A Shadow All of Light (52 page)

If we succeeded, the city fathers would show their gratitude. How could they not? They would reward us with coin and perhaps at last the commerce of shadows would be recognized as legitimate and shed the unsavory reputation that tacitly clung to it as its unwelcome umbra. I would walk abroad as a partner in our enterprise, as respected as any overseer of a lord's estates.

I recalled my private conference with Astolfo. He desired to give up the trade of shadows. If I understood correctly, he was determined to devote himself to the study and rigors of philosophy. He would not engage, however, in the pursuit of logical corollaries and cloudy theorizing. The maestro was in search of some sort of entity that embodied an absolute purity of reality, a being so completely unsullied of spirit and body that its shadow would be … What?

I could not envision the thing he tried to describe when I sat by his side and fortified my powers of comprehension with cherry brandy. It had characteristics belonging to shadows, but it partook of an ideal I could not limn in my mind. If it was an Ideal Shadow, what could it look like? Would it even possess physical attributes? I certainly could not picture this entity while lying soggy is a disintegrating boat with my life in continuous peril.

But now the muting of the sounds of the river dispelled thoughts of Astolfo and his strange ambition.

The
Maiden
was entering the harbor waters, and at a rate of speed that propelled me a fair distance into the bay toward my goal. But soon my progress slowed, for even with the tide in my favor the current was quickly dissipated. Only a few Jester masks floated along here.

I opened the lantern shutter. The candle was half consumed. Now was a moment of great risk, for I must raise the lantern and show a light visible to Osbro and Torronio on my starboard side and to Astolfo back on the wharf I had just slid past. I held it aloft, keeping its enclosed, blind side toward the pirate ship, and turned it three times the other way, counting to five on each turn. From the beach came a brief answering flicker and then in a moment a soft knell, much like the sound of a bell buoy, came from the wharves. That would be the reply from Astolfo's set of recruits. There was no signal from the
Tarnished Maiden,
but Mutano at his post there would have noted the two signals I received.

The pirate vessel lay directly before me. She appeared to be some distance away, but she also seemed immensely big. Perhaps the darkness enlarged the image of its bulk, for it looked mountainous to me in my shabby little boat, and the notion that I was on the attack against the big three-master struck me as the foolishest conceit the maestro or anyone else of sound mind could ever entertain.

My
Reluctant Maiden
was small, but she was well named. Her drift had slowed more than we had counted upon. The only means I had to make way forward was the short, crude paddle that I must use directly from the stern, working as best I could around the rudder. Oars were out of the question, their lengths too easy to remark by sound and sight. The paddle was a desperate expedient, the only thing we could think of. We were landlubbers, Osbro, Mutano, and I, and even Astolfo's grand store of general knowledge was scanty in regard to matters maritime.

When I confessed my ignorance and complained of it, the maestro replied that the task must be undertaken and that if we were better versed in the ways of water, we would be too knowledgeable to allow ourselves to make the attempt. “We would realize it as impossible?” I asked. He quoted the old saw,
“Fortune may favor fools,”
and added, “And we know that we are fools. That is why we have made such careful plans.”

And so I paddled onward, straining and formulating vile, silent oaths. Yet I must have made better progress than I had thought, for when I twisted about to look, I found I was quite close upon the big ship. I had passed the
Tarnished Maiden,
now abaft to port, and bobbed within the shadow of my objective. I estimated her distance to be an approximate sixty-count forward, and then I opened the lantern. The candle was short, but from within the mirrored interior it threw enough light to be seen ashore. I turned it first to shine toward Osbro's beach site and then wharf-ward, where again my light was answered by a soft belling.

*   *   *

The response from the beach was not so modest. The flare of a torch rose skyward and then swooped to earth. A file of yellow-white flame ran along the length of the whole strip of sand. The flames shot up to the height of the palm trees behind them, from one end to the other. Accompanying the flames was a loud clatter of metal on metal, a frenzied drumming, and I heard the excited shouting of hoarse voices.

Lights came alive on the pirate ship, one by one by one, and I heard the oaths of startled men, spoken in various tongues, and the bawling of sharp orders. I did not understand the words but knew the import to be for every man to occupy his battle station. But discipline aboard pirateers can be loose, and a large number forsook their duties and rushed to the stern taffrail to see what was taking place on land.

Here was the moment upon which all depended. I pulled the covering off the array of shadow-eaters and wrapped myself in it, making sure to enclose every inch of my body in the black fabrics. I dared not peep out, but I could hear the plants sway and writhe as they felt the presence of shadow-prey. I reached about me under the covering to take hold of the oilskin bladder Sbufo had sewn together. It was supposed to enable me to float to the
Tarnished Maiden.
I felt all around but could not touch it. It must have got kicked aside as I struggled with the tiller and now lay outside my protection of canvas covering. I dare not put my hand out to search, for I would cast a shadow the plants would immediately attack. The light from Osbro's fires was powerfully bright. The sailors on the ship that hung above me were caught in the glare.

The only food the plants could find was the shadows of the pirates on the decks above. The eaters would begin their onslaught the moment my
Reluctant Maiden
touched the looming hull. The ravenous vines would be able to scale those weathered strakes without impediment, but some would yet cling to the
Maiden.
We had to make certain they never got back to the city, where they could turn upon the shadows of the populace. There had already been one serious injury when one of the Verdant Ladies' careless gardeners had stepped between a plant and the light.

To prevent this possible calamity Sbufo and Cocorico had made of my boat an invention I must now employ. I put little faith in it; in fact, I mistrusted it entirely. My stubby little bowsprit was a dowel which served as the linchpin of my vessel. They had found this old, disused, and apparently abandoned boat in the corner of a shipyard, and, after acquiring it on the cheap, had taken it apart board by board. Then they had put it back together without the use of nails, holding its shape with shroud-line, twines, and thin iron wire.

The bowsprit was the key to the undoing. When it ran against the pirate hull, that pressure caused it to retract, and when it did so, the tensions that held all the parts of the boat together relaxed at once and the
Reluctant Maiden
came all apart instantly.

I had not believed it could perform as Sbufo described.

“Think you,” he said. “Have you not often seen those familiar toys, the ships-in-bottles that the elderly tars with lost limbs or other disfigurements enjoy to put together? You know how they insert all the small pieces that have been joined to a single string and then pull that string tight so that the bottled ship stands erect? That is what we have done with this dumpish boat, only it will work backward. When the time comes, when this dowel touches the pirate hull, your boat will fall to pieces. When that happens, you must embrace this oilskin bladder and hold fast to it and never drown while you strike out for the
Tarnished Maiden.
” He had handed me the bladder in the shape of a bolster. All black it was, and he bade me keep it near.

But it was lost. I felt about for it desperately and when the boat began to come apart to pieces—a change that happened rapidly—I looked all about and finally saw it in the bay waters an unhappy distance away. How it had got loose I did not know, but it could be of no aid to me now. The cold bay water roared suddenly over my head and I flailed my arms about, but only in blind panic, not trying to swim, for I had no conception of the skill. I thwacked my forearm sharply on a board that floated by. I struck it so sharply that I broke a bone, or so I thought, as pain coursed through my arm and shoulder.

I was able, though, to crook my elbow over this length of wood, and it supported me for a time sufficient to collect another of its kind and transfer it under the same arm and thus gain enough buoyancy to stay afloat. I began paddling with my other arm and one leg toward the
Tarnished Maiden.
The diseased old hulk lay a ship's-length away, but I felt confident I could attain to its safety, despite my painful arm and the unhealthy draughts of bay water I was imbibing.

To most other men the decrepit hulk would have appeared to be no safe haven. It would seem instead a terrible peril—or a grisly, certain doom.

A confusion of loud voices rose from the pirate ship behind me. Most of the sounds were screams of those whose shadows were being ingested. Shouts of amazed consternation clamored also. Some of the crew must have looked out at the
Tarnished Maiden
and seen there what I saw in brief glimpses as I fought to hold on to my wood and keep my head above water.

*   *   *

The old ship lay three-quarters sidewise with her prow pointed toward shore, exposing her stern to the pirates and me. Over the taffrail came again the Mardrake, the foul monster that my brother Osbro had once defeated heroically at the château of Baron Rendig, hacking its fabrics to ribbons and patches with his fierce sword.

But here now was no frail, small puppet flopping out of a wellhead. This Mardrake was of a grand size, its tentacles as thick as my thighs for most of their prodigious lengths. The bulk of the thing caused the vessel to list heavily. A precarious position this was, for the
Maiden
seemed barely to keep afloat on her best days. If the ship foundered, I would probably drown in the wash.

Slowly the monster came over the stern. I could hear even in my watery exertions the squealing of pulleys and I pictured Sbufo and Cocorico scurrying from one set of levers to another, pulling, jerking, turning, and straining to make the huge machine perform its functions.

I made my way toward it, but my arm pained me severely and I had grown tired in the struggle with the boat and with battling the waves. I had to rest for a moment and so dog-paddled for a space with my flotsam-support under my armpit.

This brief respite afforded me a view of our circumstances. The fire-pits that Osbro, Torronio, Crossgrain, and the others were tending on the shore still flamed gloriously, and so high did the fire leap that it touched off the crowns of the palm trees behind and they caught one by one, like lamps being lit along a nighttime street of brothels. This grand illumination shed a wild, yellow glow upon the whole scene. I saw the soiled harbor water with its Jester-masks, the
Maiden
and its threatening Mardrake, the wharves and sullen structures at the river mouth and all round it, and the pirate ship now in the grip of a struggle with the voracious plants. It looked also as if the crew members had set to against one another. Caught in the glare of the pit fires, the attacking plants must soon perish, for they could not survive light, but before they turned to gray and harmless ash, they would tear away to oblivion the shadows of many a cutthroat aboard the ship.

But other pirates crowded to the rails, fearing more a monster in the water that they could well see and understand than ebony plants aboard ship that they could not comprehend at all. They now lofted arrows at the Mardrake and some of these fell into the water around me. One of the arrows speared through the forehead of a floating mask of Bennio, and this sight brought home to me the danger that I was in from the pirate archers.

All the bay was black and yellow-white and red and smoky and loud with shouts and shrieks.

I started thrusting toward the
Tarnished Maiden
again. The pirate crew, if they spotted me in the water, must have considered me a man whose senses were deranged. The Mardrake was a formidable object, even to me who knew its risible secret. It was continually growing in bulk, the tentacles thickening. It was no octopus, for at least a dozen or so tentacles had sprouted from it now, thrashing furiously. The sound it made was nigh deafening, nothing like the leonine roar of its small forebear. It emitted a high-pitched hooting that carried over the water and echoed from the waterfront facades. That call descended in pitch, sliding its note like the tin whistle a child blows upon. It must have wakened the people of Tardocco in fright, if the pulsing of the fires in the pits had not already roused them.

The waves the false Mardrake created pushed against me so forcibly I feared I must lose arm-clutch of my floating lumber. Mutano was supposed to find me in the water and bring me safe aboard, but I doubted whether he could locate me in the commotions of the surface. I had to make a quarter circuit away from the stern; the power of the backwash close to the monster was greater than I could overcome.

Then I distinguished my colleague's outline on the deck where a piece of the structure had broken off. His shape was unmistakable, and he had already dropped a rope ladder that knocked against the hull loudly enough to draw my eyes to it. I strove heartily in the water. Live or die, I thought, even though my exertions this night had left me scant strength.

When I reached the ladder I let go my makeshift raft and clung to the first rung above the water with my right hand. But I could not climb. Mutano realized my predicament. He began to haul me up. I scraped along the hull, thumping against it, and could barely keep hold. But up I went until he grasped my wrist and grappled me aboard.