The Deep Gods (20 page)

For days, Daniel searched through the ruined streets of Numith, sleeplessly. He came to those places where a few prisoners were held, and questioned them in a cold voice, his face like stone. He searched out survivors who came crawling from the cellars, and questioned them with the same relentless voice. Eshtak stayed with him constantly, and Galta came, too. But there were no answers. No one had seen what had happened, nor was Ammi’s body to be found.

He collapsed at last, his body driven beyond endurance, and slept in his quarters in the citadel. Few of the Council were left alive, but the city was slowly recovering some semblance of its life.

When Daniel began to recover, he seemed a stranger to Eshtak and to the others who had known him. He did not show his grief, and he asked no more questions; he seemed to have accepted the fact of Ammi’s death, though there was no proof. He moved silently about the citadel, and often disappeared for hours into the lower levels. Sarak, the oldest Councilor, who had somehow survived the storm, went with him at times, and at others he went alone.

When Messengers came, in great excitement, to find Daniel in the citadel, he was once again deep in the lower rooms. Eshtak went down the steep stairways with a torch, seeking him. He found Daniel in a room lit with oil lamps, before a long table on which scrolls were scattered.

He looked up with the same strange look he had worn for the dreadful days that had passed.

“There are sea folk in the harbor,” Eshtak said excitedly. “The fleet of Esmare is destroyed, they say. And they want you to come to them.”

Daniel stood up slowly and followed Eshtak out. As they mounted the stairs, Eshtak said quietly, “You destroy yourself, Daniel.”

The man ahead shrugged, and, after a moment, spoke.

“Not yet, Eshtak.
First, I’ve something else to do.”

“The lady Ammi may still live,” Eshtak said. They came out into the light, among the towering walls, and Eshtak put out the torch. “If she does not, there’s sorrow,” Eshtak went on. He put his big hand on Daniel’s shoulder and squeezed. “Sorrow comes to all men. Sometimes even to women, though I wonder about that at times.” He tried a dry chuckle, but Daniel did not speak.

They went out toward the harbor, along the empty streets. As they walked, Daniel stared ahead; then he spoke.

“You’re a good man to have for a friend, Eshtak. No, wait. You mistook me, I think. I… think she is dead, yes, and there’s a great pain, because of it.” He was silent for a moment. “But I’ll recover from that pain, in time. Do you know
,
that’s a strange thing, Eshtak? What hurts me is that I know I’ll forget the hurt.” He laughed harshly as they came down the steps to the quay.

Men were crowding around the stone jetty, where half a dozen dolphins swam slowly, surfacing occasionally. The crowd parted to let Daniel pass and stand at the water’s edge.

A dolphin reared, and spoke in deep boom, oddly tinged with pain.

“There has been a great evil, man,” it said. “We who were brothers fought, under the sea. Many died. The ancient peace has been broken.”

Daniel stood, looking down, knowing the dark meaning of what the sea beast said. It did not really matter who had won, or that the wall still stood; the peace had returned, even under the sea, but the evil remained, indelibly.

“I am sorry,” he said. The words sounded incredibly silly, somehow.

“Those who served the lost one came against us,” the dolphin said. “But the ships of Esmare are sunk or driven ashore. It is ended. But the Morra-ayar
send
to you, to tell you. You must still come to the place of deciding; the time has not yet come.”

It slid silently below the water.

Time passed. Daniel began, very slowly, to return to a kind of health, almost in spite of
himself
. It hurt to consider that Ammi must be dead, and as he had thought, it was painful to discover that he could absorb the fact, and that the scar could heal. He worked hard; there was much to do. Now he was regarded as a hero, of sorts, and there were times when he began to enjoy that, a little. But it helped to be so regarded when it was necessary to bring life back to the wounded land.

He learned to read some of the ancient writings, with Sarak’s help. Much of what was in the scrolls was of no value, but the older ones contained strange, teasing bits of history and of other knowledge. There were fragments left from what Daniel felt sure had been a higher level of civilization, a world that seemed to have nearly reached a technology equal to his own. But the scrolls were no more than a small part of his work. He had searched his memories, trying to reinvent a whole range of useful devices and methods; setting artisans to work on whatever might prove to be immediately worthwhile, and writing down details of still other gadgets.

I’m handing these people the whole damned nineteenth and twentieth century, wrapped up, he thought with a faint feeling of uneasiness. It’s an impossible paradox; it can’t be. Unless something comes along that will literally toss the whole culture back into the Stone Age again… and Daniel dropped his pen, and sat, wondering.

Ships had set off to the west to find and help those who had fled to those lands from Eloranar, and other ships went to the frozen south, to Alvanir. There, the last of those who would leave were taken aboard and brought north.

His other friends had returned to the country of the river people, where they seemed more at home; only Eshtak remained. Eshtak was privately pleased when Daniel began to work, but it puzzled him that Daniel should seem to spend all his waking time in his labors. On one or two occasions, Eshtak managed to arrange certain matters, sending carefully selected girls to cross Daniel’s path. Daniel treated them very well, and sent them away within a day or two, usually; and forgot their names in a week.

It did not seem quite healthy to Eshtak, especially now that spring had come again, and there were so many pretty girls about the city.

Daniel stood at a high window in the citadel, looking out over the city and the wall. He smelled the sharp odor of the wind from the sea, and breathed in deeply. It’s time, he thought.

He had already made his preparations, weeks before. Every detail was arranged. There was no more that he could recall to put down in his scrolls for the use of the workmen and builders, no other real need for him, anywhere. The difference between an engineer and a king, he thought; when an engineer’s work is done, he can quit. He smiled a little bitterly.

“We’ll go in the morning,” he said. Eshtak, at the door, nodded silently. Daniel turned and looked at him. “You don’t have to come, you know.”

“I remember you said that, a year or so ago, when we were in the moors,” Eshtak said, grinning. “You also asked me to tell you if I thought you did a foolish thing.”

“Well, am I?”

Eshtak shrugged. “I don’t understand,” he said. “But then, I don’t understand many things that you do. What do you seek, in the Locked Sea?”

“I told you,” Daniel said.
“The beast.
The lost one.”
His mouth hardened. “For vengeance, if you like.
Or for the future of things.
As long as he lives, he will search for a way to gain his ends.”

Eshtak watched his face. “No man has ever returned from the Locked Sea,” he said. “No ships sail it, and ghosts dwell on its shores, they say.”

“Afraid?”

Eshtak laughed.
“Certainly.
I’ll be more afraid when we reach that sea, and even more so if you find the lost one himself.” He grinned. “But if anybody could slay such a beast, it would be
yourself
.”

“I think I must kill him,” Daniel said, staring out of the window. “But the strange thing is that I don’t wish to do it. I… need to face him, to discover what he is. Maybe… what I am. He caused death to thousands, broke the peace of the sea… and through him,
she
died. But how can a man hate… that? Whatever he is, he’s almost beyond things like simple vengeance and hate.”

“You speak as if he were a god,” Eshtak said. “He is flesh, as we are. As the Morra-ayar
are
.”

Daniel looked oddly at him. “We’ll see if he is.”

Chapter X

This time, the journey through the valleys was not in haste; in every city there was welcome for the Lord Daniel of Numith. At times it was difficult to break away, especially for Eshtak; he usually managed to perform the feat, however. In the last city they passed through, Kratonis, it was nearly impossible because of certain complexities in the Kratonian female character.
Particularly the Queen’s, as Eshtak said sorrowfully later.

“It seems that she was, after all, willing to take second best,” he told Daniel. He fingered a bruise on his cheek as they rode. “But once having her wish, she didn’t like to give it up again,” he added. “It surprises me, at times, that I should have this strange power over women.”

Daniel laughed.

They rode through passes that led up toward a range of mountains, which lay where Turkey would be. Seeing them in the distance, Daniel was almost doubtful of his location, at first. They seemed much higher than the land of
his own
time. Yet it was the right latitude, and the Locked Sea should lie beyond, if he could find a pass through.

He had chosen twenty men, most of them Numithians, the best he could find; good riders and brave. But when he told them where they were to go, all but six had finally refused. He did not try to play on their honor; if he had, all would have gone. But the terror of the Locked Sea was too much for even brave men, and a man in fear would be of no use. So, with Eshtak, eight men rode up into the windy passes, climbing higher each day.

There were small deer, at times, and a mountain stream that was alive with small trout. And there was, for a while, enough grazing for their mounts, although it grew scantier as they went. Then for two days they struggled through a narrow pass where wind blew, icy and snow-filled. On the other side, the mountain was kinder. Before long, they were among scraggly trees once more.

Then, in the distance, they saw a glittering flash. The sun, on water; it was the Locked Sea.

As they came closer, a mist came over the land, and the sky. According to the tales, it was usually thus, around the Locked Sea, dense fog or light mist, but never clear air. They rode on, going now through immense old trees that reminded Daniel of redwoods. He was fairly sure they were not, though he couldn’t name them. But looking up at them as he rode past, he thought that even one such trunk might make a huge canoe, such as he had planned to build for the search.

Eshtak, riding beside him, was staring at something else. Each time they passed a wider space in the trees, Eshtak’s head turned, and he looked more puzzled. Finally, he rode nearer to Daniel’s mount, and spoke.

“There’s something here I don’t… really like,” he said in a low voice. The six men rode well-apart among themselves, and plainly, Eshtak wanted to keep his thought to Daniel’s own ear.

“Look,” Eshtak said. They passed a clear space among the trees again, and Daniel tried to see what Eshtak meant. He could see nothing unusual.

“Like streets,” Eshtak said. “I’ve never seen a forest so…”

Now, Daniel saw his meaning. The trees did seem to grow in oddly regular squares, with the spaces between like streets. Even the trees were spaced at intervals within the squares, in orchard lines. But the forest was old; brush grew heavily and there was nowhere any sign of any human hand.

“In my world, we planted trees sometimes, to replace a cut-down forest,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “A forest like that… might seem like this one, after a few hundred years or more.”

Eshtak looked nervous. “No man did this,” he said. “I’d heard tales of the… old ones. They were almost all gone, when the first men began to come into the lands, back of us. But the few that were left lived nearest the Locked Sea. Maybe some of them still live… or worse, their ghosts.”

Old ones?
Daniel remembered some of the scrolls in the citadel. The tale was consistent, anyway; he believed that the creatures were final survivals of the prior civilization that he had glimpsed, in the vision of the Morra-ayar. They did not seem horrible to him, then, or in imagination. Lizardlike, in a sense, but manlike as well, and like man in their ways… yet it must have been so long ago that it was hard to believe any of their kind still survived. Like dragons, Daniel thought, their terror would go on long after they’d vanished, in superstition.

“I doubt they did this, but I doubt they’ve left ghosts anyway,” he told Eshtak. “Besides, you’ll be in no danger unless they’re the ghosts of women.”

Eshtak laughed, but he still looked nervous.

Then they came suddenly onto a strand of muddy gravel, and the sea rolled, dark and oily, just beyond. The mist was very heavy, though it was noon. It was not possible to see more than a few hundred feet out into the milky whiteness.

“We’ll camp, and set up our work,” Daniel said as they drew rein. He stared out into the mist. “He may know we’re here, as the sea folk know such things… and he may come to us first. If he doesn’t, I’ll find him, sooner or later.”

They built a fire, and two of the men went into the forest while Daniel and another pair of men waded into the shallows with nets. There were fish in plenty, and the two hunters returned before dark with fat birds. It was a good place, plainly; a man couldn’t starve, though he might take a chill easily enough.

Daniel sat by the dying fire, wrapped in a cloak. One man stood guard, in the shadow, and another would take his place later. Tomorrow, Daniel thought, they would put together a rough shelter that would serve for a while.
Then, a canoe, which would take a couple of weeks.
He had it planning, as he sat; a complete image of a big dugout log, with outriggers and a sail of matting. It wouldn’t be the equal of those ancient Polynesian craft on which his mind modeled it, but it would do to hunt the coastlines.