Tanith Lee - Birthgrave 3 - Quest For The White Witch

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VEIL OF TIME

I had anticipated finding Uastis, but she had grown more astute with the years, the sum of my

whole lifetime ... She had twice my years, but. she looked, as I had suspected she would, far

older. Her face was, as ever, covered with a veil of heavy white silk. Yet her arms and throat

were bare, and the long talons of her hands were enamelled the color of dying fire.

I could say no word. I had sworn to slay her when I discovered her, but I was helpless. Her

voice was young and fresh and beautiful:

"I was rid of your father by means of my hate. You also I may kill. Unless you consent to serve

me."

I could speak. I said, "If you wanted my service, you should have kept me by you."

"You were his curse on me," she said.

"And I am still!" And my hand shot out and snatched the veil from her face.

I jumped backwards with my eyes starting from their sockets. It was not a woman's face at all, but

the head of a white lynx....

QUEST

FOR

THE

WHITE

WITCH

Tanith Lee

DAW Books, Inc.

Donald A. Wollheim, Publisher 1633 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10019

PUBLISHED BY

THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY OF CANADA LIMITED

FIRST PRINTING, FEBRUARY 1978

56789

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTP-RHD 1J.SP\T OFFMABC* HEGISTRAOA. 1 >-> S-* »"<• S3 HECHO EN WINNll'EG, CANADA

PRINTED IN CANADA COVER PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Contents

Prologue

BOOK ONE

PART I Great Ocean 13

PART II The Sorcerer 37

PART III The Crimson Palace 116

PART

The Cloud 171

BOOK TWO

PART I In the Wilderness 221

PART II White Mountain 263

PART III The Sorceress 301

Prologue

Previously*, I have recounted how I spent my youth among the tribal krarls of the Red Dagkta. How I was named

Tuvek and believed myself the son of Ettook, the krarl's chief, and his out-tribe wife, Tathra. How I was tattooed in the

Boys Rite, when the tattoos did not remain on my skin I must fight grown men to prove myself-which skirmish I won

and to spare, earning thereby the enmity of the krarl's stinking seer, Seel. Neither did Ettook much like me, though he

told me to pick a gift from his treasure chest. I chose a silver lynx mask, because it was workmanship of the old

cities-his prize. I became a warrior of the krarl, unequalled and fighting-mad, yet I was dissatisfied with my life, not

knowing why. My flesh had a strange knack of healing. No wound festered; I even survived the bite of a venomous

snake.

When I was nineteen, the krarls were at a Spring Gathering when we were attacked by city-men and their cannon.

These cities lay over the mountains, ancient, corrupt and decayed. The folk there went masked, man or woman-only

our females hid their faces in the shireen-and supposed themselves descended from a god-race, superior to humanity.

They captured many of our men in their raid, and bore them off to be slaves.

I alone dared follow, with rescue and loot in mind. However, near the raiders' camp, a strange force seemed to take

possession of me. I found I could speak the city tongue. More, the raiders mistook me for another, a man they feared

and named Vazkor. It was easy to free their captives and slaughter the city-men in their alarm. Among their pavilions I

* Vazkor, Son of Vazkor by Tanith Lee

discovered a gold-haired city girl whom I greatly fancied, and carried home with me to the krarl. Here, I interrupted my

own Death Rites-to the dejection of Seel and Ettook.

I came to love my city girl, Demizdor, and she to love me, despite her contempt for my tribal origins. Soon I wed her.

She was much superior to my krarl wives, Chula and the rest

I had neglected my mother, Tathra, who alone, formerly, I had cared for. She was heavy with Ettook's child, and

presently bore the thing and died of it. On the night of Tathra's death, Kotta, the krarl healer, told me this: That I was

not, after all, the son of Tathra and Ettook, but of a whitehaired city woman-she whose silver lynx mask Ettook had

taken. This woman had given birth about the time that Tathra had, But Tathra's child died. The tent being empty, the

city woman had substituted for the dead baby her unwanted one: myself. This story I credited when Kotta told me the

white woman claimed to have killed her husband, a sorcerer and city king, by name Vazkor.

In a turmoil of grief and arrogance, I meant to slay Ettook. But another peculiar power came to me, and I struck him

down with a white lightning that burst from my brain. However, I could not control this phenomenon, which

overwhelmed me too. When I recovered my senses, I was helplessly bound and about to be executed by the

krarl, Demizdor, too, when they were done raping her. It was Sihharn Night, when reputedly ghosts walked. But the

ghostly riders who entered the krarl were Demizdor's city kin. She, they saved. Me, they also took. Believing me the

son of the hated Vazkor, they would make a spectacle of me in their city of Eshkorek.

Vazkor had been creating for himself an empire, which crumbled at his death, bringing war and ruin to the cities.

Uastis had been his wife, an albino sorceress, believed by some to be a reincarnated goddess of the old Lost Race. She

had murdered Vazkor, escaping herself. These then: my father and my mother.

Now the cities existed in poverty-ridden luxuriousness, tended by a dark ugly slave-people. The lords of Eshkorek

were hot for second-hand vengeance on Vazkor, through me. But I healed fantastically of the grim wounds they gave

me, without even a scar, and was taken under the dubious protection of Prince Erran. To the amazement of all, I

instinctively understood and could speak and read the language of the cit-

ies. I concluded this was due to my magician father's blood in me. I was treated well enough, and, despite despising

them, came to enjoy the things of Eshkorek, their books and music, their arts for battle and for the bed. My ancestry

seemed to surface in me. I was no longer the tribal savage, but what they called me, Vazkor, son of Vazkor. But

Demizdor had begun to hate me again, for her treatment by the braves, and because her proud kin regarded me as a

barbarian and this shamed her.

At her instigation, one of her princely lovers let loose on me a demented horse. Its madness came from poison he

had given it, but, astonished, I found myself able to heal the animal. In my rage, though, I killed Demizdor's prince. I

was instantly imprisoned and promised a grisly death. However, Demizdor, relenting, enabled me to get away via an

underground route which led from the city and beyond the mountains. Her plots had cured my love, yet I asked her to

accompany me, for her own safety. She refused.

The tunnel opened into a vast subterranean concourse built by the Lost Race. Perversely, in view of its

magnificance, they had named it SAVRA LFORN-Worm's Way. Here I saw frescoes of this magician people

performing miracles-• walking on water, in sky flight, and so on. Many were albino, like Uastis, some were very dark,

as my father had been, as I was. One other fact became clear. The Lost neither ate nor drank, nor did they need to

relieve themselves-the wretched latrines were plainly for their human slaves.

Emerging above ground, pursuit followed me. The chase was led by Demizdor's kin, Zrenn and Orek. I killed most of

their soldiers. One I slew by means of the white lightning Ettook had perished from-and, as then, I was debilitated by

its use. I sought refuse in a krarl of the black people, by the sea, and discovered I could master their language, too. I

assumed I had inherited all these powers from my father.

Peyuan, the krarl's chief, spoke to me of my mother, for she had come among his folk after leaving Ettook's krarl. His

words confused me. Though he had only seen her masked-I had met none who had seen her face-he told me she was

beautiful, charismatic, yet a gentle friend who had saved his life. I inwardly rejected his version. Peyuan advised me to

seek refuge from the city-men on a small island, invisible from the shore. This I did, accompanied by Peyuan's

daughter, Hwenit. She was the healer-witch of the krarl, and went

with me in order to make jealous her half-brother, whom she loved, scorning his scruples against incest.

On the island, Hwenit, who was cunning, schooled me usefully in my own psychic abilities. Yet she made a

fire-magic by night to witch her brother. The fire was spotted by enemies, and soon Zrenn and Orek ambushed me,

having been rowed to the island in a stolen boat by their dark slave. In the ensuing fight, Hwenit was viciously

stabbed by Zrenn. But I mesmerized this bastard, using my powers, and killed him. Orek chose suicide, having told me

Demizdor had hanged herself, I was burdened by this onerous news, but the dark slave galvanized me into action. He

had formerly seen me strike the man dead with the white light-now the slave, Long-Eye, reckoned me a sorcerer-god.

He expected I would heal Hwenit, who was near death. I had healed the horse in Eshkorek, and a child in the black

krarl, but I was unsure. Still resolved to try, and indeed, I saved Hwenit and she lived.

Stunned at the magnitude of my 'sorcery', I faltered. I had reached a hiatus in my life. Earlier, I had sworn a secret

oath to Vazkor that I would avenge his death on Uastis, the white witch. I too had a score to settle-my desertion, the

king's birthright she had deprived me of. Now, I resolved to seek the bitch. In a moment of prescience, I ascertained I

must travel east, then southward, across the sea.

Long-Eye, electing me his new master, took me to Zrenn's stolen boat, and we put out on to the morning ocean.

What follows is the second portion of my narrative....

BOOK ONE

Part I

Great Ocean

The boat Zrenn had chosen to steal was a skiff, very similar to Qwef's craft, but capable of sail. The slave had

stepped the mast and unfurled the coarse-woven square, rigging it to catch the ragged morning wind that came

slanting from the mainland far behind. He told me after, for he was unusually talkative to me, how his people sailed

back and forth over a wide blue river in the course of trading. They understood ships and boats in the same way they

understood gods-a hereditary oblique wisdom, passed from father to boy. This blue river lay a million miles distant

west and north; he had sculled there in his childhood before the slave levy fell due and he, along with countless

others, was taken to black Ezlann, later bartered to So-Ess and finally absorbed, via a raid, into Eshkorek Arnor.

Long-Eye was four years my senior and looked old enough to have sired one twice my age. He said the girls of his

people were nubile at nine or ten, many had borne babies at the age of eleven; even among the tribes, this would have

been considered forward. Not surprisngly, the poor wenches were used up before they reached twenty, wizened hags

at twenty-five, and dead most often a couple of years later. The men fared not much better. An elder of forty was

unusual and greatly revered. Their hair and the hair of their women commenced turning gray about the twentieth year.

I saw some evidence of this, for, as Long-Eye's pate began to blossom into blue-black stubble, badger gray tufts

sprouted along the ridge of his skull. Oddly, his face remained bald. I had occasion to envy that, as the thick growth of

beard continued to push, itching, through my own jaw and upper lip.

Long-Eye raised the sail to catch the wind, put it to rest,

and took up the oars when the wind failed. At night we drifted, but by various sailors' tricks he kept abreast of the

skiff's inclination and the mood of the sea. We must head east before south, his old map had told him. We baited lines

with dead Zrenn's provender, and caught fish. There was even a fire-box in the boat on which to grill them, and two

clay water bottles Long-Eye had replenished at the island spring.

I had lost my discomfort at the size of the ocean; yet the curious phenomena of the sea did not leave me untouched.

The height of the sky, the large clouds at its edges, looking close enough to put your hand on; the light of a fine day

penetrating liquid like glass; the shine of fish burning with their own cold fire in the darkness; the sea laced with

phosphorous, the oars catching it, turned to silver.

Looking over my shoulder at this wild venturing of mine, I try to recall what I must have felt, having abandoned

myself with such fatalistic, grim optimism to the unknown. I think my life had moved too swiftly for me, and I had not

caught up. That would account, perhaps, for my complaisance and the curious, uneasy sense of waiting that lurked

beneath it.

Five days went swimming by. The climate was deceptively, as I might have noted, threateningly mild. The sea went

down under the skiff, blue-green and clear, into a shadowy weedforest, peopled by fish.

Toward the end of that fifth day, just as the innocent sky was folding itself into a scarlet sunset, something loomed

up on the sea's eastern edge, a bar of red-lighted cliff stretching north to south, and out of sight.

The wind had been dying, though the sea was heavy as syrup. Long-Eye unstepped the mast, and sculled. We

reached the cliff wall as the last embers went out in the west. A rough escarpment led up from the sea; the base of the

wall was clogged with the green hair of Hwenit's sea maidens; They must have enjoyed much love on the barren

ridges. We hauled the boat aground for the night, and found birds visited there-one to its regret, since it provided

dinner.

An oddity, that wall of rock, breaking the ocean end to end, as it seemed, yet only a mile or so wide. I climbed the

bastion at moonrise and looked out to the east, beyond the barrier, at new miles of white-painted water and that other

great ocean of stars. Perhaps a continent had sunk here, leaving only the tops of its highest mountains, transmuted

ignominiously to cliff. I had been childishly expecting to reach new

land every day, and thought this marvel to be the outpost of it.

At sunup, after a breakfast of eggs-two other potential birds that had lost out at a chance of life-we slid the boat

back in the water. I took the oars, the god feeling in need of exercise; Long-Eye acted as lookout. Presently he located

a curious hollow tunnel that passed through the cliffs to the open sea.

The sky was like the inside of a glazed pot. Little fine hairs of pale blue cirrus were all that disturbed its enamel

perfection. The storm did not come that day but on the next.

The ocean, credited here and there with being female, has a woman's wiles and ways. She wants you to love her,

but she wants your guts into the bargain. Man's weight and dominion of ships she bears with a honey groan, but

soon she means to swallow you whole into the hungry, salty womb. At her most benign, she is promising a scourge.

That day of transcendent quiet ended with another crimson, copper sunset. Fish leaped from the swells, ruby

plated along their backs, their wings spread as if they would fly up to the red clouds. Black night, with no wind,

followed; next, a silver dawn, and still as metal. By midmorning every hair on my body was electric.

"What is it?" I said to Long-Eye.

"It has been too calm. A storm, perhaps."

I glanced around like an idiot, the way a man will, looking for something he wishes for but knows is not there. We

were more than a day from land at back and none in sight before. It was hard to be sure, from Long-Eye's wooden

manner, what variety of rough weather threatened, yet the feel of the air was bad.

Presently the sky darkened to an iron green.

"She is coming," Long-Eye said.

I never in my life had met so briefly ominous a sentence.

This was where my blind quest had brought me, my dream of power that would lead me straight to the goal,

unhindered.

Long-Eye's face, more than wooden, was serene. He was safe, being with a god.

"Long-Eye," I remarked, "are you supposing I am about to work a wondrous spell to subdue the elements?"

He shrugged, and this supernatural, indifferent confidence shattered the last vestige of my lethargy.

Then the storm came, the hurricane.

The voice of the wind swept toward us over the sucking roll of the waves. It was like the howling of an enormous

flesh-and-blood voice box-and made less pleasing by this resemblance to something human or animal-growing

impossibly larger and more imminent with each second. Such a noise had no place in the real world, but it was

unmistakably here. It was the kind of clamor to run from, save there was no place to bide. Then a tree of lightning

flooded up the shadow sky, branches and claws slitting the overcast from horizon to horizon. From the lightning's

roots sprang the storm itself, a sheet of solid yet preposterously volatile lead, that smote the skiff one hammer blow

straight on her back. She leaped, as the flying fish had leaped, as if to get free.

The sea hit me. My mouth was full of water. I tried to take a breath and that was water, too.

The wave passed on with another riding behind it. The boat bravely attempted to chase up the length of it. The

vast swell-black shot with green like a bolt of rotting Eshkirian silk-slammed under the keel. The skiff swung, poised

on her tail, and capsized.

So the invincible god was to be drowned after all. The invincible god could not swim.

The black water gushed up over my head; I was bottled in it. My panic was indescribable; there was no sequence

as I thrashed and choked in that stranglehold of heaving ink.

Long-Eye, taught to swim strongly hi a poisonous blue river one swallow of which meant death, hauled me up. He

dragged my hands together around the floating mast.

A moment of precious air was followed by fifty seconds drowned in the vitals of a roller. The wind screamed in my

eyes and ears.

Even through the dark, I had a glimpse of Long-Eye's face, as blank and noncommittal as I had ever seen it. When

the next big breaker smashed over us, he clapped his palm across my mouth and nostrils and stopped me taking on a

fresh lungful of water. With the cordage of the sail, he had lashed his left hand to the mast. Somehow now, between

the surges regular as heartbeats that thrust the sea at the sky, he contrived to lash my left hand also to this life raft.

"Fool," I said, "you chose the wrong master, fool of a slave."

By way of a change, the black sky fell down on the black sea.

The hurricane lasted in fact, in the first portion, for about three hours.

How we survived it, I had no notion. I quaffed deep of the sea, that much I knew, and brought it back again. The

buffets of water and wind numbed me, though I felt my ribs crack in the old place. There was no feeling in my feet and

legs up to the crotch, but there I had grown painfully erect as if the sea indeed would couch me. The flesh of my face

was flayed like the hide of a whipped man. My hands turned blue as they grappled the mast, and the left wrist was

braceleted where it was tied with my own raw, bloody meat. Long-Eye was in a similar case, or worse, his cheeks

peeled open and half-blind. We learned soon enough that both his legs had been broken by the force of the waves.

But for his trick with the lashing, we should have been fathoms down some while before. Even with it, our bruised

and battered carcasses were fair set for death. I had fed on fish, now fish should feed on me. Barely conscious, I clung

to existence-the mast; survival reduced to pure stubbornness, abstract motives literally washed away.

After those three hours of hell (I reckoned the duration only later from the positions I had vaguely noted, when I

could see them, of the sun), I appeared to myself to be drifting up into another sea, the water grown so level I thought

it had congealed, so level it actually nauseated me after the turmoil that had preceded it, and to which I had grown

accustomed. Then, lacking the frenzied beating of the sea, my numbness began to wear thin, revealing a hundred

bursts of pain of variable intensity.

The hurricane seemed spent, the ocean abruptly flat, the sky pastel and very bright with low sun. The unnatural lull

was, however, the vortex, the storm's eye that travels at its center-merely an interlude, the cat toying with the mouse.

This fact Long-Eye presently told me. Even hi my half-wit state, his fortitude appalled me.

I glanced about, illogically glad of the lull despite its transience. The sun was lying over in the west, on my right

hand now.

"If you are in the mood to curse me," I said, "do it."

My speech sounded like a drunkard's, blurred and thick.

"You will act when you are ready, lord," Long-Eye said imperturbably.

"When I am ready? Don't you see yet, fool's slave? I am incapable. Behold, I manumit you. Curse me."

He said, "Mast not enough to save us. Without the lord's power of will, we should not still be living."

Apparently he continued to believe I had illimitable abilities, yet did not reproach me for not using them. What he

imagined me playing at, I cannot guess.

I rested my face on my arm over the mast. My mind was blank.

Suddenly, between one breath and the next, it reached me. It was like a voice calling, far back in my brain-Here.

Look for me here.

All your life you must be ready to change course, open for it. Then, when the signal comes, you are prepared. When

I was a boy in the krarl, learning to hunt or to ride and mainly my own teacher, for the environment was hostile to me, I

must continually go over the actions of what I did: Now, I set my hand so, and now my foot. One day, a great surprise-I

found I had done everything by instinct without thinking it through first: I had learned. Something like this occurred in

the storm's eye, as I have later concluded. At the hour, it was as if a black window broke in me and radiance streamed

through it, a revelation, such as men say they have of their gods or their destinies. It is only their own wisdom, maybe,

catching up to them at last.

The light was bronze now, and the sides of the waves like jewelsmith's work, heavy seas of amber and beaten gold.

Something ran molten together in my chest. It was the break healing in my ribs. Dead flesh flaked from my face and

hands, which had knit whole beneath. I broke the lashing on my left wrist. Then I did what magicians dream of. I got to

my feet, easy as a man rises on a boat's deck. I stood upright on a floor of choppy brazen gold, and I walked on the

ocean.

I analyzed this, after. When it occurred, a sort of aberration came with it, precluding reason. Analysis told me,

however, only one fact. Belief is the root of this power. Not to tell yourself you may, but to know you can. I have

journeyed far enough since, in the seasons of my life, to understand by now that the skill is not as exclusive as I then

supposed it. The sorcerer-gods are only those born knowing the key to the brain's inner rooms. That is their luck, but

beware-the meanest may search out the key, or stumble on it, and become gods also.

Having achieved one miracle, the rest seemed little more than a process of mathematics.

I kept my balance lightly, as a charioteer does, levitating

my body without effort, my feet braced on the smooth toiling of rollers. The sky was veiling again; the wind

threatened from a different quarter,

I stared at sky, at sea, one with it, master of it.

Power gives wings, and fire. Power is the wine after which all other wine is mud. To control the raging elements

becomes explicit and simple. Rope the wind, disperse in fragments the hurricane that bounds the vortex wall. Pressure

to pressure, thigh against thigh, the mind wrestling briefly with the insensate motive of the storm. The blows are

diverted and the vast forces quenched.

The hurricane died over the sea like a huge, ghostly bird.

Ultimately, the act had been swift, positive. Behind the storm was a green cloud, out of which a quick rain fell. I could

see Long-Eye, horizontal on his back, capturing sufficient of this rain in a leather water bottle of his own-the clay pots

had been smashed and lost. I watched him with a certain prosaic interest. As I walked on the water.

Gulls flew over, refugees of the storm. The air was charged with ozone and a scent of iodine from floating stirs of

ocean weed. Nothing seemed strange in the sunset; the apotheosis was in the man, not the world about him.

Long-Eye lay unprotesting and observed me till I should remember his plight. Gods were selfish, their right and

their failing.

In the end, I collected myself and went to him.

I healed his broken limbs, the bruises and wounds at a touch, as before, feeling no virtue go from me. I asked him if

he noted anything when I did this, any pain or curious sensation. I was hungry for facts, could not get enough of my

talents. He said it was like a tremor of electricity disturbed in an animal's coat in summer, nothing more. I placed my

fingers on his face to renovate the skin; he said it was like spiders running. His legs were stiff and needed massage

before he could work them. Once he was able, I unstrapped him from the mast, and told him to get up and follow me.

His face, almost invisible now, for the night was black and the moon unrisen, scarcely altered.

"I am the lord's slave."

"If I tell you to do as I do, you shall manage it."

Left in the water any longer, he would die of it. His devastating trust, his human wits by which he had saved me,

were things I prized with a sudden and emotional fervor new to me. I grasped his shoulders.

"You know I can equip you to do this."

"Yours is the cloak that covers me," he said. It was a ritual phrase out of some primeval and obscure ancestral past.

He let go the mast, the wood was mostly sponge by now, and set his hands out as if to balance himself. By his

shoulders, I drew him up to stand, as I did, on that faintly swelling, calm night sea.

Thus we remained, between heaven and ocean, the clouds pouring slowly over above, the waves tilting gently

beneath.

Long-Eye began to weep, without shame or restraint. Then he bared his teeth and threw back his head, staring up at

the sky, grinning and crying. After a minute, he rubbed his palms over his face, and looked at me. He was again as

passive as I had ever seen him, as if he had rubbed expression away with the tears.

I turned, and began to walk due east, the direction the storm had driven us to as if some fate were still in it. He

followed me, as I had instructed. His faith never wavered. He fixed his eyes on my back and trod unerringly across the

sea.

Now that I had a power beyond any man's hopes, beyond even my own, I felt neither confusion or excitement.

It was as if a million hands had clasped with mine, a million deep vaults given up their treasure and their secrets. A

sense of omnipotent loneliness more absolute than the desert of space, a sense of omnipotent continuance more

definite than if an army of my forebears had stretched away from me, each linked to each and culminating in this final

existence which was mine.

Yet I was not thinking of my father. Neither did I think of her, the lynx woman, save as a lamp somewhere before me,

which, armed with the thunder, I should one day extinguish as she had extinguished his dark light.

I was thinking of what was in me, truly, of my self.

Old beyond age, younger than the chick, I strode across a mosaic floor now black and silver, now splintering into

yellow as the sun rose like a wheel from the east. The night had passed like a folded wing.

And I saw the ship on the farthest edge of distance, etched there, immobile, as if awaiting me, almost as I had seen

it on the shore of the island, behind my eyes.

To the people of the southern ocean, the sea is the woman; what rides her and must be stronger than she, that is

the man. So the ship was masculine that rode at anchor in the bright morning, storm-blown a great distance from the

trading routes of the south.

He was a tall galley, this male ship, towering up from the water on his double oar-banks, twenty-five oars to a bank,

fifty to a side, a hundred oars all told. The two high masts, stripped spar-naked after the hurricane, striped the

dawnburned sky.

When he sailed, he had been a brave sight, twenty-four man-lengths fore to aft, a vessel painted blue as a summer

dusk over his ironwood planking, the prow gilded, and the vast curving whale's tail of the stern. The sails were indigo

figured in ocher, with a triangular wind-catcher or shark's-fin sail at the stern. His name was written on his side in

southern picture writing:

Hyacinth Vineyard.

He had gone west of north, the ship, swallowing up red amber and black pearls, jade, cloth, pelts, purple dye, and

antique bronzes from the archipelagoes of Seema and Tinsen, before he turned for home.

One morning, out of sight of land, the wind dropped. The oar-slaves, every black scaled like the backs of reptiles

from the beatings that fell on them like rain, day in and out, grunted and sweated up their hate and agony on the

ironbladed poles. It is the only death sentence that crucifies a man sitting, and may take ten years or more, if he is

sufficiently tough and maddened, before it kills him.

The beautiful ship, courtesan-colored, pretty as a fancy boy and named for one, and for the earth rather than the

sea, powered by a heaving of pain and fury in his oar-gripped bowel. He met the hurricane at midnight, the one

stranger not to be bargained with.

A night and a piece of a day the galley fought the tempest.

The sails were taken in but presently broke lashings, rent,

and were stripped. The oars, unusable, were belayed. The rowers' station, though decked over, was nevertheless

awash from the hatches, and dead men lay about in the untidy and unhelpful manner of the dead, for the overseer

had tried to outrun the weather and paid for it by breaking the ribs and guts of others.

The ship staggered and wallowed at the mercy of the boiling cold sea and the black gale. He was well built for such

work, or he would not have lasted.

About noon they passed into the cool eye of the storm. The sailors, of whom many were additionally slaves and

recent landsmen, ignorant as I had been and thinking the fury done, lay facedown on the deck praising their amulets,

as they had similarly lain wailing and puking at the storm's violence. Others, knowing this lull to be the vortex and

worse to come, were for throwing the precious cargo overboard as offerings to the sea. The officers, their greed larger

than alarm or superstition, decreed otherwise. The naval instruments were broken or mislaid; no coast was visible. The

master took stock, unsparing of his amber-necked whip.

Even at the tumult's height this man, the master, Charpon by name, had been grim rather than disturbed. Charpon

was a "Son of the New Blood," thus, however lowly, a bastard fragment of the elite, the ninety-year conquerors of the

great city that was home to the ship. His emotions were limited to avarice, obscure but definite pride, a certain brutal,

unimaginative intelligence, and a liking for the flesh of boys.

While the Hyacinth Vineyard hung gently rocking under him, oddly becalmed between the two walls of the

hurricane, Charpon, his face like a fist, stood in the bow, whip in hand, on lookout for the returning storm. He was not

thinking of, death but rather of the abacus in his brain that was clicking away his profits in lost slaves, lost goods, a

foundered vessel. He owned the ship; it represented the twelve years of his life he had labored to buy it.

Then, the hurricane failed them.

After two or three hours, the sky clearing into deep gold and the sea smoothing into a silk finer than the dyed stuff

in the galley's holds, the crew descended to their knees once more to give thanks to the ocean.

Smoke was burned before an image in the raised forecastle. It was an effigy of copper, depicting a male warrior-god

grasping lightnings and mounted astride a lion-fish with enameled wings of blue and green. This was the demon of

waves, Hessu, the spirit revered by the Hessek sailors of the "Old" Blood. Charpon did not bother with it.

The ship put down anchor to lick his wounds. Parties were herded up to patch and hoist the sails, stop leaks with

heated bitumen, and sling overboard the useless dead. The master and his seconds prepared for the task of plotting

their course afresh.

The day went out in night. A watch was set about the vessel; ten exhausted men, still half afraid the hurricane

might attack again, like a tiger in the night, superstitiously telling the little red beads of Hessek prayer-necklaces,

promising sweets to all the spirits ashore.

The sun, having circled under the sea, rose from it in the east. Suddenly one of the watch yelled out in terror,

"S'wah ei!" a cry that roughly means, "May my gods guard me," and thereafter repeated the plea with vehemence. A

whistle was blown and sailors came running. By now the watch had collapsed on the deck, whining. Soon Charpon

arrived, whip curled in hand.

"What does the piss-brain say?"

The sailors, having caught the plague of fright, yet aware of their master's irreligious and mundane preference,

hesitated to tell. A kiss from the whip, however, loosened their tongues.

"Lauw-yess." (It was a Hessek word, expressive of respect and obedience.) "Ki says he saw a man, in the sea."

At this Ki, appearing demented, began to mutter and groan and shake his head.

Charpon struck him.

"Speak for yourself, worm."

"Not a man, Lauw-yess. A god. A god, the fire-god of the Kings-Masri, Masrimas, dressed in fiery flakes of the

sun. I saw him, Lauw-yess, and he walked. He walked on the sea."

The sailors gave off a shuddering murmur.

Charpon gifted Ki a second blow.

"My crew has gone mad. Maggots in the head. There is nothing in the sea. Take this worm and shackle him below

till the fit soaks out of him. He shall not feed or drink till he's sane again."

But, as they were taking the unfortunate Ki away, another of the watch shouted. Charpon's head jerked up. The

sailors clustered at the rail, gabbling. This time, no sorcery. Two men, no doubt wrecked survivors of the storm,

floating in the troughs, one splashing feebly to attract attention.

Charpon nodded. He did not see survivors but replacement oarsmen, if they lived. Some recompense, after all, to be

measured on the clicking abacus in his head.

Knowing I might cross the water afoot, reach the vessel, observe some two hundred men stricken on their faces

with alarm, or else riotous and searching out weapons with which to attack me, I had preferred discovery in the image

of a helpless destitute. I had heard the man scream his terror from the side, and that had been warning enough. I lay

down in the sea, and Long-Eye with me. Levitation had surmounted the need to swim. I buoyed us up and let the

swells drift us toward the blue ship.

At length ropes were thrown us. We threshed and floundered and were dragged up the iron-wood planking, over

the picture-writing of the galley's name, onto the deck.

Charpon's black shadow fell on us.

He was a tall man, the "New" conqueror blood showing in his height, huge bones, and russet skin. His hair was

clipped and oiled until it resembled a cap of black lacquer. His teeth were white but unevenly set, like shards stuck

haphazardly into cement. In his left ear hung a long, swinging earring in the shape of a golden picture symbol-the sign

of Masrimas, the fire-god.

Charpon prodded me with the handle of his whip.

"Strong doss," he said, "to have lasted the storm. We shall see." He fingered his earring and said to me, "Speak

Masrian?"

"Some," I answered slowly, not wishing to seem too proficient, though Masrian came as easily to me as the other

languages I had met. It was the conqueror tongue named, like the conqueror race, for their god. Charpon nodded at

LongEye. "No," I said. "He is just my servant."

Charpon smiled dismissively. My days of possessing servants were obviously numbered.

"Where do you come from?"

I said, "Northward, and something westward."

"Beyond the wall of rock?"

I remembered the great cliffs across the sea. Probably the traders had heard of northlands, but had not gone so far

for centuries.

"Yes, The shore of ancient cities."

"Ah." He seemed to recognize it, contemptuously. No

doubt he knew little of it, poor trading land, a jumble of barbaric tribes and ruins.

I could smell his rough cunning, his shrewd greed, foresaw, with no recourse to magic, that he would use me where

and how he reckoned most profitable. And I wondered briefly if I could read his mind-I did not know my limits, my

power might stretch to anything. Yet I shrank from that ultimate intrusion, that floundering among the swamps and

sewers of another's brain, and did not attempt the feat. Reluctant as I was, I hardly think I could have managed it in

any case.

Charpon did not seem inclined to question my grasp of the Masrian language. Probably he believed the whole

world should speak it, to the greater glory of his illegitimate sires. He tapped with the whip handle, and a sailor

brought me a pot of water with some bitter alcohol mixed hi it. No offering was given Long-Eye; when I shared the

ration with him, Charpon seemed tickled.

"We can't conduct you home," he said to me. "We make for the Sun's Road, the way to the capital of the south.

You'd best come with us. It will broaden your experience, sir." He was attempting polite, sarcastic humor. His four

seconds, well-dressed bullies, one missing an eye, grunted.

"I agree to that, but I can't pay you," I said. "Perhaps I can work my passage?"

"Oh, indeed you shall. But first, come to the ship-house, sir, and share my dinner."

His smiling and unlikely courtesy would have warned the slowest fool of tricks in the offing. Yet, in the capacity of

intimidated flotsam, everything lost, adrift on his clemency, I thanked him and followed him, companioned by his bully

boys, Long-Eye a pace behind me.

The ship-house lay aft, constructed of iron-wood and painted indigo, but the door was pure wrought iron with

brass fitments. I could hardly resist the idea such a door had mutiny in mind. Inside was a great beamed room with

plush couches built in along the walls, and piled with spotted and striped pelts, and cushions and drapes better suited

to a brothel. A luxurious twist to Charpon's granite. I could picture the master lolling at his leisure, the incense burners

smoking and his whip to hand, ready for action of one kind or another.

The obligatory statuette of Masrimas, gilded bronze, fine work, stood in an alcove looking on with eyes of nacre

shell, a flame fluttering before it.

We sat at Charpon's table, I and the four seconds; Long-

Eye he let crouch near my chair on the rugs. Three youths brought the food. Conscripted in childhood for this hell of a

life, they were bound to it for ten years by Masrian law unless they were sharp and desperate enough to run away in

some port. Two were handsome under their dirt, and one knew his luck. He flirted a little, surreptitiously, with the

Lauw-yess, brushing the master's arm with his body as he set down the platters in then" scoops. Charpon pushed him

aside, as if irritated by the proximity, but he was taking note. The boy was clever, if he could make it last. Though small

and slight, of the old Hessek blood to judge by his sour-pale complexion, he had already got a Masrian name: Melkir.

He looked at me with cultivated scorn, the precariously safe dissociating himself from the damned.

Birds had fallen part-dead on the ship's deck when the vessel entered the storm's eye. The sailors had wrung their

necks and now served them up stewed. The worshipers of the Flame did not sully fire by putting carcasses in it to

cook; only meat boiled in water in a pot, or baked in a container, was allowed, thus keeping it the required distance

from the god.

Charpon urged me to gorge, for, as ever, I ate sparingly; he told me I must get back my strength. Yet, he remarked, I

was certainly no weakling to have survived; my servant, too. How long had I been in the water? I told him some lie of

the boat's capsizing later than it had. Still he marveled. Most men, this much in the sea, would be spoiled for anything.

Masrimas had blessed me and preserved me for the ship.

I asked him, casually, what work I might do about the galley to recompense him. He supposed me scared, no doubt,

trying to learn my destiny by degrees. He said I should not do common crew work. Then I knew for sure he meant me

for the rowers' deck.

I turned and said to Long-Eye in the tongue of the Dark People, "He intends us to embrace the oar. Watch him."

Charpon said decidedly, "You will speak Masrian."

"My servant speaks only his own language."

"No matter. It's better you do as I say."

His bullies laughed. One said to me, "You must have been a fine prince among the barbarians. Did you save any

jewels from your skiff?"

I told the man I had nothing. Another put a hand into my hair.

"There's always this. If the young barbarian lord were to

shear his fleece, there's many an old whore in Bar-Ibithni would pay a gold chain for a wig of it."

I moved slightly to look at this man-his name was Kochus-as he fondled me. His eyes widened. He snatched his

hand off as if he had been burned and his face went gray. The rest were drinking and never noticed it.

Since the miracle in the sea, my abilities seemed loosened in the sheath, more ready. I was confronted by choices. I

could mesmerize the roomful of villains, kill or stun them with a white energy of my brain, or perform some other

magician's trick of terror to set them gaping with fear.

Feeling myself omnipotent, with leisure to spare, was my foolishness. A sudden scuffle from behind alerted me, but

too late. Something struck me on the skull, hard enough to jar my brains.

I was sufficiently aware, however, to realize I was going to the below-decks after all, a substitute for some

storm-death.

I was dragged. A hatch was pulled up, some words were exchanged regarding new flesh for dead flesh. I was

lowered and left to lie in a stinking dark, the anus of despair. The oarsmen stretched in corpse-sleep, groaning and

mewing as they rowed in their dreams. Long-Eye tumbled close to me. The hatch slammed shut.

After a while, lamplight shone through my lids. The Overseer of Oars was bending above me, together with the

Drummer-the man whose task it was to beat out time for the oar-strokes. A pace behind them stood one of the two

"Comforters," those essentials of any slave galley, their work being to patrol the ramp between the rowing benches,

and "comfort," with their flails, any who fell behind in the labor. Compared to those flails, Charpon's whip was a velvet

ribbon. Every instrument had three strings to it of corded leather toothed with iron spikes. My eyes were shut and my

head clamored; I formed a cerebral rather than a physical picture of these men through their mutterings and

movements, and later from my own experience. It was partly disappointing to me to find them so exactly predictable.

Like a child's drawing of a monster, each was inevitably what one would expect, barely human, a perfect prototype of

depraved viciousness and myopic ignorance.

"This one is very strong," the Overseer remarked, kneading me like a hard dough.

The Drummer said indifferently, "They don't always last, Overseer, even the strong ones."

Somewhere, one of the rowers called out indistinctly for water, in a dream. There was the crack of a flail. The

nearest Comforter laughed.

Long-Eye was examined next, and the same words were brought out. Presented with a line of fifty unconscious

potential rowers, no doubt they would have mouthed the inanities over and over: This one strong. Even strong ones

don't last.

Two Comforters picked me up. They handled me indifferently, without interest since I was not yet properly aware,

alive, receptive, the love affair not yet begun between us. The tough, stubborn slaves they liked the best, the men

who flung around snarling at the flails, struggling in their shackles, furious to get free and kill the tormentor, to no

avail.

Soon enough, they found an empty place for me.

A man was lying under the bench in his chains, his chest rustily heaving and creaking as he slept. His dead mate

had been unbolted and got rid of some hours ago.

The reek from the benches was thick as mud in the nostrils.

The Comforter bent near, fixing the irons to my legs, and securing these in turn to the bench. Both limbs were

constrained. Later, an iron girdle about my belly would link me with the oar itself.

Before he went away up the ramp, one of the Comforters struck me across the back that I might wake to the full

taste of my new life. I was returning fast to myself now, and reaching upward from my thought, healed the stripe

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