The Ruling Sea (45 page)

“They mean no harm,” he muttered, pausing at Pazel’s side. “Just not sure of their footing, if you follow me.”

“I do, Mr. Coote.”

Coote pointed with his big East Arquali nose. “We’ll be headin’ in among the Black Shoulder Isles tonight. At least that’s my supprazichun.”

Dead ahead, six or eight miles off Bramian, ran a string of uninhabited islets: the Black Shoulders. They were small and jungle-clad, built of dark volcanic stone that still shook and grumbled, troubling the waves and dropping great shelves of rock into the depths on occasion. What slim fondness sailors had for them was due to the harbor they could give, in a pinch, from the battering ram of a northbound Nelluroq storm.

“Do you know why, Mr. Coote?” Pazel asked. “I mean, what have the Black Shoulders got that we need?”

Coote glanced up at him for the first time, and almost smiled. “Thought maybe you’d know, with all your tricks.”

“I don’t have many tricks, Mr. Coote. I wish I did, believe me.”

Coote shrugged. “Well, water, maybe—can’t never have too much sweet water in your casks. That one to our north is Sandplume—what some call the Isle of Birds. She might have a pond worth pumping. Come on in, Pathkendle; there’s no more work to be done out here.”

“Oppo, sir. I’m right behind you.”

Coote lumbered off, but Pazel didn’t leave the bowsprit. He faced the sea again, his arm draped over the Goose-Girl. She was a pretty lump of wood, although her grip on the necks of her two geese always struck him as savagely tight. He had stood here that first day on the
Chathrand
, when Fiffengurt told him to pry the limpets off her, and Dr. Chadfallow raced along Sorrophran Head on horseback, crying across the water to Pazel:
Jump ship! Jump ship in Etherhorde!

He could have done it, probably. Where would he be now,
who
would he be, if he had obeyed?

The thought left Pazel strangely chilled. For more than five years his only dream had been to find his parents and sister, rebuild his shattered family. Just how that miracle was supposed to happen he had never quite worked out. Not even Chadfallow, personal friend of the Emperor and one of the only men in Arqual with connections inside the Mzithrin, had been able to carry off a prisoner exchange—he wasn’t even sure Pazel’s mother and sister
were
prisoners, only that they had both been in Simja on Treaty Day. And his father—well, Captain Gregory had found
him
, all right, after the battle on the Haunted Coast. He simply hadn’t cared.

Pazel closed his eyes. There was a great black oak in Ormael, in a stand of such trees between the plum orchards and the path to the Highlands. It was not the tallest in the stand, but it was a mighty tree. Passing beneath it one day on a walk with his father, Pazel had declared with confidence that no one could climb it. Captain Gregory had laughed and shimmied up the oak like a topman scaling the shrouds. At eighty feet, he’d pulled out the knife Pazel carried today and begun to carve, slowly and carefully, at the joint of a limb.

When he had returned to the ground, Pazel had asked, “What did you carve there, Papa?”

Gregory had just ruffled his hair. “Go and have a look yourself,” he’d teased, making Pazel laugh aloud. It would be years before he could reach the lowest branch.

Gregory never told Pazel what he’d carved, and after his desertion Pazel had decided that he didn’t care. He could climb as well as his father, now. But even if he one day saw Ormael again, why should he go looking for that tree? For years he’d tried to convince himself that his father had some heroic reason for abandoning them. But the Haunted Coast had provided a simpler, uglier truth. Captain Gregory didn’t give a damn.

All at once Pazel realized that he was quite cold. He’d lingered too long, grown too still, and his pants were soaked with chilly spray. It was time to get out of the wind. Carefully reversing his grip on the Goose-Girl, Pazel negotiated an about-face. He looked down at the forecastle—and saw Arunis gliding toward him with a smile.

The mage had not harmed a soul since the day of Thasha’s wedding, but the few sailors in his path leaped away as if from a marauding tiger. Pazel suddenly realized how very vulnerable he was. Everyone but the lookouts had fled the forecastle, and even the latter two sailors stood uneasily by the ladder, as though weighing the danger of abandoning their posts against the threat of that figure in black.

Pazel scrambled down the bowsprit. But Arunis, with startling quickness for such a heavyset man, leaped up to the marines’ walk—that narrow platform that was the only way on or off the bowsprit. He raised an open hand, as if warning Pazel to remain where he was.

Pazel stopped. He was some eight feet from the sorcerer, and had no doubt that he could keep out of the mage’s grip long enough to shout for aid. But the marines’ walk had only two knotted ropes for rails. If he tried to squeeze by onto the deck Arunis could attack him, perhaps even push him into the sea.

“What do you want?” he said.

Arunis’ white scarf flapped in the wind. He placed a hand on each rope. “A little of your time,” he said. “You have more to spare than other boys on this ship, after all.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you. Murderer.”

Arunis gazed at him, unperturbed. “Even as enemies we have rather a lot to learn from each other,” he said, “or hasn’t Hercól taught you that first maxim of the fighting man? ‘In single combat, your foe is the only one who can help you defeat your foe.’ But that, I hope, shall prove beside the point. For there is no reason why we should remain enemies, Mr. Pathkendle.”

Pazel laughed. “No, none at all. Except that you fed me powdered glass, and nearly strangled Thasha. To say nothing of what you told the sibyl on Dhola’s Rib. Something about ‘scouring the world for its new dispensation,’ wasn’t it? Care to explain
that
one to me?”

“I would like nothing better,” said Arunis. “It is the horror of my life, being misunderstood. What you heard on Dhola’s Rib, for instance: of course it sounded vile. And so must all my actions, since we were introduced as enemies. But you do not truly know me yet—and you do not know the burden I carry.

“I am the greatest mage in Alifros. I am thrice the age of the Empire of Arqual. The Old Faith was but a collection of prayers and mumbles when I first walked the paths of Ullum, and the name of Rin had yet to be spoken by human lips. I have served this world as seer and counselor for thirty centuries, lad. Her destiny is my destiny; her life is what I live for.”

Pazel snorted. “Funny how much joy you take in
ending
lives, in that case.”

Arunis shook his head. “No more than the gardener who pinches cutworms between his fingers to save the crop. You have closed your mind for sentimental reasons, Pazel. Did not Ramachni himself warn you to seek allies in unlikely places?”

Pazel was shocked. How Arunis could have come by such knowledge he could not begin to imagine.
He’s spying on us somehow. I’ve got to warn them
.

“You are convinced you wish my defeat,” Arunis went on. “You are persuaded that the breaking of two corrupt empires—for that is what the Shaggat’s victory will mean, the end of both Arqual and the Mzithrin—will be a bad thing for this world.”

“I’m persuaded that a world ruled by you would be a thousand times worse.”

Arunis stepped toward him, impatience flashing in his eyes. “And why is that? What do you know of my true intentions? Nothing. But I know a great deal about yours. I know you dream of finding your mother and sister. Would you like my help? I could locate them within the hour, by my arts, and tell you how they fare.”

For a moment Pazel could not speak. The faces of his mother and sister, their smiles, their laughs—

“No,” he said. “I don’t want your help. You wouldn’t, anyway.”

Arunis drew closer still. “I know that you hate Arqual for its crimes. How could you not, when you’ve seen it destroy your family, your home, your very nation? When you know it is ruled by those who seduce their enemies with talk of peace, all the while hiding a knife called the Shaggat behind their backs? A knife with which they plan to reopen their enemies’ deepest wound?

“Think, Pazel, of what will happen if I step aside. Either Sandor Ott’s plan will succeed, and the Shaggat will rise and cripple the Mzithrin, and within a decade the Pentarchy will collapse, routed by the armies of Arqual. Or the plan will fail, and provide an immaculate excuse for a new global war—a war of equals, a war of blackest hatred, a war without end.

“In either case the innocent will die in countless numbers, and the survivors inherit a ruined world. If Ott triumphs, you may imagine the future as a bloody rag in the fist of the Magad dynasty, a fist that tightens forever, even when there is no blood left to wring out. And should he fail—two fists contending for the rag, Arquali and Mzithrini, tearing, pulling, shredding it ever finer.”

“And in your future?”

“In mine, quite simply, the Shaggat’s triumph will be so swift that Alifros will be spared the worst part of war. Fleets will burn, but not cities. Armies will be destroyed, but not the countries they hail from. There will be death, but how much less so than otherwise! My future is the least of the evils arrayed before us—surely you see that now?”

Pazel said nothing. Arunis rested a foot on the bowsprit.

“Listen to me, boy. Your morals are a good thing. But they are simple hand-tools, and the world, like this ship, is a vast machine. You cannot expect your notion of the good to serve all purposes, any more than you could cut new lumber for this ship with a pocketknife.”

Pazel averted his eyes. The late sun was blazing behind Arunis, yet he felt colder than ever—almost numb with cold, and his mind was dull and doubtful.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

The mage smiled again. “But at least you hear me—that is enough. Pazel, there are moments in history when what appears to be an evil is the only path to the good. Humans are a flawed creation. Gather them in any numbers, and they kill. Dreamers like Hercól will never admit this truth—and in the end it is they who must be blamed when their pretty fantasies collapse. Arqual and the Mzithrin are the twin banes of Alifros. How would
you
choose, in your youthful clarity of heart? Destroy two wicked empires—or stand back and watch them destroy the world?”

Pazel clung there, six feet from Arunis, shaking his head. “Neither,” he managed at last.

“That too is a choice—to do nothing, shrug off the burdens fate gives us, pray that others will lead in our stead. But I do not think you are that kind of man. You’re a captain’s son, after all.”

Pazel looked up sharply. The mention of his father brought all his anger back in a flash.

“I’ll give you one more chance to tell me what you want,” he said, “before I shout for the guards.”

The mage looked at him steadily. “You are shivering,” he said. “Are you coming down with a cold?”

“I’ve been out here a long time.”

“Quite true,” said Arunis. “You have been alone in more ways than most men experience in a lifetime, and you have known no rest. Your life has been marked by one terrible change after another. And I can only offer you another—a frightful change, I know, but I promise it will be the last. For you are a
Smythídor
, a being changed by spellcraft forever, and because of that you will never belong with any but your own kind. You belong with me, boy, at my side as student and disciple, heir to my wisdom and arts. This is what I offer you. Will you not consider?”

Pazel found himself trapped by the mage’s eyes, which had taken on a cold, bright sheen. The heat of his rage was no match for that glow, that spider’s hunger. He could not look away.

“At … your side?”

“Yes, said Arunis, “forever. Shall I tell you something? You may be aware that I called a spirit to my cabin, before we left the Bay of Simja. It was the ghost of Sathek, a mage-king of the ancient world, and a wise and terrible king he was. Sathek told me that I should meet a child of Alifros aboard this ship who would grow into as mighty a spell-weaver as I am myself. Of course I knew at once that he meant you.”

“I’m not a mage,” said Pazel.

“But you will be,” said Arunis, extending his hand. “Come, Pazel Pathkendle. I am the home you’ve been looking for. I am your natural ally. Not a coarse island boy like Mr. Undrabust. Not the doctor who lusts after your mother. Not the vixen child of the man who laid waste to Ormael.”

“Who—who do you … ?”

“Thasha, you simpleton, the girl who laughs when she beats you with sticks.”

“Don’t you try—” Pazel shook his head with tremendous effort. “—don’t you
dream
of turning me against her, damn you, I—”

He broke off. Why were they even talking? Why wasn’t he shouting for help?

Arunis looked at him thoughtfully. When he spoke again, his voice was quite changed. “I would never try to turn you against Thasha,” he said. “Oh no! You misunderstand me entirely. Do you think that we mages plumb the secrets of the several worlds, yet remain ignorant of the noblest of all human feelings? Do you think us so stupid and cold?”

“C-cold—”

“No matter. Tell me of your feelings for Thasha Isiq. It will do you good to speak of them.”

But Pazel shook his head again.

“I understand,” said the mage. “You are protecting what is new to your heart, and I shall ask no further. But you
must
let me help you.”

His tone was sharply aggrieved. Pazel felt a sense of guilt creep over him, stealthy and quick. He felt suddenly as though he had spat on the efforts of a kindly uncle.

“Tomorrow we shall make landfall on Bramian,” said Arunis, “and there—surely you know this already, deep inside?—the two of you must depart. For not a soul on this ship, myself included, will ever see the placid eastern world again, once we enter the Ruling Sea. It is a mission of death, my boy. Why sacrifice yourselves? Why betray Thasha, and the bliss of a life together, before it has truly begun? Tell me, as one man to another: have you not sensed the
possibility
of such bliss?”