Of course, my preparations for her death had undergone a change. There had been before no precautions of fire, a total
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destruction that nothing might return. Remembering the Eshkorek legend of her, that she had risen from a grave once or maybe twice, and having the proof of this oddity in myself, aware it might happen, my plans were half unconsciously altering and reshaping themselves. From that conclusion rose an unassailable revelation.
Since the beginning of it, rejecting or reveling in my Powers, I had claimed them from my father, who had been a sorcerer before me. But my father had died. Though his body had never been found in the ruined tower, yet it lay there, or somewhere. If he had lived, there would have been news of him in twenty years, some tale, some battle, some fresh striving would have revealed his life. No, he was dead; my whole argument sprang from his death. She it was who could not die. She, and I. It was her blood that made me more than human.
The bandits, their dogs and women, snored in the camp. The corpse of the tiger lay where they had left it, already vile smelling, with ten black desert birds circling above, afraid to come down to feast with so many live things about.
Then, under the stunted palm that grew above the spring, I observed Darg Sih sitting with Gyest, playing one of the southern checker games in the dust, with elegant, certainly stolen, counters of red soapstone and green jade.
Caught by the incongruity of this, I paused to let the bandit chief make his move. He pulled his moustaches and grunted, and rapped with the green counter on his teeth, as if they might supply the answer.
Shortly, the counter slapped down. Darg Sih had won the game. He roared for koois, and from a tent nearby a boy ran and gave him the flask Gyest had brought. Darg gestured me over with flailing motions of his arms, embraced me, and offered me the rum. We drank, and Gyest, lifting the red veil, also drank. Darg watched this with childish fascination, digging me in the ribs. No iota of countenance came visible as Gyest drank. Presently he handed back the flask.
“You go south, then, bandit brother, take ship? Bad, bad,” Darg said to me.
“Does Darg also read minds?”
“Gyest tells me,” he mumbled. “Why go to the poxy stinking port? Stay and hunt tigers with Darg, eh, brother?”
“He must seek his kindred,” Gyest said.
“Ah,” Darg said. “Kin. Not scutty Sri ways, no man knowing his father, eh?”
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“How did you decide my road?” I asked Gyest.
“Not I. Long ago you foresaw a ship would take you there.”
“That time I was in error.”
“Not this time.”
“No,” I said, “not this.”
We drank more koois, and the boy brought a plate of cold meat and figs. He had gold earrings. I could not work it out if he were Darg’s son or his leman.
“If you need a ship, then you must reach Semsam port. Ships there.” Darg skewered his meat with the knife that a few days back, probably, had been slitting some merchant’s throat. “If you go to Semsam, I will give you a pony and send three-no-four men with you. No trouble in the Ost, then”-he beamed at us, using the Sri word to better our understanding-“and no trouble in Semsan either, where they are dogs who cut up their babes for supper.”
I thanked him for his generosity.
When we rode out an hour later, the Sri wagons and my guard of four bandits, Darg Sih wept copiously, and swore he would offer prayers to his gods on my behalf. I think I never inspired such instantaneous and fulsome approval in my whole life, before or since.
My parting from Gyest six mornings after was more constrained. I assumed I should not see him again. Each farewell in my life had been final, and men’s days were short. It is extraordinary. I had not known him long, nor intimately beyond those psychic interchanges on which ground we met as fellow magicians, and I the greater of the two. Neither did I ever see his face, or learn anything of note concerning his history or his aims (if aims he had; I think he was content to be). I never had the father with whom most men expect nature to equip them. I had instead the hatred of a red pig, and a shadowy myth given me by enemies and strangers. Even if my father had been Gyest, among the Sri I could not have been sure of it. Still, he was the closest I got, maybe. Or maybe I let sentiment influence me. Say then only this: I shall regret always the loss of his good friendship, his unpretentious wisdom, and his half-amused quietness under the hand of his god.
Every one of the four Sri women kissed me good-bye, and the white dog licked my hand. They gave me food for the journey, and Ossif handed me a copper charm from his
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wagon. These charms they acknowledge as toys, their god cares for them anyway, but man in his weakness likes visible proof of caring. It is a joke between them and the Infinite.
The four hairy bandits seemed pleased rather than otherwise at being my escort. I wondered if they meant to try to kill me, or sell me on the way or in the port itself. What would I do then? Power, or the knife I had bartered for in Darg’s stronghold? As it turned out, they had no tricks in mind, and were simply enjoying scenery different from that of the camp.
The track to the southwest shows clearly an old road of Hessek make with a decrepit shrine to some Hessek spirit at its beginning. The deity is not Shaythun for sure; he has chipped wings and a tiger’s head. An iron bell without a clapper rusts in the dirt nearby. There must have been a priest to tend him once, but he was gone, and the hermitage returned to the dust of the plain.
It would need sixteen days, a little less with hard riding, to get to the coast.
Gyest and I had not spoken again of where I was headed, my destination nor my goal. I had ceased quarreling with it, and he had ceased showing me my way. Destiny or gods or fortune-whatever one is pleased or innocent enough to call them-they seal men to their decree. There comes an hour when batle ends and one put’s one’s neck beneath the yoke.
I forget most of what was said. A platitude or two, probably, wishes for safe journeying, kind weather. The best men fall back on them when wit no longer answers.
When I was mounted, I thanked him without specifying my thanks.
“You have time. Go slowly,” he said.
I knew what he meant, and I said, “Still, I swore it to him. I mean to do it. I can kill as well without anger as in a rage. Better.”
He said quietly, “I see a jackal running. His name is I Remember.”
A slow shiver went down my spine. I had thought myself past such things. But I raised my arm to him and bade him good-bye, then rode off along the Hessek road to Semsam, the four bandits whooping after me.
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3
Semsam glowed muddily in the rain. It was a place of ramshackle itinerant bivouacs and worming alleys crowded by makeshift hovels, which had somehow, against all odds, endured. Near the shore, decayed mansions of Ancient Hessek balanced on marble stilts, like terrible old dying birds. The rain, which had started three days back on the shore road, looked fair set to wash this slimy disaster of a port away. There were no walls, no watch. It was a center of robbers and reavers, and of certain illicit trades of Tinsen from the west, and various outer islands to the south. In dock, the canoes of the black jungle men lay alongside the tall slavers and the single-deck galleys of Seemase pirates.
A Hessek palace three stories high, five before the top two floors collapsed, had been reborn as the Inn of the Dancing Tamarisk. Here, traces of weird Hessek splendor remained, an antique silver cage of crickets chirping just inside the door, round-bellied lanterns of red glass, a costly, threadbare pornographic carpet on the wall. Painted Thei-boys sat primly in a row on a low gallery, peering through latticed fans, waiting to be picked by the customers. Meantime, the rain hustled down the cracked panes of green crystal, and plopped through the ceiling.
My four bandits were good insurance. Modest Darg had not told me Semsam paid him tribute. As the friend and “blood-brother” of a bandit lord, and a Sri magician into the bargain, I was fed and accommodated at no expense, and promised a ship to wherever I wished to journey. Probably they reckoned me a fugitive from justice. Many such, I imagine, dashed in and out of Semsam.