Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII

by Waters, Elisabeth

  Seawind rocked madly. Wind-whipped spray blanketed the view. With agonizing slowness, the ship turned. A rain of hot ash pummeled the deck.

  Horos screamed for more canvas. Eyes and throat burning, Eliane bent to her task. Everyone but the youngest children took their turn. More than once, several had to pull together, for the winds grew every moment in strength. The ship, under full sail now, plunged and bucked like a wild beast.

  Then the rain came, pelting them from behind. Waves surged higher, the fresh water mixing with the salt. The sea was rising to meet the fury of the heavens.

  Within minutes, the deck was awash. Horos shouted more orders, his voice torn by the gale.

  The day, which had begun so warm and still, grew colder by the minute. Horos sent the drenched, shivering children below. Everyone else hauled and climbed and spliced and cut.

  Eliane ceased to feel hunger, although thirst clawed at her. Sometimes she thought her hands shook, or perhaps it was the fury of the storm pounding through the ship. At one point, a child thrust a cup at her. It was rainwater, somehow gathered in the confusion. The water cooled her burning throat. Renewed strength flowed through her veins. She reached for the rigging to climb back up.

  Seawind pitched wildly. Eliane, her hands clenched around the ropes, was pulled off her feet. The movement of the ship spun her around, so that she faced back in the direction they had come. Water sheeted from the sky and waves shot up to meet it.

  In the howling storm, an immense shape took form. At first, she thought it a trick of the rain. Something was there, insubstantial and wavering, mist condensing against the maelstrom of white and gray.

  The next moment, Eliane dropped to the deck and fell to her knees. Slipping, cursing, she hauled herself up by the railing. Splinters dug into her flesh, but she held on.

  The water around the shape churned and boiled, adding steam to the tattered whirling whiteness of the tempest. Voices echoed on the wind. The ship's timbers groaned like beasts hamstrung and run to ground.

  She felt the thing in the sea, as if some unknown part of her, some sense which had lain sleeping all these years, now stirred with memory... and recognition.

  Only its upper part extended above the plunging waves, human and dragon and sea-beast all in one. The massive head lifted, mane like tangled kelp streaming over the shoulders. A crest of knobbed, interlaced coral sprang from the overhanging brow, arching over the domed skull and down the spine. The skin, what Eliane could see through the foam-whipped shroud, was green and mottled gray, patterned with pale incrustations and plated scales that shone, opalescent as moonstones. Its eyes were huge and lidless, made for peering through the lightless depths.

  The apparition sank down, as if gathering itself. Arms—two or three or even five, Eliane couldn't tell—burst from the water, lashing it to even greater heights.

  A noise like a gigantic whipcrack snapped through the air. Eliane jumped, almost losing her hold on the railing. She hazarded a glance aloft. The mainsail had ripped through. Ropes snapped, their shredded ends flapping madly. A small figure swung from one of them like a tattered rag.

  "Doveth!"

  Seawind shuddered. The boy's body plummeted downwards. The rigging broke his fall. He slid to the deck.

  Eliane raced to Doveth's side. The deck tilted beneath her. She slipped, scrambled up, lost her footing again and slid. With the boy in her arms, she came up hard against the cabin house. She lay on her back, heart hammering against her ribs, rain streaming into her eyes. Above her, Horos and Khalden fought to cut the sail free. She couldn't see any of the other crew.

  The boy whimpered. Somehow, she heard him above the howling gale. She pushed herself to sitting, cradling his body against hers. His face convulsed. His collarbone was broken, probably more.

  Above her loomed the vast inhuman face. The mouth opened, its breath the bitter, numbing chill of the sea. It raised one arm and clenched its fist. She felt its utter, implacable rejection of air and land, and all the creatures that dwelled there. The mountain of Pirion had spoken with fire and ashes, and this creature had answered, catching Seawind in its fury.

  Even if Horos and Khalden could salvage the sail, even if the boy in her arms survived, it was no use. In a moment, the gigantic fist would hammer the ship into splinters. The sea-beast would swallow them all.

  In her arms, the boy cried out in terror. She felt his sobs ripple through her own body. Her arms tightened around him. She closed her eyes.

  Oh sweet Mother of Blessings, if ever you loved your children, save them now!

  The words poured from the innermost core of her heart. An image had sprung behind her eyes, of the dozen or so Bharim children who had been in her care since that desperate flight from Yvarath. She saw them sink beneath the water, bodies like sodden petals drifting downward, drawn into the inexorable, swirling currents. In the frozen dark, they settled among the bones of monstrous benthic creatures, where no one knew their names or sang their lineage. Bereft of light, of warmth, of memory. As if they had never existed, never been loved, never known a moment's joy.

  Let it not be! Help them!

  The fist descended, somehow missing Seawind and passing instead through the maelstrom. A wall of water slammed into the ship. Timbers shrieked. The prow lifted, gasping, shuddering, reaching for the light. Then it began to slip downwards.

  Eliane scrambled to her feet on the tilting deck. With one hand, she clasped the terrified child against her body. With the other, she raised her own fist, filled her lungs with fury and hurled it out.

  NO! YOU SHALL NOT HAVE THEM!

  For an instant, time itself seemed to pause. Though the wind and rain continued, the sea scarcely moved, as if the waves were mere painted images. The ship hung suspended in its descent.

  The immense, distorted head swung around. This time, the eyes were not blind pallid orbs, but glowing, lit from within. Eliane staggered under their weight. The apparition's watery breath surged over her. She felt its awareness of her, the leap of curiosity.

  STOP IT! she cried, pressing the moment's advantage. STOP IT NOW!

  The thing was in her mind, ringing through the caverns of her skull. Thoughts reverberated, overlapping, rippling, so that she could not tell which were her own and which from this strange creature. She no longer feared it, or the watery death it brought. She feared only for the others—her shipmates, her friends... her children.

  Once she had heard from afar the pealing of bells from the Duke's palace, upon some celebration or other. She remembered the cacophony of sound and how it had fallen away at the end, leaving a single melody, so pure and clear that it stirred her to tears. Now the jumble of thoughts within her mind also faded. Even the storm quieted. She could hear the beating of her own heart.

  The winds shifted and the apparition before her dwindled. She no longer looked upon a grotesque colossus, half sea-dragon, half parody of man, but upon a much smaller shape.

  A whirlpool of deepest blue bore him up, covering the lower part of his naked form. It lifted him, so that his gaze was level upon hers. He seemed to be standing utterly still, yet in constant motion.

  He bore the aspect of a bearded man, broad of chest and heavily muscled, yet with a sleekness that reminded her of dolphins. Seaweed twisted with strands of tiny pearls fell across his shoulders in a mane. When he lifted one hand toward her, the light around his body shimmered like mother-of-pearl.

  The eyes that gazed upon hers reflected the same moony radiance, but she caught the darkness behind them, the deep slow brooding intelligence. The eldritch joy.

  You have returned to us at last, he said.

  Not as all things return to the sea, the answer came from within her. But as a child returns to the place of its birth, to the arms of its mother.

  She heard, and recognized the truth.

  How she had come to be stranded upon land so many years ago, she could not guess. Yvarath was a port city—in the shadowed corridors of her memory, she saw torchlight reflec
ted off wet pilings, smelled the reek of heated pitch, heard the cry of gulls and creaking of ships at dock, tasted harbor-foul water, felt the thousand tiny knives of a barnacle bed along her skin.

  As they gazed upon one another, Eliane and the sea king, the storm itself fell away into stillness. He shook his head, and the strands of his mane and beard undulated like sea-grass. The tiny pearls woven into his hair chimed like bells. He was ancient beyond human reckoning, as enduring and changeable as the sea.

  She stretched out her hand, leaning far over the railing. The tips of his fingers brushed hers.

  Deep beneath the sea, where the sun's brassy brilliance dimmed to moony shades, creatures moved within grottos fashioned of marble and whalebone. In memory she saw them, or perhaps it was imagination, for it seemed that a veil of dust had fallen from her eyes to reveal the true nature of things. Water currents swirled around her, but instead of blurring her vision, they enhanced it, bringing out hues and textures impossible in the dry stark light of land. She saw with her heart as well as her eyes, and knew she was one of them.

  She was not of the Bharim, for all that they had fostered her with love. She had worn their human nature as a cloak, hiding her essence. Her bones were cages of coral, her teeth a row of glimmering pearls, her salty blood the sea.

  She had only to shift her precarious balance and fall into the sea king's arms. The living waters would surge over them, leaving behind forever the hot choking hatred of men, the fires of Yvarath, the difference that had haunted her all her days. She would look upon others like herself and be recognized.

  She who was lost has returned to us at last! At last! At last! Their jubilant cries would echo through the waves.

  Yet something kept her feet upon the wooden planks, the fingers of her free hand curled around the railing. She had only to let go, and yet... she could not.

  What held her here? she wondered. Matthias, her only family, was dead. Horos and Khalden were amiable comrades, but hardly her own kind. As for the children, the burden she had never sought—

  Eliane leaned back, breaking the contact with the sea king.

  The children. The Bharim children.

  What had she sworn, that first night after their desperate escape from Yvarath? That they would not wake, alone in their terror, even as she had?

  No one left behind in the darkness.

  I was there to comfort them, she argued with herself. I kept my promise.

  For today. What of tomorrow? What of their arrival at whatever haven they found? Horos would not deliberately abandon them, nor would Khalden. But who would sing their lineage and ensure their continuance?

  They would live on, nameless and kinless, alive in body but lost to the spirit which had sustained their ancestors. They would no longer be Bharim.

  Salt stung her eyes as she once more met the gaze of the sea king. "I cannot go with you." Eliane spoke the words aloud in the ancient language of the Bharim.

  How could she make him understand? It was not because of the kindness of the Bharim in sheltering her. Nor was it a matter of honor or obedience to traditional law.

  She and only she could give them the knowledge of who they were, what they were. If she broke faith with them, she could never keep faith with herself.

  The sea king nodded, a slow dip of the head, the gaze never leaving hers.

  So it is also among us, the passing of memory from one generation to the next. She heard his thoughts more clearly now. The contact, catalyzed by the water that was their shared life, had attuned their minds. For the sea people, the link was less fragile. Many of them, like the giant creatures of the depths, lived immense spans of time. Humans were transient as the sands.

  Yes, they are, she responded. Which is why they treasure writing. She thought of the Book of Remembering, the Bharim-a, lost in the harbor at Yvarath.

  Lost? the sea king repeated. There is nothing lost in the sea, for it is all joined in a single unity. Whatever is given to one is given to all.

  The column of cerulean water which had supported the sea king receded. He sank below the surface, which had now subsided to gentle ripples. Seawind rode easily upon the surface.

  Eliane sagged against the rails. She had not expected so abrupt a parting. If the sea king meant to hearten her, then he had failed. He brought no comfort, only longing beyond words. She had not even the breath to sob out her loss. She buried her head in her hands.

  From aloft, someone called her name. Reluctantly, she raised her head, squinting against the sun that burst from the fleeing clouds. Khalden climbed down the rigging.

  The column of darker water swirled upwards once again. The sea king's pale, wet skin shone like pearl. Although he did not smile, his entire countenance radiated an inner luminescence. He lifted his hands above the water, and Eliane saw what he held.

  Nothing lost in the sea... Like an unexpected gift, his words came back to her. He placed the package into her outstretched hands.

  The outer wrappings, leather and silk, still protected the precious Book within. Recognizing it, the boy at her side cried aloud.

  Khalden rushed toward them. His gaze jumped from the injured boy to the dripping figure of the sea king. "I saw the boy fall."

  Eliane stared at Khalden as if seeing him for the first time—not a hard-edged mercenary, but a devoted older brother. He might not be Bharim, or even care what that meant, but to save his friends, he was willing to brave a monster from the depths.

  "When the children are old enough, you must give them this." Eliane handed the Book of Remembering to Khalden.

  "But—but, Eliane—"

  "Farewell, my friend. Love them as I have."

  "Eliane, no!"

  Khalden's parting cry reached Eliane as she jumped. The sea king caught her, strong as storm and soft as foam. Cradled in his embrace, she sank below the waves. Her last breath streamed upwards in a column of diminishing bubbles. She drew the salt water deep into her body. All sensation of cold, of longing, of separation, lifted from her. Instead of muted blues, she saw all the glorious hues of the depths, and the lower they went, the more complex the colors became, interwoven now with smell and taste and texture, senses she knew and others she had no names for.

  Here she would need no names, for the sea itself would sing her lineage with every passing tide. Her people swam to meet her, and she felt their joy reverberate endlessly through the coral chambers of her bones.

  Squirrel Errant

  by Michael H. Payne

  One of the things I look for most in a story is that it be memorable. During the reading period I'll often hold a story I like overnight. I often get a story that seems perfectly good at first reading, but the next morning I can't remember what it was about without rereading it. I was thinking about that phenomenon during the reading period, and for some reason I was remembering a story from Sword & Sorceress 19. Two days later I got this story, which is a sequel to the one I was thinking about. (No, I'm not psychic—I'm a large, not a medium.)

  Michael H. Payne's life hasn't changed much since he sold Cluny's first adventure to Sword & Sorceress 19. He still lives and works in the coastal deserts of southern California, but now he seems to devote most of his life to writing and drawing his two webcomics—Daily Grind and Terebinth. Both are available for viewing at pandora.xepher.net.

  #

  A tiny click, and the visor of Cluny's helmet slammed shut over her snout. She dropped her lance and shoved the thing up with both paws. "Crocker, this is not a good idea!"

  "Trust me." Crocker peered around the trunk of the tree they were crouched behind. "Just scamper up to that branch, leap into Michelle's window, and announce that you're the brave knight come to save her from the horrible homework dragon. She'll love it!"

  Cluny fiddled with the visor till it clicked again, locking it—she hoped—into its open position. "Her spellbook's due tomorrow. If she's still working on it, she—"

  "Michelle?" Crocker shook his head, his most recent attempt at a
wizard's beard only serving to make his chin look dirty in the twilight. "I'll bet she's been done for a week; she's prob'bly just sitting up there fretting over comma placement. I mean, jeez, the way she gets into this stuff, you'd think she came to Huxley just to study."

  "Imagine that." Cluny put her paws on her hips. "You suppose that's why she's on the Magister's List? While certain people who spend all week making squirrel-sized armor are barely scraping through Evocation 101?"

  "Quiet, you." Crocker was still focused on Michelle's window, so Cluny had no trouble dodging the finger he flicked at her. "Besides," he went on, "you're my familiar, right? Supposed to help me in all my endeavors, right?"

  His words made her blink, and she opened her mouth to object: as far as Master Gollantz could tell, Cluny was the one in their pairing with the sorcerous power while Crocker's abilities were perfectly attuned to support her! If anyone was the familiar here, it was—

  But she stopped herself. Master Gollantz had given them quite a list of the unpleasant things he would do to them if the truth about her and Crocker ever got out, and as much as it galled Cluny, she had to admit that the world just wasn't ready for a squirrel sorcerer with a human familiar....

  So she sighed and hefted the lance from the ground. "This thing had better be usable, that's all I can say."

  "Why? You planning a tournament?"

  "If Rennie's feeling grumpy." At Crocker's blank look, Cluny added, "Renfield? Michelle's familiar, remember?"

  "Yeah. So?"

  "So he's a fox. I'm a squirrel. You figure it out."

  He blew out a breath. "Will you just—?"

  "I'm going, I'm going." Cluny rattled her armor and started up the tree, the lance clutched in her left front paw.

  "Great!" she heard Crocker call from below. "I'll be out in the hallway waiting, and we can all head down to the Grotto for supper when you're done!"