“And in Estafan?”
“In Estafan they worship Bandercran under another name, though the Silver Swimmer is far more beneficent than the hemi-ghoti revered in Isher. In Finial I am told they worship a goddess who appears as a clock-owl; and it is not until one reaches Sworp that one encounters Korèsanism untrammeled, though even there, it seems they have made an exception for the Society of Seers. I am told that travelers of other faiths must take an oath of noninterference, nonevangelism, and nonblasphemy but need not themselves adopt Korè. Also, one must not be overheard commenting adversely about Faros in his persona as high priest.”
I thought he was extremely well informed. Since the peoples of Tavor were mostly Korèsan, it did not appear we would have any troubles of a religious nature.
Izzy turned his glass upon the tabletop, seeming deep in thought. “Would you be interested in letting me come with you?”
The prince seemed struck speechless, as though he had been attacked rather than merely asked a question. His eyes darted.
I put my hand on his wrist, calming him as I asked Prince Izakar, “Why would you want to?”
Izzy shrugged. “Your mentioning the Hospice of St. Weel. I am faced with a particular puzzle of my own, one I must solve as soon as possible. There may be an answer in Sworp, through which you will pass, and that failing, it is said all kinds of questions may be answered by the wizards at the Hospice. Even a clue to my puzzle would be a help.”
The prince was again startled. He shifted in discomfort. “Surely your people would insist upon providing you with an escort. And we are already quite a large group….”
Izzy nodded. “It was the size of your group, and their attitude toward you, that convinced me you were of the nobility. Throughout the lands, a commoner might travel with a servant. A baron from the Four Realms might have half a dozen guards. Someone related to a royal house would have a dozen or more. You have that many.” He smiled and shrugged again. “As for my people insisting upon providing an escort—they are Ghotians: they will insist upon nothing. Our religion lends us a certain resignation in the face of events. What will, will, we say. What won’t, won’t. Any effort to assure my safety would be pointless if I am doomed, equally pointless if I am not, and in any case, the world may go pop very shortly, so why worry?”
“A despicable faith,” murmured Sahir. “In my opinion.”
Izzy leaned forward and said as quietly, “Mine also. However, it would not do to say so loudly. There are three Ghotian Inquisitors, a Bandercranian Contemplative and a Halfish Exemplary sitting at the table by the far wall.”
“So many?” I breathed.
“Palmody is currently host to an ecumenical conference on the subject of revelation.”
“I should not think revelation would need conferences,” I murmured. “Doesn’t it come when and how it will?”
Prince Izakar smiled at me. “My father was beheaded for speaking of something called electrification. When the bishops asked where he had heard of this subject, he said it had been revealed to him in a vision sent by Bandercran. They told him this could not be true, for though Ghoti used to allow revelation, he does so no longer. During the time when Ghoti did allow it, everything was revealed that was worth revealing, and the bishops memorized it all and have passed it down unchanged by jot or tittle through the years. Thus there could be no purpose for further revelation and claiming revelation is strictly prohibited. The Ghotians want this prohibition included in the catechism for all Bubblians, Bandercranians and Halfishers.”
I thought about it. “If people were to believe that Bandercran goes about delivering personal revelations, it would be very upsetting, for no one would know what was true and what wasn’t.”
“Exactly the Ghotians’ point,” he agreed. “The Bandercranians, however, who include among their number certain persons who receive revelations fairly regularly, are holding out for exceptions.”
“Do you speak Farakiel in addition to Tavorian?” asked the prince with a sideways glance at the Inquisitors. “If you do, it could come in useful.”
Izzy nodded. “Farakiel, yes, both low and high. I speak the trade language, Inglitch. Also Sworpian, Finialese, Estafaner, and the debased Uk-luk tongue of the Onchikian tribes who occupy the shore counties between. I can make myself understood in certain other languages, as well, though we would be unlikely to encounter them on this trip.”
“Where did you learn all that?” demanded Prince Sahir in a petulant voice. “I had sufficient trouble merely learning to read!”
Izzy shrugged. “I am very bright. All the Gershons are. It’s a genetic thing, inherited from my foremothers, like red hair and brown eyes.”
“And dwarfism?” jibed the prince.
“That’s unkind,” I admonished him. “He’s small, but he’s no smaller than I am, and I’m no dwarf.”
The prince sighed in a put-upon fashion. “My faithful Nassif is my conscience, Prince Izakar. Some days I lose patience with this journey, even though I’m already much improved, physically. You were probably correct when you attributed it to removing myself from the intrigue of the court. There was some idea I had been poisoned.”
“You are your father’s heir?”
“Among many.”
“I am my father’s heir, the sole surviving one, but my uncles have not cared about the matter sufficiently to poison me. While all my half brothers were eager, their deaths were due more to heedlessness than to ambition. Bubblians are not given to glory, or to power overmuch. We tend toward sloth rather than avarice.”
Our talk went on, wandering here and there, with not much said of grave importance, yet by the end of the meal we had considered many things and the agreement had been struck. Izzy (the prince) would join Sahir (not called the prince) in his journey north and west up onto the great plateau where lay the silvery expanse of the Crawling Sea. Izzy would bring a few people to look after him, but would rely mostly upon the Tavorian guards to protect him as they protected Sahir.
When this agreement had been reached, Izzy went out, got upon his bald-tailed horse and rode up the hill toward the castle, leaving us staring through the open door as his small figure retreated up the cobbles toward the crenelated walls. If we had had any doubt he was who he represented himself to be, these were allayed when the distant figure received a salute from the guards as he cantered across the bridge and disappeared inside the castle.
“He never told us why he was going,” I remarked.
“We never told him why we are,” said Sahir.
“We did. It’s your health.”
“That’s the reason father gave you, before,” murmured Sahir. “It doesn’t happen to be the only one.”
I cocked my head at him. “No?” I respected Soaz’s confidence and had not mentioned the oracle story to the prince.
“No, my faithful Nassif.”
He said it with a sneer, as he often did. For the most part, I ignored his tone. He sounded as most scuinic males sounded, and there was no point being irritated about it.
He went on, rather sulkily. “Mother thought it was, of course. It wouldn’t have done to have anyone know why I was really going. We left three layers of stories behind. One, that I was ill and was going to the Hospice of St. Weel. Two, that while either going or coming, I had gone on pilgrimage to the Temple-Garden of Korè, near the locks at Giber. Three, I had gone on north on a diplomatic mission from the sultan to Faros VII. My real destination is the hospice, which, since I have said I am going there, no one will believe.”
I longed to ask him about the oracle business, but I contented myself with less. “I take it then that we are definitely headed to the Hospice of St. Weel, or that vicinity?”
“Faithful Nassif, we are going to the hospice, yes. If there is opportunity, we will probably seek an audience with Faros the Seventh of that name. The sultan believes it is important that I visit Faros, if only to express our congratulations at the length and power of his reign. And finally, i
f we can, I would sail on the great lake to Korè’s Temple-Garden. I am a faithful son of Korè, a believer, a worshiper, and much merit accrues to the person who visits that place. I am told the hymns that are sung there are of extraordinary beauty.”
“That reminds me of a story,” I mused.
“Everything does,” sneered Prince Sahir. “You will story me all the way to Zallyfro in the country of Estafan, and perhaps, heaven knows, to Sworp itself.”
He went to arrange for rooms. Annoyed by his slighting manner, I stayed where I was, staring up the roadway at the castle. Meeting Prince Izakar had been exciting, or at least jolly after a steady diet of Sahir’s jeers and glooms. True, Izakar had said a number of things I had not at all understood, almost as though he lived in some other world. Or visited some other world, from time to time.
Nonetheless, I looked forward to his joining us. Soaz had become my good friend and Sahir was at least bearable most of the time, but neither of them were what I would call fun. I had caught Izzy looking at me several times in a very fellow-tribal way that made me think he might be a lot of fun.
8
Onchiki
“What mystery surrounds the Onchik-Dau! This ancient people of few words and dour aspect rules the seashores and off shore waters as they have since time immemorial. Harbors are their special provenance, and those high reefs which lie just out of sight and present a terror to mariners. There is scarcely a captain who cannot tell a tale of his ship’s being saved by an Onchik-Dau, of a voice in the night, calling to the watchman to beware….”
THE PEOPLES OF EARTH
HIS EXCELLENCY, EMPEROR FAROS VII
The Biwot house hunkered up Chilliburn Creek, its threshold well above the reach of even the highest waves. Nigh two hundred winters of storm had not conquered it, but the slow rip of the seasons had taken their toll: the rafters that held the sod roof were rotten, and woodworms had made powdery tunnels through the lord and lady beams on either side of the door. During the mild weather of midsummer, wrack relaxed upon ruin and all seemed homely enough, but when the gales of early autumn came, a rampageous seawind tongued the roof off like the peel of a fruit and spit it into the outgoing waves while the Crawling Sea slithered up the creek bottom and onto the moor, where it lapped its wet tongue across the threshold of the house.
The Biwot family, fisherfolk who were accustomed enough to being wet but didn’t like sleeping in it, scurried for the cover of the boat bed and huddled within it, at least one of them awaiting an end that the roaring wind declared to be imminent.
“Oh, Lord Wind, have pity,” cried Sleekele, bumping her head on the bedframe. “Oh, Lord Wind, great Lord Wind…”
“Shut face, woman,” her mate, Diver, rejoined. “Lord Wind is too full of his own noise to hear thee talking.”
“Enough, both thee,” growled Grandmama. “I’m glad it’s happened, do you hear? We’ve worried over it long enough. Now the roof’s gone, we can quit worrying and do something with ourselves.” She laid her head back on the hastily flung pillow that had preceded her own stringy self into the boat bed and stared at sloping sides around her, as though taking count of the seams that might, or might not, hold out the flood. “Now we can do something.”
“Oh, we’ll do, all right,” said Burrow, the oldest boy. “Crawling Sea will crawl in here and float us out the door and down the creek and onto the sea, where we’ll sail away forever on the boat bed, to the land where the bombats live.”
Grandmama snorted at him, waving her webbed fingers in front of his nose. “Why float, boy? Swimming’s easier. Just because we’re shore people doesn’t mean we’ve forgot our heritage.”
“Onchik-Dau would like to hear you say that!”
“Onchik-Dau has nothing to say about it. Our roof’s gone. We’re homeless, boy.”
Legally, she was right, of course. Onchikiel people followed the home laws: due regard for shore and pasture, due regard for roof and floor, due regard for hearth and kinfolk, not to leave them evermore. So long as onchiki had a roof over their heads, their movements were restricted to the three Fs, fishing, flocks, and folk, which meant just what it said. Fish was what they caught and dried, eating some and selling some; veeble flocks were what they sheared the wool from; folk were what they kept company with in festive seasons, visiting back and forth. With no roof, however, they became homeless, and a homeless onchik was a wild onchik, able to go places and work or not as he pleased. Some had even been known to change their names and leave lifemates and children to go off into the unknown by themselves. After the long boredom of homefast life, the attraction of venturing was so great that some had been accused of weakening their own roof pins, no matter how the Onchik-Dau fulminated against such behavior.
“What’ll we do with the veebles, Grandmama?” This was Lucy Low, the oldest girl child. “We can’t leave the veebles for the cowjers to eat.”
Mince giggled from his place near the bottom of the bed:
“Was a veeble, very feeble; was a cowjer, large and fat;
Came a Lucy, very juicy; cowjer ate her stead of that.”
“Shush, Mince,” said Grandmama. “Do thy rhymes when the sun’s up. In all this wind, I’ve no patience with it. Now see, thee’ve made her sorrow!” She stroked the girl’s smooth head and wiped her bright brown eyes, saying, “There now, there now,” until Lucy Low gave over being sorrowful. It was the idea of a cowjer eating the veebles that had done it, for she had best friends among the veebles: Chimary and Chock, Willigong and Gai.
“Shush, child,” murmured Grandmama. “We’ll see to the veebles, bless you. Your friends are safe.”
Lucy Low managed a gasp. “Will we open the box of fortunes, Grandmama?”
“Why, certain we will, child. When the roof goes, what else can a family do?”
Inside the boat bed, protected from the wind and mostly from the rain—for the bed had a canvas cover though it wasn’t boat-tight as it should have been—snugged down they lay: Grandmama, and her son Diver, his wifemate Sleekele, the three girls: Ring, and Bright, and Lucy Low. And the two boys, Burrow (who was near enough a grown male to be all trouble and no sense, so said Grandmama), and Mince, (who might never make it to his growth, irritating as he was). The veebles were out in the shed, and Uncle Wash, Grandmama’s stepson, was abed in the shed loft, had the shed still a roof, praise Lady Heaven, and that was the lot of the Chilliburn Biwots, though not for long, for with the loss of its roof, Biwot had become a no-place.
Even with a roof, it hadn’t been much.
Chilliburn was a small stream, barely more than a trickle oozing down from the Sharbak Mountains to make murmurous meanders over mossy rocks and through bits of marshy moor, into peaty pools, dark as tea, and out once more, past the legs of the herons and the bellies of the frogs, thence whispering over a fall onto a pillow of ferns, finally transforming itself into a silver song that lilted among the smooth shore stones, across the pebbly beach to the high mirror of the Crawling Sea. The sea was green with algae, but Chilliburn was drinking water, washing water, water for the garden, water for the veebles, and thank the Cloud Ladies for that, all in their billowy dresses with their big hats, floating across the sky on their way to meet the sky king, somewhere over Gosland.
Chilliburn had only the one fishing croft. There’d been another, farther up, years ago in Grandmama’s youth, but it’d been gone now a lifetime, eaten by the wind. Onchik-Dau had refused to rebuild it back then. He’d said it wasn’t worth it, so the crofters had gone.
“Couldn’t we put the roof back on?” asked Burrow. He was deep in a bottom corner of the bed, and his voice came out of the darkness like a haunting. “Wouldn’t that be the thing to do? Wouldn’t the Onchik-Dau want that?”
“Whoosh, lad, and get on with this nonsense?” said Grandmama. “The Onchik-Dau? Why would he be so silly? What’s the rent he gets from the croft? Nothing plus nothing, and that’s only when we’ve had a good season. Sale price of fish that nobody’s buying. Sale
price of wool, likewise. Without us in the way here, he can rent the hills to guz herders, and besides, aren’t you sick and all of it? Fish for breakfast and fish for lunch and fish for dinner, with an onion if we’re lucky. Feast days there’s a hen that’s all muscle and no meat, and odd times maybe we take the throat out of a veeble that’s about ready to drop dead anyhow. Whoosh, lad, you want to go on with it?”
“Never been noplace else,” he said.
“Nor me,” said Grandmama. “And I’d say it’s about time.”
“You’re so brave,” wept Sleekele. “You keep your spirits up so.”
As somebody had to do, said Grandmama to herself, for if left to Sleekele, their spirits would all liquify and run down the Chilliburn into the sea to become weepy ghosts, lamenting ladies, blow-arounds for the Lord Wind, willow-wraiths to flow away down the Fraiburne into the distant ocean, way south, past Isfoin.
“Yes, Grandmama, you are brave,” whispered Ring and Bright, as in one voice. They were twins, and Grandmama was of the opinion they had but one brain between them. Certainly it took both of them to do what one sensible person might manage.
“H’loo,” came a voice from the wind. “H’loo. ’Ny-body in there?”
“Wash, you fool,” cried Grandmama. “Course we’re in here. Where’re you?”
“Shed roof blew away,” he said, leaning down where he could peer in at them, his nose wrinkled back, his teeth showing white in the dim. “You got any room left in there?”
“How’s the veebles, Uncle Wash?” Lucy Low asked. “Are they scared?”
“All curled up with their noses under their paws and the little ones snug in the middle. Veebles lived here on this poor moor long before folk, Lucy Low. They got their ways.”
“There’s room for half of you, Wash,” said Diver. “Top half or bottom, it’s up to you.”
“Naw,” he said. “I’m wet now. What I’ll do is, I’ll curl up under the washtub. Likely that’ll do me until morning.”