The Dragon in the Sword (12 page)

When next I rose up I was in full charge of my senses. I apologised to everyone. I turned and began to make my way back to our hull. From the ground the grouping of hulls was even more impressive. It was almost as if every great transatlantic liner, including the
Titanic
, congregated here, each one neatly beached with its bow pointing inland, each one bearing on its back a complete and complex medieval town. This sight took my attention away from Ermizhad just a little. I knew that I was experiencing something akin to a continuing hallucination, an extension of my dreams that past night. Yet there was no question but that the woman resembled Ermizhad, down to the shape of her mouth and the subtle colour of her eyes. So the women were Eldren. Yet they were not from the same time, probably not even the same realm, as the one from which I had been wrenched against my will. I resolved to contact those women as soon as I could. They might have some clue, at least, to Ermizhad’s whereabouts. And I might also discover why they called for Sharadim.

Von Bek and I had been wise to take all our possessions with us when we left our quarters. When we reached Armiad’s portcullis and called to the guard to open it for us there was a silence. This was followed by some kind of mumbled reply to our third request for the gate to be opened.

“Speak up, man!” cried von Bek. “What’s the trouble?”

Finally a guard on the other side yelled that the gate was stuck and that it would be a number of hours before it could be repaired.

Von Bek and I looked hard at one another and smiled. Our suspicions were confirmed. Armiad could not dismiss us from his hull but he could do everything in his power to make life uncomfortable for us.

For my part I was as glad to be out of his company and we made our way back to the part of the ship where our student friends generally congregated. Some of them were there, playing their interminable game with counters, although Bellanda, we learned, had gone to take instruction from a teacher recently dismissed from their school.

With Jurgin’s willing assistance, we continued to watch the preparations being made for the Massing. Various stalls, pens, tents and other temporary buildings were being erected. Each group from the Six Realms had brought goods they wished to trade, as well as livestock, publications, new tools. The people of the Draachenheem seemed a little disdainful of the others while the Ghost Women kept themselves thoroughly apart.

One group seemed more used to trading. They had the hardy, simple look of a people who regularly carried on barter in a variety of locations. It was the way in which they set up their stalls, looked at their neighbours, chatted amongst themselves, which characterised them. The only surprise, for me, was their inefficient boats. They must be more used to making overland treks for their normal trading, I thought. These were the people whose realm was called Fluugensheem, who were protected, I remembered being told, by a flying island. They seemed singularly ordinary for folk so exotically named.

There was still no sign of those who had come here in the oddly shaped ark, nor of the occupants of the three bulky paddle-steamers.

“This evening,” Jurgin told me, “they will begin the first ceremony, when all announce themselves and give up their names. Then you shall see them, every one, including the Ursine Princes.”

He would say no more. When I asked him why the Ursine Princes were so named he would only grin at me. Since my chief interest was in those they called the Ghost Women, I was not greatly upset by his deliberate mystification.

Needless to say von Bek and myself were not amongst those invited to attend the first ceremony, but we watched from the rigging of the
Frowning Shield
as gradually the various peoples of the Six Realms began to assemble about the monolith. This was called, I was told, the Meeting Stone and had been erected several centuries before, when these strange gatherings first began. Until then, Bellanda informed me, all the various realms had regarded the others with superstitious fear and had fought each other at random. Gradually, with familiarity, they had struck upon this means of trading and exchanging information. Every thirteen and a half months, apparently, the Six Realms intersected so that each realm could enter any one of the others. This period was brief—three days or so—but it was enough for everyone to conduct their business, so long as it was agreed that only the most formal rules were applied. No time could be wasted on anything but the agreed activities.

Now the stolid merchants of Fluugensheem came to take their places on one side of the monolith. Next the Ghost Women of Gheestenheem arranged themselves on the other side of the Meeting Stone. They were followed by six Baron Captains of the Maaschanheem, six splendid lordlings of the Draachenheem, and, from the strange steamers, six fur-festooned and bearded Rootsenheemers, wearing great metal gauntlets and metal masks which obscured the top halves of their heads. But it was the last contingent which stunned me.

The Ursine Princes were precisely named. The five great, handsome beasts who marched out of their ark and down the lowered ramp to the ground were not human at all. They were bears, bigger than grizzlies, clad in rippling silks and fine plaids, each wearing upon his shoulders a kind of delicate frame from which, suspended over his head, hung a banner—doubtless the banner of his family.

Von Bek was frowning. “I am astonished. It is as if I look at the legendary founders of Berlin! You know we have legends… My family has stories concerning intelligent beasts. I had thought they spoke of wolves, but doubtless it is of bears. Have you seen anything like the Ursine Princes in your travels, Daker?”

“Nothing quite like them,” I said. I was greatly impressed by their beauty. Soon they, too, were grouped around the Meeting Stone and we were able to catch a few words of the ceremony. Each person gave his or her name. Each described his or her intention in coming to the Massing. This done, one of the Baron Captains declared: “Until the morning!”

The response came: “Until the morning!” Then they all went their separate ways, back to their own ships.

I had strained to hear the Ghost Women announce their names. I had heard nothing which even remotely resembled the sound of “Ermizhad”.

That night we were guests of the students, sleeping in their already cramped quarters, constantly inhaling ash, besieged by draughts, rolled from side to side by sudden movements of the hull which, although it did not travel, was still subject to peculiar shudderings, like someone in a disturbed sleep. It sometimes seemed to me that the
Frowning Shield
was in tune with my own state of mind.

Again my sleep was constantly interrupted by nightmares. I heard the Ghost Women chanting, still, but no longer in my dreams. I could hear them in their own camp. I longed to go to them but the one time I rose, with the intention of going over the side once more, both von Bek and Jurgin took hold of me and stopped me.

“You must be patient,” von Bek said. “Remember your promise to us.”

“But they are calling for Sharadim. I need to know what they want.”

“They want her, surely. Not you.” Von Bek’s voice was urgent. “If you left now Armiad and his men would be bound to see you. They’d feel within their rights to kill you. Why risk that when tomorrow you can approach them under the terms of the Massing?”

I agreed that I was being childish. I forced myself to lie down again. I lay there, looking up through the gaps in the roof at the occasional spurt of glowing cinders, the grey, cold sky, trying not to think of Ermizhad or the Ghost Women. I slept a little, but sleep only allowed the voices to sound louder in my ears.

“I am not Sharadim!” I cried out at one point. It was dawn. Around me the students were stirring. Bellanda made her way through the sleeping bodies. “What is it, Flamadin?”

“I am not Sharadim!” I told her. “They want me to be my sister. Why is that? They do not call me. They do call me—but they call me by my sister’s name. Could Sharadim and Flamadin be the same person?”

“You are twins. But one is male, the other female. You could not be mistaken for her…” Bellanda’s voice was a little sluggish with sleep. “Forgive me. I suppose I’m talking nonsense.”

I put out my hand and touched her. I was apologetic. “No, Bellanda, it is I who should apologise. I talk nonsense a great deal of the time at present.”

She smiled. “Then, if you think that, you cannot be completely insane. You say those women were chanting all night for Princess Sharadim? I could not hear them so clearly. It sounded like an incantation. Do they believe Sharadim is a supernatural creature?”

“I cannot say. Until now I have always recognised the name I hear in my dreams. I have responded to it. I was Urlik Skarsol, then I was a variety of other incarnations, then Skarsol again and now Flamadin. The fact is, Bellanda, that I know in my bones they should be calling me!”

But because this sounded like egomaniacal ravings (and might have been) I stopped myself from continuing. I shrugged and lay back in my blanket. “Later,” I said, “I shall have the chance to answer them face to face.”

And I slept a little longer, dreaming only pleasantly of my life with Ermizhad when together we had ruled the Eldren.

By the time I awoke again everyone else was already up. I stretched, stumbled to the communal washing stands and tried to clean oily grime from my body.

When I next looked towards the Massing Ground I was surprised and impressed by what I saw.

In some parts little groups of people stood engaged in eager conversations. I saw two bears squatting beside a Ghost Woman displaying charts and all three talking vigorously. Elsewhere the bright awnings of market stalls offered an illusion that this was no more than an ordinary country fair, while the lie was given by a pen in which two awkward and bad-tempered lizards, standing upright on their hind legs and resembling a kind of dinosaur, snapped with red mouths at two Maaschanheemers who were pointing out aspects of the saddles and harness on these beasts and questioning their owner, a tall Draachenheemer. Doubtless the lizards gave that folk its name.

All manner of weird livestock was on display, as well as animals more familiar to me. There were certain goods which I failed completely to identify but which plainly were in great demand.

The noise of all these exchanges was loud but reasonably good-humoured. Many people walked in small groups, neither buying nor selling, but merely enjoying the spectacle.

Over near the great ark, vessel of the Ursine Princes, a less pleasant aspect of the day could be seen. Here were frightened teenage boys, stark naked and chained together, being inspected by Ghost Women. I could scarcely believe that the Eldren had become so corrupt as to be slave-owners and cannibals.

“Are these the people you claim are so much nobler than human beings?” said von Bek. He spoke sardonically, but he was plainly disgusted by the sight. “I can hardly find help for my own mission here, if such things are commonly permitted.”

Bellanda joined us. “The Ursine Princes rule a realm where the humans are savages. They kill and eat one another. They buy and sell one another. So the Princes feel it is an ordinary custom amongst humans and do not see why they should not benefit. The boys are well treated—by the bears, at least.”

“And what do the women do with them?”

“Breed from them,” said Bellanda. She shrugged. “It’s no more than a reversal of a situation commonly found amongst our own people.”

“Except that we don’t cook and eat our wives,” said von Bek.

Bellanda said nothing.

“For all that,” I said, “I am now going down there. I intend to approach the Ghost Women and ask them some questions. Surely that is permitted?”

“Permitted to exchange information,” said Bellanda. “But you must not interrupt a bartering while it is in progress.”

We disembarked from the hull with a crowd of others who were interested in the sights and who casually inspected the variety of goods for sale. With von Bek in my wake, I headed directly for the area near the white ships where the Ghost Women had pitched their tents and enclosures of tightly woven silk. Finding no-one outside, I walked to the largest of the pavilions. The opening was unguarded. I entered. I stopped in some consternation.

Von Bek behind me said: “My God! A cattle market indeed.”

The place stank of human bodies. Here the slavers had brought their wares to be inspected. One scarred, wide-eyed soul especially impressed me. Some were presumably embarrassed or ashamed by their calling. Others preferred to strike their bargains in relative privacy.

In the gloom of the tent I saw at least a dozen pens, their floors covered with straw, and within the pens were boys and youths, some of whom bore the marks of every kind of cruelty, while others were proud, holding themselves with straight shoulders and glaring into the unseen faces of the Ghost Women who looked them over. Many more were simply passive, as docile as calves.

But what really shocked me was the sight of Baron Captain Armiad, evidently in the process of striking a bargain with one of the ivory-clad women. A ruffian, who was plainly not of the usual hull’s complement, held a string of about six boys in a kind of continuous rope halter about their necks. Armiad was pointing out their virtues to the woman, making jokes to her which plainly she neither understood nor cared to hear. Doubtless he had discovered a more lucrative means of ridding himself of some of his surplus population and, since the other Maaschanheemers hated trading in slaves, felt himself safe enough from scrutiny.

He looked up in the middle of a greasy grin, saw von Bek and myself looking at him, and shouted with fury. “Spies as well as outlaws! So this is how you’d be revenged on me, when I discovered your perfidy!”

I held up my hands, trying to show him that I was not about to interfere with his business. But he was incensed. He knocked the rope from the hand of his hireling. He strode towards me. And he would not stop yelling.

“Keep the damned slaves!” he screamed at the surprised Ghost Woman. “Have them for your supper tonight, with my compliments. Come, Rooper, we have changed our plans.” He stopped when he reached me. His face was bright red. He glared up into my eyes. “Flamadin, you renegade. Why did you follow me? Did you hope to blackmail me? To shame me further in front of my fellow Baron Captains? Well, the truth is that I was not selling those lads. I had hoped to free them.”