The Warrior's Tale (23 page)

Once again, he offered me the feather. This time I took it.

Gamelan smiled: 'Drag over my chest,' he said. 'There's a special oil we'll need, and some other things.'

I fetched the chest, found the proper bottle of oil and some dried-up, foul-smelling powders he said were necessary. Then he told me what to do. I imagined myself going into
battle
, dousing all emotion, pushing everything from me, except what he was saying.

At his direction, I chalked a pentagram about the brazier and sprinkled in the powder and oil. Purple smoke gushed up and a demon hopped out. It was small, with leathery green skin, a fanged toad's face, but the wizened legs and arms of a man - if men had talons and claws. It hissed and snapped at me. Numbly, I handed him the feather. He plucked it from my fingers and leaped back into the brazier.

Gamelan had told me what would happen, but still I had to steel myself as the flames exploded up and out. I closed my eyes as the Are engulfed my face, then my whole body - but instead of burning, the flames were cold on my flesh. I opened my eyes and felt the icy flames lick. All about me were swirling colours, and below me - at the bottom of the brazier - was smoke. I blew
...
and the smoke swept away.

I found myself looking down from a great height at the war canoes. They were still partially hidden by fog, so I blew again and the fog wisped away across the grey seas.

King Keehat lolled in the largest of the canoes. He was being fed by a slender youth, who wore not even a loincloth. The youth had the breasts of a woman and the private parts of a man. As I watched, the youth dipped food out of a bowl and offered it to Keehat. The King opened his mouth and ate from the woman/man's fingers, then licked them clean. The youth giggled and dipped out some more. From far away I heard Gamelan urge me on.

'Keehat!' I called. My voice seemed to echo as if I were in a large cavern.

The King jolted up, pushing the youth aside. He looked all about for the source of the voice. 'Who addresses the King?' he demanded. 'Keehat!' I called again.

The King's head snapped back and forth, blazing eyes jumping from one of his warriors to the next. 'Who speaks?' he shouted.

His men were clearly terrified, thinking their King had gone mad. 'Keehat!' I said.

This time, the King leaped up, and as he did so the youth suddenly became that obscene staff Keehat carried. Keehat gripped it, then shook it at his men.

'Answer!' he shouted. 'Or you will know my wrath!'

They were all too terrified to speak. Keehat struck the man nearest him with the staff. The warrior screamed and shrunk back as if he had been burned by an intense heat.

'It wasn't me, My Lord!' the man shrieked.

'Who, then?' the King shouted. 'I know you all speak of me behind my back! Calling me mad, or a fool, for this pursuit!'

The warriors were silent.

Keehat struck another man with the staff. The victim howled in

agony like the first, and begged his King to please believe him and spare him. But the King pushed him down with his foot and ground the staff into his belly. The man cried out and writhed in pain as the searing-hot staff burnt into him.

'Slave like master,' I intoned, and my words rolled out like a wave.

Keehat whirled, looking up, realizing the voice came from the skies. For a moment I thought he was looking at me.

He shook his staff at the heavens. 'I am Keehat!' he roared. 'Who dares defy the King?'

Lightning speared from the tip of the staff, and I nearly ducked as it crashed up. Then I felt the reassuring touch of Gamelan's hand on my arm. The lightning bolt crackled harmlessly beneath me.

'Master like slave,' I continued, piling phrase upon magical phrase. I felt a shock of power as I spoke. But it was a power that sickened me and made my head swim as if I were gripped by fever. I dared not stop, for Gamelan had warned that to do so would be fatal. I pushed on: 'Like to like
...
Hate to hate. Slave find thy master! Master find thy slave!'

Near the canoe, the water roiled and then Keehat shouted in alarm as the toad-faced demon I'd sent shot up from the spume. The King lashed out with his staff and the demon shrieked in anger as Keehat's totem charred his flesh. The King laughed and struck again. But this time the demon vanished just before the staff connected.

Keehat whirled this way and that, looking for where the next attack would come from. His men were silent
...
unmoving.

Suddenly, he shouted in fear as the staff writhed in his grasp. Another cry as the head of the staff transformed itself into the demon's sharp-fanged face. Keehat moaned in pain as the staff seared his flesh. He tried to fling it away.

But the staff transformed into Keehat's lover. The King screamed when he saw that his woman/boy lover bore the head of the demon.

'Master!' the demon hissed in an ugly parody of passion. 'Come into my embrace!'

And Keehat screamed again as
his lover-slave leaped on him
burying his teeth in his throat.

Not one warrior rose to help as the youth wrapped both arms around Keehat and jumped over the side.

The men watched silentl
y as the water boiled violently. Then there was stillness. Blood floated up to pool around the war canoe.

I heard one of the men say: 'Good riddance.'

And another said: 'Let us call the others, my brothers. Our loved ones await us at home.'

I felt a lurch, my vision clouded, and the next thing I knew I found myself kneeling on the deck of Gamelan's cabin, retching into a bowl as he held my head and whispered soothing words.

When I was done, he groped about and found a cloth dampened with some sweet herb. I wiped my face.

'An excellent first effort,' the wizard said, with much satisfaction.

I didn't answer, or protest. It did not make me happy, but there was no denying that Gamelan had just made a wizard of me.

I felt a bit like I imagine one of my sisters might feel, when she has just become a whore.

The next day I sent out several boats to scout the area in every direction. There was no sign of the war canoes.

No one cheered. Because it was apparent to everyone in the fleet we were completely and hopelessly lost.

Ten

Our disaster struck
like a storm demon's hammer. It numbed all
feeling, paralysed all thought. I doubt there are few alive who know the true meaning of the word lost - or certainly who have known the despair. For most to be lost means standing on a small circle of the Unknown, surrounded by an enormous Known. The correct path only awaits the aid of patience and luck. My brother once asked Janos Greycloak - who had experienced just about everything any traveller could encounter - if he'd ever been lost before. Greycloak, after some consideration, finally said: 'No. But I admit to being bewildered for a month or two.'

We were more than bewildered. Our very sanity was being shaken. The circle we sailed in was nothing but a vast Unknown. True, the creatures of the sea were
mostly
familiar. The ocean tasted just as brackish. The winds blew as they had before. The sun rose and set on the same schedule and from the same directions. Even a few of the stars were familiar, although so oddly placed no navigator could use them to set a home course. These things did not soothe our guts, calm our lurching hearts, or offer even the most wispy of hopes.

For a time we were all frozen in that nightmare - although even that word is weak. Even nightmares offer the comfort of having visited their drear landscapes before. We did not look, much less think, of our fellows - but only stared out at the empty sea, knowing it was impossible for any wave that crossed under our bows to break on a familiar shore.

Numbing fear swept through the fleet like the plague. At first, the sailors - and even my Guardswomen - were lisdess at their posts; barely hearing orders from their equally demoralized superiors, and what duties they did perform were perfunctory, half-hearted. Accidents and injuries increased, caused by lack of attention; petty squabbles erupted; friendships were tested; and lovers parted, seeking no others to fill the void.

It was Gamelan, our poor, blind wizard, who was the first to shake off the dread.

One day, just at dusk, Polillo, Corais and I were slumped against the weather rail, not seeing, much less enjoying, a spectacular sunset. I was thinking bleak thoughts of Tries and home, while they carried on a desultory conversation.

'What happens when we die?' Polillo moaned. 'Our bones won't know the ground they're buried in. And what of our ghosts? Will they be as lost as we are?'

Corais shook her head, her normally fiery eyes dull as poor steel. 'I don't know,' she said. 'But I've heard that a soul can never find rest if it takes flight in such a place.'

Gamelan's voiced rasped at our backs. 'Who told you that'' We turned, startled that he'd come on us unawares. He jabbed his blindman's stick in Corais's direction. 'What fool has been lecturing you on the preferences of ghosts and souls?'

Corais sputtered: 'I, uh
...
I don't, uh.'

'Speak up, woman,' Gamelan snapped.

'It was Master Klisura, if you must know,' Corais shot back, recovering some of her missing spark. 'He has an aunt, who was washerwoman to a witch. Practically raised him - the aunt, I mean -not the witch. So, he's quite knowledgeable about such things.'

Gamelan was disgusted. 'Washerwoman to a witch, you say? Servant to a dog's mother, more likely.' He rapped his stick on the deck. 'It simply amazes me that where the spirit world is concerned, normally rock-solid people will listen to any nonsense from anyone. As long as the wisdom is purportedly from a creature with a warty nose, and an addled manner, why, it
must
be so!' A sneer creased his beard. 'What if I told you my father was fishmonger to an armourer's grocer? Does that make me expert on the soundness of shields and blades? Would you trust your life on my wisdom?'

Corais turned as scarlet as my brother's hair. She is not a woman who is easily rattled, and it pained me to see her so embarrassed.

'Leave her be, my friend,' I broke in. 'Corais didn't mean anything by it She was only making conversation.'

Gamelan was not calmed. 'Conversation is just about all that has been made around here for some time,' he snorted. 'That and whimperings over our supposed fate. I wish we had let that savage catch us. At least I'd have some peace from all this mewling.'

Polillo was caught by the same barrage fired at Corais. She slumped so much, she seemed to have lost a head in height.

I came to their rescue. 'Don't you two have some armour that needs burnishing, or some blades that require sharpening?'

They leaped on this like kitchen mice on over-ripe cheese, babbled excuses, and scurried away. I turned to the wizard, braced to become the sole object of wrath.

Instead, he said, quite mildly: 'What's to be done, Rali?'

I sighed, and said: 'What can be done? I'm not a navigator, much less a sailor - thank the good Maranonia, who has sense enough to leave the seas to gods who like to be wet, and actually prefer a smelly old fish over a nice charred calf s haunch.'

My attempt at levity was met with an impatient rapping of Gamelan's stick against the deck. 'You are the leader of this expedition, woman. Speak as such.'

Stung, I lashed back: 'How can I lead, when I don't know where we're going? If the admiral and his officers are mired, what can I do to get us unstuck?'

Gamelan laughed. 'Why, lie, of course! All good leaders have a trunkful of untruths. It's time you started rummaging in yours. True, our problems are many. But as I see it, they can all wait until we tackle the most important two. And of these, the least important at this juncture is the route home.'

'If we knew that,' I snapped, 'we wouldn't even be having this discussion.'

'Agreed. However, if everyone gives up hope of finding our way, then, it becomes a fact for lack of trying. And we are doomed to making a poor life among strangers who have so far proved to be most unfriendly. We'll either be killed,
enslaved, or - for your Guards
women - forced to be concubines or wives.'

'I can't quarrel with that,' I said. 'But what lie could I possibly tell that would put steel back in their spines? And why would they believe the lie? I'm a soldier, not a miracle-maker.'

Gamelan made no reply. He only rapped on the deck with that damned stick of his.

I groaned. 'Not again, wizard. You can't make me something I'm not. And don't say that I've already proven my talents. And don't shine any of that grand
-fatherl
y charm on me, so I start spilling deep dark secrets all over the floor like a trooper on a wine binge. I've had enough, you hear?'

A flying fish broke the surface. It skimmed across the sea a startling distance. Where its flight began, I saw the dark shape of its enemy. The wizard asked me what was happening and I told him of the remarkable fish.

'Now, there is a creature,' Gamelan said, 'who made good use of its fear. It grew wings.'

He turned away and started rapping his way back across the deck.

'All right,' I called after him. 'I take your point. If only to stop your nagging, I'll do as you ask. What trick would you have me perform this time?'

Gamelan turned back. 'I'll want more than just a trick, or two, my dear Rali. We can't feed the fleet with a single baited hook. You're going to have to set out the entire net.'

It was on that day I truly began the practice of magic. Because for the first time, I learned to treat it as it really is - a grand entertainment, and no more. And I tell you this, there is
little
difference between the greatest Evocator and the meanest bacchanal faker. It's all smoke and mirrors, Scribe. Don't stretch a long, disapproving face at me. As you shall see, Gamelan was the first to admit it.

What the old wizard had in mind was a lavish ceremony, with as much splendour, and excitement as someone of my limited knowledge could muster. The ceremony must be staged at just the right moment - when we could make some poor scrap of luck seem a banquet.

First, we began a grinding daily routine of magical lessons. The first thing I learned was sorcery is hard work. The second thing I learned was although Gamelan insisted I had much natural talent, I certainly didn't have any natural enthusiasm to go with it. I'm afraid I grumbled more than a little - so much so Polillo and the others made excuses to sail clear of my course whenever I'd completed a lesson.

'I'm trying to teach you as much as I can, as fast as I can,' Gamelan said one day. 'But, we're going to have to jump past all the rules and spell memorizing that apprentices normally have to go through. It's probably just as well, for I fear that after Janos Greycloak's discoveries, all of those things will soon be considered old-fashioned at the best, and unnecessary and even harmful at the worst.'

We were sitting in his cramped cabin, fiddling with the small details of our preparations for the ceremony. At his bidding I'd conjured up Gamelan's kitchen demon and set him to work mixing powders, sewing magical cloth, and grinding little mirrors to specifications Gamelan had me find in a fat old book, with a cracked black cover that felt warm when you touched it, as if it were a living thing. It was, of course, no ordinary book. When you opened the covers the pages were a swirl of colour and letters and phrases that didn't seem to stick to one place but leaped all over, and scurried to the next leaf when you turned it. They only took form of a sort when you spoke a word, indicating what you were looking for. Say, 'demon' for instance, and the pages would flip madly in first one direction, then another, and little green creatures - bearing what appeared to be miniature fire beads - would leap out squealing to be recognized. 'Look here for conjuring ardour in your lover, great lady,' one might squeak. Or, 'Cursing enemies, our speciality, Mistress.' Or, even, 'Housebreaking your Favourite guaranteed.' When you settled on the category, the creature whose wares you'd chosen would snarl at his fellows to cow them, then crawl onto the page you wanted. He'd lift the fire beads and you'd see letters scurrying all about like ants gone mad from dry thunder. At his squeaked orders they'd form up and reveal their message. Give the order - 'speak' - and they'd even read themselves aloud.

When Gamelan reminded me of Greycloak I was trying for the tenth time to follow the book's directions for snatching ribbon out of empty air. It's done like this, Scribe. Watch. First I crook my fingers so. Then I make a motion as if tying a knot. Then I push my fingers together like this, and
...
see. Ribbon. Bright red ribbon. Here's some more. You take one end and pull. Keep pulling. Sorry, I know you can't write and pull at the same time. But, you see how easy it seems. And there's at least a mile of the stuff in whatever place it exists, so you could pull for a long time before it comes to an end. But even such a simple trick isn't easy when you're starting out. So I was all fumble-fingered, turning out only knotted twine, and that of the cheapest sort. Since that trick was failing me, I thought I'd try the old ploy of the lazy student - engaging your teacher in a subject dear to his heart, thereby escaping an hour or so of work.

'As you know,' I said, 'I am not among those who admire Janos Greycloak. He betrayed my brother, after all, and nearly slew him. But Amalric claims the magical secrets he's bequeathed to us outweigh his failings, and all Orissa is obligated to sing his praises on his death day.'

'That is certainly the view of my fellow Evocators,' the wizard answered, but his tone was bitter.

Interested, I forgot this was only a conversational trick - idle talk to win me idle time. 'You don't share that view?' I pressed.

'Oh, certainly I do,' he answered. 'Greycloak's gift was greater than any in history. Equal, at least, to the first man who made fire and shared it with his fellows. From Janos we know there are laws to magic. And with that knowledge there is little we cannot accomplish, given time and experimentation.'

'I hear words of praise, my friend,' I said. 'But I sense you don't really believe them.'

'Oh, I do,' Gamelan said. 'If you hear otherwise, you are mistaken.'

I remained silent.

Finally, he sighed. 'Very well. I'll admit that in weak moments -especially since I lost my powers -
I
hate Janos Greycloak for his gift. But, it is only envy. When I was young, and denied the life I was born to, and the woman I loved, I traded ambition for the contentment I would never have. I was determined to be the greatest Evocator in Orissa.'

'And this you became,' I said.

'Yes,' he said. 'Except for Greycloak. But the distance between his achievement and mine is as vast as the watery wilderness we find ourselves in. I am a mewling babe compared to Janos.'

'Come, now,' I said. 'All know the extent of your powers. Without you, we never would have defeated the Archons.'

'Even if that were true,' he said, 'it would be no comfort. You see, before Greycloak we practised magic as it had been done since the first spell was cast in the days when even fire was new. Successful spells were memorized and passed on to acolytes. When writing was learned, we put them in books, such as the one you have before you. Not once did anyone ask
why
a thing worked. We believed the results were the doings of the gods in the spirit world, and that was answer enough.

'Knowledge can never grow in a field absent of questions. I know that now. But I did not know it before. All that could be accomplished in those times were better twists on an old trick. Or, refinement of a trick. Power was limited to native-born ability. Which I had in plenty-more so than my fellows, at least.'

'But what of the wizards of Irayas? I asked. 'The magic of the Far Kingdoms, as all know, is much greater than ours. They progressed mightily-without Janos Greycloak's laws.'

Gamelan snorted. 'That's only because they found old scrolls and books from the Ancients. The things they have accomplished do not come from wisdom, but tricks lost to us over the ages.'

'I don't call changing common metal to gold a trick,' I said. 'They can do that in the Far Kingdoms.'