Kavin's World (6 page)

As she scrubbed my weary back, she chattered in an oddly accented, lisped, version of our Doradan tongue… an accent which I cannot even begin to write, so odd it was. She had learned many more than a few words, it seemed.

“Great One, Kokoorakoo…” (
which
I gathered meant the high priestess) “
she
say I belong you, as long as I want. I want always stay.” She giggled, and splashed water at me. I grinned back, and tickled her.

“Oh, bad,” she said, examining one of my earlier sword cuts. Then the missing tip to my ear caught her eye, and nothing would do but to apply cleansing oil at once. She took most excellent care of every detail, and the bath was a long one. But it was very refreshing, and I felt like a new man as I climbed out and into a clean gray robe.

“Come back, quick,” Isa said, tying the robe. “Come and take me to beautiful ship again.” Her eyes caught my battered armor, piled on a bench, and as I left she was already hard at work, cleaning each piece with a soft rag.

They were all waiting for me, in the other court; five ancient priestesses, and the high priestess herself, and servitors with flaring lamps. We went silently through, into the inner temple, where only at such times may a man walk, and then only in terror. No man of Hostan had asked the questions, not for two hundred years; for none knew what the price might be, except that it was always high.

Four

We went downward, through narrow passages cut into the rock itself, down and down, through darkness, where the walls of black stone grew damp, as though we were now below the sea’s level.

At certain places we paused to perform rites of which I am not allowed to speak. And at last we came down the last slope, and entered the place of questions.

It was very dark, in spite of the lamps. The place was as it had been described to me once; a great cavern, partly natural, but worked on by man’s… or other… hands. The walls were painted with strange shapes, the colors dimmed by time and nearly invisible in the scanty light. Those shapes were not easy to regard calmly, and I have tried hard to forget them entirely, although I have had evil dreams in which I saw them again.

In the center of the cavern lay a great pool, round, its surface smooth and black. Before the pool rose a black stone altar, conical and undecorated, and against its base there were white objects. I came closer, and recognized human bones, very ancient; but the skull was missing.

“There’s one who asked the wrong questions, an age ago,” said the high priestess sardonically, answering my unspoken question. “He remains here where he came on one of his unlucky days. Be warned, Prince.”

I took a deep breath, and held myself erect and silent. Here, if anywhere, a man ought to try to keep his dignity if he couldn’t keep his life.

“And now, Prince, we begin,” she said. “We call on the Shapes who dwell in this pool, which is a mirror of other worlds; we call them, in your name, to speak with us, and tell us what they will. Remember: for their answers, they will ask gifts, and every gift must be given, whatever it may be.”

The priestesses
began,
while the lamp-carrying servants drew back a distance. Slowly, they moved about the pool, performing the acts that were prescribed, while the words were spoken. A curl of smoking incense was placed on the black altar, and the priestesses chanted again.

Then the black water began to glow an unearthly blue green, and a ripple shook its surface. From somewhere at the core of the earth itself there came a deep humming sound, which grew stronger, until it resolved itself into a voice—not a human voice. The voice chanted, the same words as the priestesses had been using, echoing their invocation. The pool glowed even brighter.

Then the voice ceased, and I saw deep into the blue glow. Faces seemed to swim there, insubstantial but familiar; people I had known, I thought.
And glimpses of places, Dorada as it was once, scenes from my own life… and then the face of Uncle Hogir, drifting like a cloud.
But it was a dead face, blood-smeared, a severed head.

Then that too vanished, and all else… except eyes. There were a number of pairs of eyes in that pool, all regarding me with an unpleasantly knowing look.

“Ask.” The humming voice came deeply.

I had thought about it, with great care, and arranged my questions as best I could in their order of importance.

“How may I restore Dorada to peace and happiness, as the land once was?” I asked, at last.

The humming grew again, and the voice spoke.

“Because we may not give you an answer that will please you, we ask only a small price. For this, give us the life of a friend.”

“A prince has few friends to spare,” I said, bitterly. “If that’s a small price—and for an answer that won’t please me—no, I think I’ll give you back that question, and try another.”

The voice seemed to laugh alarmingly. But it said again, “Ask.”

“All right, then. How may I defeat the invaders?”

The voice again: “The answer will not please you, and we ask only a small price. For this, give us the life of a woman who loves you.”

It was my turn to laugh now. “You offer fine bargains, ghost. Well, then, I’ll defeat the dogs with my own wit, and if there’s a woman who loves me—Isa, perhaps—I’ll keep her alive a while. There aren’t many women who love princes.”

This time the laughter was louder, and nearer.

“Ask,” the voice boomed.

“At your prices, I can’t afford to ask you the way home. You’d ask my right hand to give me the time of day.” I took a breath. “Well, then, I’ll ask once more. Tell me if I’ll live long, well, and wisely. What price is that?”

This time the laughter was deafening, and it seemed a long time before the voice came.

“Because you will not like our answer, we ask only a small price; give us the color of your black hair, O Prince.”

“Well, that’s more reasonable,” I said. “Take it and welcome.”

“You will live longer than you wish, O Prince; your life will be hard, filled with struggle, and never long at peace. And you will be not much wiser at the hour of your death than you are at this moment.”

And suddenly I saw it clearly. Wise, indeed! What fool would give the demons of this pool the best things there were in life for answers he could gain himself soon enough, at no price at all… except maybe his own life?
Wise?
I’d never be wiser than at this moment, the moment when I made no bargain with these. Except, of course, for the color of my hair… which troubled me not a bit.

“I have asked enough,” I said. “Take this, as free gift, from Kavin of Hostan; return to your own place.”

This too was custom; I took a heavy gold ring from my arm, and tossed it into the pool. The humming rose again, and the distant laughter.

Once more the voice spoke.

“Take this, as free gift from us to you, Kavin of Hostan. Firstly: remember the north wind cleanses best. Second: seek the roots of an evil tree. And third: the long way around may be the swiftest.”

Then the pool darkened at last, and the silence came. The lamp-bearers, pale and shaking, went before us, back up the long passages to the surface world again.

There I paused in the dimness of the inner temple, and drew a deep breath of fresh air. The high priestess regarded me, darkly.

“So great a risk, boy,” she said.
“And for so little.”

I looked at her with stony eyes, “Lady, I am no boy.”

“True enough, now,” she said.
“Your hair.
It’s as gray as your robe.”

My hand flew to my head, and I yanked a strand out; she spoke the truth. The payment had been made.

“Well,” I said. “It would have turned, some day.”

“You got little enough for that,” she said.

“I learned I’m to lead a hard life, which I already knew,” I said. “But I learned three things besides, which might be of use: north winds are cleansing, look for a root of evil, and go round the long way. Well enough. I also learned that I have at least one live friend somewhere, and that there may be a woman who genuinely loves me; both great matters indeed.”

“And what will you do now, Prince?” she asked.

“Now, that’s the form of address, Lady,” I said. “Not boy.” I was afraid of her, right enough, but I would not show it, though the Goddess struck me then and there.
“Now?
Now, I’ll find a way to clear vermin from the land. As soon as I’ve had an hour or two of
sleep, that
is…”

Mind, I’d no idea at all how any of my great plans were to be carried out. At that moment, every bone in me ached with weariness, and my mind was clouded.

But in the outer court, I found Isa and a guardsman weighted down with my armor: every bit of metal shone with the gloss of jewelry. She followed me with her new servant, a young man who stared at both of us as if he saw the gods. It was a way Isa had, I found later, that she could make any man do her bidding, for no price but her smiles. As for me, the tale of my exploits was running through the town, much magnified; the young fellow looked at me as if I were a great hero who would save all.

Unfortunately, I did not feel like a great hero. I felt like a man with an unsolvable problem.

We went to the castle, where I fell into a great bed, once Uncle Hogir’s own, and into nightmare-haunted sleep. Weary as I was, I should have slept without a dream. But ghostly blue-green light flooded through my sleep, with voices, mocking. I saw the face of the woman I had killed shrieking soundlessly at me, and the faces of dead men piled on a plague cart. It was not a good sleep.

But sleep it was, at least. When I awoke, sun flooded the narrow windows, and Isa sat adding a stitch to a torn place in my tunic. I was hungry as a wolf, and my mind was full of a new idea.

Later, on the walls, I looked out to where the circle of black tents still ringed us in. There were fewer of them now, though, and the riders kept well back.

Men came, saying that the slower ships were in sight, and that the first of them was even now entering Astorin harbor. There would be more food, though more mouths too, and powder for the guns. But no horses, I thought. How can one fight riders on foot?

The north wind touched my face with a cold puff as I stood on the wall. Then I remembered.

In
  Dorada
,  in  this   autumn  season,   the  wind  rises strongly and flows down the valley, from the mountains toward the sea. For days, sometimes, the wind blows so strongly and steadily that ships must tack about and wait before entering the harbor, or be drawn in by oarsmen. And the voice had spoken of the north wind.

But there had been no word at all from Granorek, the fortress at the head of the valley of Dorada, nor any sign that it was still in the hands of Doradans. My uncle Malvi was not a man who would have given over Granorek easily, though. There were more than a hundred men of fighting skill there with him, maybe more if some had come in before the flood of invaders swept them up. The place would have been stored better than the city; Uncle Malvi was like that. To reach Granorek… but I heard someone call my name.

“Prince Kavin.”

He came up the stair to the wall, fat as ever, grinning like a frog which he much resembled.
Thuramon the magician, my old teacher.

“Thuramon!
You look in good health,” I said, frowning.
“Unlike most others hereabouts.”

“Now, what value is there in magic art if a man’s to starve or fall ill?” Thuramon asked, stroking his beard. “Surely I would be no more than a charlatan if I were to come here to you thin and weak.”

“You’ve been in the city through the whole siege?” I asked.

“Where else?” he said, chuckling.
“Though I sometimes found it convenient to walk invisible among the enemy.
A little trick you could not seem to learn, I recall.”

“An untrustworthy trick, for me, I remember,” I said, smiling in spite of all. “Damn it,
Thuramon, that
ointment smelled so vile that none needed to see me who had a nose. And when I tried to use the trick, I could be seen, though not well. Such half-invisibility is less use than none.”

“Ah, that was because you would not learn to hold your mind in check,” Thuramon said. “More than half of all magic rests with the magician himself, not with the spells or the potions. Well, some day you may learn.”

“I could use such witchcraft now,” I said, staring out over the walls.
“If Granorek still holds… how to reach it?”

“Granorek still holds,” Thuramon said. “And reaching it… well, there are more ways than one to be invisible. I can conduct you there, if you wish.”

“Thuramon!”

“Wait. For all magic, there’s a price.”

“I found that out yesterday,” I said, grimly. “I thought you a friend, Thuramon. What’s this talk of price?”

“And I thought I had taught you the Three Laws,” he said, looking hard at me. “Even between friends, the Laws hold. No work without price.”

“And what will you have?” I asked. “Yesterday, I would not pay. Today… well, what? My right hand, possibly?”

He looked at my forehead, and I saw he had noticed my iron-gray hair.

“Yes, I see you paid something,” he said. “Well, this price is not like that. I have an enemy. Your enemy, as well, I think… or you’ll discover it so. I cannot reach that enemy, but you can. I want your word that before all else you will seek him out, no matter how long it may take, nor how far a journey, and slay him.”

“For this promise, you’ll aid me in all ways, magical and otherwise, to clear the riders from Dorada?” I asked.

“Yes. By the holy names of the Two who stand on the West and on the East, I do swear that,” Thuramon said, and I knew he would keep his word on that oath.

We went at once to the quays, where my
Luck
lay once more, back from her night journey. I noticed, as we passed the prow, how Thuramon made an odd gesture at the figurehead, and I asked him why.

“I know that lady,” he said, and that was all.

Once aboard, in the cabin, he repeated the gesture before the curtained niche where the smaller figure was hidden.
He had never been aboard the
Luck
before, and I did not ask him how he knew she was hidden there.

I had already given my orders to the crew; we would lie at the quay while my sailing master brought round an oared fishing galley, a small craft which lay nearby. On deck, there was a thumping and clatter, as the men prepared to transfer a gun and other arms, down to the valley.

I opened a jar of good wine, of which I knew Thuramon was more than fond, and we shared it in silence for a while.

“You asked nothing about my payment,” he said at last.

“You have my word,” I told him sipping my wine. “No more’s needed.”

“You asked for no name,” he said. “You were never so restrained when you were my pupil.”

“I was much younger then,” I said. “My curiosity’s edge grows dull with hacking away at the walls of wisdom.”

“Excellently put, Prince. And good wine, too. Well, I shall tell some part of the matter… not all, but some.” He leaned back, his eyes on the curtained niche where the goddess Tana lived. “Tell me first, my Prince: when you found this
ship,
and what was concealed aboard her… did you find aught else beside that pretty figurine?”

I had never mentioned anything of my various finds, to anyone. I cannot say why I kept the matter so secret, but for some reason, I did. Had Thuramon asked me then, I would have gladly shown him the things, but he did not ask.