“You should know better, dog, than to pick up snakes.”

  A lightning of fear flickered in muddy irises. He felt the flail writhe in his hand, and let it fall with a cry.

  “Poor dog,” I said, “you are sick. Go vomit, dog, till you are dry.”

  He lurched about, clutching his belly, and staggered off in the growing gloom and began to puke. Lyo giggled excitedly.

  31

  Judging a disturbance, another of the Comforters materialized at my elbow,

  “Give me water,” I called to him, “water, for your god’s sake.”

  He grinned and stared me in the eye, and made to beat me, and lashed himself across the face instead. He screamed with pain and stumbled to his knees.

  “Now you will give me water,” I said. I put my palm on his shoulder, keeping the oar going easily single-armed. He took his hand from his injured face. “Water in a cup,” I said.

  He crawled away, and returned with an iron bowl, his own, filled with mixed water and grain-liquor. I drank, and gave him the cup back with a bow. Bloody, he shambled to his station, apparently unaware of his hurt.

  The Drummer sat drumming the time of the strokes, a moron, not seeing. The Overseer was above.

  Tension had tightened over the rowing lines. The oar does not deal kindly with the mental process; only a few had taken in what had occurred. Even so, a febrile alertness had spread like a new smell through the deck, and a rampant, gnawing memory of the first aspirations of the slave-mutiny, rebellion: freedom. The inexorable pendulum had faltered. Not one of them but did not sense that much, and fasten on it with a cloudy prayer for change to whatever gods they still forgave and reverenced.

  And none of us missed a stroke.

  3

  It would be a journey of seventeen days, so they reckoned, to regain the ship-roads and reach the city, for they had been in the outermost regions of their travels when the hurricane caught them. Seventeen days, too, was an estimation that took into account continuous use of full sail and oar-power together. For this, each rower worked a third of a day alone at the big pole and one third in harness with his mate. An hour following the sunset, when the quarter-lighted black of the underdeck thickened to an unbelievable second depth of darkness, a portion of sleep was allowed, and the slaves tumbled down into that abysmal, muttering unconsciousness

  32

  by which any man, having once heard it, could tell such a spot blindfold ever after. At the midnight bell, the flails would rouse the lines again to toil in shifts till sunup.

  For one day I perversely continued my slavery, after which I had had enough of it.

  At sundown, before the last shift was done, I broke and kicked off my chains, and stood up leaving the oar to Lyo. The two Comforters I had had dealings with before retreated from me, shouting. Immediately the shouting spread, the rowers snarled around from their poles like hungry, angry beasts, yet still with not a stroke missed. Plainly the Comforters in my path did not wish to touch me. I met their eyes, and they crouched gradually down on the ramp, like men bowed by an enormous weight upon their backs. The Drummer, more observant on this occasion, had left off his beating and was trying to get his hammer ready for a blow. I called to him.

  “Put away the drumstick, or you shall break your own hand with it.”

  Even the paralysis of authority had not affected the oars. Like a grisly clockwork toy, the motion kept on, though their faces were craned to me.

  The Overseer lay in the below-decks cabin, nursing a pipe of Tinsen opium.

  “Get back to your bench,” he said thickly. “Who sent you here?”

  “Don’t be troubled,” I said. “You are having a vision from the poppy seeds.”

  “You are no vision, stinking slave,” he whispered, smiling at me through the thin mist in his head. “Who unchained you?”

  “I am Vazkor, and you are my servant. There is no doubt. Accept it.”

  “If I do not obey, what then?”

  “Be disobedient, and learn.”

  He lapsed back.

  “You are a slave,” he said.

  I looked into his drug-blind eyes and made him know that I was not, and went out, leaving him in an abject, speechless idiocy, the idiot’s smile still sewed on his face.

  I did not imagine I should need to sleep, but sleep I found I must. I chose a spot for it, confident in the fear I had inspired, and in fact no one came near me at that hour, or tried to take me.

  The slumber itself was crowded by dreams, nightmares that

  33

  angered me, the first for days. My cleverness had outgrown such wretchedness, or surely should have done. Lying on the roughly padded bunk in the Comforters’ warren below, I met even Ettook again and every one of the old frustrations, and one new damnation, which was a girl hanged in her own yellow hair. I was not a mage, asleep.

  Near midnight I woke.

  I thought, It is no longer thus, I have changed, I have dislodged the past.

  A shadow had bent near me that lurched sideways at my stirring.

  “I meant no harm, Lauwyess.”

  The Comforter with the lashed face-he would carry the scar the rest of his days, however short or long they might turn out to be-accorded me Charpon’s title.

  I felt no menace from him, but I held up my palm and the energy shone through it, and sent him to kneel pleading in the black that I should do him no harm. I had become clever with the energy, able to portion it out in various strengths and forms.

  It would be no problem to discipline my servants. Also, no problem to kill my enemies now perhaps, not as it had been in the wildlands beyond Eshkorek, the pale glare and the sick agony after it.

  I dropped into another sleep.

  There was another dream. I dreamed of my father.

  He rode through a white city, lighted up in fits and starts by the bonfires of a sack, and I rode beside him. I could not see his face against the red fires, but I saw a white cat seated on his shoulder, and continually it darted with its paw and slashed at his breast, over where the heart was, and the black shirt was bloody. He did not cry out at these stabbings, which raked ever nearer his life, but he said to me quietly, “Remember it, remember the vow you offered me. Do not batten on my will, which made you, and forget.”

  From this I woke calmly, as one does not generally wake from such a thing. But all the grim jokes I had derived from my Power aboard the ship, and all the endless mistakes I had made, had soured like wine kept too long in a cask.

  I was not a child but a man, the son of a man. His death hung like a leaden rope about my neck at that moment. My father would not have clowned with his destiny as I had done with mine. His ruthless ambition, his iron mind, his ability

  34

  had been better employed. Was I then to ape Ettook, the futile boasting of the red pig in his sty?

  The midnight bell sounded above. Ignoring my absence, as the crowd ignores the passage of a leper-shrinking aside, yet speaking of the day and the state of trade-the lines were being roused to their work by the brotherhood of the flails.

  I rose, and went out and climbed up the ladder from the rower’s deck, and those awake watched me with their glinting, awestruck eyes.

  I passed two of the watch on the upper deck, and had them before they could challenge me. Once I would have used a weapon or a blow; to make a man stone quiet with the eyes is a curious deed.

  Charpon’s ship-house was dimly lighted, with one low burning red lamp. By another of the laws of Masrian fire worship, no kindled flame might be left uncovered, save before the god. The room smelled of incense, and of a stable.

  The master, russet as a bull in the lamplight, sprawled across the handsome boy I had seen make up to him earlier. The boy’s face, curd-white between the ruddy cushion and the master’s ruddy flesh, stared straight up at me with a pared and vicious horror, like the white mask of a rat cornered by dogs.

  “Lauwyess,” he cried, seizing Charpon’s arm, frantic between fear of angering the master and a worse fear of me.

  Charpon growled. The boy shook him, hissing a stream of faulty Masrian. With a curse, Charpon heaved around and made me out. His fingers slipped along the couch to his knife-belt. I let his grip close on the handle before I educated him. This time I saw the bolt shoot from my hand. It caught him about the wrist, soundless, but Charpon roared and jolted sideways, letting go the blade half-drawn. The boy squealed and jumped off the couch, flinging himself into a corner. I felt sorry for him, his fortunate night wrecked by the unexpected.

  “Melkir, run for seconds-” Charpon shouted.

  I said, “It will do you no good. Before the boy gets to the door, I will kill him, and you shall be next, I promise you.”

  I let him have another bolt between the ribs, as I would have cast a spear but one year before. He doubled up, retching, among the exotic pelts.

  The boy Melkir began to snivel.

  35

  “You will spoil your looks,” I said. “Shut your mouth and keep still, and you will live to ply your wares ashore.”

  He turned off the tears insfently, and made his eyes soft, in case I might be susceptible. Having been the pupil of a hard school, he was apt for quick lessons. Even the sorcery was less compelling than violence, of which it was obviously merely another branch, something to be avoided, placated, put, if possible, to use.

  I crossed over to Charpon and rolled him onto his back. He wiped his mouth and showed his irregular teeth.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “What do you suppose?”

  “I suppose mischief. I send you to the oar, and you are a conjurer of tricks-a priest perhaps? I have heard of such cunning being the property of priests.”

  There was a swift rodent scuttle through the draperies-the boy escaping out of the door. Charpon swore, knowing quite well he would get no help from that quarter.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you want?”

  I met his little black eyes, which froze with no struggle. Finding me more than his match, Charpon wasted no effort on resistance.

  “Your ship,” I said, “your service. Whatever I instruct shall be done. We will call your officers in and tell them the happy news.”

  Outside, the night tasted already of the faint spice balm of the south, and the stars described different patterns between the sails.

  I had mislaid my memory of LongEye, but presently recalled and had them release him. He came limping from the chains and stood beside me.

  I remembered how I had valued him and was at a loss to find him once again only a piece of what was all around me, a mortal wasteground peopled with beings no more akin to me than is the tinder to the flame that strikes from it.

  I clothed myself with light in order to impress them, which it duly did. It was easy to do so, as had been the other things, unnervingly easy. It was not surprising that in after days I found myself reluctant to experiment with the Power that had abruptly burgeoned in me, afraid of its enormity, so suddenly unleashed. However, I became lord of Charpon’s ship, and ninety-seven men offered me fealty that night, kneeling bewildered and afraid on the upper deck.

  I felt neither hubris nor exaltation. I felt, for those mo-

  36

  merits, as afraid as they. I found myself on a pinnacle, neither king nor magician, nor even god, simply one man isolated from the race of men. Alone, as never in my life before.

  Part II

  The Sorcerer

  I

  The first city I came to was a dead one, Eshkorek Arnor, the Golden Skull. My second city lived, a shining anthill, impervious it seemed to disaster, degradation, the scouring passage of the winds of time, and to every one of those things that had eaten Eshkorek alive. I remember that, despite the events that led me there, I was still humanly young enough to gape that seventeenth morning, when the Hyacinth Vineyard drifted on her oars and dipped sails like a blue moth into the Bay of Hragon.

  The summer came early to BarIbithni; against the backdrop of an indigo sky, five hundred palaces let down their reflections in a sea of sapphire glass. West, where the great docks began, gold and green alligators of ships covered the water. At the innermost point of the bay stood a statue of gilded alcum, flashing like a fire some sixty feet high: the Masrimas of BarIbithni: Hragon Masrianes, the first conqueror-king, who raised the city to its might, also raised up the statue. It had cost a thousand Hessek slave lives to do it, but slave life, as ever, came cheap. The god statue wore the pleated kilt, generous draped breeches, and knee boots of the conquerors, and also the massive collar and shoulder-pieces and the spiked helmet of a warrior. This gear-imposing on the tall Masrians, serving indeed to make them seem giants among flies-was but another symbol to the people under their sway that to dwarf a man is usually to best him.

  A hundred years before, in the “Old Blood” days of the Hessek kings, only the embryo of a city had stood here, BitHessee, or Sea’s-Mouth. Inland lay three Hessek provinces, and over the water to the west, Hessek Seema and Tinsen. The Hessek kingdoms had contrived to persist some centuries,

  37

  38

  a culture ancient and sufficiently rotten that the thunder of war soon shattered it.

  War came from the east in the form of a young people thrusting west and south. The old world crumbled where they passed. The little empires were consumed one by one, broken, annexed, and remade in the name of Masrimas, FlameLord.

  The fire-worshipers were a formidable race, large in frame and huge in military numbers. Their legions, or jerds, were matchless. Disciplined to iron, clad in burnished bronze, and eauipned with horses, the like of which animal had never before been seen in the south, they poured across the map in their hunger for ground. Starved in their arid home of snowless crags and raw desert, the Masrians discovered the south with its rivers and alluvial plains, and the Hesseks, having withstood this change, as ever, stubbornly and ineptly, were thrown down and savaged with all the rest.

  Seduced, however, by the bride they had forced, the warriors rebuilt the old world, dubbed it the “New,” and hung trinkets of architecture on the ruins. BitHessee, a mere ocean port of the Hesseks, was razed and recreated, a model city for the Warrior-Emperor Hragon. BarIbithni. as she became, instantly rivaled, then soon outshone, the Masrian cities of the east. Palaces were built by the sea, temples, monuments, theaters, which swiftly reduced the former capital to the artistic level of a cow-byre. The invaders had become occupants of a land of plenty, and were learning its wavs. Where the jerds marched now was in the drillvard and the court; they stacked their arms in taverns and bv the couches of women, till half Hessek was impregnated with Masrian seed. Presently the Masrians mellowed into that intellectual and sane enjoyment of life that heralds the decay of human strength.

  The Hyacinth Vineyard paid her toll, and entered under the bar into the docks. Such quantities of shipping passed into and out of the harbor that the port and dock together ran for a mile or more. Behind lay the vast storehouses and Fish Market, landmarked by its two golden fish high on their pillar of granite. Here Amber Road began, which led in turn to the Market of the World, where was sold then anything that could be got in the empire, from transparent silk to green Tinsen tobacco to candied bees. Off from this colossal pool of commerce the lesser markets flooded away, the dealers in horses, cattle, and slaves, and here, too, the hostelries and wineshops and whore-palaces commenced.

  I left Charpon with three of his seconds to sort the ship’s

  39

  business as he would among the merchants’ offices about the quay. With a guard of ten Hesseks, Kochus, the remaining second, conducted me through the Fish Market and up Amber Road to the Dolphin’s Teeth. This place, named for the sea as city ships were named for the land, was a gaudy hospice, catering to wealthy brigands, and well supplied with such. Even Hessek pirates nocked there if they had silver money chains enough to pay for their board. Yet it was a Masrian house by inclination, aping conqueror ways, though I do not imagine a man of pure Masrian stock had ever entered it.

  Kochus led me up the yellow marble steps of the Dolphin’s Teeth with the pride of the landowner returning to his estate. Thick pillars, painted a blue and red fit to spear the eyes, held up a roof of white stucco. The tiled walls bore pictures necessarily of dolphins.

  Early drinkers, ships’ masters and sea bandits, were swaggering into and out of the vestibule with detachments of ruffians. Kochus, exhibiting the true sentimentality of the sadist, grinned black molars and embraced acquaintances. Seeing me stand modestly to one side, a scarred devil with an armful of gold, and missing the obligatory eye of the pirate, remarked on my outcity bumpkin appearance. Kochus flashed me a look of fear.