The Warrior's Tale (35 page)

'Perhaps,' Gamelan said in his low but commanding voice, 'you should begin by telling us what you ruled.'

The Sarzana's lips curved. 'Thank you, Lord Gamelan. I shall. I am not accustomed to tale-telling, and I forget that not all the world knows of Konya and its once greatness.'

He sat down at a couch, and poured a goblet of what appeared to be water from a clear pitcher.

'My kingdom,' he said, 'is far to the south of us and if you will forgive me for waxing poetic, I think of it as jewels spilled across the seas, since it is composed of many thousands of beautiful islands -whose centre is Isolde, the most lovely gem of all. It is from here that the kingdom has been ruled since time began. The islands have every climate imaginable, from desert to coral atolls to high glacial mountains in their reaches to the furthest south, which remain unexplored. Isolde itself is about three weeks' sail under strong winds.'

'So many islands,' Cholla Yi asked, 'are they all peopled?'

'Most of them,' The Sarzana said. 'And this is the great tragedy of Konya. It sometimes seems as if each island is its own nation, a nation entirely different from its nearest neighbour. Worse, each island is perpetually at war with the other.'

I saw Cholla Yi smile, and knew what he was thinking - if each man's hand is turned against his fellow, there are rich takings for a pirate.

'We Konyans,' The Sarzana went on, 'have only one thing in common: we are hot-blooded and fiery, quick to judge, love or hate. There's a proverb - "with a Konyan beside you, you shall lack neither friends nor enemies." I fear it is true.'

'A hard land to rule,' Corais said.

'It is
...
was, indeed.'

'Were you born to the throne?' Cholla Yi asked.

'I was not. Like your Evocator, I was a fisherman.' I glanced quickly over at Gamelan, and saw him suppress a start. 'Perhaps,' The Sarzana continued, 'I misspoke. My family were less masters of the net and line than expert with
our boats and, just as importantl
y, the marketplace. My family owned five smacks, and another ten families owed us fealty.'

'You outreach me,' Gamelan put in. 'We had but a single boat to fish the river, not the sea, and we owed money on that one to our village's lender.'

'Perhaps,' The Sarzana said, 'I would have been happier if that had been my position as well, for I never would've ended up here on this forsaken rock. But I'm probably being naive - a man is, I believe, born to the throne, no matter if he is birthed in a ditch. Ruling is a destiny, not a profession.'

Cholla Yi looked approving, and Gamelan frowned slighdy, but none of us interrupted.

'As I said, I was no different from a dozen other ship owners on my island, with but one exception: early on, my family recognized I had a talent for magic. On our island, unlike some other places, a witch or village wizard was respected, particularly if he had any of what we called the Weather Art. But what knowledge I gained was here and there. There was no formal schooling to be had that I was aware of, unlike what I have divined your home of Orissa to have. Perhaps, if there had been more money, or if my family was higher in the social order, although we had no aristocrats to speak of on the island, I might have been able to go to Isolde itself to perfect my art. But this wasn't to be. Perhaps it was for the best, when I think about what happened to many of the lords and ladies a few years later. I reached my young manhood not much different from any of the others in my class. I did everything in my family's trade, from fish-gutter to helmsman to harpooner to using my small Talent to feel where we might have the best luck casting our nets.

'The misfortune of our island was it lay in rich waters on a main trade route leading to Isolde itself. Rich waters with fish beyond count for the taking - but our seas were travelled by other sharks. Pirates, slavers, warships, even merchants who were nothing loath to waylay one of our boats if they were short of a hand or two. Everyone knew the men of the Island of the Shark were, they said, birthed with webbed feet and hands curved to fit an oar's handle.

'Every year five, ten, sometimes more islanders would vanish. Some would find their way back after a single voyage, others
...'
The Sarzana shrugged. 'I, myself, barely escaped being forced into servitude half a dozen times, either by weather-luck or being able to feign disease or feeble-mindedness when one of my boats was stopped. Of course, I never showed any sign to these raiders, that I might have a bit of the Talent, or I would have been a great prize.'

'Couldn't your government help?' Gamelan asked.

'Government?' The Sarzana sneered. 'Our rulers were far away and cared little what happened to us, except when they sent a tax ship to levy a toll. That was as great a burden, some thought, as any pirate.

Konya was ruled, or I should say misruled, by a single family and its septs, whose blood had gone thin over the centuries. No, we could look for nothing except harshness from those who thought themselves fit to wear a crown.'

'The gods gave man steel,' Corais said, 'so he would not have to suffer unjust kings for ever.'

The Sarzana looked at Corais strangely, then said, 'Perhaps that is the legend in your land, Legate. But not in mine. In Konya there is a belief that he who kills a king will die a million deaths, and his soul shall never be permitted peace, but be tormented by demons through all the worlds that exist for ever. But we have veered from the subject at hand, and what happened to my poor island that began all this.

'One day pirates surrounded ten boats in the middle of a great haul, and took all of our men off, sinking the boats in callous glee as they did. That day marked the end, and the beginning. All of us ship owners assembled, determined we must do something. That was the day the gods touched me, because I
knew
what we must do. Perhaps this was the first time my Gift really showed what it could become. We must fight back, I said, and fight back hard. We were becoming a joke, not men, not women, but eunuchs, and if we stood for this treatment, we deserved to be wiped out, our island to be a desolation and our women transported to port towns to whore for their bread. We might as well rename our island Jellyfish Isle, instead of calling ourselves after the ruler of the seas. Honey was given to my tongue, because all at once, my fellow villagers were shouting their approval, and hoisting me to their shoulders.'

The Sarzana stopped for a moment, then went on. 'That was the first time I heard cheering and my name being cried aloud, and it was very sweet.' I thought he was speaking to himself as much as to us.

'We formed a defence league. No longer did each fisherman flee his fellows to work a secret reef or hole. Now we sailed in groups of at least five boats, and would work common waters, always with one man in each boat keeping his eye on the horizon for a hostile sail. Each of our boats now had weaponry under the nets. At first it was little more than sharpened gaffs, tridents and gutting knives, but after the first raider made the mistake of attacking us, we had swords, s
pears and bows.' He smiled tightl
y at the memory. 'Very quickly, we learned to use them well, against others who were foolish enough to take on the men of our island. The word spread - the waters around the Island of the Shark were safe for all, except those who sought blood. Those pirates and raiders found the death they thought they were bringing to us.'

The Sarzana's eyes flashed. 'There were other islands who sent representatives to marvel at our accomplishments. To each of them we made the same offer - join us and have peace. It took little persuasion once they saw the benefits of cooperation.'

Cholla Yi appeared as excited at the story as The Sarzana was. 'And they chose you as their leader?'

'Of course,' The Sarzana said. 'Who else
was
there? Within a year, our entire archipelago was at peace. The islanders found my ideas and ways to be convenient, and so they asked me to rule them in their daily life, not just as a defender. We were able to choose certain men, our most valiant, and pay them to do nothing but stand guard. We regulated the markets so a fisherman could go to sea knowing he wouldn't return home with his holds full to find the prices so low he wouldn't even have paid for the twine to repair his nets or the scrap fish to bait his hooks. Disputes between villages could be handled by a travelling court, rather than settled with feuds as before. We made our own flag. In honour of where our movement began, we chose the shark
...
Once again, we had peace. But not for long.'

'I don't think your rulers would have thought very much of this new kingdom in their midst,' I said.

'True. But that is not the way it happened,
exactly
. We found there is a worse despotism than an ageing, senile family. It is the people themselves. The old King died. And that gave the opportunity. There can be no regicide when no one has been crowned. On Konya, and on other islands, the populace rose spontaneously. Mobs formed and attacked the rulers' palaces. By the time word reached our islands, what government of old there had been had disappeared in a welter of blood and flame, and noble heads paraded through the streets atop pikes.'

The Sarzana shivered. 'Now came true terror. Let me tell you,
gentle
people, if you have never been unfortunate enough to know tyranny, you should know there is none worse than that wielded by the people. Let the slightest man or woman of ability, thought or genius rise up, and he will be cut down, just as the scythe first slashes the ripest grains of wheat that have grown above the rest. That is when I learned that if the first principle of monarchy is to rule with justice, the second is that those whom the gods meant to be governed must never be allowed to influence the sceptre.'

I glanced at Corais, keeping my face blank, and saw her own expression as closed as it was when she heard an order she knew to be wrong. But Cholla Yi was nodding, enthralled. I could tell nothing at all from Gamelan's expression.

The Sarzana continued: 'Once they'd overthrown the government, then they met in solemn enclave, what they called a People's Parliament.' He snorted disgust. 'Imagine all those shopkeeper's wives, bloody-handed soldiery, dirt-caked peasants and their like, milling about the palaces they'd sacked, each shouting he knew the best way to rule. Eventually, they settled on a form of government in which each man or woman was to be no better than the worst, and anyone who deemed himself better than the others was evil, a horrible reminder of the days of kings that were gone, never to return and that must be destroyed.

'What was worse,' he went on grimly, 'was these peasant-rulers had sycophants of the worst sort, yea-sayers who kept those poor fools from realizing their stupidity. Early on, when the people had first begun their revolt, the lowest class of the nobility, the barons, those who'd never done anything to help Konya except sit on their estates and exploit all who came near them, saw the straws in the wind, and cast their lot with the usurpers. These petty lordlings were held up by the rulers of Konya as proof positive they didn't desire to turn all mankind into a swarm of ants. So, of course, these noblemen and women danced constant attendance to their real rulers.

'I gather,' Gamelan said, 'that about this time your Shark Islands must have come into conflict with the Konyans.'

'Just so,' The Sarzana nodded excitedly. 'When they realized there was another way to live, a way in which each man freely paid the debt owed to his superior, and his better gave even more of himself
...
why, a great expedition had to be mounted to extirpate this heresy from Konya.

'Also,' The Sarzana went on, and this comment was the second that seemed inwardly intended, 'I have learned a ruler's task is easier if the masses always have an external enemy to arouse their anger.

'They sent out a great fleet, with orders to lay waste to our lands. Perhaps the old regime might have mounted an expedition successfully. But not this new rabble. It took them months to raise and half
-
train an army, find ships and educate their merchant captains to be naval officers, and then longer still to victual and outfit the men. All this took great time - time they no longer had. Because something had happened to me. One day, and if I were telling anything other than the raw truth it would have been a day of thundering and lightning, I
...
I
understood.
I do not know how else to put it. Gamelan?'

'I
do
know what you mean,' the Evocator said. 'It's not unknown for a particularly gifted sorcerer to suddenly be enlightened, and see the elements of his craft open before him.'

'Just so,' The Sarzana said excitedly. 'This part of my life I do not discuss with others, and it is a relief to find that I am not alone. Because once I held this power, I knew I must not confide in any magician who could become dangerous to me. I could feel my enemies - the enemies of my people - building their strength. But my own strength was growing fast. I felt at times the very spirit of my islanders, and those who'd chosen me as their ruler, giving me power.'

The Sarzana stopped and poured his glass full. He drained it, set it down, and smiled, his mind in the past.

'When their fleet arrived off the Island of the Shark, it was met with a great storm. A storm my powers had helped raise. There were two hundred or more ships that sailed to the islands. But the rocks and the tides and the winds took them and scattered them and sank them! When the winds died, and the sun came out once more, then we put out in our small ships against their great galleys with many-rowed oars. My men swarmed against their ships like barracuda striking a sunfish. And then it was over, and the men of the Island of the Shark held the day. Now we were the strongest force in all of the Konyan lands. We knew what we had to do. We could not discard the sword and return to our nets and our lands - the mob would try once more, never satisfied until they dragged us down.