by Unknown
His fingers closed over my sleeve. “Better than the likely alternatives. Leastways I got a brother there.” At this he lapsed into the sleep that precedes death, his chest barely rising and falling.
“Otondo! ” I cried.
He limped to my side, a long gash still untended on his upper thigh.
“Throw this man overboard,” I commanded.
“With pleasure.”
The ogre tossed Twill over his shoulder, took him to the rail, and subjected him to an undignified dumping. The inevitable splash soon followed. How long would it take, I wondered, for his soul essence to migrate to Drowningtide? I envisioned him on the deck of that eerie ship-fortress, raising a goblet with his brother Geor. They would have until the end of time to bridge the gap that
separated them in life.
Seagrave dropped a brass cask, chased in gold and silver, at my feet. Pewter suns, moons, and stars dotted its face.
“So it’s all for naught, then.”
“Why would you say that?”
“We were after Twill, as Firsk was, to open this outer shell and gain the Treasure of Far Thallai. The entrance to a fabulous realm, where maidens fair cry out from desire unslaked. Where nectars beyond earthly intoxication wait
for the swilling. Where gems and rubies lie about for the scooping.”
“About that, Seagrave … “
The others gathered around. Aspodell pressed a rag to his forehead, staunching a wound. Otondo held his great cutlas s as if ready to slash the cask open. Rira pretended that she wasn’t studying it.
“With the lockbreaker gone, we can’t open it, can we, ma’am?” Seagrave asked. “It’s so much jetsam.”
“I said that only Twill could force it open,” I said. “He was Firsk’s only way to get at the treasure. Which is why we sought him, because he would lead us to the Monster Captain. As indeed he did. But if, in another life as a cloistered scholar, I studied plans for the cask’s design, I might happen to know the combination, and not need to force it at all.”
“You revel in the withholding of information,” Rira said.
I squatted beside the cask. “I admit to a wide range of flaws, but would argue this is one ofthe charming ones.”
In fact, it took me several attempts to remember the exact sequence. Each of its celestial bodies was mounted on an interior peg and could be moved either vertically or horizontally. With a sequence of five movements, the lock would unlatch and the lid pop open. This, under the near palpable stares of my adjutants, I finally achieved. “And here it is,” I said.
Inside the cask lay a scroll, browned with age. Dampness had fused its pages together-though with expert work, these could be prised apart.
“That’s the incantation?” Rira asked. “That takes us to Thallai?”
“Again, in the interest ofkeeping your motivations keen, I have failed to cure you ofa misapprehension. This is a poem.”
Otondo and Seagrave uttered contrasting obscenities.
“This is Thallai, an epic once thought lost to the ages, and known now only in this single copy. Written in the days of legend, by Zeneus of Azlant.”
“Zeneus,” Aspodell mused. “I believe my tutor mentioned him, when I was a boy.”
“And what did you learn?”
“That I was more interested in the pain thresholds of various milkmaids.”
I returned the document to its cask and pressed shut the lock. “Yes, it transports you to a land ofbeauty, opulence, and eroticism. In your mind’s eye, as you hear it recited. Through ages past scholars have spoken ofit as the greatest triumph of Azlanti letters. To have lost this forever-as surely would have happened if Kered Firsk opened a cask and found only poetry inside-would have been our age’s greatest tragedy. He would have torn it to shreds.”
Aspodell walked away. Otondo and Seagrave ran out of common swear words, and switched, respectively, to the languages of giants and dwarves.
“We shall convey this to a college in Rahadoum, so it may be safely copied, and then dispersed to all the peoples ofGolarion. Lest you consider mischief-heaving it overboard-! hereby charge you, by the power of your geases, to protect Thallai and its cask with full and unstinting diligence.”
A strange sound rang from Rira’s mask. After a moment, I recognized it as laughter.
At my hip, I felt a stab of heat. The fifth and final crystal in Siren Call’s hilt flickered to full illumination. I made quick progress to Kered Firsk’s body, which some sailor had naively covered. With the tip of my scabbard, I pulled the blanket from him.
Kered Firsk emerged grimacing from the sword’s transformative sleep. Like four others before this, an interval of confusion and spluttering attended this awakening. When he calmed himself, I bid him rise.
He snarled. “I take no orders from you, woman. No matter how trivial.”
“Incorrect.” I tightened my grip on Siren Call’s hilt, concentrating on the fifth crystal. Kered Firsk trembled, as if shocked. He stood, crying out in disbeliefas his body betrayed him.
“You’ve made a puppet of me! “
“In some senses, yes . Yet some portions of your free will you’ll retain, so that you can best serve life, and justice, and knowledge-the very interests you’ve fought all your life to destroy. Without inaccuracy, you may use the word cruel. I would instead call it a deserved irony.”
Spittle flew from his lips. ”I’ll slit you stem to stern. I’ll dance on your corpse.”
“Perhaps some day you will. Provided one ofthe others doesn’t beat you to it.” I gestured to his four colleagues, who huddled in colloquy on the aft deck.
“Until then, you’ll strive to balance all the destruction you’ve sown. Summon what patience you have, Kered Firsk. Over the next days you’ll need it, as I explain the terms of the geas. You can save yourself much useless effort by committing them to heart. Rest assured that your predecessors have thoroughly tested its provisions, resulting in a comprehensive list ofimprovements and codicils.”
Kered’s acceptance of these facts was less than instantaneous. As I let him ramble through the expected litany of imprecations, my attention drifted to the other four. They stood too far away to hear, but as I have already mentioned, I read lips. Rira was immune, of course, and Otondo gave me only a view of his muscular back. He and Seagrave took turns shoving Asp odell. The nobleman bore
these assaults listlessly, his shoulders slouched in apparent sympathy with his tormentors. It couldn’t go too far. Among the aforementioned improvements and codicils, the first to be adopted had concerned hostilities between the geas’s co-sufferers.
“You idiot!” Seagrave kept saying.
“I can’t argue,” answered Aspodell.
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t get it either.”
“It wasn’t the geas. If she’s that far from the sword, she can’t assert it.”
“I knew that.”
“And yet you didn’t slay her?”
“I should have, yes. I should have.”
“That wasn’t the puppet Aspodell then. That was you, the true Aspodell, who returned that accursed cutlass!”
Then Rira took charge of the excoriations, for a good long time.
When she was finished, Seagrave said, “You could have slit her throat. Or just let Firsk end her, and we’d have finished him.”
“Could have,” said Aspodell.
Seagrave seized him by the shirt. “Then why didn’t you?” He threw Aspodell into a cabin wall.
For a moment, Aspodell seemed dazed. Then: “I wish I knew, Seagrave. I surely wish I knew.”
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