The Anvil of the World (40 page)

"Unmarked. Enough to cover your debt and pay for your passage out of town," said Mr. Silverpoint. "And you'll transfer the development claim to me, here and now."

Mr. Smallbrass rallied slightly.

"Oh, sir, the claim's worth more than that!" he protested. "All those waterfront lots! Unspoiled paradise!

Mr. Silverpoint just looked at him. His stare was fathomless as a night full of jungle predators.

"I have inside information that the property has recently undergone devaluation," he stated, quietly, but with a suggestion of reproach.

Mr. Smallbrass winced, thinking of the desperate message he had received from his caretakers the day before. He made his decision.

"Let's just step across the street to the claim office, shall we?" he said. "They've got a notary and bullion scales on the premises. Most convenient."

The journey continued, in its effortless and silent way, flowing with the current. The
Kingfisher's Nest
had no need of its mechanical oarsmen yet, nor even of its striped sails, drifting through the blue-and-gold weather. But there came a morning when Smith saw the fog wall rising in the north, pink with sunrise.

"Hey, look!" He waved his stump at it. "We'll make Salesh inside of a week. Two weeks at most, if we play it safe and go all the way around the blockade. Do you think you're a father yet?"

Willowspear, who had been watching the fog bleakly, smiled.

"Surely not yet," he said. "I would know."

"Have you settled on a name?"

"If it's a little girl, Fenallise," said Willowspear. "Kalyon, if it's a boy."

Smith nodded slowly. Willowspear looked out at the fog again.

"I miss her so," he said.

Lord Ermenwyr came on deck, saw the fogbank, and groaned. He slumped into a chair next to Smith.

"I need brandy for breakfast," he muttered.

"That had better not be a remark about my cooking," said Lady Svnae sharply, rising from the companionway with a tray. She set it beside Smith and unfolded a napkin for him with a flourish. "I tried something new this morning, anyway, for our dear Smith. Look!" she whisked the cover off his bowl. "It's a sort of Potted Seafood Surprise! There's shrimp relish and fish eggs boiled in
straj,
and that dark stuff is fish paste swirled through."

"Sounds delicious," said Smith gallantly. "Thank you, my lady."

"Can I have brandy in mine?" asked Lord Ermenwyr.

"Stop it!" She whirled on him. "I told you I was sorry about yesterday, and how was I to know you were allergic to clove honey?"

"Remember when I went into anaphylactic shock when I was ten?"

"Oh. Well--" Lady Svnae spotted the fogbank. She blanched. "We're nearly there, aren't we?"

Lord Ermenwyr nodded mournfully. She sank down on the deck beside him. After a moment they clasped hands, staring together into the mist. Willowspear began to sing, quietly.

Smith ate his breakfast. A white butterfly settled on the edge of his bowl. Two more fluttered out of nowhere and landed on the helm, between Willowspear's hands.

The current drew them on, gently. Within another hour they had entered the gray world.

Smith, watching the bank from where he sat, saw the black twigs bobbing in the reed beds before he noticed the scent. It was harsh, acrid, unforgettable.

"That's clingfire," he said, sniffing the air.

"That's right," said Willowspear, staring straight ahead as he steered.

Smith looked at the white scum high on the tideline and knew what it was, then, and when the first of the black skeletons emerged from the fog, he clenched his one fist. Gradually the fog lifted farther, and he saw the wilderness of mud and ashes that had been Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he cried.

Lord Ermenwyr shrugged.

"It wasn't your people, at least," he said. "It was the Steadfast Orphans. They destroyed it, lest it be profaned."

Lady Svnae bowed her head and wept.

Smith made out the shape of the landing ahead of them. Its red-and-yellow banners were gone; a scattered mound ashore was all that remained of the caretakers' hut.

"Please, can we put in?" he asked. "If there's any chance one of them is still alive, I'd like to get him out."

Willowspear steered to the bank, and brought them up against the pier like a master. At Smith's signal Stabb and Strangel dropped the anchor. Smith got unsteadily to his feet and peered through the drizzle.

"Ai-ai-ai!" he called.

A moment later there was an indistinct response, echoing from someone unseen.

Smith looked hard. Gradually through the fog he made out shapes moving, pale upright figures in the landscape. A wind came off the river, sighing in the rigging and the waving reeds, and the mist opened, and the scene before them became clear.

There were people struggling in the wet churned ashes, turning the earth with spades, raking it level, bringing muddy armfuls of roots or even small trees to be planted. One man stalked from west to east, moving with a smooth and endless rhythm as he drew a fistful from the seed bag he carried, swung his arm wide, scattered seed on the earth like rain, dipped again.

The three standing stones were toppled, lying in a blackened tangle that had been rose briars, but there was a team at work raising one of them with makeshift levers and ropes. And on the bank of the river a woman stood, weaving hurdles from green willow wands.

She was a tall woman robed in white, though her robe was work-stained and muddy, and so were her feet and hands. Rain dripped from the wide brim of her hat. With strong hands she wove the slick palings, effortlessly shaping walls, driving them into the mud with a blow to set them; and where she struck each one it sprouted, gray catkins on the nearer, green leaves already shooting forth on the first she had set. Were the walls flowering, too? No; white butterflies were settling on them here and there.

"It's Mother," said Lord Ermenwyr, in a ghost of a voice.

She raised her head and looked at Smith. He caught his breath.

The woman had clear, clear eyes, and their gaze hit him like a beam of light. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, but somehow that fact went unnoticed by his flesh. She was spare and perfect as a steel engraving, and as ageless. She was simple as water, implacable as the white comber rolling, miraculous as rain in the desert.

They went ashore and picked their way through the ruins at the pier's base, and the lady walked down to meet them.

Lord Ermenwyr cleared his throat. "Why, Mother, whatever are you doing here?" he inquired cautiously.

"Making a garden," she replied. Her voice was beautiful, too.

Willowspear knelt before her, and she raised him with a hand under his chin, smiling. "Don't worry," she told him, and the phrase seemed to resonate with meaning, silence a hundred unspoken questions. "Now, let me see the hero."

Smith wondered whether he ought to kneel. He had never felt so awkward in his life, obscurely ashamed of his maimed arm and the fact that no one had shaved him in three days.

"G-good morning, ma'am," he said hoarsely. "There were some men who were stationed in--in the ruins over there. They were just watchmen. Were they killed, when the Orphans burned the place down?"

"No, they weren't," she said. "They got into the reeds and hid themselves. Though poor Mr. Bolter was dying of pneumonia when we arrived." She turned and pointed at the stone, just lurching upright in its cradle of rope. Smith squinted at the figures surrounding it, and realized that three of them were Children of the Sun, covered though they were in mud and ashes like all the others there.

"Mr. Bolter!" the lady called. "Mr. Drill! Mr. Copperclad! The ship has come back. Would you like to go home now?"

The three turned abruptly, staring. They exchanged glances and began to walk across the field, but in a slow and reluctant manner. Three-quarters of the way there they stopped.

"Are you from Smallbrass?" demanded the one called Copperclad. "You can tell him, we quit. We haven't been paid. No supply ship ever came, and she"--his voice broke--"she
saved
us. So we're staying to help her!"

"Please, ma'am?" added Bolter.

"Thank you," she said. "I would be grateful for your hard work." They turned and walked rapidly back to the stones.

"Mother, how can you plan a garden here?" cried Lord Ermenwyr. "They're going to build a city on it!"

The lady turned and regarded her son with a look of mild severity. He flinched, and Smith had to admire his composure; he himself would have been on his knees pleading for forgiveness.

"No," she said. "Hlinjerith belongs to me, now. Your father made the necessary arrangements in their claim offices. When the Beloved comes again, he will find his sacred grove and his garden waiting for him."

"Ah. How nice," said Lord Ermenwyr, groping in his pocket for his smoking tube. "Well, I think I'll just go on to Salesh--"

"The city will rise across the river," his mother went on calmly. "You will build it for me, my son."

Lord Ermenwyr froze in the act of lifting the tube to his lips. "What did you say?"

"You will build a city on that bank," said the lady. "Bowers to shelter the pilgrims who will come. Gardens and greens, where classes will be taught. And a great library, and a guesthouse for the Children of the Sun, who are unaccustomed to living out of doors."

"But--but--Mummy, I can't!" Lord Ermenwyr wrung his hands in panic. "I don't know anything about building! And I can't live here, it's so bloody damp and cold I'll start growing toadstools! Why don't you make Demaledon do it?"

"Because you would be better at it," said his mother. "He doesn't go among the Children of the Sun, as you do. You understand their culture, and their money, and their business practices. You will draw up plans, and order shipments of cut stone. You will hire workmen."

"I think I'm starting to run a fever--"

"No, you're not. I won't see your talents wasted, my child. You've been running about the world on your father's business long enough; it's time you started tending to mine."

"But the Children of the Sun wouldn't come here," Lord Ermenwyr protested.

"Yes, they would!" cried Willowspear. "I taught them meditation. I can teach them farming, and medicine."

"Wait. Let's consider this objectively, shall we?" Lord Ermenwyr said, widening his eyes in an attempt to look calm and reasonable. "They're
already
overrunning the world. The only advantage we have over them is our knowledge of medicine, of agriculture, of, er, birth control and so forth. Now, do we really want to give them that knowledge?"

The lady looked at him sadly. "My child, that is a base and cynical thing to say. Especially in front of this man, who has suffered through your fault."

Lord Ermenwyr winced so profoundly, he nearly lost his balance and fell over.

"Smith, I didn't mean it like that! You almost wiped them out yourself, after all. Didn't it seem the right thing to do, for a moment, back in that cave? Wouldn't mass annihilation have solved a lot of problems? What I'm saying is, if the gods themselves thought that was a good idea, who are we to argue?"

"Maybe they're not very nice gods," said Smith. "If they kill their children. Maybe we should argue,"

"Perhaps," the lady agreed. "And perhaps the gods were waiting to see if you'd give in to the temptation to destroy your world in a blaze of glory. It's always so much easier to smash mistakes than to correct them. But if it wasn't a test, then what can one assume but that the gods are foolish and not very powerful after all?"

She reached out and touched his shoulder. Where her hand passed, warmth flowed into him.

"I think that if your race could produce a man willing to make such a sacrifice, it's a sign that they ought to be given another chance," she said. "I intend to see that they have it."

Lord Ermenwyr, who had been trying unsuccessfully to light his smoking tube in the damp air, said sullenly, "I'll build your city for you, then. But if you're expecting the kind of twits who sign up for meditation classes, I warn you now: They're not interested in learning anything
useful.
All they want is a new religion."

"They want it because they know there must be something better than violence and stupidity," she told him sternly. "Their hearts are in the right places. We will make certain their minds follow. And one is coming who will lead them here, in the morning of the new world."

Without warning she turned and looked directly at Lady Svnae, who had been edging gradually back in the direction of the landing.

"Are you so eager to go, daughter?"

Lady Svnae flushed and strode forward, muttering. She towered over her mother, but somehow looked like a gauche adolescent standing before her.

"Well, you didn't have anything to say to me," she said.

"I have a great deal to say to you," the lady replied. "But you must take poor Smith home to his family first. You owe him that; if you hadn't pried into matters that didn't concern you, he might still have both his hands."

"No, that was fated to happen, whatever
I
did," said Lady Svnae stubbornly. "And the death of a whole people
did
concern me. And I've said I was sorry. What more can I do to atone?"

The lady smiled at her. "You can use the strength of your great heart, child. You can help your brother build the city. The library, especially."

Lady Svnae brightened at that. Her mother surveyed her scarlet-and-purple silks, her serpent jewelry, her bare arms, and she sighed.

"But please buy yourself some sensible clothing in Salesh, before you return."

Lord Ermenwyr sidled over to his sister.

"Cheer up!" he said. "Think of the fun we'll have shopping." He looked sidelong at his mother. "I'm going to spend an awful lot of your money on this. I ought to have some compensation for being a good boy."

"You have always been a good boy," his mother said serenely, "whatever you pretend to yourself."

Lord Ermenwyr gnashed his teeth.