Part 39 (1/2)

”Let me see,” said Adica, more insistently now. He held out his arm. Where her fingers probed gingerly, pain flared. He looked away, unwilling to see the angry swelling turn ^hite where she pressed on it, as if it were already dead and rottir '.

Sorrow and Rage took off running down the ^each, stretching their legs at last. Many tunnels studded the cliff face that backed the strand. A s.h.i.+p lay beached on the sand, drawn up out of tide's reach: sleek curves and pale, gleaming wood.

Seeing him stare, Adica spoke as she continued to probe. In a way, her matter-of-fact voice took his mind off the pain and off the fear of what the snake's poison might be working in him.” Only the Cursed Ones build such beautiful s.h.i.+ps, as fair as the stars and strong enough to sail out of sight of land. In such s.h.i.+ps, the Cursed Ones crossed the world ocean. They came from the west many generations ago, in the time of the ancient queens. Here in human lands they crafted a new empire built out of human bone and human blood.”

* ”Ai, G.o.d, look.” He choked, wincing as Adica's touch reached the painful bite.

The phoenix had gotten here before them. The s.h.i.+p hadn't burned, but its sails had. The planks had scorched but remained intact. Dead littered the beach like flotsam.

Not even an enemy deserved a death like this one, rent to pieces, burned, and mangled.

”I'll make a poultice,” said Adica, letting go of his hand.

”Where has the phoenix gone?” asked Laoina nervously, but she headed down along the sh.o.r.e to collect weapons off the dead.

Was that movement, out on the sand? He hurried forward to kneel beside a body, one among two dozen, a formidable raiding party with their bronze swords and spears, and wooden s.h.i.+elds overlaid with a sheet of bronze embossed with cunning scenes of war.

Formidable, except that they were all dead now.

The man moaned, gurgling. His crested helmet had been half torn off his head, his wolf's mask ripped clean off, but the death wound had come when claws had punctured his lungs.

”Poor suffering soul,” murmured Alain, kneeling beside him. His proud face reminded Alain bitterly of Prince Sanglant: the same bronze complexion, high, broad cheekbones, and deep-set eyes, although this man's eyes, like a deer's, were a depthless brown. Despite his wounds, he hissed a curse through b.l.o.o.d.y lips when he saw Alain looming over him, and in an odd way, Alain felt he could understand him, a dutiful soldier defiant to the last: ”Although you defeat me, you'll never defeat my people, beast's child.”

”Hush, now,” said Alain.” I hope you find peace, Brother- Laoina stepped up beside him and drove her spear through the man's throat.” Sa'anit! So dies another one!” She spat on the Cursed One's face.

Alain rose.” What need to treat him cruelly when he already dies?”

”How is a quick death a cruel one? That is better than the death his kind give to their human slaves!”

”So may they do, but that doesn't mean we must become as they are! If we let them make us savages, then we have lost more than one battle. If we lose mercy, then we may as well become like the beasts of the wild.” With his good hand, he gestured toward the carnage left by the phoenix. Blood stained the sand and leaked in rivulets out into the sea, soon lost among the surging waves.

Laoina stabbed her spear into the sand to clean the blood off of it. When she looked up, she met his gaze, warily respectful.” Maybe there is truth in what you say. But they still must die.” Then she flushed, looking at his wounded arm.

”I won't die,” he promised her. But he thought, suddenly and vividly, of Lavastine and of the way Bloodheart's curse had, so slowly, turned the count into stone. Yet when Alain touched his swollen, hot fingers they hurt terribly, and he could still feel bone, flesh, and skin. Even to turn his wrist caused enough pain to make him dizzy. But he wasn't turning to stone.

The sea hissed as waves sighed up onto the beach and slid away I again, leaving foam behind.

”Hei!” By the cliff, Two Fingers pulled a bush away to reveal a cave's mouth.

Alain stayed on watch while the others dragged out a slender boat, deep-hulled, with clinker-built sides, a steering oar, four oar ports on each side, and a single mast, and shoved it down over the sand and into the water before fastening down all their gear and looted weapons as ballast. Alain whistled, and the hounds came galloping back, eager and fresh, to pile in with them.

Two Fingers unwound eight heavy ropes

% ened to hooks at the stem of the s.h.i.+p and flung them over the^ jide. He stationed himself at the stem. While the boat rocked on incoming waves, he drew a bone flute out of his pouch and began to play.

They came, first, like ripples in the water. Two creatures reared up from the waves, their bodies glistening as foam spilled around them. They wore faces that had a vaguely human shape, with the sharp teeth of a predator. The skin of their faces and their shoulders and torsos had a sheeny, slick texture, as pale as maggots. The first dove, swiftly, and slapped the surface of the water with a muscular tail.

Alain stared.” He's summoned the merfolk! I never thought ” He reeled as the boat rocked under his feet. How long had it been since he had dreamed of Stronghand?

But he was dead, wasn't he? The dead did not dream, and he had not dreamed of Stronghand since the centaur shaman had brought him to Adica's side. In a way, staring at the sea, it was like dreaming of Stronghand all over again.

If he was already dead, then he could not die again, even from a poisoned snake bite. He laughed, grasped Adica's shoulder, and turned her so that he could kiss her on the cheek.

”Maybe the poison makes you lose your wits,” muttered Laoina.

Adica's frowning apprehension was as strong as the salt smell of the sea, yet she was too practical to weep and moan. She crouched in the boat and began to rummage through her pack while, as Two Fingers played the flute, the merfolk circled in reluctantly.

A second pair arrived, and a third, and suddenly the boat lurched under Alain, and he sat down hard onto the floorboards, clutching at the side with his good hand. His staff clattered against the stern-post. He caught it just before it tumbled into the water. The hounds settled down, whining softly. Laoina spoke soft words, as though she were praying, and stared in wonder and horror as the merfolk caught the ropes in their clawed hands and, to the tune of Two Fingers' flute, pulled the boat onto the sea.

A fourth pair arrived, then a fifth and a sixth, until there were always some circling and some towing, their bodies a slick curve against the dark waters. The strand and the cliff receded until even the gleam of the crippled s.h.i.+p left stranded on the beach vanished from sight.

Alain's arm throbbed steadily, all the way up to the armband. His ears rang slightly, and he felt feverish, or maybe he was only s.h.i.+vering because of the wind and the cold sea spray.

”Drink this.” Adica set the rim of a leather cup to his lips, and he swallowed obediently. Afterward, she pressed a cool mash against the swollen bite and wrapped it tightly under a bit of wool cloth.

Night fell. Alain could not see the merfolk at all, yet the salt spray stung his lips and eyes and the boat heaved and danced under him as they pressed onward. His hair, his clothing, his skin: all were sticky with salt. Adica had fallen asleep under her fur cloak.

He dozed, and woke, cold, damp, and miserable with his head pillowed on Sorrow's ma.s.sive back. Two Fingers stood tall and straight by the stempost, playing. Alain knew a spell when he heard one. Should Two Fingers falter, they might well be abandoned here in the middle of the sea, left to drift and, finally, die of thirst despite the wealth of water. Alain found a waterskin but drank sparingly, even though he had gotten very thirsty.

For a long while he sat in silence, in the darkness, his hand and arm hurting too much to let him sleep, as the boat split the waters and raced onward. The merfolk made clicking sounds so muted that at first he thought it was the hounds' nails ticking on wood. But the pitch and distance of these clicks changed and s.h.i.+fted: in this way the merfolk communicated each to the others, punctuated by sudden wild hoots and spits of water arcing skyward.

He swam in and out of waking as he s.h.i.+vered, dreaming that he could understand their talk: ”Turn them out of their sh.e.l.l and into the world so we can eat them. Nay, the queen bids us. We cannot refuse her song.”

Sometimes when they changed direction, swells. .h.i.t them sideways and water spilled over the side. Every time cold seawater sluiced around his feet, he bailed while the hounds whimpered. Here, out on the sea, the two hounds scarcely resembled the fearsome creatures they were on land. To the merfolk, whose element this was, the dogs would no doubt be nothing more/ijn a tidy morsel gulped down. Nor could the human pa.s.sengers^ xpect any mercy. He didn't like to think of what would happen to one who fell over the side.

The rhythm of the waves chopping at the underside of the boat lulled him into a doze even as his blood pulsed hotly in his hand. He slept fitfully, dreaming of a great chasm opening in the heavens as the earth split beneath his feet and plunged him into an abyss with no bottom into which he fell and fell and fell. ... He had sworn to protect her, just as he had sworn to protect Lavastine, and now he had failed.

”Alain.”

He started awake, almost crying out in relief to find that it was Adica, alive and well, shaking him gently. Her face was a shadow against the sky, like a ghost, nothing more than eyes, nose, and mouth.

”I feared for you, beloved.” She touched his lips, brushed her CHILD or FLAME fingers lightly over his forehead, and checked his pulse at his throat.

”I am well enough.” He tested his hand but still could not flex it. It felt stiff as a board and twice as large as normal. But he could bend his elbow, very slowly.

Up by the stem, Laoina crouched behind Two Fingers, staring into the sea.

”You must see.” Adica's voice had an odd hitch in it.

The waters sang around them, an eerie lilt, like the sea wind streaming through a hundred whistles. Light gleamed from the watery depths. He crawled over the nets splayed over the ballast and, clinging to the side, looked out over the waters.

There was a city under the sea.

A whorl of light, like a vast sh.e.l.l, spread across the seabed below them. It seemed to go on and on and on in a tangle of curving walls, accretions of alabaster or palest living sh.e.l.l coated with phosphorus that pulsed in time to the waves above, or some respiration of the sea unknown and unknowable to him and to all creatures who live in the world of air.

A crowd of merfolk rose to the brink of sea and sky to swarm around the s.h.i.+p. They, too, seemed trapped by Two Finger's flute. Their dance, as they swam in tight circles and spirals, winding in and out around the s.h.i.+p as it streamed through the waters, seemed born as much out of resentment as enchantment. Magic binds. They were powerless against the spell he wove.

At times, a pair of merfolk streaked in, taking over the ropes; the tired pair melted away, lost as they sank into the darkness. Their clicking and singing serenaded their voyage, yet it was no restful lullaby. 'What lies beyond the Quickening? How can magic out of the thin world bind us? We could eat them if it weren't for that sh.e.l.l. Do they breathe in the Slow, too?'

He was so tired that his drifting mind wove those noises into intelligible language. Were the merfolk simply beasts? Stronghand had not thought so. Stronghand had negotiated with them, trading blood for blood, the currency he knew best. They had shown signs of intelligence, and here lay greater evidence before Alain's eyes: a vast city.