The Family Tree (20 page)

W
hen Mince, Burrow and Lucy Low returned to their family, they were shown to rooms near the stables and I rejoined Prince Sahir and Izzy, who told me of the countess’s plans, and I heard more about these plans when they were discussed in greater detail over the dinner table. For purposes of communication, we all spoke trade language, based on the very ancient lan
guage of Inglitch, said Prince Izakar, and long used to facilitate understanding among the people of various tribes.

I knew trade language, of course. My father had spoken it in the marketplaces of Tavor, and many slaves in the harim spoke it, since their own native tongues were often not understood.

The secretary, Blanche, said, “At all costs, we must avoid Finial. The Dire Duke has the province in his grasp, and we could not hope to get through the land without being certainly stopped, probably recognized, possibly eaten.” She shivered dramatically.

“So Fasahd has indeed relinquished the ethical standards set by Faros VII,” remarked Izzy. “How does he hope to endear himself to the emperor by eating the emperor’s subjects?”

The countess agreed. “When I met him, I saw a person moved by envy, emboldened by rivalry, thinking no farther than the next acquisition, intending to prevail over his brother by pure force of terror, unmitigated by reason. He wants what Fasal Grun has, and what the emperor has, but not what the emperor wants.”

“The emperor wants peace,” said Soaz. “So I have often been told.”

“The Dire Duke does not want peace,” said Elianne. “The Dire Duke wants power. He wants it for itself; no other dream attracts him, though he would accept riches and fame, perhaps. His greatest joy is to see people bowing before him.”

“So,” yawned Izzy. “We won’t go through Finial. How will we go?”

“We can go around,” said Blanche. “On a boat.”

“A boat?” Soaz frowned. “A ship?”

“A fishing boat. It was the fortunes of the two young onchiki that gave me the idea. The fishing fleet owes allegiance to no particular province. The little boats sail up and down the coast of the Crawling Sea, from Estafan to Sworp and back again, sometimes easterly along the shore counties and sometimes, though rarely, around the
north coast even so far as the Temple of the Eye. Since they are crewed by pheledas, who can well defend themselves, since they carry no riches but do provide a good portion of the food of the shore peoples, they have attraction neither for privateers nor for the pressmen of the Dire Duke. We can hire a fishing boat to take us to Sworp.”

“What about our umminhi?” asked Soaz, his brow wrinkled.

“Several fishing boats?” suggested the countess. “If Prince Sahir takes the umminhi, we would need several.”

“Actually, it would be better to leave the umminhi here,” Blanche said, fixing Sahir with her black-eyed stare. “Sell them or put them in stable awaiting your return. We can rent others in Sworp. Or,” and she looked pointedly up and down the countess’s voluptuous figure, “we can walk, which would probably benefit us all.”

I hid a smile. The countess chose to ignore this insolence. The conversation went on for a time in rather desultory fashion, and at last the countess excused herself with a yawn and was escorted from the chamber by Prince Sahir. Since I was sleepy, also, I followed them out.

“They’ll sort it out,” Sahir was telling her. “Soaz is good at that sort of thing. I’m afraid we scuinan people are less practical, Countess.” He smiled warmly at the countess, and I stepped behind an arras, wanting to see what happened next.

“Let us say rather we enjoy our pleasures,” she murmured, glancing flirtatiously from under her lashes. “I bid you good night, Prince Sahir.”

“I shall await a morrow already blessed since the Countess Elianne will be in it,” he said, leaning forward to press her cheek with his own. He turned then and went down the stairs to the guest wing, leaving her to appreciate his retreating form, his robe swirling elegantly around him as he moved, almost at a trot.

She sighed.

I had not seen Blanche arrive, but she was suddenly there, beside the countess. “A fine picture he makes. A suitable person, as well. It is time you wed.”

The countess stamped her foot. “No one is speaking of wedding, Blanche! Surely I may indulge myself in a few romantic thoughts.”

“Only with care, Countess. The Dire Duke is no romantic. Given the chance, he would eat your lover as lief as he would eat you.”

The countess’s expression told me she did not find this a happy thought on which to end the day. “It will not keep me from sleeping, Blanche. I learned long ago that one must sleep when one has the chance.”

A good lesson, I thought, going quietly away to my own room, full of wonderings about the prince and the countess and whether they would indeed have a romance, or even a marriage. I wondered what the sultan would think about that, if and when it happened. I wondered myself asleep.

When morning came, our entourage took measures to reduce itself both in numbers and bulk. One of the countess’s hostlers took the umminhi and their handlers to be boarded at a stable in the southern fringes of Zallyfro. From among Prince Sahir’s guards, Soaz selected four and put the rest on board wages at the palace, awaiting our return. Prince Izzy insisted on taking Oyk and Irk, though he left his body servant at the palace under the supervision of one of Elianne’s under-butlers. All of us went through our baggage, removing bulky items which were not actually necessary, reducing the whole to a volume that could be handled by porters hired in Sworp, or put into a light wagon, perhaps, depending upon the roads.

I asked Izzy if I could help him, and he shook his head at me, saying that he’d gone through his sorcerer’s kit half a dozen times and had quit trying to select from it. Since he had no idea what we would encounter on
our way, he had no way to select from among the rather scanty supplies he had brought with him.

The countess and Blanche decided they could, as Blanche put it, “live on the country,” so they would do without ladies’ maids. Lucy Low, Burrow and Mince would take their veebles, mostly because the countess found herself enchanted by them. They had such lovely ears, she said, such soft muzzles, such sensuous fur.

When we were ready to go, the party included three principals: Izzy, Elianne, Sahir; four ancillaries: Soaz, Blanche, me, and at the last moment, Dzilobommo, who announced he would accompany us for reasons of his own having to do with the survival of his people. Whether this placed him among the principals or the supporters, I did not trouble myself to define. Also along were the three younger onchiki, four guards, plus Oyk and Irk and the four veebles: a total of twenty persons and creatures. A propitious number, said Blanche, to which Dzilobommo replied with a lengthy
grummel
which I understood to be a commentary upon fortune, fate or destiny, as it pertained to the armakfatidi.

Even so reduced in size and numbers, our group was too large for the little coastal boats, Blanche felt, so the countess’s agents chose a deep-water schooner, the
Elegant Eel
, and workers from the palace were sent to remove the accretion of scales, guts and old fish heads with which it was ordinarily bedaubed. This cleaning took some time, so it was calm evening into which we travelers embarked, with the sun glinting low across the waters as we sailed due north, pressed forward by mild airs. The shoreline receded into dusk. Darkness oozed along the eastern mountains until the moon rose, bulging up like a leprous lantern from behind the Dreadful Mountains.

“If we could see far enough,” said Mince, “We’d see Uncle Wash over there, climbing onto Hovermount.”

“If he got through the Dire Marches,” said Lucy
Low. “His fortune only said there was treasure there; it didn’t say he’d find it.”

“Uncle Wash is lucky,” said Burrow, though with some doubt in his voice. “He’s always said so.”

“A man who wants little will be happily surprised at most anything,” quoted Lucy Low. “Uncle Wash never wanted much.”

“I don’t imagine there was much to want, was there?” asked Izzy, who had come up behind us where we stood at the rail of the boat, looking out over the moon-spangled waters. “Chiliburn Creek sounds like a place with small wants.”

“True,” said Lucy Low, looking up at him. “There was always food, but it was always the same. There was always drink, but it was always water. There was always warmth, though it had to be huddled for. Such a life leads to small wants. Traveling, now, that’s something else. I can feel my wants getting bigger every minute!”

“I hope you fulfil them all,” I responded. The little onchik’s cheer was infectious. It made me smile just to look at her.

The countess came from the cramped cabin onto the deck and joined the rest of us at the rail. “We will be past Finial by morning,” I told her. “Then, so the captain says, we will run west with the dawn wind, into the harbor of Gulp, which lies at the mouth of the River Guzzle.”

“All of which sounds very greedy and impetuous,” said Izzy.

“They are so named for the sound the seas make when they are blown into the gaping caves ashore,” said the countess. “I have been there, and indeed, they make a voracious sound, but only when the river is low. Now, with the snows melting on the Sharbaks, the river will be in flood.”

“We must enter the harbor against the flow,” I said, quoting the captain. “Or, we may anchor along the breakwater, which is some easier.”

“Hoooh,” came a voice from above, a whisper of
sound falling onto us like chilly water. “Hoh, sail-hoooh.”

Soaz came out onto the deck, his face set into a frown, as the pheledian captain cried to his lookout, “What mark?”

“The Skull and Ax of Finial,” called the lookout from his place atop the mast, where he clung by the tips of his fingers, as though glued to his post. “I think, though it’s too dark to be sure. I’m sure it’s no fishing boat.”

“By the tonsils of Taskywheem,” muttered Soaz. “How did the Dire Duke know we left Estafan?” He regarded the countess with a look that was almost accusatory.

“It was not my doing,” she said. “May I borrow your glass, Captain?” Taking the preferred article with a somewhat quavery smile, she put the glass to her eye and spent a long moment searching the dusky horizon for the approaching ship, as though hoping it was not what it appeared to be. The distant ship changed course, heading more directly toward us.

“It is indeed the Dire Duke,” the countess whispered, taking the glass from her eyes. “He has seen us. Somehow he has learned we would be here, upon the sea. Oh, I fear me he means us harm.” She shivered, and Prince Sahir pressed against her so she could lean on him, though he too turned pale at the threat of the dark ship.

Izzy looked up to see our several pairs of eyes fixed on him. “What?” he demanded.

“It would be better if he didn’t find us,” rumbled Soaz. “The captain is a good fighter, and his crew is likewise, but this ship is small and we are not numerous. That black ship is large; it contains a good number of warriors, I have no doubt. This confounded moon will light us like a beacon.”

Izzy shook his head doubtfully. “I could summon a fog. That is, it is theoretically possible for me to do so.”

“He is a sorcerer?” the countess asked Sahir in a low voice.

“Of sorts,” said Sahir. “Not much practiced, it seems, though he saved us from a rather nasty battering by trees on the way here.”

“By trees?”

“Hush. He will do better with us quiet.”

Indeed, Izzy needed all his power of concentration. As he confessed to me later, the spells for calling up natural forces are complex in the extreme. He had learned them, of course, just as he had learned so much else, but he had never used them. Now, under pressure of that black-sailed ship in the east, he had to remember not only the words but also the gestures and the materials.

He handed me this and that to hold, ordering me to stand beside him as he worked. “I didn’t bring some of the most effective antireflexives since they are expensive and I foresaw no use for them,” he muttered. “I hope I have enough all-purpose cataphractics and anathematics to keep an elemental at bay. Fog is the least dangerous element to call. A storm at sea could become reflexive without warning, as could a firestorm among forests. Earthquake, volcano or tornado would be summoned only by a fanatic in the last stages of nihilism. The same for hurricane. No, fog will do. Fog will have to do.”

Though this made little sense to me, I stood ready to help as he lit a fire in the iron pan the fishermen used for boiling their kettles.

“What summoning name?” he asked himself. “I have no idea! What language should we use, Nassif?”

I thought frantically, knowing nothing of magic, why did he ask me? “If it’s to be a local fog, shouldn’t it be the local language?” I asked.

He snapped his fingers. “Of course. I’ll call upon it in three languages, Estafani, Finialese and Sworpian, thereby more or less confining it to this corresponding geographic area. Find my ampli-fire; it’s at the bottom of the pack.”

I dug into his pack, finding a stubby jar labeled
Jo
rush’s All-Purpose Ampli-fire
. I set it beside him as he ringed the fire with a circle of white powder.

“What’s that?” I whispered.

“Cataphractic powder, to protect the ship and ourselves,” he said under his breath.

“And what is that stuff?” breathed the countess, peering at the long-necked bottle he was holding aloft.

“Elias’s Element-all,” said Izzy. “Containing only the purest ingredients in ideal proportions. Elias has his shop on the square in Palmody. He has supplied our family wizards for generations.”

“I thought wizards made up their own…stuff,” commented Sahir.

“You may be glad that is not always true,” muttered Izzy. “It would have taken me the better part of two days to make this up, even if I’d had all the ingredients to start with. Now if you’ll all forego asking questions, I’ll try to remember how to do this….”

We kept silent as he began the invocation:

“I call upon you, child of sky and sea, great fog…” he began, ending with a string of imperatives. His voice faded as we all felt the clammy grip of the fog seize upon us, but then he gathered himself and finished the spell while the mists swirled up from the waves like a steam of rising ghosts, thickening as they rose, becoming milky and opaque, blanketing the
Elegant Eel
as if with batting.