Singer from the Sea (60 page)

So, this morning, when she fell into a doze, the others moved around her quietly, letting her sleep, only to be startled half out of their wits as she sat up suddenly and screamed. It was an enormous cry, one that went out of her like a visible thing, like a great wing of sound, reverberating among the rocky cliffs, propagating as it soared over the desert, going away among its own echoes still sounding, plangent as an enormous bell.

This was followed by a profound hush, during which her companions scarcely breathed. Thus, silenced within silence, they heard from afar an answering sound, lower, and yet alike, a sound that did not diminish but went on and on, like the endless vibrations of a tuning fork.

Genevieve staggered to her feet in one panicky motion, and the others shook off their immobility and surrounded her, as she glared with wide eyes into the cliff face that sheltered them as though it were a door into some other world.

“I see,” she cried. “Oh, I see.”

“What,” urged Joncaster, coming to place his hand on her shoulder. “What do you see?”

“They said call upon them on the sea,” she whispered, eyes focused on something they could not see. “We must get to the sea. There is a place by the shore where a pillar of stone rests on a black pedestal. I see a great stone serpent, a horned serpent …”

“We know the place,” said Gilber. “It marks on offshore deep …”

“A ship is coming there.”

“What … Who … told you?” asked Melanie.

Genevieve laughed, almost hysterically. “Your spirit, I suppose. The one you’re so determined to convince me of!”

“Te wairua taiao?”

“The one you say you’ve never seen.” She put her head in her hands, shuddering. “Oh, Aufors, Aufors … Please, someone, help him! He’s … he’s wounded. He’s sick. He needs help.”

“Where?” cried Joncaster. “How?”

“I see a red cliff with a black layer in it, like a wide stripe. I see him moving … moving bodies. Moving women’s bodies away from the lichen, so they won’t be found there. He is wounded, the wound is infected. He’s delirious. I don’t know if he lives … ah, Aufors … I see a red cliff and I see rocks covered with birds, along the shore …”

“You’ve seen three separate places,” muttered Joncaster.

“Aufors at the red cliff or the bird rocks,” Genevieve cried. “The serpent rock is something else …”

“We’ll empty two sleds at the refuge tonight,” offered Enid, “and send one to the bird rocks and one to red cliff …”

“No,” said Joncaster. “We’ve seen proof of her visions already, Enid. We’ve seen that delay is a mistake. We’ve already reduced the loads by half, so we’ll unload two of them onto the other five. If her man is there and wounded, best we find him while he’s still alive.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Genevieve muttered. “Take care. Oh, Joncaster,
that’s
why Aufors was moving bodies! I
said they would come! They
have
come! The Aresians! Mahahm-qum is taken. Havenor is taken. The Lord Paramount, oh, see him go down, down. Oh, now he lies deep, deep in the tunnels below Havenor. The Shah is no more. Oh …” She put her hands to her head, her eyes wide, unseeing. “More. Animals? From below Havenor? I told Veswees … it wasn’t supposed to be animals …”

“What do you mean, wasn’t supposed?”

“I’d seen something else moving from Havenor. No matter, no matter, it will have to wait. My father. He’s up there behind us, following us. He has murder in his eyes. There is danger …”

“What else?” murmured Melanie, with a shocked look at the others.

She started to speak, started to scream, then held it in, clamped down upon it. “Nothing,” she murmured. “Nothing. Only the sea, the waves of the sea, the surf breaking on the serpent rock. You must bring Aufors there …”

Joncaster shared a look with Melanie, half awe, half skepticism. “You’ve seen enough to keep us all busy, Genevieve,” he said at last. “The rest of you head for the standing stone. Jorub and I know where both the other places are.”

They began to bustle, unloading and reloading the sleds, while Genevieve sat with her head down, concentrating. The last of the dream. After she had seen the serpent rock. She was there with Aufors and the baby. Someone … someone was threatening her. Someone said, “Genevieve knows, she’s such a clever, clever girl …” and then someone else pursued her, and she climbed onto that horned rock, with Dovidi. Oh, Dovidi. She climbed that rock, carrying the baby and then … then …

She looked up, shuddering.

Joncaster put his hand upon her shoulder. “What is it, Genevieve? Something else we should know?”

Her eyes focused and she took control of herself. She would not speak of the stone. Not yet. “My father wants to kill you, and then he will give me to the Prince.”

“Gilber can circle behind your father to keep him off you. Jorub will go to the bird rocks, and I’m taking Etain with me,” said Joncaster, nodding toward the men from
the marae. “If your husband is at red cliff, he’s still near where the bodies are, and if he hasn’t moved them all, perhaps we can finish the job. The Aresians mustn’t find out what they’re there for …”

“I’ll circle out behind your father,” said Gilber. “You’re sure he’s out there alone.”

“Yes,” said Genevieve, positively, almost pityingly. “He’s always been alone.”

From a rocky height some distance to the west, the Marshal peered down at a straggling and almost invisible track leading toward the rocky wilderness along the coast. He had followed the track all day, even catching recurrent glimpses of the travelers. Once he had seen a line of sleds sliding over the top of a dune and had counted the people on them: seven drivers, plus one.

The one was surely Genevieve. He had not believed she had gone elsewhere, no matter what Y’bon Saelan had said. Genevieve had inherited her mother’s unwarranted cleverness, her mother’s ability to gather information she should not have any inkling of and put it together to draw a conclusion that was always and infuriatingly correct. Women were quite bad enough when they were as stupid as they were expected to be. When they were intelligent, perceptive, when they saw through each courteous evasion to the facts one would prefer not to discuss …

Why should a man be labeled a monster by laying his motives out in that way when a few harmless evasions would allow his reputation to be unstained and his family to be comfortable? Genevieve’s mother could not have been comfortable in paradise! The questions she used to ask! The way she worried at things! The answers she came up with! She had probably known all about P’naki years before he did. He was certain of it. He remembered her looking at him almost pityingly, with those strange, all seeing eyes….

The previous afternoon, when he had sneaked close to the ones he was following, downwind of them, he had heard his wife’s voice, coming over the sands. He had actually looked up, expecting to see her, before realizing it was not wife but daughter he heard. Genevieve was like
her, so like her, with that same voice, that same cleverness. Oh, depend upon it. She knew! She knew all about it.

Women were not supposed to know the truth! They had their youth, their comforts, their purity of soul to guarantee them an eternity fluttering like butterflies among the flowers of paradise. So the Invigilator had said. Being butterflies wasn’t an immortality a man would want, but no doubt it served for women. Thank heaven Genevieve’s mother had died. Knowing what he knew now … he was glad she had died.

And what a fool he had been not to have known sooner! Of course, his own father had died young, in battle, while he, the Marshal, was only a boy. There were no other male relatives. So, it had been left to Rongor, though the fool had given him as much misinformation as fact! Rongor had intimated the Prince was in charge of the P’naki matter. Perhaps Rongor had merely inferred this from the Prince’s lordly manner, but in any case, he had been mistaken. It was the Shah who controlled P’naki, and the Shah had no high regard for the Prince. Idiot Rongor, who had worshipped the Prince and who had not known the truth until it was too late….

And he, himself! He had tried to expedite the delivery of his daughter into the hands of the Mahahmbi! He had left the doors open, so they could come in and get her, and he had gone to the palace to announce that fact. Instead of being congratulated for solicitous behavior, he had been taken prisoner and his guards had been slain before his eyes. Even then, perhaps, things could have been differently managed if he had known the Shah’s true feelings.

“What does this mean?” he had asked, when the Prince and Rongor had involuntarily joined him in the palace guest suite.

“A momentary hitch,” the Prince had said, loftily. “The Shah is merely making a point. When he is finished making it, all will be well.”

“Then there is no danger?”

“I am in no danger, Marshal. Don’t concern yourself. I have seen these little fits before.”

Well, the Prince had been in no danger, that much was true, though the Marshal had foolishly allowed himself to
be misled by that fact and by the Shah’s soft words. The Shah had referred to them as his “guests.” The Shah had spoken regretfully about the “misunderstanding” with those on the ship. The Marshal had been lulled.

His comfort had ended that night when the three of them were summoned onto the desert by the Shah’s minister—to admire a comet, so the minister said. There had been no comet, though they had stood awhile in a patch of blood lichen, looking upward at starry heavens. While they were thus distracted, the Shah’s men had surrounded Rongor and cut him down. He, the Marshal, would have moved to defend the Invigilator had not the Prince held fast to his arm. The Prince’s face had remained impassive. He had not even looked at the Marshal as he held him fast.

So were the Shah’s true feelings and power made clear. So was the Prince’s subordinate position illustrated. So was the Marshal’s danger made manifest. While they watched, the Invigilator’s dry-sucked head had been put on a stake in the center of the lichen. A warning, said Ybon Saelan, in a loud clear voice, a warning that this place was unblessed by the Shah,
and there could be no I ‘naki without the blessing of the Shah.

Meantime, the Shah himself had smiled and smiled, at the Prince, at the Marshal, at the others there, letting them all know that P’naki belonged to the Shah, only the Shah, and they had best not try to interfere again.

After that, they had stayed penned in the palace during the so called holy days and while the people of Mahahm-qum prepared for war. Day on day they had sat in the Shah’s throne room, eaten at the Shah’s table, and observed the Shah’s growing irrationality, his putrefying resentment, his erratic malevolence. It was obvious the Shah was teetering on the edge of sanity and standing too near him was to woo death.

While matters were in such flux in Mahahm, the Marshal felt it made good sense for him to be out of reach. It was not quite honorable of him to have left the Prince, true, but since he had learned how much additional life Genevieve’s blood would buy him, honor had seemed less important. He wanted those extra years. He had earned
them. He deserved them. And he would return Genevieve to Mahahm-qum to be a candidate for the Prince!

On the eastern side of the Stone Trail, the Frangían ships were plowing steadily southward, toward their enclave on the continent of Mahahm. The Lord Paramount’s airship had been spotted earlier that day, the Lord Paramount’s message had been delivered, and the airship had reinflated itself and flown away northward. Now they had the next duty to perform, which did not trouble them. Being Frangían, nothing troubled them much.

Therefore, there was some wonder at the tone of the lookout’s voice when he shouted in panicky fashion, “Yo. Sir. Something out there. Something …”

Those on deck followed the direction of the lookout’s flailing arm, seeking along the line of islands for whatever it was that had caused such consternation. At first they saw nothing, but then … well, they saw a something. A very large something protruding from behind one of the rocky islets, something vaguely goldish in color and enormous in size and roundish in shape, though no one could give a name to it. On the back of Whatever-it-was were other whatevers they could not identify, and above and around were other whatevers yet in the sky and in the sea. All of these things or creatures were moving south along the outer or western side of the islands, all of them silent, all of them taking no notice whatsoever of the Frangían ship.

The men turned, as was their habit, to the Captain for reassurance in their faith.

“Whatever happens,” said that worthy. “Whatever is inevitable. Whatever always differs from what was. Be at peace in the Whatever. Let us offer our adoration.”

When they turned to adore, however, Whatever was gone. Still, they had marked its direction. They would follow it, for it was the Frangían way always to discover whatever. The ship heeled in the brisk wind and began a westward tack that would take them between two rocky isles and down the west coast of Mahahm.

Outside Mahahm-Qum, Terceth Ygdaleson sat in his tent with Captain Dunnel, watching a straggling caravan
approach across the sands. In the lead, ahorse, were two men, a prince of Haven and a minister of Mahahm, and in a horse-drawn travois between them was the body of the Shah, a statue of his former self.

“Sir,” said Dunnel. “That sounds exactly like what happened to Obrang!”

“One of their men disappeared, also, a high-ranking Havenite, the Marshal,” said Terceth. “The man who disappeared here was a malghaste. So you said.”

“I may have been wrong sir. The man the Prince wanted was the Marshal’s son-in-law. The man we had might have been him.”

“Wrong coloring, you said.”

“He could have dyed his hair, sir. I should have checked at the time …”

“Nonsense, Dunnel. It wasn’t as though you turned him loose! I said hold him, you held him, it wasn’t your fault he vanished like piss in the sand. That blockhead, Obrang, was responsible if anyone, and his fate fit him like a glove. Once a blockhead, why not a blockbody as well, ah? Assume the prisoner was the one the Prince wanted. You think this is some kind of family poison? Something they all carry?”