“The militia brought Megara home, along with her father’s body. For a while we were all afraid that she was going to die, too. Oh gods, I was afraid we were going to have to bury her at night, under the stones out in the courtyard, with all the rest who died that night.” Alicia covered her face with her hands.
“Can you help us?” This time the question came from Hissarlik. Chilperic faced him thoughtfully. “I think I can. I certainly intend to try.”
Invited to stay the night, with a strong implication that he would be welcome to remain indefinitely, Chilperic lost no time in moving his few personal effects into a snug bedroom on the manor’s upper level. There a sobering number of well furnished rooms were vacant now. As soon as he was installed, he began to plan how to convince this puny Tyrant that he and his demon could overwhelm the Tyrant’s enemies provided, of course, that the Tyrant helped Chilperic to recover the missing Sword.
In the privacy of his room, where the demon was able to visit him without disturbing other members of the household, Chilperic was able to make certain other arrangements as well.
Next morning, as he joined his hosts for breakfast, Chilperic felt confident enough to hint strongly that some real help ought soon to be available.
Hissarlik and those with him were pleased and startled at the same time. “Then you have communicated with your master during the night?”
“Of course.”
“But how?”
“To a magician of the stature of my master, the great Wood, there are always means of communication.” Chilperic did not say that the means employed in this case had involved several nocturnal visits to the manor by the demon, carrying messages back and forth.
“This help you mention—how long do you think it will be before it becomes truly effective?”
Chilperic smiled encouragingly. “Perhaps I will be able to do something for you, and for your poor aunt, tomorrow. Perhaps it will take a day or two longer.”
“As soon as that?” The Tyrant seemed to be struggling with mixed feelings. Pleased, of course, as well he might be, but also a touch alarmed. “How near is your master himself, then?”
“Alas, the mighty Wood is still almost a continent away. But he has rapid means of transport available, when he wants to use them.”
The assurance did little to allay his host’s uneasiness. Still, to Chilperic, everything seemed fairly well under control.
Chapter Eight
Half an hour before midnight on his first night in Malolo manor, Zoltan, having listened patiently to the last ineffective warnings Lady Yambu felt bound to deliver, slipped out of a back door of the stronghold. He went quietly over the outer wall of the compound, which was no higher than his head, then moved as silently as possible through the moonlight toward the nearby forest, intent upon keeping his rendezvous with Black Pearl. Yambu’s disapproval of this midnight sortie made him uncomfortable, but a much greater degree of discomfort would have been required to keep him from going.
If the disgruntled mercenaries, Senones agents, or anyone else, were spying on the Malolo manor tonight, Zoltan observed no sign of their presence as he crossed the moonlit clearing. Once in among the trees he paused to let his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness. Then he moved along, steadily following a gradually descending slope. On his jaunt around the grounds late in the afternoon he had made certain where the creek ran near the manor house; and once he reached the creek tonight it ought to be easy to follow it downstream to the spot along the riverbank where Black Pearl had said she would meet him. Fortunately Zoltan possessed a natural talent for finding his way to any desired geographical goal.
The creek was just where he thought it ought to be, and when he had followed the path beside it for less than a kilometer, he emerged on the bank of the river. No mist had risen from the Tungri tonight, or else it had all dispersed again by this late hour, and the broad surface of the stream, a hundred meters wide, lay clear before him in the moonlight.
There was no house or dock in sight, nor had anyone been considerate enough to leave a boat where he might borrow it to go paddling out in search of his love. Zoltan found a smooth fallen log conveniently close to the water’s edge, and sat on it, doing his best to quiet his impatience, preparing himself to wait.
While he was waiting, Zoltan thought over the general situation. It could have been better, but certainly it also could have been worse. The great thing was that he had now found Black Pearl, and he now knew her name. There had been moments during the past three years when such an achievement had seemed impossible.
He was almost lost in thought, enjoying in his imagination the glowing possibilities of the future, when the dark water rippled directly in his line of vision, and she was in front of him again.
Zoltan slid from his rock and splashed thigh deep into the cold, dark stream. “Black Pearl—I was afraid that you weren’t coming.”
Two meters farther from the shore than he, the mermaid tossed a spray of moonlit silver from her hair. Swimming without apparent effort she held her head and shoulders out of the moonlit water. It looked as if a girl with two legs was simply standing in a greater depth of water.
“Zoltan.” There was great tension in the mermaid’s voice. “I am pleased that you have not forgotten me.”
The young man blinked at that; it seemed a quite unnatural suggestion for the object of his love to make. “Forget you? How could I ever do that?” Zoltan waded forward until the water was waist deep, and he could feel the full strength of the cold current. Reaching out with his right hand, he touched her wet hair, as before. The skin of Pearl’s shoulder, when his finger only brushed against it, felt very cold. Suddenly he burst out: “And are you doomed to remain always—like this? I can’t believe that, or accept it. There must be some way—”
His fingers encountered the thin chain of the amulet she wore around her neck. “Where did you get this? You didn’t have this when I knew you before.”
“It’s nothing, many of the girls wear them. I found it on the bottom of the river, that’s all.” Her dark eyes held his, and she seemed to be trying to find words. “Oh, Zoltan, are you so jealous? What man would love a mermaid, and give her pretty things to wear?”
“I can love a mermaid, I’ve discovered. I can love you. I wish that I had pretty things to give you. I wish…”
The mermaid was silent for a few moments. Then she took his hand in her cold fingers, asking: “And if there should be no way for me to change, to ever be a normal woman? If I must remain like this until I die?”
“I love you,” he repeated, as if that meant some means of solving any problem must exist. And if there was the slightest pause before Zoltan gave his answer, the pause might very well have been only the kind in which a speaker tries to find the most forceful words in which it was possible to express an idea.
“But you would be happier if you had two legs,” he added a few seconds later, feeling that he sounded foolish. “And how can I ever love you as a man should love a woman, unless…”
“There might be a way for me to have two legs again,” she said. “I say there might be. If we can find it. Often I dream I am a little girl again, with legs.”
“Then when you were a little girl you were not a mermaid?”
“Oh no.” Black Pearl shook her head decisively. “That happened to me later. It is a result of evil magic.”
“So I have heard. Then I say there must be good magic to counteract it. Tell me what happened. Tell me how this curse ever came to fall upon your people.”
Briefly the mermaid did as Zoltan asked. The feud, and the curse it brought, had fallen upon Black Pearl’s people long before she was born. She could only tell Zoltan something of the early years of the feud, as she, when a small girl with two legs, had heard the story from the elders of her people. And tonight she also gave her lover an idea of what life was like for someone upon whom the curse had fallen.
All girls born in the two or three afflicted villages lived seemingly
normal lives up until puberty. Then, at about the time of commencement of the menses, perhaps one out of ten of the young women underwent what could only be described as a magical seizure. There was no telling ahead of time which girls would be afflicted.
“Sometimes the change will strike by day, sometimes by night. Always it is very sudden. No one knows who will be taken and who will be spared. Except that if a girl has already been a woman for three cycles of the moon, or if she becomes pregnant, she is certain to be spared.”
“Why don’t the people of these villages pack up and go somewhere else when they have daughters? Just to get away from this?”
“The villages are their homes. Anyway, people say that in my grandmother’s time some people tried that. The only effect was that when the change struck their daughters they were far from home, in some cases far from any river, among people who did not understand, and who wanted to burn the helpless girls as witches.”
“I see.”
Black Pearl looked sharply at Zoltan. “You must come in a boat next time. The water will freeze you, my poor Zoltan, your teeth are starting to chatter already.”
“I’ll be all right. But what about you? The water is so cold—”
Black Pearl laughed; it was a cheerful and wholly human sound. “My poor man, I live in this water all winter; it would have to turn to ice before its coldness bothered me. Next time, tomorrow night, let us meet out there.” And Black Pearl, pointing out over the dark water, indicated to her lover what she called the Isle of Mermaids, and said that it was easily reachable by boat. “There are two islands. The small one is the Isle of Magicians, and we had better avoid that.”
“Are there magicians on it?”
Black Pearl hesitated. “Sometimes there are. And there are other things, which can be unpleasant. The Isle of Mermaids is much nicer. Any of the maids you find there ought to be willing to pass a message on to me, if for some reason I’m not there.”
“What would happen if I did go to Magicians’ Island?”
Again she seemed uncertain. “Probably nothing bad. But sometimes, when people go there, there is unpleasantness.”
He decided to let that subject drop for the time being. “Wouldn’t it be easier for us to meet by day?”
“Yes.” The mermaid’s evident uneasiness remained. “But if the lords of the Malolo manor find out that you are meeting me, they will want to charge you a price for my company. You are not a wealthy man, are you?”
“No, I am not. But in any case I would not be inclined to pay them a price for that. You’re not their slave, are you?” The mere thought made him angry.
“I’m no one’s slave. But it will be better if you can avoid dealing with those people altogether.”
“Can’t do that very well,” he announced cheerfully. “I’m living in their house now.”
Black Pearl’s confusion only increased. “If you refuse to pay them, Zoltan, then you will have to fight with them. They do consider mermaids slaves if someone else wants one of them. I have already been sold once, as you know.”
“My poor girl, there aren’t enough Malolo manor-lords left to fight very successfully with anyone. The Sword called Farslayer has taken care of that.”
Black Pearl considered this in silence, running fingers through her long dark hair, tossing her head. She said: “Even mermaids have heard about the fight.” After a pause she asked: “Which ones are dead?”
“Quite a number. I didn’t get any list of their names. Why?” “Nothing. Is there—is there a man named Cosmo among them?”
“No. Not among those still living at the manor or among their dead. He’s missing. Why?”
“Why? I don’t know. I don’t suppose it matters.”
Zoltan hesitated for a moment, trying to understand. Then he asked: “I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about the Sword that killed them all? I would like very much to get my hands on it.”
Black Pearl splashed water with her hands, nervously. It was a gesture that an ordinary girl might have made in swimming. “Whom do you want to kill?”
“I? No one, at the moment. No, it’s a matter of seeing that certain people don’t come into possession of Farslayer.”
“Well, I know something, perhaps. But I am not sure that I should tell you.”
“Why not? Yes, absolutely you should tell me. Where’s Farslayer now? Can you tell me that?”
“No, I can’t. Not right now.”
He took a step toward the mermaid, but she slid effortlessly out of his reach in the water. “Black Pearl?”
“Zoltan, at our next meeting I will tell you something, I promise. Maybe that meeting will have to take place at night again.”
There was a gentle disturbance in the surface of the water nearby. Another mermaid surfaced; this one had lighter hair, but in the darkness Zoltan could not otherwise distinguish her.
“It’s only Soft Ripple,” said Black Pearl. “You remember, she’s my best friend, who came to the bachelors’ hut with me.”
“I remember,” said Zoltan and nodded politely in the direction of the newcomer. Then he resumed his conversation with Black Pearl. “I’ll seek you out again by night if need be. But if I come out here looking for you by day, I hope you don’t intend to hide.”
“I will not hide, by day or night. Zoltan, you have really come all this way downriver seeking me.” Black Pearl’s voice was gently marveling.
“Of course I have. What did you expect?”
But Black Pearl would not tell him what she had expected. Again, with Soft Ripple looking on, the lovers embraced, and this time exchanged passionate kisses. Zoltan thought he had been ready for the coldness of her mouth, but still his own nerves felt it as a shock. And another shock—though it was hardly a surprise—came when his hand, sliding down Pearl’s bare back in the moment before they separated, encountered the border where smooth skin abruptly changed to scales. It felt as if her lower body were completely encased in some flexible kind of armor.
Hastily they arranged another meeting. Then, his body feeling shriveled and numb with cold from the waist down, Zoltan slowly and unhappily waded back to shore. Then he turned his steps uphill in the direction of the Malolo manor house.
* * *
Ascending the rough path that followed beside the little stream, he crossed a small clearing in bright moonlight. Looking back from the uphill end of the open space, Zoltan realized abruptly that he was being watched and shadowed. At least it looked that way. First there was one, and then, he thought, there were two dark and nimble figures just visible at the edge of moonlight at the lower end.
Zoltan wasted no time. He turned, ducked into the shadow of the trees again, and ran. The people who might be trying to follow him were not going to get any closer if he could help it. The path was very dark in stretches, but it was basically familiar to him after his trip down, and if the two figures were trying to catch up they were having no success. Now and then, looking downhill behind him, he caught a glimpse of one or another of them in moonlight, and was satisfied that they were gaining little if any distance on him.
Zoltan did not slacken his pace. Running softly, dodging among trees like a shadow, he soon drew near the cleared area around the manor. Here, to his surprise, he came close to running into several more mysterious figures. These were keeping watch on the house from the shadowed edge of the forest.
Zoltan got past these additional complications without incident. As he entered the clearing, a man’s voice, its owner invisible in the darkness, called softly from somewhere off to his right. Zoltan thought that he could recognize the voice of the mercenary officer Koszalin. If this identification was correct, the mercenaries had come back from spending their pearl money sooner than expected. Or else something had happened to keep them from ever going as far as the nearest town.
Whoever the watchers at the edge of the clearing were, they must have been aware of Zoltan’s passage. But they made no attempt to stop or overtake him. In a few score
running paces he had reached the back door of the manor.
Lady Yambu had evidently been listening for Zoltan’s return, for the moment he gave the agreed upon signal, the door swung open to admit him to the house.
Bonar and his sisters were waiting in the kitchen along with Yambu, and the clan chief and his sister Rose were openly relieved to see that Zoltan had returned. Violet, on the other hand, immediately expressed her suspicions that he had been treating with the enemy.
Zoltan denied this flatly.
“Then where were you?”
“If I told you I was visiting a mermaid, would you believe it? I’ll give you the details, if you like.”
There was silence; at least the accusation of treating with the Senones was not immediately renewed. Meanwhile Yambu, not bothering to ask Zoltan what success he’d had with his mermaid, hastened to bring him up to date. For whatever reason, at least some of the mercenaries, Koszalin among them, were here instead of enjoying their binge in town. Possibly their captain had decided that much more treasure could be extracted here, and had been able to enforce patience on his men. Whatever the reason, they had returned a little after midnight, to hammer on both doors of the manor, demanding what they called their fair share of the wealth.
Zoltan, mindful of possible flanking movements, started upstairs to check on the manor’s defenses there.
Somewhat to his surprise, dark-haired Rose volunteered to come with him, saying that he might need help finding his way about through the darkened rooms.
“I might well need some help. Are all the windows protected with good gratings?”
“I’m almost sure they are. Let me come with you and we’ll make certain.”
A few moments later, as Zoltan turned to make his way out of a small bedroom whose windows were indeed securely barred, he found Rose gently but firmly blocking the narrow doorway.
Her hand came to rest on his arm; her voice was hardly louder than a whisper. “I feel safe as long as you’re here. But you’re wearing pilgrim clothes, and that means you don’t intend to stay here very long. Doesn’t it?”
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