Sisters in Fantasy

by Edited by Susan Shwartz

  The thwack of the broom against fabric faltered. “Where else would he be, but in bed? The shame on you, Ciondo, for leaving him trussed like the felon he certainly isn’t.” Smack! went the broom at the quilts.

  When only the cottage door hammered closed in reply, Sabin gripped her knees with sweaty hands. She all but cowered as her uncle’s angry tread ascended the stairs; bits of grit and shell scattered from his boots and fell pattering against the baseboards as he hurried the length of the hall. The next instant his hulking shoulders filled the bedroom doorway, and his sailor’s squint fixed on the empty shackles that lay where they had fallen on the floor.

  “Fool woman,” he growled in reference to his wife. He raised hands scraped raw from his labors with net and sea, and swiped salt-drenched hair from his temples. Then he noticed Sabin. “Out, imp.”

  Her chin jerked up to indicate the man on the bed. “I found him.”

  “So you did.” Ciondo’s grimness did not ease as he strode closer, but he did not send her away. Sabin watched as he, too, met the uncanny gaze of the stranger who had wakened again at the noise. The sword-edged clarity of that stare arrested her uncle also, for he stopped, his hands clenched at his sides. “Do you know that all morning we have been dragging in bits of burst ships? Not just one, but a fleet of them.”

  The Wayfinder said a touch tartly, “Karbaschi warships.”

  “So you know them.” Ciondo sighed. “At least you admit it.” His annoyance stayed at odds with his gesture as he noticed his boots, and the sand left tracked in wet clumps. Hopeful as a miscreant mongrel, he bent and scuffed the mess beneath the bed where Kala might not notice. He dusted his fingers, ham-pink and swollen from salt water, on the already gritty patches of his oilskins. “You were a criminal? Their prisoner perhaps?”

  The Wayfinder’s Up curled in a spasm of distaste. “Worse than that.”

  Ciondo straightened. “You’d better tell me. Everything. Our people fear such fleets, for where they go, they bring ruin.”

  The man propped up by the pillows seemed brown and wasted as stormwrack cast up and dried on the beach. In a whisper napped like spoiled velvet, he said, “I was their Wayfinder. Kept bound in chains to the flagship’s mast, to guide them on their raids. When I refused to see the way for their murdering, or led them in circles at sea, they made sure that I suffered. But by the grace of your kindness, no more.”

  Uncle Ciondo’s square face looked vacant with astonishment. “You!” He took a breath. “You? One of the in’am shealdi, the ones who are never lost? I don’t believe it.”

  “Then don’t.” The Wayfinder closed his eyes. His lashes were dark at the roots, and bleached white at the tips from too much sun. “Your wife named me liar also.”

  “Storm and tide! She’ll fling any manner of insult at a man, if she thinks it will help make him listen.” Ciondo shifted stance in disgust. “And I did not say you spoke falsehood, but only that I can’t believe you.”

  At this, the Wayfinder’s eyes flicked open. Though he tensed no muscle, Sabin felt warning charge his presence that swept the room like cold wind. “Is it proof you want? You shall have it. Leave me blindfolded on any of your fishing sloops, and give me the tiller, and I will set you an accurate course for the spit called the Barraken Rock.”

  “A wager?” Ciondo covered uneasiness with a cough. Thoughtfully, he added, “The trial would have to be at night, or the sun on your face might guide you.”

  “Be it night, or in storm, I care very little,” the Wayfinder challenged. “But if I win, I’d have your promise: not a word of my gift shall go beyond this village. Your King, if he found me, would send me back as a bribe to plead for an exemption from tribute. Greedy traders anywhere would sell the secret of my survival. The Karbasch make unforgiving masters. If they learned I still lived, a warrior fleet would sail to collect me, and killing and looting would follow. If your people have no riches to adorn Karbaschi honor, your noses would burn, and your daughters know the miseries of slavery.”

  Ciondo went pale, even to the end of his nose that seasons of winds had buffed red. He stepped back from the edge of the mattress and sat without care for soggy oilskins on the cushion by the windowseat. “If you are in’am shealdi, then you steered those ships afoul of the currents. Was it you who set your Karbasch overlords on our reef to drown and then took your chance in the sea?”

  The Wayfinder denied nothing, but regarded his wrists as if the weals dug by fetters could plead his testimony for him. A tight-drawn interval followed, broken at last by the rattle of pots in the kitchen; Kala had relented enough to oversee the noon meal. Her industry spoiled the quiet, and forced the Wayfinder to raise his burred voice to be heard.

  “Men travel the land, but they do not hear it. They sail the waters, yet they do not know the sea. The Karbaschi warships carve paths of destruction, and the peoples they conquer grieve for slain husbands and sons. But where the Karbasch stay to settle, they bring cruelties more lasting than death to the flesh. The lands they rule will wither in time, because they are a race who take and give nothing back. Their habit of pillage has deafened them, until they plow up forests for fields and raise towns without asking leave. The rituals mouthed by their priests are empty of truth, and without care for the still, small needs of the earth.” Here, the invalid lifted his wasted, leathery shoulders in a shrug. “In’am shealdi are actually guardians. We nurture the spirits that the Karbasch run over roughshod, because they love only the desires of humanity. It is such spirits that show me the way. If I call, they answer, though the Karbasch ruled my body as a man might course a hunting dog. The guidance given to me in trust was forced to ill-use, and inevitably brought the earth sorrow. The day came when I could not endure its pain, or my own, any longer.”

  The Wayfinder sounded wistful as he finished. “I expected to die in the sea. Since I did not, I should like very much to stay. To live simply, and make use of my talent very little. I wish for nothing beyond your leave to guide your village sloops back to anchorage each night for the rest of my life.”

  Secure in the belief she was forgotten where she sat on the clothes chest, only Sabin caught the half glance he flicked in her direction. As if his cracked voice informed her, she knew: because of her he begged sanctuary—because of the gift he claimed she shared; and not least, for the sake of Juard, who was dead, who had to be dead, else magic and spirits were real and horses ran wild in the sea.

  If in truth such beauty existed, she would never shed the distraction of dreams, but helplessly become consumed by them until the small inattentions that cursed her grew monstrous and took over her life.

  Spooked by strangeness that threatened to draw her like some hapless moth to a flame, Sabin sprang to her feet and fled. Out and through the hall she pounded, and on down the stair beyond. Kala called out as she passed through the kitchen, to say the noon meal was waiting. But the girl did not stop until she had left the house, and raced at reckless speed down the cliff path to the place she called her chair seat.

  There she spent the afternoon, while the Wayfinder slept. She did not return for supper, though Kala called from the back door to say that their guest had risen for the meal. By that Sabin understood that her uncle had accepted the Wayfinder at his word; an outsider who spoke false might stay because he was ill and had need, but he would not be invited to table. One supposed that Kala and the stranger had settled their hostilities by not speaking.

  At nightfall, when most folk gathered at the tavern, the beachhead glittered with torches. Word had passed round of a wager, and every boy with the sea in his blood turned out to ask Ciondo’s leave to man the sloop, never mind that the craft was handy and needed little crew. The commotion as boasts were made and shouted down, and lots were finally drawn to keep the choice fair, enabled Sabin to sneak past and hide under the nets in the dory. Certain she had not been seen, she peered out cautiously and saw the tight knot of men stepping back. They left the Wayfinder standing alone with black cloth muff
ling his head. He turned unerringly toward the tender that was Ciondo’s. If his steps were unsteady due to weakness, the line he walked was straight. He crossed and found the thwart without fumbling, and spoke so no others could hear. “Your good aunt does not know where we sail. I never mentioned to your uncle that I know your cousin Juard to be alive. Before we arrive at the Barraken Rock, I give you the burden of telling him.”

  “Aunt Kala would curse you for putting your lies in my mouth,” Sabin accused from under damp nets, the reek of which suddenly made her dizzy. She was trembling again, and that made her angry, for he sensed her fear, she was certain. She could feel those pale eyes burning even through their veiling of cloth as he said, “But you are not Kala. You are the child of a weaver, and your fears are not ruled by the sea.”

  “They are when I sit in a boat!” she snapped back, more like her aunt than herself.

  He laughed in his broken, rasping way, and because there was no malice in him, she wanted to hit him or scream. Instead she shrank into a tight huddle. Light and voices intruded, and the boat lifted, jostling, to be launched. As the keel smacked the water, and blown spray trickled through her cocoon of nets, she tasted warm salt with the cold. Tears: she was crying. The man seemed so certain that poor, lost Juard still breathed.

  Sabin felt the rampaging buck of the surf toss the dory over a swell. The alternative terrified, that her cousin had rightly drowned, and that this stranger who lured the people laughing to their boats to follow his blindfolded quest was a sorcerer who could swim in iron chains. They might rescue Juard, or else join him, leaving more bereaved families to weep and to curse at the sea.

  Sabin rubbed the stinging cheek her uncle had smacked when he found her, and smacked again when she told what the Wayfinder had said of her lost cousin. While the wind shifted fitfully, slapping sails and stays in contrary gusts, and moonlight silvered the wavelets, she braced against the windward rail, away from the men by the binnacle. Their talk grew ever more sullen as Juard’s fate was uneasily discussed, and shoreline and lights shrank astern.

  “Nothing lives on the Barraken Rock but fishing birds that drink seawater!” cried Tebald over the wear of patched canvas. Young, and a friend of Juard’s, his jutted chin and narrowed eyes were wasted.

  Blind behind swaths of black rag, the Wayfinder stood serene before aggression, his thin hands draped on the tiller as if the wood underneath were alive.

  Darru argued further. “Without a fresh spring, a castaway would perish.”

  “It has rained twice in the past week,” the stranger rebuked. “Oilskins can be rigged to trap water, and the seabirds are plentiful enough to snare.” Ciondo’s spare smock flapped off his shoulders like an ill-fitting sail, the cuffs tied back to keep from troubling his sores. The linen bindings covering his wrists emphasized prominent bones; a man so gaunt should not have been able to stand up, far less command the muscle to mind the helm. But Sabin could see from where she stood that the sloop held flawless course. The wake carved an arrow’s track astern.

  Ciondo glowered and said nothing, but his hand strayed often to the rigging knife at his belt.

  “We should put about and sail back,” Tebald said.

  Darru was more adamant. “We should let you swim back, stranger, for your lies.”

  The Wayfinder answered in the absent way of a man whose thoughts are interrupted. “If I prove wrong, you may kill me.”

  At this came a good deal of footshifting, and one or two gestures to ward ill luck. No one voiced the obvious, that they could kill him only if malfortune went elsewhere and they lived to make good such a threat.

  The night wore on, and the stars turned. The wind settled to a steady northeast, brisk and coldly clear. Moonset threw darkness on the water, and the land invisible astern. Once, Darru repeated the suggestion that the wager be abandoned, that the sloop seek return by the stars. He spoke to Ciondo by the mainmast pinrail, but was answered in gruff-voiced challenge by the Wayfinder aft at the helm. “Would you take such a chance, just to keep Juard’s doom a clear certainty?”

  Darru spun in vicious anger, jerked back by Ciondo’s braced hand. “Don’t provoke him! He is in’am shealdi, or how else does he steer without sight? Find faith in the straight course he sails, or else give the decency of holding your tongue until you have true cause to doubt.”

  “Grief for your son has turned your head,” Darru muttered, shrugging himself free. But he could not argue that lacking clear stars or a compass, no ordinary man could keep a heading hour after hour without mistake.

  Night waned. Sabin slept through the dawn curled against a bight of rope. She dreamed of waves and white horses, and the rolling thunder of troubled seas until Tebald’s shout awakened her. “The Barraken Rock! Dead off our bow, do you see!”

  She opened her eyes to a dazzle of sunlight, and the soured smell of seaweed beached and dried. “Juard,” she whispered.

  No one noticed. Ciondo stood as a man frozen in place by the foremast stay; the more volatile Darru gave back laughter and cried to his fellow crewman, “Where were you an hour ago when the spit rose out of the sea?”

  “Sleeping,” Tebald confessed. His awed glance encompassed the scarecrow figure who guided the tiller with a feather touch, and whose eyesight was yet swathed in cloth. The mouth that showed underneath seemed turned up in detached amusement. Tebald leaned down and ruffled Sabin’s hair as he passed, his discomfort masked by a shrug.

  Peevish and oddly unrefreshed, she tried a kick that missed at his ankle. “Don’t do that. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  Tebald ignored her as if she were a bothersome younger sister. To Ciondo he said, “The wager’s won, I’d say. Your in’am shealdi should take off his blindfold. It’s probably making him sweat.”

  “I said so,” Ciondo admitted. With one hand fastened to the head stay, he kept his eyes trained on the rock that jutted like a spindle from the sea. “Tell him again if you want.”

  But with the arcane powers of the helmsman now proven, no one seemed anxious to speak. Sun glared like molten brass off the wet shine of the deck, and the sheet lines creaked under their burden of sail. The pitiless isolation of the sea seemed to amplify the wind and the mingled cries of seabirds that squabbled and flew above the rock. The deeper shout that was human seemed to rend the day’s peace like a mortal blow to the heart.

  On that gale-carved, desolate spit, splashing in sea-water to the knees, a raggedy figure ran, dancing and gyrating to a paean of reborn hope.

  “It’s Juard!” Darru gasped. He glanced nervously back at the Wayfinder, ashamed for his unkind threats. Tebald at his side held his breath in wordless shock, and Ciondo just buried his face in his hands and let the tears spill through his fingers.

  It was Sabin who moved to free sheetlines when the Wayfinder threw up the helm. While Tebald and Darru roused belatedly to set the anchor, the girl un-lashed an empty bait barrel. She stood it on end by the sternpost, climbed up, and as the Wayfinder bent his head to receive her touch, she picked out the knots of his blindfold. The cloth fell away. Hair bleached like bone tumbled free in the breeze, and she confronted a face set level with hers that had been battered into pallor by exhaustion. The eyes no longer burned, but seemed wide and drugged as a dreamer’s. Almost, she could plumb their depths, and sense the echoes of the spirits whose guidance had led without charts.

  “You could hear them yourself, were you taught,” the Wayfinder murmured in his grainy bass. Yet before those eyes could brighten and tempt her irrevocably to sacrifice the reality she understood, she retreated to a braced stance behind the barrel.

  “The moment Juard can sail with his father, I’ll be sent back home. Whether or not there are horses in the sea, I shan’t be getting lost behind a loom.” Her bare feet made no sound as she whirled and bounded off to help Ciondo, who was struggling in feverish eagerness to launch the tender by himself.

  The sloop was met on her return by men with streaming torches. Juard’s reappearanc
e from the lost brought cries of joy and disbelief. Kala was fetched from her bed for a tearful reunion with the son miraculously restored to her. For Juard was alive; starved thin, his hair matted in tangles so thick they could only be shorn, and his skin marred everywhere with festering scratches that needed immediate care. The greedy sea had been forced to give back its plunder, and the news swept like fire through the village.

  A crowd gathered. Children in nightshirts gamboled on the fringes, while their parents jabbered in amazement. The Wayfinder, whose feat had engineered the commotion, stood aloof, his weight braced against the stempost of a dry dory, as if he needed help to stand up. From farther back in the shadows, outside the ring of torchlight, Sabin watched him. She listened, as he did, to the noise and the happiness, and she alone saw him shiver and stiffen and suddenly stride into the press with his light eyes hardened to purpose.

  He set a hand marked as Juard’s on Ciondo’s arm, and said, “No, I forbid this,” to the fisherman who had been boasting the loudest. “You will not be repeating this tale to any traders, nor be offering my service to outsiders. This is my bargain for Juard’s life.”

  Silence fell with the suddenness of a thunderclap. Surf and the snap of flame remained, and a ring of stupefied faces unfamiliarly edged with hostility. “Which of us made any such bargain?” shouted someone from the sidelines.

  The Wayfinder’s peaked brows rose. “Ciondo is my witness, and here is my warning. For yourselves, you may ask of me as you will. The guiding and ward of your fleet I shall do as I can; but let none beyond this village ever know that I am in’am shealdi. Say nothing, or sorrow will come of it.”

  Finished speaking, or perhaps too weary to stay standing, the Wayfinder strode out of the pack. He left all the village muttering and wondering as he moved in slow steps toward the path. On the chill sands outside the torchlight, Sabin watched him vanish in the darkness under the pines. She did not follow; nor did she feel moved to join the villagers. The waking dream had touched her. Curiosity no longer drove her to discuss the stranger Kala sheltered.