The Incompleat Nifft (30 page)

"Just for
your
information, grandchild, in the Benevolent Wanet-ka, you have chosen from the past the worst possible hero on whom to model your ambitions. A great man and warlock he surely was. But such a one as only greybeards like myself, who understand how to distinguish his triumphs from his lunacies, can intelligently honor. Wanet-ka! For the reasons you admire him, you might as well choose some great demon chief from these deeps to idolatrize."

"I don't idolatrize," the boy said hotly, "and you can just keep your jaw locked from now on."

The Privateer's jaw did indeed tighten shut. He reached forth his hand toward the boy. He was back in the stern, and so the boy didn't move, thinking the gesture a senseless one—until the Privateer's arm elongated impossibly, and a huge webbed claw half-engulfed the lad's head. Wimfort's horror was plain. Gildmirth said, "Your father didn't send
me
after you, boy. I live here, and may do so forever. For a false copper I'd take you back down and hand you to another Bonshad. Don't yank on my old grey beard, boy. I hurt all over in ways you'll never learn enough to understand. I'm in a nasty mood, grandson, and you watch your tongue most carefully with me, at all times."

Gildmirth's pique was surely forgivable. To hear such a squall as the boy had made raised over a three-month term in hell, for one who has stoically borne a sentence of three centuries, must be unimaginably irritating—especially when the short-term wailer makes his complaint en route to his freedom. Perhaps he regretted his anger, however, for he brought his arm back to its proper form, and went on in a gentler tone: "You must grasp, my boy, that I'm not disparaging your ambition. I admire your spirit. And when I force unwelcome information on you, I'm just trying to amplify your understanding, give you vital data on whose basis you can proceed to fulfill your dreams of sorcerous power. Do you think that I or my friends here are jealous of the greatness you propose for yourself? Why should we care one way or the other? We have our own pressing concerns. Since I happen to know something of the matter—a circumstance I regard as purely an accident of time and experience, and of which I am no-wise vain—I'm simply telling you that no serious wizard, save for some hard to imagine and highly specific aim, would meddle with the Elixir of Sazmazm. Its power is far too unwieldy—too great for accurate mastery and utilization—while its immense attractiveness to all the demons of this world makes the mere transport of it highly dangerous, assuming that it could be wrested from Sazmazm's vassals in the first place. I am told that you bear a spell of incorporation for the Elixir. Can you believe that making your body a jar for this substance could be anything but the rankest suicide down here? The first demon that caught you would make a fire and render the Elixir from you as casually as if you were a chunk of whale fat.

"You must understand. This Elixir is a powerful drug to the denizens of this world. It enhances their sensual and cerebral universe to a pitch of paradisiacal ecstasy. From even the most vanishingly small potations of it, they taste an amplification of spirit to which the intoxications of human prey are but the feeblest premonition.

"But leave all this aside. Suppose you brought the Elixir safely back to the surface-world? Your plans for its use might be unexceptionable—temperate, benign, creative—still the smell of it would be on you, so to speak. Within the first day of your homecoming, all the most powerful wizards on earth would know you had it—know who you were, and how to find you. Consider that phrase, please: `all the most powerful wizards on earth.' In my day, that was a crew that contained some great and remorseless predators. Whether or not many of those men still live—and many might—their like have surely been appearing throughout the intervening centuries. I'll say no more than to remind you of the chunk of whale fat."

The boy said nothing, but clearly it was only the demonstration that his preceptor was no mean magus that stilled his tongue. He squirmed and twitched with unspoken rebuttal throughout the Privateer's remarks. Gildmirth sighed, and the three of us returned to our wine while the boat, under his covert direction, returned us to his manse.

I sat facing the sea through an archway in the colonnade where we sat. The Privateer, sitting behind me, touched the back of my head. A whiteness and nothingness occurred. Then again, there was the archway and the sea beyond it. I was faintly dizzy, but this passed almost at once. I looked around, and saw that a cloudiness was just clearing from Gildmirth's bloody orbs. When he spoke his jaw at first moved numbly.

"You've lived much, Nifft. You leave me quite a world to be explored once I'm alone again."

His eyes mused a moment, and he chuckled and swore. I felt my past had been as air to his present imprisonment, and it made me glad. Barnar took his turn, and I saw that Gildmirth's touch lasted less than a minute. Again the Privateer rested, and marveled. When at last he looked at us, there was no self-consciousness in our looking-back. What would have been the point? Gildmirth smiled and said: "How tired I am of what I know of this world, my friends. How I crave to return to the learning of that more evanescent and various lore, the lore of living men."

"Listen," Barnar said, "Nifft and I have talked. We've agreed that if there's any way in which we could help you win your freedom from this place, we will put off our return until this is accomplished."

Gildmirth smiled again, and shook his head. A loud snort from Wimfort reminded us all of his presence. The Privateer had given the boy leather leggins and a byrnie of light mail from his own stores. The gear hung a bit roomily on his frame, which caused him an irritation that betrayed a habit of infallibly correct fitting-out—something the Rod-Master's pride of place would surely have seen to.

The snort was a prelude. The boy had been developing his strategy, and was now going to expostulate with us as though we were rational beings with at least as much say in the course of events as he had. He made a reasoning gesture with both arms, a very political bit of flourish which he almost had the hang of, and which a few more years of observing his father would make him perfect in. He addressed himself to the Privateer.

"I'm
convinced
that you aren't seeing the true advantages of an expedition for the Elixir. You've probably been down here a while. You seem to know your way around down here, you have some powers—guide us from here to scout inland for the Elixir! You have yourself, sir, given a hint of the immeasurable value it would have, even here among demon-kind. What could it not purchase? Impressive though your establishment here might be, surely you don't have absolutely everything you wish! Surely there is something you lack that you desire. Who has everything he wants?"

The Privateer had paled. Knots of murderous intention were forming at the corners of his jaw. Then, in his eyes, I could see the dull rage give way to more self-command—to a realization that the irony of the boy's words was accidental, and that Wimfort had no conception of our protector's situation—indeed, had surprisingly scant
attention
to spare for it, considering that Gildmirth manifestly commanded an outpost of influence in the sea itself. The Privateer expelled the last of his wrath in a deep sigh. Looking earnestly for a moment into the boy's eyes, he ended by laughing. "Oh Junior Rod-Master, it is truly well for you that you have these men for your escorts. If anyone, on your route home, can protect you from the consequences of your fatal misapprehensions, they can. Pray for the wit to appreciate their services, and to aid them in every way you can. Gentlemen—" Here he took our hands in turn. "—I honor you for your worth, which just lately I have come to know in detail. I thank you for your generous offer to help me. May all luck go with you. I cannot hope—for your sakes—that I will see you again, though the affection I bear you makes me wish it. For the trifling service I have done you—" (Here he glanced at Wimfort.) "—I am amply repaid."

Walking away from the Privateer was as hard as disarming would have been—piling my weapons on the ground and setting forth without them. When we had scaled the salt cliffs we raised our hands to him. He was far below, but I saw him nod very slightly as he stared back up at us. Then he turned and entered the manse—I think to spare himself the spectacle of our endlessly gradual disappearance as we dwindled from view along his clifftop skyline.

On first reaching the sea we had noted an offshore crag for a landmark, and thither we now doggedly bent our return course. We knew that by walking a diagonal path inland from the manse we could cut many weary leagues off our march, but the convenience of this was not worth the risk it entrailed. The route we knew offered dangers we had proven to be survivable, and for all we knew it was, in this, unique.

Naturally, Wimfort began gaping at the baubles down on the beaches, and immediately started demanding we stop, and go down for this or that trinket. I say "naturally" because I believe I understood him perfectly. He didn't really need to hear the answer we gave him: that such treasure-hunting would mean a dangerous re-entry of the sea's zone of influence, and that most of those riches were merely bait for man and demon alike. He didn't truly want those baubles; what he couldn't forbear to do was push at us. He was furious with us—not for anything we had done, but simply because we were the tardy, powerless drudges that we were. What he wanted was rescue by a wizard astride a golden griffon—an immediate plucking from the imprisoning waters (and
not
three months late, thank you) followed by a swift jaunt to pick up some of the Elixir of Sazmazm, and concluding with a prompt, painless return home, and the heating of Master Wimfort's bath.

And after all, how could the boy be otherwise? All he knew was to order us to do what he wanted. Reality, for him, did not run any other way than that. And here we were, telling him he was going to have to walk with us, through mire and peril, for more than a month, and that there was going to be no stop for some elixir en route. We offered mere escape—ignominious, arse-bare escape escorted by two scoundrels of unromantic appearance.

Rage and wounded pride look painful on a young face. Sixteen is a difficult age to get on with. There's much to like—the freshness, the force of conviction. But there is also a certain arrogance, an inevitable concomitant of development, perhaps, which one must always struggle to forgive. Wimfort had a great deal of freshness and enterprise, but he also required huge amounts of forgiving. He lashed us with pejorative epithets and sneers when we denied his will and bade him march on.

Verbal rebukes were powerless to curb his hectoring. At length Barnar and I conferred aside. We took some of the rope which Gildmirth had included in our provisions and rigged a humane though not extremely comfortable cradle. In this we trussed the boy. We hung him from one of our spears and carried him between us as hunters will a bush-pig they've bagged upcountry. An hour of this convinced him of our sincerity in telling him that henceforth he would cease to vilify us, or he would make the entire journey thus. Though successful in the short range, this ploy proved a mistake. When liberated the boy did, strictly speaking, stop vilifying us, but in insult's stead be muttered endlessly varied rehearsals of our punishment and death at the hands of his father, the august Kamin, Rod-Master of Kine Gather. Whenever this paled, the boy had only to scan the beach till he found some new thing there to demand and be denied. This accomplished, he was able to resume his vengeful soliloquy with fresh gusto.

Meanwhile his surroundings, the fabulous nature of his present position, were dawning on him. At times he fell silent, and caught his eyes marveling at the sea's horizon, exulting in its shore's tangled wonders. At these moments we glimpsed an impressive strength of will in the boy—an ambition sharp and forceful as a man's hatching within a heart and mind still childish in their scope and capacity. These glimpses did not increase our peace of mind.

When at last we approached our landmark Wimfort, gathering that we were near our inland-turning, began to find the attractions of the beach ever more urgent. I could feel him winding himself tight for some absolutely peremptory requirement that could give occasion to an outright defiance of our will. Then he saw some amphorae of burnished copper.

We were above a particularly lush stretch of beach. The cliffs here were luminously white. On the shingle footing their waxen wall, on the wave-worn stones as black as boiling tar, a flock of thralls lay in the surf. Each of the flock was two—a man and a woman, fused at the waist into a limbless, two-headed sausage—and each of these, when the surf came in, bent up in a U of revulsion, hoisting its heads out of reach of the erratic, leap-frogging foam. On all sides of this flock tide pools dappled the rocks, and these were clogged with such lurid riches as would mock the greediest imagination with its littleness. The amphorae were strewn through several such pools, and some were battered and ruptured, like storm-wrack. The plug sealing each of them bore a deeply graven, S-shaped rune. Wimfort stood stock-still, then opened his mouth. Furious in advance, I forestalled him: "Can you be such a fool, Wimfort?" I shouted. "Would it be sealed in jars and stamped like a bottle in a perfumer's stall?"

"Yes!" he shrilled. "If it were some demon's booty—some Elixir
successfully stolen,
and jarred for storage in the demon's cellars!"

Barnar groaned. "Wimfort! Did they all lie to us when they called you well-read? That could be a snake-rune! It could be the High-Archaic demi-sigil. I mean who even knows how `Sazmazm' is rendered in demon callig—"

"Look!" shrieked Wimfort in horror. I blush to report that Barnar and I, green as bumpkins at a fair, whirled round as one man, and the boy sprinted for the cliff.

The bluffs were mostly sheer, but above the amphorae a deep gully split the cliff. Wimfort jumped into it and rode down it on a little avalanche of loose salt. He was halfway down before I could uproot my feet. As I ran for the cliff I called back to Barnar: "A line! And brace yourself, I want a good haul coming back!" I jumped into the gully and skied down as Wimfort had done.