Singer from the Sea (64 page)

“So you’re one of the women who was going to be sold, are you?” asked Terceth in an interested voice.

“I am not the Prince’s property to dispose of,” she said. “Neither my husband nor I belong to Prince Delganor!”

“All the Prince’s subjects belong to the Prince!” the Marshal shouted, staggering into the lamplight, his face contorted with rage.

“I am not the Prince’s subject,” retorted Genevieve. “Nor are you. We are both subjects of the Lord Paramount. You seem inclined to forget that, Father.”

“You know the Lord Paramount?” Terceth asked her, in a deceptively casual manner.

“I have met him, yes,” she said, looking over the Marshal’s shoulder at Aufors. Joncaster had helped him rise, and he stood in the shadows.

“And what else might you know about long-life stuff?” Terceth asked.

“Just what I’ve told you,” she said. “It’s given only to men, and it’s expensive, and they get it from off-planet.”

“Hah!” shouted the Marshal, his rage outrunning his good sense. “The presumptuous chit knows more than that. I heard them talking out here! She knows where a supply of the stuff is, a great supply!”

Genevieve’s spinning shadows collapsed upon themselves, and she waited for nothing more. Even as Terceth turned toward her with a triumphant shout, she darted out the entrance and down the slope, Dovidi on her shoulder. On the pebbled beach she evaded the astonished group of Trackers and raced out along the serpent’s tail. The tide was low. She splashed through the shallow water that led to the hump, then over the hump through deeper water to climb up the neck of the serpent and onto its head, where she grasped the horn and stood silhouetted against the last of the light.

Terceth stalked angrily down the slope, gathered the Trackers, and went out onto the tail stone.

“She’ll jump if you threaten her,” Awhero screamed from up the hill. “She will!”

“She won’t jump with the child,” growled Terceth to his men, staring up at Genevieve. The neck stone was the height of five or six tall men, and it was slick with spray. Genevieve stood with one arm clutching Dovidi, the other grasping the stone horn, her face turned outward to the sea and her body leaning dangerously above the deep.

Terceth snarled at two of his men, “Go up there and get her.”

They began to splash toward the neck stone.

At the first splash, Genevieve opened her mouth and called. The great sound went out of her visibly, plangent and sonorous, the air wavering as though from rising heat, the cry undiminished by distance. Even when she closed her lips, the air throbbed vibrantly for an endless time. Before the sound faded, a wave leapt up from the deep and came swiftly toward the shore to wash the Trackers from the stone and tumble them in the surf. Another, larger wave threatened all those on the shore, and they fled before it.

Terceth turned as the water slithered away in runnels of foam and saw a sun rerisen in the west, monstrous and golden, with huge dark shapes arcing before it. The dark shapes leapt and soared from fountains of foam, jumping again and again, higher and higher. A wail arose from the Frangians on the ship. “Whatever! Oh, Whatever!”

Terceth snarled, strode back down the slope, thrust himself through the waves to the bottom of the neckstone and began to climb.

Above, Genevieve turned and sought Aufors, where he stood in the cave entrance, supported by Joncaster, his eyes fixed on hers. She lifted her hand.

“Aufors,” she cried in that great voice. “Aufors wait for me …”

And she threw herself out into space; folding the child between her arms, bending her head to cover his, she arrowed down, slipping into the water as into a silken gown, and was gone.

“W
HAT WAS THAT
?”
CRIED
T
ERCETH, STARING AT THE HO
rizon where the rerisen sun had just disappeared into the sea. “What in the universe was it!”

The Frangían ship was close enough that its captain heard him. “Whatever,” he shouted exultantly. “Oh, whatever.”

“Te wairua taiao,” sang the malghaste, as they poured down from the cavern above. “Oh, wairua taiao!”

“What are they going on about,” Terceth angrily demanded from Dunnel.

“I don’t know, sir,” Dunnel whispered, his eyes still moving between the horizon and the spot where Genevieve had fallen.

All those from the cave came down the hill, including Aufors, supported by Joncaster and Jorub. Lagging behind were the Prince and the Marshal, keeping a considerable distance from the others.

“What was it?” Terceth demanded of the malghaste.

“The spirit of this world,” Melanie rejoiced. “Together with a company of great whales and many other creatures.”

“What do you mean, the spirit of the world?” he grated, reaching out to grasp her by the shoulder.

Joncaster lowered Aufors on a convenient sitting stone and came to remove Terceth’s hand from Melanie’s shoulder,
putting himself purposefully between them. “You saw the spirit of Haven. Your world once had such a spirit also.”

Terceth snarled wordlessly. This was nonsense!

Melanie saw his furious expression over Joncaster’s shoulder. “But it’s true! Your world did have a spirit! You saw it depart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our people in Havenor have heard you speak of the night the fires departed from Ares. Surely you remember it.”

“I remember,” said Dunnel, white-faced. “My parents got me up, and we watched it go …”

“This is nonsense,” blustered Terceth. “Arrant nonsense.”

Melanie shrugged. “Well, it is easy to know whether I speak truth. If life is dying on your planet, then your world’s spirit has departed.”

“We have a disease,” said Dunnel. “People just … stop. They keep trying to remember something …”

“Of course,” said Joncaster. “They wake one morning no longer feeling alive. They try to remember the feeling of life. They wander, searching for it. They rove among their human kin, but they cannot find what they are seeking. They take a pet cat into their laps, or lean to pat a dog, and for a moment they feel peace, but only for a moment. At the end, they realize what has been lost and they cry out, most piteously, and soon after they die. Is this not the way of it?”

“How did you know that?” cried Terceth, clenching his fists, ready to assault them all.

“It’s not a secret,” said Melanie, impatiently. “Yours isn’t the only world it’s happened to.”

He jeered, “And I suppose the Marchioness of Wantresse summoned up the spirit of Haven and then went to join it, did she?”

For a moment, Melanie was stunned, then eager surprise lit her face and she gripped Joncaster by the arm, crying, “She did call the spirit, Joncaster! We heard her! But she wasn’t a believer! Could she have …”

Joncaster nodded slowly. “It might not matter. Perhaps
the spirit doesn’t care why we do the right thing so long as we do it.”

Terceth cried, “The right thing! To drown yourself and your child in the ocean!”

“Better than die at the hands of Aresian torturers!” said Aufors, tears streaming down his face.

“We are not torturers,” Terceth blustered, flushing as he confronted Aufors’s pain-racked face and the accusing stares of those around him.

“I was quite well until I met the Aresians,” Aufors murmured. “Call your treatment what you will.”

Terceth glared in frustration, grinding his teeth as though to gnaw the situation into something more malleable.

“If our world is dead, what do we do to resurrect it?” Dunnel pled.

“You can’t,” said Melanie.

Dunnel cried, “But we must. We’ve already brought in animals! We’ve imported trees!”

Joncaster shook his head. “There are too many vital pieces left out, hundreds of thousands of tiny living things you never knew were there. How can you restore what you never saw in the first place?”

Aufors bent forward with a moan, trembling, his hands clenched, his forehead beaded. “Jenny,” he whispered, as though to himself. “Oh, Jenny …”

Awhero put her arms around him, murmuring, “You heard your Jenny, Aufors. She said to wait. Believe in her. She didn’t drown herself. And she didn’t drown Dovidi.”

Terceth was too frustrated to let this go unchallenged. “Oh, she most certainly did, old woman. She’s committed suicide!”

“No,” cried Aufors, his eyes wild and unfocused as he tried to stand on legs that would not hold him.

“She’ll be back,” whispered Awhero, dragging Aufors back onto the stone, holding him there.

Terceth ranted, “She won’t be back unless she’s part fish! And the child won’t be back unless he’s a fish’s whelp!” He spun around, gesturing. “Dunnel, go back to the ship and get it out into the sea. If that woman or
creature or whatever she is comes up with or without the brat, I want her.”

“Fish’s child,” said Aufors, his face becoming even more pallid and clammy. Part fish, his mind blathered, running back into his childhood, full of jeering brother-noises and night terrors. Part fish. He was unable to escape the idea. Maybe it was true. Genevieve had encountered something in Merdune Lagoon. Something shapeless, she’d said, but what did shape matter? Had something happened to her she hadn’t wanted to tell him … ?

This led him into a thicket full of clammy monsters, bogeymen of grief and jealousy that he was not strong enough to recognize, much less analyze. He slumped, unable to hold up his head. Joncaster picked him up and strode up the hill with Awhero and the other malghaste following. Delganor and the Marshal followed Terceth and Dunnel, who went on down to the shore, Dunnel very pale and quiet while Terceth, who had been raging at the world of Haven and everyone on it, grew gradually quieter and more thoughtful and more anxious. In an impotent fury he admitted to himself that there might well be things going on he did not understand. It might well be that this expedition had not been a good idea. Perhaps, oh, perhaps all the Aresian forces now on Haven would be better off somewhere else.

On a hillside not far from Havenor, among an untidy litter of furnishings and materiel, two watchers sat comfortably in dusty chairs observing a procession of exotic and complicated robots emerging from a vertical cleft in the rock. Variously, the machines rolled or strode or bounced westward in eerie procession on a shadow carpet cast before them by a rising moon. They might almost have been spectral, they moved so silently. Even after centuries of storage, not one of them squeaked.

The watchers, Veswees and Jeorfy Bliggard nee Bottoms, had only recently discovered this deep fissure leading into the Lord Paramount’s caverns, one better suited to the emergence of bulky machinery than any of the eel-burrows or squirmy mazes they had explored theretofore. The departing procession was the final one for this evening,
though on previous nights many waves of flying or fast-running machines had come out like monstrous hatchlings from a dragon’s nest. The earlier departures had allowed more travel time, but this group was destined for duty in the villages around Havenor itself.

“You know,” said Jeorfy in a disappointed voice, “I expected them to clank. When we unpacked and programmed them, down below, they looked like they’d clank. And make sparks.”

“And utter threats in loud voices, no doubt,” said Veswees. “If you’re trying to sneak up on people, you don’t want things that clank or spark or shout.”

“We’re not really trying to sneak …”

“What would you call it?”

Jeorfy gave this his complete attention. “I’d call it getting people’s attention modestly, politely, occasioning no alarm.”

Veswees smiled only slightly. “Clank or no clank, I can’t imagine any of these creatures entering a village without occasioning alarm. The less alarm the better, however, so the villagers can give the messengers a fair hearing.”

“It’s good there were so many machines that can talk,” agreed Jeorfy. “But I wish you’d allowed me a little more variety in their modes of speech.”

“Clarity was most important,” Veswees said firmly. “Declamations in foreign accents or complicated verse forms would not have helped!” Veswees stared after the retreating forms, now vanishing in the dark. “I hope to heaven we’ve programmed them correctly. I shudder to think what may happen otherwise.”

“Certainly
I
programmed them correctly,” said Jeorfy, indignantly. “Even though I’d never tried it before it came quite naturally to me. I did it correctly. I think.”

Veswees sighed deeply. “You think?”

“I’m quite sure,” Jeorfy tittered, hugging himself. “Oh, Veswees, if you could see your face!”

“I’m tired, Jeorfy. When you tease me it makes me wonder how it could have sounded like such a good idea when Genevieve told me about the robots down there … and about you.”

Jeorfy’s face lit up. “Genevieve! Now, that should relieve your mind completely.”

“How so?”

He stood, adopting a declamatory posture: “Genevieve sees the future, dark or bright? So she’s already seen my programming, right? And she wouldn’t have told you to come find me, unless I’d done or would do it successfully!”

Veswees laughed, though briefly, all he had strength for. The past days had been overfull of travel, exploration and mental strain. Finding Jeorfy. Finding the machines. Using the huge cargo machines to widen the way out. Making lists. Determining which would go where, when! Composing and re-composing the message! Jeorfy’s talking in verse only complicated things. “Genevieve also told me you’d given up rhyming.”

“I have. Mostly.” Jeorfy pulled at the closest pile of materials the cargo machines had carried outside over the last few days, tugging out a gold-framed mirror that he propped against a topless packing case. The case held the desiccated body of an old, old man with his arms tightly curled around an empty jar. When they had found him in the caverns he had had a very complicated little code book in the pocket of his dusty trousers and he had also been wearing the dented crown that Jeorfy now wore tilted over his left eye.

“What shall we do with him?” Jeorfy asked, indicating the dried-up body.

“Fasten the top on that box and bury him,” said Veswees. “I still say he’s the Lord Paramount. No one else would have had that crown. Or that code book.”