by Dave Duncan
“You don’t weep all the time. You don’t weep any more than I do.”
They had this conversation, or one like it, far too often. The next bit was where Thaïle told her that all those months with the goblins couldn’t be wiped out in a couple of days, or a week — and now it was more than a week. That was nice to hear, but in truth she was not behaving at all like a rescued princess should. After all, it wasn’t as if the goblins had ever actually hurt her. Blood Beak had only threatened to rape her, so he hadn’t ever meant what he said, and no one had ever subjected her to any of the awful tortures they had used on all the other prisoners, filling the nights with howls of torment and bellows of mirth from sunset to dawn. Just being terribly frightened for a very long time was not much of an excuse for a princess to behave like a ninny.
“Let’s keep that first basket of yours,” she said. “It’s too good to leave behind.”
Thaïle nodded vaguely, golden eyes staring at nothing.
“We can pick some plums and strawberries on the way back to the Thaïle Place.”
“Mm.”
Kadie felt a twinge of alarm. “And will you let me try cooking again tonight?”
“What?” The pixie looked around distractedly. “Sony. Er, I have a job to do.”
“Job? You’re going to leave me here?” Kadie heard her voice quaver into shrillness. “All alone?”
“We can go back to the Place first, and I won’t be long.”
“How long?” What if Thaïle never came back and Kadie was left in the cottage all alone, a stranger here in Thume…
“Steady!” Thaïle squeezed her hand. “No need to panic! No need for me to leave you, either. I’ll take you with me. Come!”
She jumped up in a flounce of skirt and ran to her sandals. Kadie fumbled in the grass for hers.
“It’s all right — you taking me, I mean?”
The pixie grinned. “And who’s to complain? I’m an archon, I can do anything I want. Come, give me your hand.”
“Where are we going? Why? Who’re we going to meet?”
“We’re going to the coast. Close your eyes, it’s bright.”
They joined hands. Kadie felt no sense of movement, but at once pink light glared through her eyelids and a shivery wind enveloped her. Its clammy embrace raised every goosebump possible. She said, “Eek!” loudly. She was certainly no longer in a shady forest. She heard a familiar unending rumble, scented a familiar smell. Gulls shrieked appropriately in the distance.
In a moment she forced her eyes open against tears. She stood on a sand dune, knee-deep in coarse grass that danced in ranks before the breeze. Below her lay a silver beach and beyond that, of course, the sea her nose and ears had detected. It had never been so blue in Krasnegar, nor the sky so wonderfully deep.
“Oh, I love the sea!” she said.
“It’s all right, I suppose,” Thaïle agreed doubtfully. “It’s so restless and noisy!”
“It does bump things around a lot.”
“It repeats itself all the time.”
“It steals things and litters.”
“But I suppose it is useful. If it went away, all the fish would fall down.”
They laughed together.
“Where are we? Sea of Sorrows or Morning Sea?”
“Somewhere in the west. This is my sector, and someone’s coming.”
Kadie took a long, careful look around the bay, from headland to headland: waves, wet shiny sand, dry golden sand, dunes, trees, and sky. There was no one in sight at all — no boats, no ships, no cottages, no livestock, just a few white birds. About a furlong away, a small stream emerged from the woods and slunk across the beach in a shallow, sinuous channel. Each new wave sent ripples exploring up it, but that was about the limit of the excitement hereabouts, as far as she could see.
“Where? How do you know?”
Thaïle was studying the sea, and perhaps she was seeing sorcerous things, because she spoke distractedly. “I know because it called me. The coast called me, to say there were strangers.” The sun chased golden highlights through her hazel-brown hair.
Kadie waited a moment for more explanations. None came. “The coast called you? The waves or birds? Or all the little sand grains jabbering at once?”
“Just the coast. I’m attuned to it, like the mountains speak to Raim… Yes, truly!” Thaïle smiled.
“I believe you!”
“Your face didn’t! All right, I wouldn’t have believed it, either. I didn’t know, but it’s true. More of Keef’s work, I assume.”
“Oh,” Kadie said doubtfully. “And where are the strangers?”
“They’re here! Watch the trees.”
In a flash, the trees changed. Most of them disappeared. Those that remained were different, and in among them lay fields, and a couple of distant cottages. Turning, Kadie saw that there were more cottages spotted along the course of the stream, and the stream’s path across the beach was different, too. Four dories lay above high water mark.
“This is the other Thume,” Thaïle said. “The one the people… Ouch! I’ll try and explain sometime.” She pulled a face, as she always did when she tried to talk about sorcery.
“Pixies?”
“Pixies. Not typical, though! This would rank as a pixie slum. Most pixies won’t tolerate a Place that has another Place in sight. And there are the strangers.”
A sailboat lay offshore. A dinghy had almost reached the shore. Kadie stared in astonishment at the four men in it — their hair!
“What… I mean, who are they?”
“Mermen,” Thane said softly. She chuckled. “Fishermen, I expect. They’ve come ashore to fill their water casks. See them in the boat?”
“Blue hair?”
“Yes, merfolk.”
“Can they see the cottages?”
Again the sorceress chuckled. “No. They would if they went inland a little way — but they won’t, because of the aversion spell. There’s a spell on that water, too. Watch what happens.”
The dinghy grounded near the stream mouth, and the men jumped out to heave it farther up the beach. Then they all straightened up and looked around warily. They had very pale skin. Their hair was long and light blue, the color of a jotunn’s eyes. They were bare-footed and bare-chested, their loins and legs swathed in long wraps that glittered silver in the sunlight. They were about imp height, but they lacked impish chubbiness.
“They’re only boys!” Kadie realized her hand was gripping the hilt of her sword and released it. What good would a rapier do her against four youths? And what harm could come to her with Thaïle here? “They look fairly harmless.” Quite nice, in fact.
“They’re not just boys. Merfolk are all skinny like that. Do you think they’re good-looking?”
“Well, yes… Yes, they are, in spite of that blue hair.” Kadie glanced suspiciously at her companion’s grin. “What’s funny?”
“If I weren’t here, you’d be in serious trouble. Princess. Those are mermen!”
“At this distance?”
“Easily!”
“Then I am very glad you are here!” Kadie said uncomfortably. Everyone knew what happened with mermen. It was not nice!
Having made their dinghy secure, the four sailors set off in a group across the sand. Kadie shied, then realized that they were not heading for her. They had not seen her and probably could not see her. Thaïle was with her, she had nothing to fear.
In a moment, too, the sailors’ path began to curve seaward. Soon they had reached the waves again. They lined up and together knelt to cup hands and drink. Kadie burst out laughing as each in turn jumped to his feet. Faint sounds of cursing drifted across on the wind.
“What in the world are they doing?” she asked.
Thaïle was grinning. “Drinking the sea, of course.”
“But why? What do they think they’re doing?”
“They think they’re tasting the stream, and they think it’s bad water.”
The four s
ailors marched farther along the beach and tried again. The sea was just as salt there, apparently.
It really was very funny. At this distance, the men did look like boys, or at least adolescents, and they were obviously furious. As a group, they began retracing their steps over the sand, angrily chattering and waving hands.
Kadie put an arm around Thaïle and hugged. “Are you doing this?”
Thaïle responded with a matching arm. “No, dear. The stream is spelled. One of my predecessors must have laid a curse on it. Don’t feel sorry for them! They know they’re not supposed to come ashore in Thume. I probably ought to give them all a dose of footrot, or something.”
“Don’t! You wouldn’t!”
“Well, I probably should,” Thaïle said doubtfully. “But I don’t suppose this lot’ll ever be back.”
The mermen were heaving their boat back into the surf, their casks unfilled.
“No need to bother the Keeper over them,” Thaïle said with obvious relief. “There’s some big fat trout in that stream. If I coax them out, would you like to try cooking them tonight?”
“How about a bathe in the sea first?”
“Why not? Race you!”
6
Where the morning sea laved the foothills of the Progistes Range stood the bastion of Quern, around whose towering walls the tides of men had surged for centuries. It had withstood sieges without number, been sacked times without number, been betrayed and looted and rebuilt, again and again and again.
Years ago, the caliph had taken Quern without a struggle, on the strength of his reputation alone. Had it resisted, he would have starved it into surrender and put every living creature within it to the sword, as he had at Shuggaran and Zarfel and Mi'gal. Instead he had offered mercy and delivered it.
Quern was the last outpost of Zark. Westward lay Thume, and the Impire. Now the caliph had returned to Quern at the head of an army such as Zark had not seen in generations. His fleet patrolled the coast to maintain security and guard the massed shipping in the harbor. All other vessels were being seized and sunk. The war had begun.
He stood in full sunlight on the battlements of the fortress, with his sirdars around him. They were watching Fourth Panoply drill on the dusty plain below. The men were good, but not good enough. Gurrak had sworn by the bowels of his sons that he would have the Fourth licked into shape before the army moved out. He had come close, very close. But not close enough. So now Azak must either pretend a satisfaction he did not feel, or select a replacement for Sirdar Gurrak.
Replacements were always a problem, and they seemed to be needed ever more often now as his original lieutenants died off, for one reason or another. Each new appointment shifted all the subtle balances of power and intrigue around the person of the caliph. They changed the balance of the army itself — ten years ago Fourth Panoply had been the cream, the staunch reserve that could turn the tide when all seemed lost. Now it was saber fodder, the trash he rolled in first to tire the enemy’s arms.
Still, he had a good staff of sirdars. A couple were cousins of his, three were survivors of other royal families, and two were so far removed from any throne as to be almost commoners. One and only one was a son. To give a possible successor command of thousands of crack troops was not the act of a prudent man. Too much prudence, of course, might be interpreted as timidity. Nuances were important. Thus one son a sirdar and only one — so far. Admirals were less dangerous.
Tomorrow they moved against the Impire. Everything Azak had done for nineteen years had led inexorably to this. Historically, the Impire’s invasions of Zark were beyond counting. Only three times had the djinns ever seriously returned the favor, and never as a united people. Unity came hard to a land that was basically a chain of isolated cities around a waterless waste, and only a need to evict invaders had ever united them in the past. Now Azak had done it for them. From Ullacarn in the south all the way around to here, Quern, the continent acknowledged the rule of the caliph. The Caliphate of all Zark, his life’s work.
Far below, a bugle called. The camel corps exploded into a charge. Ah! Now that was better! One moment lines of stationary mounts and riders like statues — barely ant size from this height — the next a rolling cloud of dust and potential death. Perhaps the camels’ performance could be allowed to ransom the wretched Gurrak. Some of the sirdars muttered appreciation as the camel corps wheeled around the infantry squares.
“That is good,” Azak said softly. He did not look; he could feel Gurrak’s spasm of relief at this hint of praise. He could also smell the rankness of fear on the man.
“The credit must go to my emir of camels. Sire,” Gurrak said hoarsely. “But he has done no more than we expect of an ak'Azak.”
Others murmured quick agreement.
Fear and flattery. Flattery and fear. They were all the same — sirdars, sultans, princes — all terrified, all sycophants, all sickening. On the other hand, there must be some truth in what the craven said. Those camels were doing better than the First’s had yesterday, much better. So young Tharkan might really be as good as he thought he was. How interesting! How old now? Azak made a quick count. Almost eighteen, of course, because Tharkan had been one of the first among his second family, the crop of sons born to him after the hiatus created by the meddling sorceress Rasha. Tharkan ak'Azak ak'Azakar, borne by… what was her name? The thin one from the hills. She’d produced nothing but daughters after Tharkan.
A mutter from the sirdars and a stifled sob from Gurrak drew his attention back to the massed specks of humanity moving on the earth far below. The horse corps was in turmoil, their mounts panicking as the camels charged past. Men were being thrown and trampled; the entire corps was on the point of stampeding. Execration! That was unforgivable! What sort of trash was he supposed to lead into battle?
Order was being restored, but he could not pretend to overlook that debacle. So now the problem was to choose Gurrak’s replacement. To have to change sirdars on the very eve of departure, that was infuriating! He must promote someone within the panoply itself, a man who would know the other emirs. After that camel demonstration, the choice was obvious. Of course it would set up young Tharkan as a potential challenger, but that might slow the others a little in their endless plotting. Tharkan probably thought of himself that way already. At his age Azak had kept four assassins on his personal staff and had known as much about poisons as all of them put together.
The archers would be next. Fourth Panoply had been noted for its archers even back when Kirthap ran it. If Gurrak had let them slip, then he would have to suffer for it before he died.
Azak blinked in the intolerable sun and wished he could wipe the sweat from his eyes. Nineteen years. Nineteen years of blood and struggle. Fifteen battles, three long sieges, four massacres, seven rebellions, innumerable executions. After the first year or two he had been sorely tempted to give up and just hold what he had already collected, but that would have been certain suicide. And the same again, two years ago, when he had been routed at Bone Pass and nearly died himself. In the end he had always just pressed on, because he had never had any real choice. Nineteen years ago he had mounted a tiger. He was still aboard and the tiger was still running. Tomorrow he would ride it westward at last. He could never dismount from the tiger alive.
The single target was ready. A flag waved. A line of arrows flew, invisible from this height. Then they seemed to congeal like a rush of smoke and the target leaped backward under the massed impact. The sirdars sighed in approval. Azak waited for the misses to be counted and signaled. Every arrow bore its owner’s mark, of course.
The archers swung around and prepared for the rapid-fire demonstration. He raised his eyes to the hills, black with men and tents and livestock. The city in the distance was packed from wall to wall. The harbor beyond was floored with shipping, all of it just a…
Arakkaran! His eyes were not what they had been, but that could only be Arakkaran entering port. What was that idiot Quarazak up to? Why h
ad the admiral deserted his fleet?
Azak’s mind floundered through a dozen possible explanations and could find none that would stand up to a second thought. He realized that he had clenched his fists and gently opened them again. Some of his companions must have noticed the dhow even before he did; they must be wondering as he was. He would not give them the satisfaction of knowing that he had not expected this.
“Well, who are the true djinns amongst us, sirdars? Can you see? Is that my dilatory son at last?”
A chorus confirmed that the vessel was indeed the flagship.
“About time!” Azak snapped his fingers and a herald ran forward. “See that the prince admiral is admitted to our presence the minute he arrives.”
The man bowed head to knees and was running before he had even straightened up again.
What was Quarazak dreaming of? Had he brought news of a battle, perhaps? Had he sunk the Imperial Navy? No, he would have sent a dispatch boat.
The rapid shoot was completed. The drill was over. At Azak’s side the massed sirdars waited in frozen apprehension to hear his decision. Probably they all knew what it must be. Those horses! Who could he put in Gurrak’s place at this late date?
For some reason he thought of Krandaraz, and sighed. In almost thirty years of breeding sons he had produced only one Krandaraz. Krandaraz had been the only diamond in the shingle. Krandaraz should be here now, first among the sirdars — he would outshine them all.
He would also outshine Azak.
The caliph turned to his tense associates. They could guess what was about to happen. They waited to hear his choice of victim. He selected the youngest, Azakar, Sirdar of the Sixth, the only one of his sons to command a panoply — at the moment.
“Ak'Azak? What do you think of Fourth’s performance?”
The lad pursed his lips. Had he licked them, his father would have struck him.
“Much improved. Sire.” He blinked garnet eyes warily. His beard was oddly forked and still notably thin, although he was one of the first family and no longer a boy. Gods! He must be twenty-three or so, older than Azak had been when he proclaimed himself ruler of the continent and set out to prove it.
