The streets were soon crowded with crying, stumbling mobs. They washed onto the beaches and human waves met the water waves, forming a splashing tumult as the citizens of Mur-es-Werd tried to put out the mad fevers that caused them to see such visions.
The stars were crossed by sudden, silky ripples. Kiril's stomach sank. He felt his body crawling this way and that, yet he wasn't moving; his muscles weren't twitching. His head threatened to turn inside out, but painlessly—a dreamy sort of dizziness, disorientation. The ocean waves grew brighter, became almost turquoise. He heard a deep bass note like the buzzing of giant bees. If the whole world had been a tapestry and somebody had started flapping it to shake out the dust, perhaps this was how it would feel—he didn't know. For a time he thought he would be better off dead.
The rippling in the sky stopped, and the stars steadied. The beach was encased in silence. The people around them moved slowly; even falling they drifted like puffs of down.
Looking up, Bar-Woten thought he was going to black out. At the periphery of his eye he could see darkness close in, cutting out the stars. But the dizziness was gone, and his head seemed all right. The stars were being obscured again. At the edge of the closing circle the points of light became lines of purple, twisted, and winked out. The familiar empty black returned. One by one, flickering, the fire doves resumed their glows. The sky at zenith turned green, then purple, then bronze; the dawn was picking up where it had left off.
The display had taken about five minutes. Everyone stood in silence for perhaps five minutes more, then looked at each other, embarrassed, and returned to their homes, trying to act as if everything was normal.
But Bar-Woten knew nothing would ever be normal again. He smiled crookedly. Then he began to laugh.
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Ten
Barthel left the beach alone before midday and took a twisting road up the city's central hill. For a few hundred meters he walked alongside a crumbling wall centuries old. Grass grew in the chinks between stones. It had become part of the ground now, like the shell of a dead snail. The wall no longer served as armor but as a place for people to walk by and things to grown in. From the top of the Kassarva, the fortress that circled the summit, he could look down across the town and port and think with nothing to bother him. Insects buzzed hypnotically through the dried grass and sparse flowers. A large temple was visible through the trees far below, ceramic domes glinting at each of its five corners. Inside it, too, looked like a fortress. There was a courtyard and small buildings within the courtyard arranged in a tomoye. Birds flew above the temple—gulls, curlews, and others he hadn't learned the names of. Some resembled hawks but caught fish by the sea and had red and white feathers in their crests.
He felt singularly ugly and afraid. The predawn unveiling had struck him deeply. What had it told him, that message for all to see? He didn't know. But it made him feel as tiny as the ants beneath him, carrying bits of white stuff in a line under his legs into a hole a few yards away. All these creatures—ants, birds, builders of temples—had been put here by the blessed One, Who had unveiled the sky that morning.
"I am Barthel," he told the sky with tears in his eyes. "I am small. Did you do all these things that I might see them, smell them? I've done nothing in return for you, Allah. I haven't even learned from them." He asked what it was Allah wanted him to do, and Allah told him this: Survive. He nodded. He would survive. The Bey had taught him how to survive. What else then? Father and mother and family.
That was all the voice said. Be to them what they would have wished you to be.
His lips curled. He stood up from the grass and gravel and brushed his ragged pants off. "I'll also find out where your light comes from," he said. "You'll be happy to see I'm clever enough to figure that out."
Bar-Woten wandered through the closed and confused streets. Kiril followed half-heartedly, not wanting to be left alone on the beach. No shops were open, and the people who passed them were solemn and tired. The city was quiet.
"What was it?" Kiril asked after a long silence. "Have you ever seen anything like it where you've been?"
"No," Bar-Woten answered. "The sky is the same wherever you go. What we saw last night was seen everywhere, even on the other side of Hegira."
"Then what was it?"
"You tell me."
"Stars, of course. But the Second-born have no stars over their heads. That's the way it's always been."
"Do we have stars over our heads now?"
"Not that we see. But something must stop us from seeing them—a lid, a hatch. And God opened that lid last night to show us glory."
"He showed us stars. Glory is what you feel when looking at them. Myself, I felt the glory perhaps. But more important, I learned that we are not so different from the First-born. We are not cursed. It may be—" But Bar-Woten stopped and shook his head.
"It was beautiful," Kiril said reverently, walking beside the Ibisian. He almost felt affection for the older warrior, as if they shared something no others did: their inner thoughts on an unprecedented act of God.
"It made my heart icy. It looked young out there."
"What do you mean?" Kiril asked.
"It wasn't all stars," he said. "There were a lot of other things out there. The fog. Maybe we didn't see a starry sky at all. Maybe we saw something else that we haven't read about yet."
They found Barthel wandering by the wharves, where all the moored boats knocked idle and empty against the pier buffers. They rejoined silently and walked along the lengthy quays, smelling the sea—which smelled no differently—and listening to the cat-cries of the seabirds. The birds sounded the same.
A five-masted steamer had docked at the end of a pier, three stacks poking jauntily above the steel hull. Gangs of sailors and stevedores hauled cargo from the holds amidships and scurried down planks, to a warehouse at the side of the pier. Cranes and winches lifted the heavier crates onto dollies. It was the only ship so occupied, and it wasn't Lucifan. They had never seen its flag before nor heard the tongue the men were speaking. Bar-Woten motioned for them to follow. They boarded unnoticed, or ignored, and watched the proceedings with interest.
Bar-Woten spotted a man who stood out from the clamor, walking with deliberate speed along the dock to the gangway. Khaki pantaloons ballooned from his legs, and he wore a tight blue waistcoat over a white linen shirt. He boarded as if he were long familiar with the swaying rope bridge and made his way to the forecastle, striding past the three where they leaned on the starboard railing. Bar-Woten stepped forward and addressed him in Lucifan.
"I'm busy," the man said. "What're you bothering me for?"
"We're looking for work and passage."
"Talk later." He hurried off. The Ibisian raised his eyebrow and winked at his companions. That was some sort of encouragement—not an offhand dismissal.
They inspected the ship in the meanwhile. Kiril counted their monies speculatively. "Look, with the cash from selling the horses—that and what we've earned—we can last four, five more days. Not much time."
"I know nothing about ships," Bar-Woten said, making it seem of small importance to his judgment. "Nor I," Barthel concurred hopefully.
"We'll have to eat. I'm tired of a sandy bed. Tired of carrying everything I own on my back."
"We've got a long way to go, friend. There'll be a lot more of that ahead."
"We should take any chance we get to board a ship, though," Kiril pursued. Barthel looked at him with dismay.
"No argument," Bar-Woten said. "What do you think we've been planning? You're the one who's been reluctant."
"I, too," Barthel said. "The sea is an unpleasant bed, Bey."
"But I mean to say that I'd rather go to sea than live a vagrant."
"You're inconsistent. You were a vagrant on your pilgrimage. I found you in an alley. You have a sudden taste for comfort?"
"Then let's not discuss it," Kiril said, growing angry.
"Certainly."
>
They waited until late afternoon. By then, the ship was unloaded, and the sailors and dockworkers had gone to ship's mess and homes on the land, respectively.
"The captain will take a walk after his meal," Bar-Woten predicted. "We'll talk to him again when he does."
The man reappeared just before dusk. The deck was deserted except for the three and a sailor standing watch on the stern. The captain walked over and looked at them sharply. "You want passage?" he asked. They nodded. "What ships have you sailed on?"
"None," Bar-Woten said.
"You think this is University of the Sea, eh?"
"I think we can learn fast enough not to stumble."
"You been to sea before, for a long time? A year or two?"
The Ibisian shook his head.
"Then what can I use you for? Mops? Who told you I needed hands?"
No one did.
"Then what makes you think I do?"
They weren't sure he did.
"Dammit, I have to take my stock where I can! Don't think that I like your faces because I say yes. Take it that the sky spoke and no one wants to sign on! They all believe the seas will swallow them when the world ends."
"It's not going to end," Bar-Woten said.
"Of course not. But sailors are bastards for a pretty story of ginnunga-gaps," the captain said. "You'll report to the quartermaster tomorrow morning. We sail with the second bell. I am Captain Prekari. Conditions are board and thirty standard thalers a month, your positions and rank to be determined according to merit and ability. Accepted?"
They nodded. The captain looked them over again and marched off muttering. Kiril turned around and looked into the filthy water lapping against the ship's side.
"Where do we spend the night?" he asked.
"On the beach. Say farewell to your sand fleas."
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Eleven
The ship was called Trident and came from a land just south of the Pale Seas. Her crew was a quiet, strong breed with few quarrels and steady loyalty. Such emotions sustained a ship over the distances she had to travel—discontent could only sink her.
Bar-Woten studiously set to learning the language they spoke, which to Kiril sounded Germanic. He had never spent much time learning the Germanic texts of the Obelisk—so far as the Mediwevans had read, they consisted of incomprehensible treatises on mechanics and a few scattered fairy tales mixed with heavy philosophy—but he knew enough to get along. Barthel had a harder time.
The Trident took her cargo of fiber, dried fish, and machine parts aboard a day after the three reported to the quartermaster. By the next morning they were at sea. They traveled along the coast eastward for several days, passing four inlets surrounded by cliffs several kilometers tall. Huge birds nested there, the sailors told them—albatrosses with webbed feet that could match a man's arm span. The exaggeration wasn't enough to make Bar-Woten think they were lying. Besides, now and then dark flying shapes could actually be seen, and at that distance they had to be impressively large to be spotted at all. No one lived in the fjords. Few people ever went there.
At a port called Trincoma they put off a cargo of dried fish and copra and took aboard more hemp as well as a number of unlabeled boxes. Kiril thought they might be drugs—Bar-Woten thought otherwise. "Spices," he ventured. "Did you smell the crates?" Barthel confirmed the Bey's guess by announcing they smelled like saffron—and there were several tons of it aboard.
The dark inhabitants of Mur-es-Werd had given way in Trincoma to light brown peoples with broad noses, thick lips, tall, noble foreheads and eyes white as bone. Kiril compared his own pale skin and regular features and found himself wanting. Each day he grew more dissatisfied with himself. But he was learning the duties of a sailor rapidly enough and received few complaints.
They began their first push far from land by the end of the week. On Skeitag, the day after Geistag and the day before Duvetag in the language of the Trident's crew, the ship set her sails and brought her boilers to full steam. Her triple screws churned the water below the iron stern until she was outracing the gentle wind. Sails were pulled in, and Kiril was taught the art of maintaining the methane supply in the ship.
Tanks were kept on each side of the forecastle deck that gathered rainwater when possible or served as storage for seawater desalinated by the sun in plastic tarp-slings rigged between the masts. Into this water were placed quantities of dried seaweed and dormant infusion. The tanks were capped, and man-operated pumps began to collect and store the resulting gases in a few days. The stink that sometimes escaped was regrettable—but it kept the boilers going when the wind was low and provided electricity at all times. Small chugging cylinders operated two generators for the ship's current.
Bar-Woten took instruction in ship's mechanics. He enjoyed the challenge of the engines more than he thought he would—more than he let on he did—and soon was apprenticed to the boiler-tender and his thirty helpers.
Barthel, least literate of the three as far as the Teutans were concerned, was given standard mast-monkey duties and was contented with such exertions. Though he frequently had to crawl out on a yardarm over open, churning water, his fear of the sea diminished to a healthy respect. His skin became even more bronzed. His muscles developed into flexible and agile bulges, which he thought he might put to good advantage in other places besides the rigging. The crew of the Trident was integrated, male and female.
Kiril sighed at this eventuality and resigned himself to quiet regret. Bar-Woten began his inevitable romancing. For the first few weeks, however, the voyage went smoothly enough.
The work of the day was over for their watches when Kiril and Bar-Woten met on the quarterdeck to talk and relax before the evening meal. The ship would soon be midway between Obelisks, where the ocean air would be cooler and the weather less predictable. Thus far the Trident had avoided the seasonal storms that plagued parts of the coast south of them. They talked about rough storms and what they must be like as they leaned over the brass railings, looking into the water. The hazy horizon was interrupted by shadows of distant coastline.
"I sometimes think we'll forget what we're really after," Kiril said. "Or you will, at least. It isn't as immediate a goal for you."
"It's a goal," Bar-Woten said. "No need to worry about that."
"I can't even remember her face," Kiril admitted. His throat caught suddenly. "I hardly remember what it was like to hold her."
"Then tell me about her. Maybe that will help."
But Kiril found words difficult, especially before the burly Ibisian. "She was at least as tall as Barthel, perhaps a centimeter or two taller," he began. "Blonde hair as long as her waist when it wasn't tied in a bun, with a tail down to her shoulder blades. She had … has a soft voice. Can I still say she has?"
"I don't know," Bar-Woten said.
"Small feet. She seems so far away now. I'm not even sure I'm the same man who loved her."
"Men have gone off on more foolish journeys for less certain reasons."
"You know, hm?" Kiril said, not intending to gibe.
Bar-Woten didn't take offense. "I know," he agreed. "What was her family like?"
"They didn't like me much. I suppose no family likes a suitor—they bring too many changes. But I didn't fit in with their activities. She never accused me of that, or minded, but her family was very clannish, played games and sports together all the time—she had a huge family, twelve brothers and sisters. Her father was a quiet man. He managed a business in a small town called Torres de Cristobal. He owned a small ranch and raised cattle. I was a scrittori—not a very reliable occupation, not much better than being a student or a theologian. But I was doing well enough that they couldn't fault me my choice of lifetimes."
"Choice of lifetimes?"
"Of course. A man chooses when he is to be born, to carry out a certain task on Hegira. If he chooses wrongly, then he comes at an inopportune time, and he can only turn out bad or useless. I was doing well
enough not to be useless."
"What was her name?" Bar-Woten asked.
"Elena," he said.
Barthel began taking lessons in navigation from three deck officers. He was getting better with the language, and two of his teachers could speak passable Lucifan. In turn for his lessons he offered them lessons in Arbuck, which some of the western coastal countries spoke and which had always been a mystery to the crew of the Trident.
Navigation on Hegira, they explained, was entirely different from navigation as described by the Obelisk texts. There were different objects to be sighted and different problems to be dealt with. The meteorology of Hegira was radically different from old Earth, and there were no stars or sun or moon to use as guides. Instead the paths of certain fire doves were charted, and each fire dove was given a name according to its peculiar qualities. In all there were at least five hundred different fire doves, two dozen of which were easily discernible. They could be identified by color and brightness, not unlike the methods used by the First-born to distinguish stars, but the fire doves were obviously not stars. They were not fixed—they wandered in relation to each other according to complex orbits, all of which appeared to be centered on Hegira. Not all the orbits had been calculated, however. Only ten especially bright fire doves were used for most navigational problems.
One of the major problems of navigation was knowing when a fire dove would be illuminated. Each had its own cycle of light and dark, which ranged from seven hours to six months. It was considered bad form to be tracking a fire dove and have it unexpectedly go out on you.
During the day prevailing winds—which seldom shifted—were used to indicate direction, according to how the ship ran with them. Some ocean currents were also used as guides. When weather permitted, the Obelisks were referred to, and these fixed points were the most reliable. The four points of the compass weren't used in their normal sense by Hegirans. Magnetized needles didn't point any particular direction, though it was rumored that lodestone poles did exist to the very far northwest. The side of an Obelisk that began with the invocation text was called the north side. Left of it was west, right east, and opposite, south. Beyond that one traveled by original orientation, using Obelisks and fire doves as references.