Kavin's World (11 page)

“I am sure it will be a boy,” she said. “Women have ways of knowing.”

“My son,” I said again, and seized her, pressing her to me. “When… how long have you known?”

“Not long,” she said against my ear. “So you
see,
no cause for jealousy. No other of your women can have your first born, Prince Kavin of Dorada.”

“True enough.” I was flushed with pleasure in it.

“So…” Isa said thoughtfully, “perhaps you will need another wife, a man with your ways… I shall soon be much too big around for pleasure. Then, months and months you’ll be denied to me, while the boy’s weaning…”

The idea was not pleasant, not at that moment especially. I considered it, glumly, while Isa went on.

“I am not joking, my lord. Two wives are certainly not much, for a Prince of Dorada. You will most certainly find pleasure elsewhere, at times… I know men’s ways. I do not mind at all, believe me. Women are not as jealous as men think; we try to seem so, at times, to flatter. But you need no flattery, Kavin.”

“I need no second wife, either,” I said.

“She is yours, by your own law. Also, she is a woman, as I am, and if you do not take her, she’ll go to another. Your own law gives women such rights as that, does it not? And being a woman, she could not help but love you, as I do.”

“You,” I said, laughing. “You…”

“I am in earnest,” she said. “I have seen that lady, and I know what you do not. Her reasons for her foolishness, for one thing… and that she feels otherwise about you than you
think
.” She came closer to me, and drew me to her; looked into my eyes, her own eyes direct and honest. “If you love me, grant me this, Lord Prince.
Take Samala.”

Somehow, I thought, I was forever making oath to do this and do that, whenever fate chanced to find more work for me. If my will was ever my own, I would be vastly surprised; and I was called a ruler! Ha!

But that night, I promised that I would take the wench as wife, when it seemed the time. I would have promised near anything, that night: to slay giants, or stand on my hands.

And with the tide’s flow, all our ships stood down the channels, and out to sea, where we parted company. The others bound west turned, before a fair wind, and were soon hull down on the sea’s edge. We tacked across the wind, making small headway, but always north and east, until we lost Dorada to sight, forever.

Seven

For many days we made little progress, sometimes losing way before strong contrary winds, sometimes making one mile in twenty, tacking always. My own
Luck,
with her rig, could have made far better time perhaps, but we would not lie too long out of sight of the slower and clumsier vessels of the fleet.

When at last we passed the final headland of the most mountainous coast, we found ourselves in calmer seas, where the winds changed for the better. But we also grew very short of water, having been longer about passage so far than I had expected. As we slowly moved along the coast, I scanned the rocky walls hopefully, to see if there were any places where a boat might land and seek water. I was not anxious to wait until we could make the river described in the ancient sailing directions; we were far too many, and we used too much. Also, the ships were slow, and we had women and children who could not bear thirst as well.

But still, I made no move to carry out Isa’s order, if I may call it that. She was quite in earnest, though; she spoke of it again, several times, and ultimately convinced me that she meant it. It even seemed by some magic means that our pillow talk reached the ear of Thuramon, who brought the subject up himself.

We had been playing chess, which he played well, but not as well as I, and I had chaffed him about a lost game, asking why he did not use his magic to win. He merely pulled his beard, staring at the board and shaking his head.

“No, Prince, chess is not subject to my art,” he said, resetting the pieces. “Oh, I could blind your eyes, and reset a piece… though even that you might notice. But then, where would be the pleasure? And in any case, chess, being a game from worlds in which iron reason holds sway, is not as much affected by magic, which lies in other ways of law…”

“Chess, too,” I said. “I would see something of these other worlds, from which nearly everything seems to come.”

“You may see them, Prince,” he said, darkly. He gazed at the board. “I think I’ll forego another game, for now. You’ll defeat me again, I see.”

“You foresee that?” I asked. “Then why play at all?”

“More reasons than one.
Simple pleasure of the game, of course.
And to see the way in which your mind grows, and how it reaches your desires. This game shows much about the one who plays it, Prince.”

“Can you not read such things, looking into my mind as you sometimes do with others?” I asked.

Thuramon leaned back, and stared at me.

“Lord Prince,” he said at last, “I could, with a mighty effort, see… a very little indeed, hardly worth the struggle. And I would be afraid to see too much. You are not a usual sort of man.”

“Compliments from my master wizard, few enough.”

“Why think it a compliment?” he asked wryly. “I said you were unusual. Lord Prince, you are most unusual, in ways I fear. I have watched you since your youth, and I have known…”

I regarded him, gray-bearded and with shadowed eyes, and not looking as fatly jolly as usual.

“Prince, most men obey the gods, whether they will or not, for most of their lives,” Thuramon said at last. “You do not.
Your
Goddess, there, is Luck, who is but another name for your own will. Sometimes… rarely, thanks
be
to
our
Goddess men like you are born, free of the laws that seem to bind ordinary men, free of that chain of guilts we seem to bear. Tell me this, Prince Kavin. You have done evil, as you know.
Small evil, but evil.
Do you feel any pangs?”

I shook my head.
“Not… not very greatly.
Odd, now that I consider it.
But then, why not?”

“And if you did great good, you would feel no special uplifting, either,” Thuramon said. “There’s one price of such freedom. Another is
,
the gods will not let you alone. They will send you much more than most men have, of good and evil. And always, the gods will strive to pull you down, either by your pride in doing rightly, or by guilt in doing wrong. For you, there will be special attention, I think.”

“Are the gods our enemies too, then?” I wondered.

“Sometimes I think so,” Thuramon said. “In particular, you have offended the Goddess. And you may offend her even more, if you keep her priestess-maiden for yourself.”

I laughed. “Ah.
At that subject, again.
Look you, wizard, I’ve been nowhere near the wench. What would you like to have me do with her, drop her over the side to the fish?”

“Rather than offend the Great Goddess further, that might be wisest,” Thuramon said.

And now my stubbornness rose again, and I thumped my hand down on the table, spilling chessmen.

“I’ll take the wench, when I please!” I said. “And let the Goddess do with me as she pleases… since she will anyway. Damn it, Thuramon, we here are sea-gypsies, we’ve neither castle nor temple any more. This is a new, wild life, and we’ll lead it in new ways.”

He simply shrugged at me, reminding me unpleasantly in his look of the old high priestess.

“Do you mean to tell me, wizard, that the Goddess prefers her
priestesses
dead?” I asked loudly. “Why, this one’s the last one alive. Why let the fish have her, then?”

“Never mind, my lord,” Thuramon said. “I see you’ll listen to no advice on the matter. Come,” he leaned forward, “Hear me on another subject. The Isle of Dragons…”

But I never heard him out, on that. There was a shout on deck, and feet pounded. I flung back the chair, and stood up; the cabin door flung open.

“Lord Prince, a light, ashore!”

I was on deck in a moment. The moonlight was very bright; the shore, a line of jagged peaks, with a gleam of white breakers at their feet… but against their blackness, a yellow gleam, moving in circles. Someone there waved a torch in a plain attempt to signal us.

And now, a fire flamed up, a pile of brush I thought; and like a dot of black a figure danced before it.

“Whoever he is, he wants conversation with us very badly,” I said, staring at the waving torch. “And from that break in the surf, I think there may be a place to land. Sailing master, signal the other ships to heave to, and have a boat over the side. Wait… I’ll go with it.”

And in a moment, we were rowing toward the distant torch and fire.

I had been right; a shallow beach met the sea under the rocky wall. Our boat’s keel grated on pebbles, a few lengths from the now-dying fire, and we heard a hoarse cry from that direction.

“Doradans!” the voice yelled. “Are you Doradans?”

He stumbled into our arms a moment later. The man was in rags, cut about with dried wounds beyond belief, a walking skeleton. Gently, we got him into the boat, while he muttered wildly at us. Only one word of sense he spoke…
“Ate my horse.”
Then he fainted.

As we shoved off, I heard the splash of water, and caught a glimpse of silver spray against the rock.

“Tell the sailing master, after we’re aboard, there’s water there,” I said to the boatswain. “Send boats in the morning; we’ll lie here at anchor the night. Now, pull for the ship—this man needs attention.”

He turned out to be a man of a kinsman near mine; one Bren, who had ridden out of Astorin with Malvi’s men. Once the blood was washed away, and his wounds tended, he awoke, and ate like a wolf.

Later he told me all, in slow words, pausing very often to drink or catch his breath.

He had gone with the others, up the river, to the hold of Granorek, where, as Malvi planned, they entered and drew up the bridge. There were few of them, but they were all a little mad, of course.

The next day they saw the first of what they had come to fight, and the madness must have gone out of them then and there. The creatures came along the wagon road, below the castle, rank on rank, filling the road like a black stream. They were as the first one had been, except that they were alive: faceless horrors, clanking in endless lines, silent except for the sound of their movement.

They had huge wheeled carts with them, drawn by human beings! That was somehow the greatest horror of
all, that
they seemed to act as if humans were no more than draft animals. These were small, shaggy people, quite naked, and apparently very stupid, Bren said; they stood very placidly when stopped, and seemed to show no interest in anything.

The carts contained all manner of strange things; they were piled high with what seemed to be black plates of metal, rods of glass, rolls of wire, an array of unknown things. The flood of creatures never seemed to stop; all day, the men in Granorek watched, as they moved like a river. The men in that hold were courageous, but no longer mad. They waited.

Near evening, a detachment of the creatures turned aside, and moved toward the castle. The men within made ready to do battle, but the creatures seemed not to be interested in the place at all. Instead, they led a cart full of their queer goods to a high knoll, and set to work. They assembled a construction which Bren could not describe; a thing like a tower of thin rods, with cylindrical rooms near it, the whole structure glowing in the twilight as if lighted from within.

Then, in full view of the men on the walls above, the creatures casually—that would seem the only word—killed and ate the draft-beasts, their human slaves.

Bren said, as if it added to the horror, “Raw, my lord.
As a savage might eat a fish.
One… thing… plucked a head off, and… chewed the rest, like a carrot!”

The sight maddened the men in Granorek again; now, against all reason, they lowered the bridge and charged, lance and shield.

And every man but one was almost instantly slain, and his horse with him.

Bren could not bear to be too specific, and I did not press him. He himself was hurled down with a single sweep of a black-armored arm, and was unconscious for a while. Then he awoke, and found himself in a queer kind of cage on wheels; his horse was led behind him. Every other man was dead. Uncle Malvi lay, torn dreadfully, in Bren’s view.

He spent that night in the cage, which was pulled along south through the valley. The next day, they reached Astorin, where the black hordes were already busy.

It seemed to Bren, as he watched through the bars, that the creatures sought something, very earnestly. And they were grimly thorough in their search, and in their other senseless work. Mad as it seemed, they were leveling vast areas of ground, both without the city and into it; as he watched, they ground walls to powder, in some mysterious way. They tore and ate a great plain before them as they worked, till half the city was level; and still they worked on.

Midway in that dreadful day, the draft humans who had drawn Bren’s cage were killed and eaten in the same horrible way, and Bren conceived his turn to be next. He made himself as ready to die as he could; the strangest thing of all, he said, was that they had not taken away his sword, which still hung at his belt. They may have believed it to be part of him; and the horse still stood behind the cage.

Then, as he watched the city, a thin column of smoke suddenly mounted from where the Temple stood, and there was a distant detonation. This he did not understand, and never did; perhaps the remaining priestess had destroyed themselves, or vanished by some work of magic. He never knew.

Immediately afterward, a dozen of the creatures approached; one, very small, only half the others’ size, but much more brilliantly painted, came close to his cage. It carried a kind of drawing board in its hand, and a marking stick.

The small monster proceeded to interrogate Bren; at least, so I would interpret its actions. It drew stick figures of men and horses, and boats; then, a clearly drawn outline of the great Temple, which seemed to agitate it. To this Bren gave answer by saying “Temple.” But the beast apparently could not understand.

After this, it drew odd figures which made no sense at all: lines, triangles, and wriggled marks. At times, it pointed at the stars, which were now out, and made mad gestures.

At last it seemed to give up, and hurried away with its fellows. Other monsters came later, and thrust lumps of meat, raw, into the cage; it seemed that they wished to feed Bren. But when he looked at that meat, he became sickened. One portion was a human hand, bearing a ring he recognized.

And then he noticed the miraculous, inexplicable fact; they had no lock on the cage, none at all!

It may be that their animals were so tamed, in some way, that a cage was barrier enough. It might never have occurred to them that anyone could escape. No reason can be given for this, no more than for all their other ways; but Bren was not seeking reasons. He opened the door, wounded as he was, mounted his horse, and galloped for his life.

Before dawn, he had crossed the river, and was high in the crags to the northward; here he paused, and mounted a rock to see if he was pursued. From where he stood, he could see well down toward the shore and the city; and none pursued him, at least.

Camps of the creatures lined the seashore, moving lines of them came on southward still, and everywhere they were busy. The queer towers were placed all across the land, as far as he could see; and near the sea, dozens of smoke lines rose, as if there were forges at work. Where ever they went, the creatures seemed to have a passion for leveling the ground, and sometimes coating it with a black material that shone like glass. But they seemed to have no interest at all in Bren; and so he mounted once more, and rode east, toward the distant shores across the mountain, where he knew my ships would pass.

The trip itself was a nightmare; there was no food, neither for himself nor the horse. The beast managed to carry him, finding a patch of scant grass to sustain itself, for many miles before it died. Then, as he said, he ate it, a deed which a Doradan finds peculiarly horrible. That gave him strength to reach the shore, where he had waited hopefully beside a pile of brush.

I heard him out, and gave orders to have him most carefully tended; he was the last Doradan, and I wished him to live. Then I went to my cabin, where I sent Isa away from me, and began to drink.