So he thought.
Indeed the halfworld lived yet along this littoral, and surely
too in the mountains which reared behind it. Swimming thither, emerging on a strand, he sensed magic as a thrill in his blood, after the barrenness through which he had lately fared; he glimpsed creatures shy or sinister which were not of ordinary flesh. Strange they were to him, and when they did not flit off as though in dread, they threatened and he withdrew. But they were his kin in a way that Agnete had finally known she could never be.
Some spots had been interdicted by exorcism. He cast what questioning spells lay in his power and learned that for the most part this had happened in recent years. A new faith seemed to have appeared among men, or rather a new sect-since he ob-served naught but the Cross anywhere-which disdained the easy-going ways of earlier Christians. Oftener he simply observed too much cultivation, or a thriving town, which by its mere presence would ban a colony. Well, the dolphins had told him he must seek further north.
As he did, he began to come on the multitudinous islands they had bespoken, and no eternal curses laid by priests. The creed that actively hated everything smacking of joy in life-for after all, Vanimen reflected, that was what the Faerie races who would fain be friends to men brought them, no doubt at peril to their souls but nevertheless joy-the new creed must not have penetrated this far. Somewhere here, he dared to hope, lay the goal of his dreams.
Wryness added: It had better. The hull was coming apart be-neath him. No longer could pumps hold the water at bay. Daily deeper sunken, crankier, less movable by any wind, his ship would soon be altogether useless.. True, then his band could search on-ward by themselves. . . .
Thus matters stood when the slavers found her.
It was a day to keep fishers at home and merchants at wharfs. Ever strengthening, squalls blew from the west, whistle, white-caps, rain-spatters out of flying gray overhead. Vanimen tried to work clear of the lee shore, but recognized anon that there was no way. Forward of him, across a pair of riotous miles, he descried a substantial island, close in against the mainland. He gauged he could make the channel between, which would give shelter. Roofs warned of human habitation, but that couldn’t be helped and they were not many.
He placed himself on the poop deck, where he could stand lookout and shout commands to a crew that had gained a little skill. Naked for action, they scampered about or poised taut for the next duty. Much larger was the tale of females and young whom he sent below to avoid their becoming a hindrance. Those could have joined the swimmers, as a few like them had done; but most mothers feared what riptides and undertows might do to snatch their infants from them, among the rocks of these unknown shoals.
Another craft came over the vague horizon while the merfolk were making their preparations. She was a galley, lean, red-and-black painted, her sail furled and she spider-walking on oars. The figurehead glimmered gilt through spume, a winged lion. From this and her course, Vanimen guessed, out of his scanty infor-mation, that she was Venetian, homeward bound. Puzzlement creased his brow; she was no cargo carrier-and would have been in convoy were that the case-but seemed too capacious for a man-of-war.
He cut off his wondering and gave himself to the rescue of his own vessel. It took experience and wit, as well as an inborn feeling for the elements, to guess what orders he should give helmsman and deckhands. Therefore, in the following hour, he paid the stranger small heed. . . until Meiiva, who had been on watch in the bows, breasted the wind and joined him.
She tugged his elbow, pointed, and said above shrillness:
“Look, will you? They’re veering to meet us.”
He saw she spoke truth. “When we’ve naught for hiding our nature!” he exlaimed. After a moment wherein he stood braced against more than rolling and pitching, he decided: “If we scurried to don clothes, it might well seem odder than if we stay as we are. Let’s trust they’ll suppose we’ve simply chosen to be unen-cumbered; we’ve seen sailors naked ourselves, you recall, since we passed the straits out of the ocean. Likeliest the master only wants to ask who we are. He’ll hardly draw so close that he can tell we’re not his kind-too dangerous in this weather-and wet hair won’t unmistakably proclaim that it’s blue or green- Pass word among the deckhands to have a ~are how they act.”