“Put away the drumstick, or you shall break your own hand with it.”
Even the paralysis of authority had not affected the oars. Like a grisly clockwork toy, the motion kept on, though their faces were craned to me.
The Overseer lay in the below-decks cabin, nursing a pipe of Tinsen opium.
“Get back to your bench,” he said thickly. “Who sent you here?”
“Don’t be troubled,” I said. “You are having a vision from the poppy seeds.”
“You are no vision, stinking slave,” he whispered, smiling at me through the thin mist in his head. “Who unchained you?”
“I am Vazkor, and you are my servant. There is no doubt. Accept it.”
“If I do not obey, what then?”
“Be disobedient, and learn.”
He lapsed back.
“You are a slave,” he said.
I looked into his drug-blind eyes and made him know that I was not, and went out, leaving him in an abject, speechless idiocy, the idiot’s smile still sewed on his face.
I did not imagine I should need to sleep, but sleep I found I must. I chose a spot for it, confident in the fear I had inspired, and in fact no one came near me at that hour, or tried to take me.
The slumber itself was crowded by dreams, nightmares that
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angered me, the first for days. My cleverness had outgrown such wretchedness, or surely should have done. Lying on the roughly padded bunk in the Comforters’ warren below, I met even Ettook again and every one of the old frustrations, and one new damnation, which was a girl hanged in her own yellow hair. I was not a mage, asleep.
Near midnight I woke.
I thought, It is no longer thus, I have changed, I have dislodged the past.
A shadow had bent near me that lurched sideways at my stirring.
“I meant no harm, Lauw-yess.”
The Comforter with the lashed face-he would carry the scar the rest of his days, however short or long they might turn out to be-accorded me Charpon’s title.
I felt no menace from him, but I held up my palm and the energy shone through it, and sent him to kneel pleading in the black that I should do him no harm. I had become clever with the energy, able to portion it out in various strengths and forms.
It would be no problem to discipline my servants. Also, no problem to kill my enemies now perhaps, not as it had been in the wildlands beyond Eshkorek, the pale glare and the sick agony after it.
I dropped into another sleep.
There was another dream. I dreamed of my father.
He rode through a white city, lighted up in fits and starts by the bonfires of a sack, and I rode beside him. I could not see his face against the red fires, but I saw a white cat seated on his shoulder, and continually it darted with its paw and slashed at his breast, over where the heart was, and the black shirt was bloody. He did not cry out at these stabbings, which raked ever nearer his life, but he said to me quietly, “Remember it, remember the vow you offered me. Do not batten on my will, which made you, and forget.”
From this I woke calmly, as one does not generally wake from such a thing. But all the grim jokes I had derived from my Power aboard the ship, and all the endless mistakes I had made, had soured like wine kept too long in a cask.
I was not a child but a man, the son of a man. His death hung like a leaden rope about my neck at that moment. My father would not have clowned with his destiny as I had done with mine. His ruthless ambition, his iron mind, his ability
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had been better employed. Was I then to ape Ettook, the futile boasting of the red pig in his sty?
The midnight bell sounded above. Ignoring my absence, as the crowd ignores the passage of a leper-shrinking aside, yet speaking of the day and the state of trade-the lines were being roused to their work by the brotherhood of the flails.
I rose, and went out and climbed up the ladder from the rower’s deck, and those awake watched me with their glinting, awestruck eyes.
I passed two of the watch on the upper deck, and had them before they could challenge me. Once I would have used a weapon or a blow; to make a man stone quiet with the eyes is a curious deed.
Charpon’s ship-house was dimly lighted, with one low burning red lamp. By another of the laws of Masrian fire worship, no kindled flame might be left uncovered, save before the god. The room smelled of incense, and of a stable.
The master, russet as a bull in the lamplight, sprawled across the handsome boy I had seen make up to him earlier. The boy’s face, curd-white between the ruddy cushion and the master’s ruddy flesh, stared straight up at me with a pared and vicious horror, like the white mask of a rat cornered by dogs.
“Lauw-yess,” he cried, seizing Charpon’s arm, frantic between fear of angering the master and a worse fear of me.
Charpon growled. The boy shook him, hissing a stream of faulty Masrian. With a curse, Charpon heaved around and made me out. His fingers slipped along the couch to his knife-belt. I let his grip close on the handle before I educated him. This time I saw the bolt shoot from my hand. It caught him about the wrist, soundless, but Charpon roared and jolted sideways, letting go the blade half-drawn. The boy squealed and jumped off the couch, flinging himself into a corner. I felt sorry for him, his fortunate night wrecked by the unexpected.
“Melkir, run for seconds-” Charpon shouted.
I said, “It will do you no good. Before the boy gets to the door, I will kill him, and you shall be next, I promise you.”
I let him have another bolt between the ribs, as I would have cast a spear but one year before. He doubled up, retching, among the exotic pelts.
The boy Melkir began to snivel.
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“You will spoil your looks,” I said. “Shut your mouth and keep still, and you will live to ply your wares ashore.”
He turned off the tears insfently, and made his eyes soft, in case I might be susceptible. Having been the pupil of a hard school, he was apt for quick lessons. Even the sorcery was less compelling than violence, of which it was obviously merely another branch, something to be avoided, placated, put, if possible, to use.
I crossed over to Charpon and rolled him onto his back. He wiped his mouth and showed his irregular teeth.
“What are you?” he asked.
“What do you suppose?”
“I suppose mischief. I send you to the oar, and you are a conjurer of tricks-a priest perhaps? I have heard of such cunning being the property of priests.”
There was a swift rodent scuttle through the draperies-the boy escaping out of the door. Charpon swore, knowing quite well he would get no help from that quarter.
“Well,” he said, “what do you want?”
I met his little black eyes, which froze with no struggle. Finding me more than his match, Charpon wasted no effort on resistance.
“Your ship,” I said, “your service. Whatever I instruct shall be done. We will call your officers in and tell them the happy news.”
Outside, the night tasted already of the faint spice balm of the south, and the stars described different patterns between the sails.
I had mislaid my memory of Long-Eye, but presently recalled and had them release him. He came limping from the chains and stood beside me.
I remembered how I had valued him and was at a loss to find him once again only a piece of what was all around me, a mortal wasteground peopled with beings no more akin to me than is the tinder to the flame that strikes from it.
I clothed myself with light in order to impress them, which it duly did. It was easy to do so, as had been the other things, unnervingly easy. It was not surprising that in after days I found myself reluctant to experiment with the Power that had abruptly burgeoned in me, afraid of its enormity, so suddenly unleashed. However, I became lord of Charpon’s ship, and ninety-seven men offered me fealty that night, kneeling bewildered and afraid on the upper deck.
I felt neither hubris nor exaltation. I felt, for those mo-
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merits, as afraid as they. I found myself on a pinnacle, neither king nor magician, nor even god, simply one man isolated from the race of men. Alone, as never in my life before.
Part II
The Sorcerer
I
The first city I came to was a dead one, Eshkorek Arnor, the Golden Skull. My second city lived, a shining anthill, impervious it seemed to disaster, degradation, the scouring passage of the winds of time, and to every one of those things that had eaten Eshkorek alive. I remember that, despite the events that led me there, I was still humanly young enough to gape that seventeenth morning, when the Hyacinth Vineyard drifted on her oars and dipped sails like a blue moth into the Bay of Hragon.