The Gods Return (39 page)

"
I always liked the sea
," Carus said. "
Of course, that didn't keep it from killing me in the end
."

He chuckled. "
If it hadn't been the sea
," he added, "
it might well have been a woman. And I liked them too, lad
."

The boatman eyed the sail, then let out the sheet he'd snubbed to a starboard stanchion. Garric couldn't imagine how the fellow navigated; the sky was the featureless gray of a high overcast.

"Sir?" he said. They faced one another, so closely that Garric could have touched the boatman's knees just by stretching out his hand. "I'm Garric or-Reise. May I ask your name, please?"

"'The Boatman' will do," the man said, smiling again. "I don't have a name any more, only a task."

Garric cleared his throat in embarrassment, though the fellow hadn't been deliberately insulting. Mainly to break eye contact, he looked to starboard as they crested a swell.

Midway to the horizon, an enormous back humped out of the water. It continued for over a minute to drive forward in a shimmer of droplets, like the paddles of a millwheel. Neither the head nor the tail broke the surface before the whole dripping mass sank into the depths again.

"Sir?" Garric said. "What was that?"

The boatman adjusted the sail again, this time taking it in slightly. "What you see," he said, "isn't the reality, your highness. It's the shape your eyes—your mind, really—gives reality."

"Sir?" said Garric. "Are you what you seem to be?"

The boatman laughed without reservation. Sobering, he said, "Nothing is what it seems, your highness. Much as you or I might regret the fact."

As the boatman spoke, he fitted a pair of looped ropes around the tiller to lock it centered. His hands freed, he worked the lid from the enameled tin box beside him and took from it a scroll made of split reeds. The fore-edge was vermillion, and the winding sticks had gilt knobs. Garric couldn't have been more surprised if the fellow had pulled out a hissing viper.

"Why!" he said. "That is, ah; you're a reader, sir?"

The boatman looked at him with an expression of disdain. "Yes, I'm a reader, your highness," he said. "At the moment I'm reading Timarion, if the name means anything to you. Perhaps her ladyship can inform you of who Timarion was, since like her he was of the Old Kingdom."

Tenoctris had been staring over the bow when Garric last checked. She twisted to look around the mast to the men, caroling a laugh.

"I assure you both," she said, "that unless he happened to be wizard or write about wizardry, I wouldn't know anything about this Timarion. He could be the greatest poet of my day, and it wouldn't have mattered to me."

"I know who Timarion is, sir," Garric said formally. "Though I've read him only as excerpted by Poleinis."

He cleared his throat and added, "Even in Lady Tenoctris' day, there can't have been many copies of Timarion's work. It written nearly a thousand years before."

Garric knew he shouldn't have been so surprised that the fellow owned a book of such high quality. It was nothing you'd expect of an ordinary boatman, but there was nothing ordinary about this vessel. Still—neither was Garric an illiterate peasant who'd stumbled into kingship.

The boatman laughed again. "I was raised to believe that the sort of work I'm doing now was beneath a gentleman, your highness," he said in mild apology. "There are obviously compensations, but I
am
a menial when those who have authority require the services of this vessel. I'm afraid I sometimes allow myself to resent the assumptions that arise from my duties, however."

"I apologize, sir," Garric said. "You had the right of it."

After a pause he went on, "Poleinis judges Timarion harshly, as I recall?"

"Yes," said the boatman with a wry smile. "He would, wouldn't he? Since otherwise someone might notice that almost all his geographical information about the eastern portion of the Isles and the lands to the northeast of the archipelago was drawn directly from Timarion. What I've been doing for the . . . ."

His voice trailed off; his expression became briefly melancholy, then returned to its normal quiet resignation. "Time isn't important any more, is it?" he said. He faced Garric, but he was apparently speaking to himself. "The problem is—"

Now his gaze did meet Garric's.

"—that when I think that way, I'm apt to think that nothing is important any more, not even the knowledge which I accepted these duties to gain. That leads into troubled waters, your highness. Even for a philosopher like myself."

"Sir," said Garric, "I know some philosophers deny there's any difference between good and evil, but I don't agree with them. I don't think anyone who really lives in the world could. By helping Lady Tenoctris, you're helping good against evil. Which is purpose enough for me."

The boatman smiled. "I was never a man of action," he said, "but I'll bathe in your purity of purpose for the time being. Thank you."

He handed Garric the scroll. "What I'm doing now," he said, "is annotating obscure portions of Timarion. For example, he speaks of permanent settlements far to the north, where fishermen not only winter over and salt their catches but also plant barley and onions."

Garric adjusted the winding sticks to open the full width of a page. The writing was in an oddly narrow form of the Old Script, making it hard for a moment to determine which were loops and which were vertical strokes.

"These capes are far to the north of the islands of the Ostimioi," he read aloud, "but nevertheless they have been settled by men from Wexisame who first followed the currents hither. The Wexisamians do not allow men of other tribes to fish in these waters, though they meet them on rocky islets midway and trade there."

Garric looked up. "Surely that's the Ice Capes?" he said, handing back the book with the reverence it deserved.

"I have never visited the Ice Capes when the glaciers didn't cover them down to the shore," the boatman said. "If you're right, your highness, then Timarion was using sources from a very long time before even his own age."

He chuckled. "Or of course Timarion may have made the settlements up, as Poleinis predictably claims," he said. "With no evidence whatever. I will continue to search for a solution."

"And then?" said Garric.

"There are other cruxes, your highness," the boatman said. He closed the scroll and placed it back in its protective container. "I'm sure a scholar like me will never exhaust the possibilities of increasing his knowledge."

He fitted the tin lid, then leaned out to look beyond the bow. Straightening, he unlashed the rudder.

"We're approaching your destination, your highness," the boatman said. "I wish you and her ladyship good fortune in your activities there. I hope to return you to the waking world in good health."

He loosed the half hitches holding the sheet but held the sail in place with his hand. Looking at Garric again, he said, "I don't feel a lack of company, Prince Garric. Nonetheless your presence has not been a burden on me."

He threw the tiller to starboard and released several feet of sheet, though he didn't let the yard swing into Tenoctris. "I have brought you to your destination, your ladyship," he said; and as he spoke, the hull grounded on what this time appeared to be a muddy riverbank.

* * *

Cashel spun his quarterstaff before him at a leisurely pace as he walked toward the blob of light. The vivid blue sparks crackling from his ferrules would've drawn the eyes of almost anybody, but the two little demons stared at the red blur between them instead.

They didn't move, though the demons at even a short distance were clopping away as quick as their little hooves could move. They ran stiffly, bouncing like their legs didn't have any knees.

The goats, the only other things in this landscape, didn't pay much attention. One blatted a nasal warning when another, smaller, goat moved toward the bush it was methodically stripping the small gray leaves from.

A monster stood where the blotch of light had been, just as sudden as the flash when a mirror shifts to catch the sun. It was taller than Cashel, twice as broad as he was, and looked like a toad on two legs.

Really like a toad. It had a broad mouth, goggling eyes, and a nobbly hide colored like bricks that had weathered to a pale, scabby red. Cashel kept walking toward it.

The toad didn't move for a moment. The demons standing on either side of it tried to stay frozen, but the one on the right started trembling. The toad turned its head slightly; it didn't have a real neck. That demon shrieked, "The Lord!" and sprang away in a tremendous leap.

The toad's black tongue shot out like a javelin. The barbed tip spiked the demon two double-paces away. The tongue didn't look any thicker than a night-crawler, but to drill into the demon's bony chest like that it must be hard as steel.

The demon's arms shot up into the air and its legs splayed like they'd been stuck on by a child who wanted his dolly to stand up. It was as stiff as a dried starfish. The demon on the other side took off running—well, bouncing—as soon as it saw that the toad was busy with its friend.

"That's over now," Cashel said. It wasn't exactly a challenge, but he thought there ought to be something beyond him just smashing the toad's skull. That's what he'd do to an animal, but he didn't think this "Lord" was an animal even if it acted like one.

The toad drew its tongue back, hauling the demon with it. The spitted body was starting to deflate: the slender legs drew together and the torso slumped slowly down over the abdomen; the arms hung slackly.

Cashel stepped off on his right foot, bringing the staff around in a horizontal stroke aimed at the toad's head. The toad vanished. The demon flopped on the ground, empty as a split bladder. The hole at the base of the torso where the tongue had gone in oozed what looked like thin red jelly.

Cashel stepped forward to recover from the blow. His foot brushed the demon's corpse; it rustled. The skin had gone pale gray with a yellow underlayer.

"Behind you!" Rasile shouted.

He spun, leading with his right hand this time and punching the staff out like a battering ram. There was nothing when he started the blow save the wizard at a distance with Liane beside her, but the toad appeared a fraction of a second later—and vanished untouched by the driving iron butt cap as before. This time it gave a "Whuff!" of startled anger.

"Your right!" said Rasile.

Cashel turned, pivoting on the ball of his right foot. He swept the staff around with his left hand leading, stepping into the blow. The toad
was not/was/was not
standing before him, goggle eyes sparking with hate. Iron-shod hickory swished through where its head had been.

"Your right!"

That was awkward, but you couldn't expect the other guy in a fight to do the things that made it easy for you. Cashel punched the staff again, not a clean blow but he'd learned by now that the toad wouldn't be sticking around long enough to take advantage of him being off-balance. The creature was dodging the quarterstaff, but he didn't have time to think about it. As soon as his eyes caught movement, he vanished.

Like this time. The toad's size had been, well, a consideration—Cashel didn't
worry
exactly in a fight—at the start, but it wasn't willing to use its bulk and likely strength. Its blotched mass swelled out of nothing and then disappeared in a flicker, making it seem more like a cloud than an enemy. That was a dangerous way to think, so Cashel made sure he carried through on every stroke.

The last spin meant he was facing the canyon wall again, yellow-red sandstone with a surface that pretended to be crumbly. The corpse, really just the hide, of the dead demon was scrunched up against the rock where he must've kicked it. Or maybe the toad had? Did it really touch the ground when it flashed in and out of the air?

"Behind you!"

Cashel pivoted on his left foot; it meant a hair's breadth longer of an arc but it got him planted solider and moved him a little out from the side of the canyon. Hitting rock with the back of his stroke would end this fight right quick . . . .

Liane and Rasile were where they'd been. The wizard had spilled a figure of yarrow stalks on the ground in front of her. Where had she gotten the time?

Cashel swung with his right hand leading. At the same time Rasile chopped down her athame of black stone.

The toad
was not/was
—

Red wizardlight flickered over the huge body. It was barely a color, like dust lying on the bare blade of a sword. The toad didn't vanish.

The quarterstaff banged the left side of the toad's flat head. Cashel grunted; the heel of his right hand tingled as though he'd hit a full-grown oak tree.

His blow would've dented the bole of an oak tree, and it was strong enough to crunch bones in the toad's skull too. The creature staggered, throwing up arms so small that they looked silly on such a big body. Black blood dribbled from where the staff struck and also from the toad's left nostril.

Cashel spun the staff sunwise, pulling the stroke just a hair so that the ferrule would miss short if the toad jumped back. It did, just like Cashel figured it would. Instead of following through with the arc, he drove forward. His whole weight rammed the staff toward the creature like he was thrusting a spear. His leading butt cap slammed the base of the toad's broad neck, crushing bones this time too.