forest he had talked at some length with Yambu about his continuing determination to seek out one particular mermaid.

  “You say, my lady, that you are making this pilgrimage to seek the Truth. Well, so am I, in my own way. My goal is to find that girl—I cannot forget her. She has come to represent Truth to me.”

  Since leaving their native lands months ago, the two pilgrims had had this same conversation, or one very much like it, several times. By now Yambu knew almost as much as Zoltan did about the particular mermaid he was seeking. And she had learned better than to argue directly against the youth’s objective. Instead she now asked him: “Exactly how many times did you really see her, in all?”

  “Three times, at least. Oh, there were other occasions on the upper river when she was only a shadow, or a ripple in the water, or a movement in the leaves along the shore. But three times, later, I saw her solidly, and talked with her and even touched her.”

  “Given the other things that happened, we must consider that those earlier appearances were a result of evil magic.”

  The young man shook his head violently. “Not her evil. Not her magic, either.”

  The woman remained perfectly calm. “No. Or at least not hers primarily. But the attraction you felt and still feel for her had its root in that same evil magic.”

  “She was enslaved then by that ghastly wizard Wood, or one of his lieutenants!”

  “True. But it seems to me that what we still do not know is to what degree, how willingly, the girl, the mermaid, went along with what the Ancient One wanted her to do.”

  “She did not help him willingly at all, I tell you!”

  Yambu only looked sympathetically at her
young companion. Zoltan got himself under control as well as he was able. “I tell you that I saw this girl, talked to her, several times as I moved farther down the Sanzu. She was—she truly wanted to help me. She did her best to help me against the dragon at the end.”

  “Ah well, you were there and I was not.” Yambu conceded the point. “Even so, that was three years ago. Even if you do succeed in finding her now, you ought to remember that much can change in three years, in the life of any person. Particularly in a young woman’s life, whether she’s half fish or not.” To herself Lady Yambu was thinking how hopeless it always was to try to shield the young against their own enthusiasms.

  But now, before Zoltan was required to answer, the two travelers had to put their debate behind them. Raising open hands in gestures of peace, Zoltan and Yambu were approaching the fishing village. Children came running to look at them, and then some of the adults.

  As they met the inhabitants they took care to observe the little hints, given them by the hermit, as to what was locally considered proper conduct. The people spoke a variation of the common tongue, not difficult to cope with. The greetings the two travelers received from the adult villagers were tinged at first with obvious suspicion. Zoltan was not surprised by this, considering that if all the stories of the clan feud and its consequences were true, these people had every reason to be wary.

  Still, Gelimer’s coaching paid off. An elder appeared at last, and the two travelers were invited in and offered food and shelter for the night. The local hospitality was somewhat more cheerfully displayed when Yambu demonstrated her readiness to pay a small amount of coin.

  As soon as the sun had departed from the sky the air grew chill, and mist rose from the river, which here below the rapids of the gorge widened to such an extent that it might almost have been called a lake. Both shores were heavily forested, and after sundown the cries of exotic animals, strange to Zoltan’s ears, began to issue from the darkness within the nearby forest.

  Against the sunset sky fairly large building, of an ominously dark color, could be seen perched atop a denuded hill at a distance of two or three kilometers from the village.

  In answer to the visitors’ questions, the villagers informed them that this structure was the stronghold of the Malolo clan, and in it dwelt the overlords of this and half a dozen other settlements upon the southern shore.

  After the two pilgrims had enjoyed a good supper, largely of fish and bread, Yambu turned in for the night in the House of Women, and Zoltan went to the Dormitory of Unattached Men, which was one of the houses built out over the water on stilts. Tonight, for whatever reason, it seemed that he was going to have no more than a couple of roommates, two tired looking village youths who had already stretched out their sleeping mats at the far end of the large room.

  So far, although Zoltan had been looking and listening alertly since entering the village for anything that might suggest mermaids, he had seen and heard nothing to suggest that this place was home to them. Indeed, there was no indication that anyone here had ever heard of such creatures. Zoltan had followed Yambu’s counsel, though with some difficulty, and had refrained from mentioning the subject. Now as he lay wrapped in his blanket, looking out at the misty, wintry lake and listening to the dark water lap the slender pilings below him, the thought of having to live in that water was enough to chill him to his bones. Of course real fish lived in it and prospered the year round … but she, the girl he sought, was not a fish. With his own hands Zoltan had touched her cool smooth shoulders, and her long black hair. Damn it, by all the gods, she was a human being like himself, even if she was burdened with a terrible curse … even if he did not yet know her name…

  * * * * * *

  Zoltan slept. And then, in the middle of the night, he came awake, softly and suddenly. In the cold moonlight that fell in through a nearby window he beheld the very girl he had so long pursued. She was sitting close beside him and leaning over him, so that an amulet of some kind that she wore around her neck swung free. Her black hair fell in wet strands past her white shoulders and around her pale breasts. Below her slender, human waist, her body continued undivided and tapering, legless and silvery, scaly and graceful and terrible, down to the broad fins of her tail. In this dream—as Zoltan first believed it was—the young girl was just as he remembered her, and the three years that had passed since their last meeting might never have existed.

  “Who are you?” he breathed, still more than half convinced that he was dreaming.

  Her voice too was unchanged from what he remembered. “My name is Black Pearl. This is my friend, Soft Ripple. And you are Zoltan. Do you remember me?”

  Only now did Zoltan realize that there was another mermaid sitting a little behind the first. The one immediately in front of him, who had called herself Black Pearl, had her silvery tail bent up gracefully beneath her, allowing her to sit in an almost completely human posture. Behind and around her, moonlight mottled empty sleeping mats, and the shadowy figure of her companion in the background. Water was dripping slowly, irregularly, from both the mermaids’ hair.

  “Do I—”

  Suddenly the conviction was borne in Zoltan that this was no dream. He sat up abruptly. “Do I remember you? I never knew your name, but I’ve done nothing for the past months but look for you. I’ve come down the river all the way from Tasavalta…”

  He reached out suddenly to take Black Pearl by the hand. She made an effort to pull away at first, but his grip was too swift and, once anchored on her wrist, too strong. “Tell me,” he pleaded. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”

  Down at the far end of the room one of the two bachelor youths snored, loudly and abruptly. Zoltan glanced in that direction, but as far as he could tell both of the young men were really still fast asleep.

  In the stillness of the night Black Pearl’s shadowy mermaid companion murmured something that Zoltan could not quite make out. Black Pearl understood what had been said, though, and ceased trying to pull free. Instead she took Zoltan’s wrist in her own grip.

  “We’ve come to bring a warning to the village. Men from the other side of the river, where the Senones live, are coming across in two boats tonight. They must be intending some hostile action.”

  “Men from the other side? What should I—”

  “As soon as we two are gone, raise the alarm. But you must not say that my friend and I were here and told you. Otherwise the elders might ignore your warning. So please, forget we were here!”

  “Very well. This place is dangerous for you, then?”

  The mermaid shook her head, as if to say there was no time to explain now. “Meet me—Zoltan, meet me tomorrow night at midnight, at the edge of the lake near the mouth of the creek that flows past the Malolo stronghold. Come out in a boat if you can. If not, then watch for me from shore. Will you do that?”

  “I will, I swear I will!”

  Black Pearl flashed Zoltan a last look, a look that held a kind of desperation. Then in the next moments she and her silent companion were gone, as softly and swiftly as diving otters, disappearing at once through an aperture in the floor. It was the same entrance commonly used by people who arrived at the dormitory in boats. But there was no boat below the entrance now.

  Only a small stain of water upon an empty sleeping mat remained to show that the visitors had not been a dream after all.

  Rising silently from his blanket, Zoltan moved quickly to one of the windows on the lake side of the house and looked out. Out on the misty lake at least two large floating objects were dimly visible, holding place against the current. They had to be boats, moving silently in the moonlight, creeping in toward the village docks.

  Zoltan drew in breath and shouted, as loudly as he could.

  The two youths at the far end of the dormitory sprang up instantly, as if they had been prodded with sharp spears. Zoltan pointed through the window toward the boats, and shouted some more. His two roommates looked where he was pointing, and a moment later added
their voices to his at full volume.

  Next, drawing his short sword, Zoltan rushed outside, onto a deck built above the water. Already the uproar he had started was spreading to the other houses. Within a matter of a few moments more, it seemed that everyone in the village was awake, and all the men had sprung to arms; the small docks were swarming with defenders.

  Three large boats, full of would-be attackers, could now be seen quite close to shore. The craft of this flotilla turned briefly broadside to the bank, from which position their shadowy crews launched a light volley of missiles, stones and arrows. Then the intruders dropped their weapons and plied their paddles vigorously, heading out into the concealing mists again. They were pursued by a scattered response in the form of arrows and slung stones.

  In the space of half a dozen breaths the skirmish, if it could even be called that, was over. No one on shore appeared to have been injured, and there was no damage done.

  Within a few minutes after the attackers had disappeared, the village leaders, gathering in torchlight among their armed and assembled people, wanted to know who had first raised the alarm. Zoltan raised his hand. He explained that he had just happened to be wakeful, and had seen the enemy approaching.

  The people of the village accepted this explanation, and were quick to praise the stranger for his alertness. But Yambu, listening, looked at Zoltan strangely. Her gaze said that later, when the two of them were again alone, she would insist on being told the truth.

  Chapter Four

  In the hours following the departure from the hermitage of the pilgrim pair, Gelimer, feeling himself unable to make headway on profound problems, decided to concentrate for the time being on simple ones. He began to take an interest in his garden, to see how the various herbs had passed through the winter, and to make somewhat belated preparations for the busy season of spring. It was a peaceful interlude. There were moments when he could almost have been convinced that the man who had brought the Sword, as well as his two most recent visitors, and all their problems including the Sword itself, were nothing but creations of his imagination.