The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  With a proud humility the man answered, "We are the few whom the Mother chooses to be her special servants. We are the sea-born who must live on land, to keep the Mother's temple."

  In other words, Stark thought, the odd births where the mutation did not quite breed true.

  "Your temple was robbed?"

  "By men like you, who are not of Skaith. They came from the sky with much noise and terrible lightnings. We could not fight them."

  "You could have died trying. I know of priests who did."

  "What would have been the point of that?" asked the blue-robe. "We lived, to pray for revenge." He looked from Stark to Ashton, who was on his feet now, and bound. "Only two of you. But perhaps you are a token, a sign from the Mother that there will be more."

  Stark said, "Those men are our enemies, too. They tried to kill us. If you will help us to get south to Andapell, we can find means to punish them, perhaps even get back for you what they stole."

  The blue-robe gave him a flat stare of utter contempt. Then he glanced at the sky, judging the time that was left until morning, and said to his fellows, "Let us begin the preparation now. We will hold the feast at dawn."

  The path to the temple was broad and easy of ascent, even to bound men. The vastness of the building became apparent, its crushing bulk looming in the cluster light, rising to fantastic pinnacles all carved with the twisting shapes of sea-things.

  It had many wings below. Stark and Ashton were taken into one of these, into a stone chamber where candles burned; and there the monks drugged them, anyway, by means of sharp slivers dipped in some pale liquid and driven beneath the skin.

  Stark's battle was quickly over. He went from there fully conscious, seeing, hearing, and gentle as a lamb.

  The night was not unpleasant. It had nothing in it of threat or danger to rouse alarm. The odd-looking men in the blue robes treated them kindly, even royally, though some of the praying was over-long and Stark slept. Otherwise, he was interested in what went on.

  He and Simon were bathed in great sunken tanks of seawater, both hot and cold. The tanks were beautifully carved around their sides, and a great deal of ceremony was connected with the bathing. When it was finished, the men were dried with silken towels and their bodies were rubbed with various oils and essences, some of which smelled rather strange. Then they were wrapped in silken robes and brought to a chamber with many candles, where there was a place to sit down among soft cushions. Here they were fed a meal, a most peculiar meal of little separate dishes, each one with a different spice or savor.

  In some dim, remote corner of his mind Stark felt that a few of the dishes ought to have been revolting to him, but they were not. From time to time Ashton would look at him and smile.

  The remarkable thing about that whole period was that it had no edges or corners. All was rounded and smooth and easy. The night flowed sweetly, and just when the bathing and the feeding and the praying and the sleeping had begun to pall, the blue-robed men raised them and brought them by long corridors into the body of the temple.

  They entered from the landward side, and it was like standing in the hold of some mighty ship that had broken its back on a reef, leaving the stem half untouched while the forward half tilted toward destruction. Looking upward into the shadowy dimness where the torch and candlelight did not reach, Stark saw a great gash of open sky beyond a ragged edge where the vault ended.

  The sky held the first faint hint of dawn.

  The blue-robed men led them on, to where the blocks of the floor had drawn apart, one side level, the other raised at an angle. A way had been made across that gap, a kind of bridge, and they walked under the sky into the forward part of the temple.

  Here they saw a blaze of candles, which showed the lower parts of reliefs on the walls, cracked and stained with dampness. The floor was much disarrayed, with blocks at all heights, and all running downhill to the front, where the entire wall had fallen and let in the sea. Wavelets lapped softly there with the candlelight shimmering on them. At one side, a platform built of the fallen stones projected into the water.

  Centrally in this half-sunken hall, tilted crazily on her massive base, the Sea-Our-Mother rose up in whitest marble, twenty feet or more to the top of her crowned head, from a surging of marble waves about her waist. She had two faces. One was the bountiful mother who gives life and plenty, the other the destroying goddess who ravages and kills. Her right hand held fish and garlands and a tiny ship. Her left held wrecked hulls and sea wrack and the bodies of drowned men.

  She had no other ornaments. Wrists and throat and the whiteness above her breasts were scarred with cruel pits; and her eyes, which had been jewels, were blind.

  Stark and Ashton were made to stand before her. Their silken robes were removed. Monks brought garlands of sea-flowers and shells and twining weeds to hang about their necks. They were chill and wet against Stark's naked skin, and the smell of them was strong.

  For the first time, a small worm of alarm began to eat away at his mild content.

  A huge deep drum boomed in the temple, three times. Iron cymbals clashed. The monks began to chant, in growling basses that sounded against the vault as though great dogs barked in a cave, groaning out their most profound rage and misery.

  Stark looked up at the vandalized faces of the goddess leaning above him. Fear shot through him, a cold spear stabbing him awake. But he could not quite remember what it was that he feared.

  The monks had gathered round. They began to move, with Stark and Ashton in their midst, toward the water; and Stark could see that one of the blue-robes had come out onto the platform that jutted into the sea. He held a horn much greater than his own height in length, so that its curved end rested on the stone.

  Drum and cymbals broke the growling chant with a blow of fierce emphasis, and the voices all together held one long, grinding note that was like the dragging of a boulder over rock.

  It ended and the horn spoke, shouting a wild, hoarse, moaning cry out across the sea.

  Ashton walked slowly beside Stark. He smiled vaguely and his eyes were untroubled.

  They walked on the submerged floor, the water rising around their ankles, toward the place where the blue-robe stood with his sounding horn. They walked to the measured cadence of the chant and to the drumbeat and the cymbal clash, toward steps that rose out of trailing weed and the encrusting shells of small things that live in shallows. The sky had grown brighter and the candles turned pale.

  The horn called, hoarsely, yearning, and the surface of the sea, which stretched like satin beneath the sunrise, was broken by the splashing of many swimmers.

  Stark remembered what it was that he feared.

  A cauldron of molten brass tipped out of the east. The burning light ran across the surface of the water. It caught in the sail of a boat going heavily before a wind that seemed to blow only for her, since all around her was a flat calm. It turned the sail to gold and the clumsy hull to a thing of loveliness.

  It caught in the eyes of a white hound standing in the bows, and these flamed with a sudden brilliance.

  N'Chaka, said Gerd. N'Chaka! There! Danger. Things come.

  Kill? asked Tuchvar.

  The canted spires of the temple burned in the distance. The voice of the horn came faintly across the sea.

  Too far, said Gerd. Too far.

  14

  Stark was halfway up the steps. Blue-robes were in front of him, and on either side, and behind. They were absorbed in their chanting. Victims customarily went smiling to their deaths. Only at the very end, when they had been cast into the sea and the Children had begun to share them, were there cries amid the blood and the floating garlands; and both cries and blood were pleasing to the Mother. The monks sang in their growling voices and did not notice that Stark had ceased to smile.

  He was still beyond any rational thought. He only knew that death was coming swiftly through the silken water to claim him. The life within him stirred—a simple, uncomplicated for
ce that rose of itself to fight against extinction.

  Ashton was at his right hand. At his left was a monk, and then a second monk, and then the unguarded edge of the steps.

  Stark swung his left arm viciously. The blow took the nearer monk across the throat and swept him back into those who climbed behind him. In falling, he clutched at the second monk and cost him his balance. Blue-robes tumbled and fell, splashing into the shallow water. Stark rushed up out of the space he had opened, clearing more space ahead of him by knocking other monks into the water. Hands caught at him, tearing away the garlands but slipping on his naked, oiled body. Some of the fingers had talons that drew blood, but they could not stop him. He gained the platform with a wild bull's rush.

  The blue-robe with the horn turned about, startled. He had an especially brutish face. Stark took the horn from him. With it, he broke the face and sent the blue-robe flying out into the water on the far side of the platform. Then Stark swung the long horn like a ten-foot club to clear the upper steps. He shouted, "Simon!"

  Then he heard a faint voice calling his name, N'Chaka, Man-Without-a-Tribe, and he wondered who on this death-bitten godhaunted planet knew that name to call him. And suddenly he realized that the voice was in his mind, and he knew it and cried out, "Gerd!"

  He said it aloud, and Simon Ashton looked up at him, vacant-eyed and smiling. Gerd, kill!

  Too far. Fight, N'Chaka.

  Stark lashed about him with the long horn. It was made of metal, bound and bossed, and it was heavy. He roared for Simon Ashton to come to him, roared in English and in clicks and grunts.

  The chanting had become chaotic. Some of the monks in the farther ranks still kept at it as the drum boomed and the cymbals clashed, but the monks up front were in confusion. Most had not yet realized what had happened. The long horn beat among them like the flail of the Lord, and Ashton, frowning in puzzlement, began to pick his way through the floundering bodies toward Stark.

  The rear ranks of blue-robes put aside their chanting. They voiced a mingled cry of outrage and fury, and charged forward up the steps, trampling their fellows.

  Stark caught Ashton's hand and dragged him up onto the platform. Gerd, kill!

  Too far, N'Chaka. Fight.

  Stark fought, swinging his flail until it bent and broke and he flung it away. He took hold of Ashton and leaped with him into the water, on the seaward side of the platform, where the Children were coming to share their sacrificial meal with the Goddess.

  The water was unexpectedly deep. The first monk he had thrust over was drowning in it.

  Now that the horn had stopped its calling, the Children seemed to have paused. He could see their dark heads bobbing some fifty feet away. They hooted plaintively as though wondering what had happened to upset the ritual. There were a lot of them. Stark did not stop to count. Pulling Ashton, he swam out around the broken wall, heading toward the nearest land. Behind him, monks tore off their robes and sprang in after him.

  As soon as he was clear of the temple, Stark saw the boat. It shot toward him, parallel to the shore, blown by a narrow gale that seemed in a fair way to drive it under.

  The monks swam almost as agilely as their full-mutant brothers. The Children called in their subhuman voices, and the monks answered them. The Children came on again, swerving like a school of fish, heading straight for the escaping sacrifice.

  Ashton was inclined to be querulous, as one might be when shaken roughly from a pleasant nap. He slowed Stark down considerably. When they scrambled out onto the muddy beach, the monks were so close behind that one had sunk his talons into Ashton's leg and was pulling him back.

  Ashton came out of his tranquil dream.

  He screamed and turned to fight. Stark got both hands under the monk's thick jaw and pulled sharply upward. There came a snapping sound and the monk let go of Ashton, who crawled away from him on all fours, trailing blood. Then he got up and ran.

  Stark turned to run with him, but brutish bodies were hauling out all around him. Hands gripped his ankles. He bent to free them and other hands caught at him. Things leaped upon him and he fell, amid a great squattering and splashing, to roll in the tepid shallows with a weight of rancid fishy bodies on him.

  Ashton picked up a stone and came back to crack heads with it.

  Stark broke free. But they brought him down again by sheer weight, and Ashton with him. A purely animal sound came from Stark's throat, once. After that he fought in silence. A leathery paw came clawing for his face and he sank his teeth into it until they grated on bone. Blood was in his mouth, strange-tasting blood. The monk wrenched his hand away, shrieking. Then, suddenly, all the monks were shrieking. The blows stopped coming. The weight of bodies lessened. Those that remained became inert.

  Stark pushed them off and got to his hands and knees.

  Monks lay about on the mud, their dead faces contorted with terror. The boat was riding in flat calm now, off the shore. He could see the white heads of hounds along the rail.

  We kill N'Chaka. You come. The Children of the Sea were not coming any closer. Some of them floated facedown in the water. Those who still could were thrashing away in a frenzy of speed.

  Stark got up and helped Ashton to his feet, pointing to the boat. Neither man had any idea how it had come there. Neither man stopped to question. They walked into the sea until it deepened, and then they swam. Ropes were let down and powerful arms helped them aboard.

  Stark was aware of faces, aware of voices shouting, aware of the hounds clustered round him, but the only thing that was really clear to him was the face of Gerrith. She came to him and he held her, and neither minded the blood and seawater that wetted them both. "You live," she whispered. "Now the way is open." And he tasted salt on her lips that was sharper than all the salt of the sea.

  The Fallarin perched on the deck, falcons in molt with their fur awry and their sullen eyes half mad with exhaustion.

  "If more haste is needed," said Alderyk, looking at the tribesmen and the Irnanese, "get you to the rowing benches. We are foredone." He bared his white teeth at Stark. "Show us wonders now, Dark Man. We have earned them."

  Stark said, "I don't understand."

  Gerrith stepped back. "Presently, the whole story. But you must have orders for us now. What are they?"

  Stark put an arm around Gerd's neck, and the other around Grith's, and his mind touched the minds of all the hounds. He smiled at Tuchvar, and at Sabak and the tribesmen, who had shed their dusty cloaks but not their veils. The Irnanese he did not know, but he smiled at them. He even smiled at Halk.

  "We go south to Andapell," he said. "We break our backs for Andapell, if the winds won't blow. Alderyk, loan us your Tarf. They can pull twice as well as we can."

  He let go of the hounds and jumped down to the rowing benches. He was not tired now. His many wounds were slight and of no account. He looked at Halk and laughed.

  "Surely you'll not stand by while the Dark Man rows? Come on, comrade. Bend your back for Irnan."

  He thrust out the clumsy sweep and felt it bite. "Yarrod!" he shouted. "Yarrod! Yarrod!"

  The Irnanese laid aside their arms and tumbled down to the benches, picking up the old battle-cry. "Yarrod! Yarrod!" They ran more oars out.

  Halk put down his great longsword and sat on the bench beside Stark so that they worked one oar together. "Yarrod!"

  The tribesmen, proud dainty riders of the cold desert, put their feet into the slopping bilges and rowed, side by side with the four-armed Tarf.

  The oars dipped raggedly. They fouled each other and men cursed as the looms thumped them painfully. Gradually the stroke steadied, as the battle-cry became a chant; and they began to feel the rhythm, bending their backs in time.

  The boat began to move forward.

  The sea was unbroken, except for the turbulence where the river flowed into it. And nothing stirred there but the wavelets. The temple of the Sea-Our-Mother leaned wearily toward the water. In the full light of Old Sun its spires seemed ver
y ancient the carvings rubbed flat by the passing of centuries. No sound of drum or horn or cymbal came from the shadowed interior, nor was there any sound of voices.

  The boat gathered speed, dropping south along the coast to Andapell.

  15

  Cereleng, chief seaport and capital of Andapell, sprawled across a circle of hills and down along the slopes to the harbor. The palace complex stood highest of all, gleaming white in the light of the Three Ladies, a gossamer fantasy of domes and arches and soaring pillars wrought in ivory and fretted marble.

  The sailors' quarter stood lowest, a maze of lanes and streets, warehouses and shops and marketplaces, stretching in a wide crescent by the water's edge. The harbor was crowded with shipping, from the big round-ships of the deep-sea traders to little scuttling craft that shot like beetles among moored fishing boats and floating colonies of houseboats. Riding lights were a small galaxy of stars caught in the placid water.

  Ashore, the streets were crowded with folk of all kinds. Seamen from half of Skaith mingled with the local inhabitants—smooth amber-skinned people wrapped in bright silks—and with darker, knottier little men from the interior, come down to trade with bark bundles of tlun and precious bits of worked ivory and wood and colored stone.

  Others were here as well. The tropics were comfortable in winter, and the seasonal migration of Farers was well along. Since food was come by with less effort here than in the north, there was less resentment among the people who produced it. Nevertheless, Wandsmen were present to see that the laws of the Lords Protector were kept. The Farers, in their infinite variety of hair, garments, paint, and nudity, strolled or lounged where they would, helping themselves from food stalls, chewing tlun, celebrating the end of their world with love and music and some really startling stenches.

  Stark kept as wide of them as he could. He was clad as a wandering sailor, with his black hair clubbed at the back of his neck. He wore a loincloth with a knife stuck in it, and he carried a folded scrap of canvas over his shoulder to serve as cloak or bedding. His feet were bare and his expression stupid. He padded the dirty streets of the bazaars. He loitered around food stalls and drinking places. He bought nothing because he had no money. He listened, and avoided the Wandsmen.