"'And so he was brought into the air, the Imperfect Beloved, and the people wept for him; but the Child pulled his hair, and he opened his eyes and lived. And he was stunned-silent-forgetful a long while, but when he spoke again it was to praise Her. And the people praised Her. In this place, they first knew She was the Mother of Strength and Mercy, and they knelt and praised Her.'"
Lord Ermenwyr grimaced, and in a perfectly ordinary voice said, "So, Smith, how do we get up the falls?"
"Oh, that'll be easy," said Smith, guiding the
Kingfisher's Nest
into the Pool. "You just arrange to have a team of engineers brought in, with a small army and heavy equipment. We could work out a system of locks and dams that'd get us up to the top in ten minutes. Shouldn't take more than a couple of years to build."
"Ha-ha," said Lord Ermenwyr. "No, Smith, really."
"Drop the anchor!" ordered Smith, and opened the stopcock as the demons obeyed him. Steam shot forth white, adding more rainbows to the air as it gradually subsided. The ever-clanking sound of the oars stopped. "Really,'' he said.
"Look, I happen to know the Yendri get up this river all the time," said Lord Ermenwyr heatedly.
"Not in one of these galleys, they don't," said Smith.
"Well, can't you do something with one of those, what are those things called, levers? One of my tutors, another one of
your
people by the way, told me you could move anything with a lever."
"Why, yes. All we need is a lever, say, ten times the length of the keel, and a place to balance it, and a place to stand ... oh, and tools and materials we don't happen to have," said Smith.
"You're being unnecessarily negative about this, aren't you?"
"Why don't you use sorcery, then, your lordship?"
Willowspear cleared his throat.
"The Yendri," he said, "travel in small light craft. When they arrive here, they get out and carry the boats up that path, and so along the bank above until they can set sail and push against the current again."
"Portage," said Smith. "The only trouble being, this vessel weighs a lot more than a canoe."
"Coracle."
"Whatever."
Lord Ermenwyr looked hopefully at his bodyguards. "What do you think, boys? Could you carry my boat up there?"
The three demons blinked at him.
"Yes, Master," said Curt, and they all three dove overboard and a moment later the
Kingfisher's Nest
rocked in the water as her anchor was dragged along the bottom.
"No! Wait!" shouted Smith, tottering backward, for the bow was rising out of the water. "This won't work!"
"You don't know demons!'' cried Lord Ermenwyr gleefully, wrapping his arms around the mast.
The stern was free of the water, and to Smith's astonishment the whole vessel lurched purposefully up the shore--
And abruptly there was a most odd and unpleasant noise, and her bow went down.
Willowspear, who had been clinging to the rail, peered over to see what had happened. He said something horrified in Yendri.
"Master," said a mournful voice from beneath them, "I am afraid that now Crish will need a new body too."
Lord Ermenwyr blew his nose.
"No," he said wretchedly, "it has to be me. But I'm damned if I'm going to do it with these clothes on."
He yanked at one of his boots manfully and ineffectively, until Willowspear arose and went to him and took the lordling's foot in his hands.
"Pull backward," he advised.
"Thank you."
They sat in the lee of the
Kingfisher's Nest,
looking vast as a beached whale where it had settled on the shore. Smith had built a small fire and was adding sticks to it now and then, but it wasn't able to do much against the damp and the growing darkness. Lord Ermenwyr disrobed quickly once his other boot was off. He stood shivering and pale in the purple twilight.
"Right," he said, and picked his way along the edge of the Pool until he found a broken branch of a good size. Stripping the leaves and twigs away gave him something that would pass for a staff. Muttering to himself, he walked a certain number of paces, turned, and began to sketch the outline of a body in the mud.
He worked quickly, and did not take great pains with detail. The result was a squared-off blocky thing that did not look particularly human, with a scored gash for a mouth and two hastily jabbed pits for its eyes. But it did look remarkably like Cutt and Stabb, who sat like boulders in the firelight, watching him.
"There's old Strangel," he said, nodding with satisfaction. "Now for Crish."
He marked out another figure of the same size and general appearance.
"So he can really ... re-body them?" Smith asked Willowspear in a low voice. Willowspear nodded. "How's he do that?"
"It is his lord father's skill," said Willowspear, in an equally low voice, though Cutt and Stabb heard him and genuflected. "His lord father can speak with the spirits in the air. He binds them into his service, and in return he gives them physical bodies, that they may experience life as we do."
Smith poked the fire, thinking about that.
"Did his father, er, create Balnshik?" he asked.
"Long ago," said Willowspear. "Which is to say, he sculpted the flesh she wears."
"He's quite an artist, then, you're right," said Smith.
"My lord is still young, and learning his craft," said Willowspear, a little apologetically, glancing over his shoulder at Cutt and Stabb. "But he has the power from his father, and he is his Mother's son."
"So's Lord Eyrdway," said Smith. "How d'you reconcile somebody like him being the offspring of Goodness Incarnate?"
Willowspear looked pained. "My Lord Eyrdway was, hm, engendered under circumstances that... affected his development."
"Too much magic, eh?" - "Perhaps. He is a
tragaba,
a... moral idiot. Like a beast, he cannot help what he does. Whereas my Lord Ermenwyr knows well when he is being an insufferable little--"
"I ought to make a couple of others, don't you think?" Lord Ermenwyr's voice came floating out of the darkness.
"Good idea," Smith called back, but Willowspear turned sharply.
"Is that wise, my lord?"
"It is if we want to get any farther upriver," was the reply.
"What's the matter?" asked Smith.
"It is no easy process," said Willowspear, "giving life."
They sat in silence for a while, and Smith let the fire die back a little so they could see farther into the darkness. They watched as the pale figure moved along the edge of the Pool, crouching in the starlight beside each of the figures he had drawn. One after another he excavated, digging with his hands along each outline, scooping away enough mud to turn a drawing into a bas-relief, and then into a statue lying in a shallow pit. Finally, they saw him wandering back. He was wet and muddy, and no longer looked sleek; his eyes were sunk back into his head with exhaustion.
"Wine, please," he said. Smith passed him the bottle from which he had been drinking, but he shook his head.
"I need a cup of wine," Lord Ermenwyr said. "And an athalme. A boot knife would do, I suppose."
Smith fished one of his throwing knives out of his boot top and handed it over hilt first, as Willowspear poured wine into a tea mug they'd brought out of the galley.
"Thank you," Lord Ermenwyr said, and trudged away into the night again. They heard him muttering for a while in the darkness, and could just glimpse him pacing from one muddy hole to the next. Willowspear averted his eyes and added more wood to the fire.
"He'll need warmth, when this is over," he said. "I wish, in all that indigestible clutter of pickles and sweets he brought, that there was anything suitable for making a simple broth."
The night drew on. They heard him chanting a long while in the darkness, and then as the late moon rose above the forest canopy they glimpsed him. He was standing motionless, his arms upraised, staring skyward. As the white light flowed down onto the bank and lit the Pool of Reth, his voice rose: smooth, imperative, somehow wheedling and desperate too. He was speaking no language Smith knew. He was making odd gestures with his hands, as though to coax the stars down...
The air crackled blue over the first pit. It became a mass of brilliant sparks that settled down slowly about the figure there. Smith held his hand up before his eyes, for the whole clearing was lit brighter than day, and hollow black shadows leaned away from the tree trunks clear across the Pool as another mass of light formed above the second pit, and then the third, and then the fourth. Flaring, they drifted down, and the four recumbent forms caught fire.
Whoosh.
The fire went out. There was blackness, and complete silence. Even the sounds of the night forest had halted, even the relentless thunder of the falling water. Had the river stopped flowing? Then a shadow rose against the stars beside Smith, and he heard Willowspear call out in Yendri. Sound began to flow back, as though it were timid.
"It's all right," was the reply, sounding faint but relieved.
Willowspear sat down again but Cutt and Stabb rose, staring forward through the dark.
"Seems to have worked, anyway." Lord Ermenwyr's voice was nearer. "Come along, boys. One-two-one-two. That's it."
By the returning moonlight Smith saw the lordling, staggering rather as he led four immense figures along the edge of the pool.
"See, boys? Here's our Crish and Strangel again," he said, laughing somewhat breathlessly. "Just as I promised you."
"Now we are a set of six!" said Cutt, in quiet pride.
"Master, what is our name?" said one of the giants.
"Yes, you must have names, mustn't you, you two newlings?" Lord Ermenwyr reached the
Kingfisher's Nest
and looked down sadly at the ashes of the fire. "Oh, bugger. No! No! Let's not name anybody that!"
Giggling, he turned back to his servants and raised a shaking hand to point at them in turn.
"Your name is, ah, Clubb! And your name is ... Smosh, how about that?" His whole body was trembling now, as he whooped with laughter. "Isn't that great?"
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he pitched forward into the mud.
Nothing would rekindle the fire, so they made a bed for him in one of the tilted staterooms, stacking mattresses against what was for the moment a floor, and on Willowspear's advice swaddling him tight in blankets.
"He's taken a chill," said Willowspear, looking at him unhappily.
"He should have kept his clothes on," grumbled Smith, crawling along the bulkhead to fetch more blankets and another bottle of wine.
They bundled up on either side of the lordling, cramped and close but warm, and lay there in the dark listening to the night sounds.
"So ... if something happens to him, what do we do?" said Smith at last. "Turn around and go home?"
He heard Willowspear sigh.
"If the Lady Svnae is truly in danger, it's my duty to come to her aid."
"But you're a married man," said Smith. "You've got a baby on the way. Don't you miss your wife?"
"More than you can imagine," Willowspear replied.
"Though I suppose it's a little cramped in that attic room with the two of you..." Smith did not add,
And the sound of Burnbright's voice would have me shipping out after a month.
"No." Willowspear stretched out in the darkness, folding his arms behind his head. "It's a paradise in our room. In summer it's so hot... one night, we ... there was a box of children's paints in the storeroom. A guest had left it behind, I think. We took it and painted each other's bodies. Orchids and vines twining our flesh. Unexpected beasts. Wings. Flames. Rivers. The stars shone down through the holes in the slates, and we pretended we were seeing them through the jungle canopy. The whole house slept silent in the heat, but we two were awake, exploring ... the night insects sang and our sweat ran down and the paint melted on her little body, and she plundered me, she was a hummingbird after nectar ... and afterward we ran downstairs hand in hand, naked as ghosts, and bathed in the fountain in the garden. We pretended it was a jungle pool.
Oh,
she said,
wouldn't it be awful if anybody saw us like this?
And her eyes sparkled so..."
He fell silent. Smith drank more wine, remembering.
"Have you ever been in love like that?" Willowspear inquired at last.
"Not really," said Smith. "I never stayed anywhere long enough. My mother died when I was a baby, so... my aunt's family took me in. And I had to work for my keep, so I was apprenticed out young. And one night I was coming back from delivering an order and ... some thieves jumped me. I killed all three of 'em. Standing there with bodies all around, scared out of my wits at what I'd done. So I ran away to sea. And later I was in the army. And later still *.. so, I was never any place to meet the kind of girl you settle down with. Lots of women, but, you know .... you both just get down to business. It isn't especially romantic."
A silence fell. Finally, Smith said, "You could go home. I could go on and rescue the lady. I haven't got as much to lose, and I'm better with weapons."
"I don't doubt that," said Willowspear. "But what would my mother say, Smith?"
"You think Fenallise would miss me?" Smith blinked. It had never occurred to him.
"Of course she would," Willowspear replied. "And I am still bound by honor. Lady Svnae's Mother raised me, Smith. She guided me on the path that brought me to my own mother and my wife. If Her daughter is in danger, how can I walk away?"
"I guess you couldn't," Smith agreed.
"It may even be," Willowspear said dreamily, "that this is a quest, and She means me to travel on. She knows the journey of each star in the heavens, and all the journeys of the little streams to the great sea; and each man's path through life, She knows, Smith. Even yours. Even mine."
A hollow voice spoke out of the darkness.
"You won't leave off worshipping her, will you?" said Lord Ermenwyr. "Give me some of that wine."
"Yes, my lord." Willowspear propped him up. Smith tilted the bottle. Lord Ermenwyr drank, and settled back with a sigh.