Singer from the Sea (37 page)

Her duty to go with Delganor. Her duty to return, then, to Delganor.

Perhaps real. But perhaps it was all a trick, a trick by Delganor himself. Anyone who could listen, as he did, could do other things as well. Create illusions. Create voices!

She tried to convince herself of this as she sat shuddering upon the hatch top, her supper growing cold in her hands. Hours later, chilled through, icy with sorrow, she heard the cheerful voices of Garth and Weird Wigham, joined in a slightly tipsy song that kept time with the splash of the oars.

Supplied with a new anchor and rope, the
Unlikely Duck
made her erratic way down the Drowned Range, from
island to island, giving Genevieve and Garth a chance to view a part of Haven neither had seen before. Since the islands were the rugged peaks of volcanic mountains sunk—and still sinking—in the Inundation, they had no gentle beaches. Here and there a wooded valley might plunge into the sea, and everywhere tiny streamlets meandered from the heights through boulder bound pools. Huts clung to the precipices and round water towers loomed over tiny terraced fields that clung to the sides of the mountains, supported by tall walls of dry-laid stone. All these works of man—towers, walls, and terraces—had been built through centuries of incessant labor.

At this season the terrace tops were furred with golden stubble, horizontal lines of brightness against black rock that towered above ice-glittering, echoing fjords. The journey was mesmerizing. Here great waves swept over the reefs between the islands, sometimes a genüe susurras of ripples, sometimes great shouting geysers of spray that erupted from blow holes on the lagoon side. As nowhere else in Haven, here was the feel of the great sea, the presence of it, the push and sway of it, and, so Garth said, the threat of it as well.

“It’s a big ocean,” he remarked to no one in particular.

“And gettin’ larger,” said Wigham. “These islands out here, they get smaller all the time. People moving up the slope and up the slope …”

“Well,” said Garth, comfortably, “it’s said the poles haven’t melted entirely yet.”

“My pa said they was finished meltin’ when he was a boy. Guess there was ice somewheres nobody knew about.”

Garth shrugged, a trifle uncomfortably. “Monsters out there,” he remarked. “So I’m told.”

“Oh, monsters right enough,” replied Weird Wigham. “I’ve seen a man go looking for his craylet traps to find them broken up, squeezed into scraps.”

“Does it happen often?” Genevieve asked, wonderingly.

“Not so often they stop setting traps,” said Weird. “Often enough to make them talk of killing the creatures, though there’s no weapons along the Drowned Range that
would do the job. The Lord Paramount might, maybe, if he wanted, but so far, he an’t wanted.”

“I doubt it would do any good,” mused Genevieve. “If one monster were killed, or two, or a dozen, or a dozen dozen, no doubt there are millions more out there.”

“Is that true?” asked Weird. “Is the ocean that large?”

“The ocean is very large,” said Genevieve in a distant, musing voice. “Its surface is about four hundred times larger than the land area of Haven, and if we were to calculate its depth, its true volume of living space would be thousands of times as great. So for every monster you might find here, at Merdune Lagoon, there are probably thousands more where you will never find them. For every mound of swelling gold, rising like a cloud from the depths, there are no doubt a thousand more that no one sees …”

She caught herself, too late. Both Garth and Weird looked at her in astonishment blended, on Weird’s part, with more than a touch of hostility.

Weird flapped mightily, crying, “Your daughter talks high and mighty, don’t she, Garth? Are all young ladies these days so uppity?”

“Mostly they are,” said Garth glumly, with a sharp glance at Genevieve. “Even when they’ve left school, like Imogene here, they read books. You’ve heard it said, a little learning’s dangerous.”

“And less is more so,” retorted Genevieve, suddenly angered in her turn. “Why, if people do not know what lives in these seas, how can they live sensible lives in this little space?”

Both men turned away, not letting her see their faces, even Garth making a gesture that she recognized as a common one—to avert ill fortune. She was ashamed of her bad temper at once, but oh, she was weary of this journey. Weary and lonely and confused. Though she had at first been grateful to Alicia for helping her escape Delganor, now it seemed she had not escaped at all, or had gone aside from her future only momentarily, until a great fish reminded her of it!

“Softly, daughter,” murmured Garth. “It will only be a day or two more.”

“Yes, Papa,” she replied in a subdued voice. “I’m sorry I spoke out of turn.”

“Have you … seen what you speak of?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps it was only a dream.”

He sighed. “The Duchess told me you … see things sometimes. She said to keep it hidden if we could. All in all, you’ve handled all this better than I expected. My own daughters would have done no better. But how is it you know all this about how large the ocean is? I thought you girls were limited to pretty chatter and the economics of housekeeping. I didn’t know you learned geography.”

“We don’t,” she said, somewhat shamefaced. “But we learned to read, and once one can read, one can learn anything. I know this ocean is a very large ocean, and when the great waves come spouting out of holes at us, or when I look across the reefs at the endlessness of it, it reminds me how tiny this boat is. I believe there are creatures in this sea far larger than this boat and more knowledgeable than we can imagine.”

He listened to only part of this. “It is a small boat,” he agreed. “And these are cramped quarters to grieve the loss of one’s love in.”

She laughed, almost gaily. “How could I lose what I didn’t even know I had? At school, when we talked of such things, it was never mentioned that one’s first kiss could also be the last!”

“Oh, come, come, now. Not the last, certainly.”

He patted her shoulder, while she thought privately that he was a good deal more sure of that than she was.

Two days later, early in the morning, they came into port at Headway, a shoreline town at the foot of the cliffs that made up the Head of Merdune. Garth rented a light carriage and a strong horse, and they set out at once for Weirmills, driving all day on the switchback road that took them to the heights overlooking the everlasting sea. At sunset they came up onto the top and looked down a long grassy slope to the Lake of the Eye. From the Eye a little stream ran away westward, scarcely more than a rivulet, but still the start of the Potcherwater, and on its near edge,
sprawled untidily among its meadows, was a rural clutter of shabby barns, listing hayricks, and ill-mended fences.

“We will stay in that village tonight,” said Garth. “Tomorrow, only a few hours west, down the little Potcherwater, we will home to Weirmills.”

“There are people on the road,” said Genevieve. “See, coming toward us?”

There were two riders on the road. Genevieve stiffened. They looked … one of them looked … no, both of them looked familiar. But, who?

From afar, the figures spied them against the sky. One turned to the other, then whipped up his horse and came at a gallop while the other followed, more slowly.

“Who?” said Garth. “Who can that be?”

“Aufors,” she cried. “It’s Aufors.” She put her heels into the horse’s sides and he, nothing loath with oats and hay awaiting in the town, plunged recklessly down the road.

When Garth arrived, they were leaning from their horses, making a kind of bridge of embraces, which Garth gently disentangled as the other rider came up, a woman.

“You must be Genevieve,” said the newcomer. “My cousin.”

“And you,” said Genevieve, staring into a face that was only a slightly changed version of her own, a face with the same eyes, the same nose precisely. “You are Duchess Alicia’s daughter. Lyndafal.”

N
IGHT, COOL, A SMALL BALCONY OPEN OVER THE STABLE
yard of a country inn. White curtains streamed into the room, blown by the night wind. The fire in the grate flared up, playing across the rose-brown skin of the woman by the hearth. The figure at the open balcony door closed it once more and resumed his seat by the fire. Aufors, with a worried face.

“So you were held captive by this man for how long?”

“I don’t know. There are no nights and days down there. A few days, I suppose.”

“Did he … hurt you?”

“Of course he hurt me,” she muttered, taking a deep breath. More calmly, she said, “And he humiliated me. I was tied up and not allowed to use a toilet. But he did no lasting damage.”

He nodded heavily, glancing at her lowered face from the corner of his eyes, wanting to ask a more specific question but deciding against it. “And then on the lagoon, there was a being who said you must go with Delganor?”

“If it was actually speaking, that is what I heard, yes.”

“A manlike being.” There was much he wanted to know about this being, but she seemed reluctant to speak of it. He had the feeling that if he pushed the matter, her fragile calm might be totally destroyed.

“Something that came from the sea,” she said fretfully.

“I think it had a head and a torso and four limbs, so it may have been manlike. Oh, Aufors, I really don’t know!”

“Or maybe …” he swallowed deeply, “it was froglike.”

“Frog, toad, monkey, I don’t know.” She looked so hag-ridden, so weary, that he turned away to the rumpled bed where they had come together like two comets, driven throughout all the ages of the universe to a fiery, impetuous meeting that should have lit up the skies with its heat. There they had lain until a few moments before, delaying any thought of reality. Now there was too much reality to suit him. He could not bear the thought of her held captive, the thought of her at the bidding of strange forces. He could not bear the thought of the man in the cavern, the manlike thing on the lagoon, both of whom had had her at their mercies. Or lack thereof.

Now he pled, “Marry me, Genevieve.”

She shook her head sadly and said no.

“I must go with Delganor,” she said, several times.

“Have you
seen
anything to do with Delganor?” He cried, hopelessly.

Genevieve shook her head again. “No. I have seen a city built of mud under a blazing sky. I have seen—or more properly heard—a huge voice crying or singing. I have seen blood on my hands and felt terror. Lyndafal has seen herself lying in the dust while her child is passed from hand to hand.” Though Lyndafal possessed the seeing, sometimes, vaguely, she had not learned from Alicia any of the things that Genevieve had learned from her mother. There had been no cellar-singing in Lyndafal’s life, nor any of … the other things. Somewhere in that lineage, the lore-line had been broken.

Genevieve ran her hands over her face, surprised to find that she still felt like the same person. She had expected to be changed, utterly changed. She gritted her teeth and went on, “The fish, if it was a fish, said our lineage was designed for this.”

“Our
lineage?”

“Well, according to Alicia, Lyndafal and I are both descended from Stephanie. She was Queen of Haven, once, though that title is only a courtesy one. Lords Paramount
rule and Queens sit still while they do it. The idea that a lineage can be designed for anything makes me rather angry. Who, here, knows how to design a lineage save in the sense that livestock is selected to be more thrifty or hardy?”

“Wouldn’t the … trait selected for be dissipated in each génération?”

“Perhaps it is not entirely in the genetic material,” Genevieve mused. “Perhaps it is merely a thing, an idea, a belief or a skill that is implanted in every member of that Une. There are descents tied to the female line, you know. This nose has afflicted generations of my foremothers.”

“Are there only the two of you?”

“I would think not.” Genevieve furrowed her brow in thought. “I had a little book, in Havenor, written, supposedly, by Stephanie herself. Someone had drawn a genealogy in the back of it, Stephanie’s line. One of Alicia’s foremothers, Mercia, had ten daughters, and each of them had three or more. One of them, Lydia, had five daughters, and they all had daughters. And my mother had sisters who had daughters. So did Lyndafal’s. The family runs to girls. There are probably … oh, dozens, maybe even hundreds of us.”

“But Alicia doesn’t have your … ‘talent.’”

“That may be a separate thing. All of us might have the pattern, but only some of us might be able to use it. If that’s what it is. Like a dress pattern.” Genevieve smiled, thinking of Veswees. “We all have the pattern inside us, but only some of us can turn it into a dress.” She stood up, bent, stretched, then came into his arms, settling on his lap, nestling there.

“I love you, Aufors. I have no doubt of that at all. But I cannot marry you. I must go back. I have no doubt of that, either.”

“But he gave me permission to marry you! I told you.”

“I know. But it doesn’t work the other way around. He didn’t give me permission to marry you. That worries me. It feels like a trap, one my road leads straight to, or through. So I go back, my darling.”

He gathered her tightly, his eyes full of tears. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ve fought it. I’ve run from it. I’ve worried over it, thinking up every excuse I can come up with. None of it’s any good. I promised. I’ll keep my promise. And then, when I’ve kept it, if I’m able, I’ll marry you.”

He tugged her back into the bed and they came together again in a spirit that was part desperation, part ecstacy, part renunciation, part something deeper and older and more profound than either of them could have identified if they had tried.

And even in the heat of it, he wondered why she would not marry him, and if it was for the reason she had given him, or for some other reason she had not told him at all. In the night he dreamed of her in the caverns, at the mercy of that old man, and on the sea, at the mercy of whatever it was who had come up out of the depths, and he awoke from that dream as he had awakened from others, shouting in terror, waking her also into fear. It required some time to settle them both.