Farslayer's Story (24 page)

Whatever had caused the usual inhabitants of Mermaids’ Island to absent themselves today, they remained absent, which struck Zoltan as somehow ominous. After pacing from one end of the island to the other, and fruitlessly calling Black Pearl’s name a dozen times more, he agreed with the prince his uncle that they had better move on and try to reach the hermit on the south shore. If fishgirls were not to be found, Gelimer seemed to represent the next most likely source of information about the Sword.

Just as they were about to embark again, Mark paused, squinting across the water. “What about Magicians’ Island?”

Bonar protested that it was unsafe to visit that place, that mermaids never went there, no one ever did. Gesner, consulted for his professional opinion, admitted that wizards, himself included, visited Magicians’ Island from time to time, and that the real danger to anyone had to be considered minimal.

“Then I think we ought to take a look.”

The prince as usual had his way. Magicians’ Island was not much more than a hundred meters from the shore base of the mermaids. But before the rowers had moved the two boats halfway there, the attention of the entire party was distracted by the sight of someone or something swimming on an interception course toward them, straight from the south.

It was a mermaid, it could be nothing else. A mermaid, just below the surface, coming toward them faster than the boats were moving, approaching at a speed that only a true fish could have matched.

She burst to the surface almost within reach of Zoltan as he crouched in the prow of one of the boats.

“Soft Ripple!” He thought he had recognized the tawny hair even before the mermaid surfaced.

Clinging to the boat, breathless with the speed of her race and with some underlying excitement, Soft Ripple babbled out an incoherent story about Black Pearl’s being dead. She added something to the effect that the treacherous Cosmo was to blame.

Gesner and Bonar sat up straight in their boat at the mention of that last name. But Zoltan had frozen in horror at what he heard. With the clarity of dazed detachment, he saw that Soft Ripple was holding up something she now wore on a fine chain about her neck. And he could recognize the amulet that Black Pearl had been wearing the last time he saw her.

The mermaid quieted a little when she saw the unfamiliar face of Prince Mark looking over the prow at her.

Lady Yambu, coming up into the prow of the other boat, was sharply soothing, and helped the girl to get herself under control.

“Are you certain Black Pearl is dead? Have you seen her body?” It was Yambu who asked the questions.

“I am certain, lady. I have seen.”

“Then show us.”

Presently Soft Ripple was swimming again, more slowly this time, leading both boats in the direction of a marshy area along the south bank of the river. This marsh was not far from the outlet of the stream that Black Pearl had ascended, with such difficulty, to visit the hermit.

Before long both boats were sliding and crunching in among the tall green reeds, their rowers swearing at the difficulty, and Bonar muttering his fears of ambush to anyone who would pay attention. No one was paying attention to him for very long.

The mermaid, slithering rapidly through the reedy shallows, and calling back frequently for the boats to follow, remained always a little ahead.

Soon Zoltan saw something floating in the almost stagnant backwater ahead. With a choked cry he leaped from the boat into the waist-deep water, and went thrashing after the pale-skinned, dark-haired floating thing.

When Zoltan came within reach of the body, he felt a rush of relief, intense but brief. This body had two legs, it could not be that of a mermaid. Nor could it be Black Pearl, he thought, perhaps not even a real corpse, though the thing was floating facedown. Whatever had happened to cause death could not have left her looking so shrunken, almost waxlike and inhuman.

“This is no mermaid!”

Soft Ripple looked at him with rage and pity in her face. “It is, it is. We all of us get our legs back when we die. Did you not know that?”

He looked at her, shaking his head. He had never had any suspicion of such a thing.

Ben of Purkinje, leaning from his boat as it drifted nearer, took hold of the body with a huge hand and turned it over gently.

At the first human touch, a little swarm of almost invisible powers, like half-material insects, deserted the corpse and went whining and buzzing their way up into the empyrean.

Ben rumbled: “Aye, this is demon-death if ever I’ve seen it. Hard to tell how long she’s been here, though.”

“No!” Zoltan screamed the word. Now he had seen the face. It seemed a modeled parody of Black Pearl’s.

Mark put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. Lady Yambu asked Soft Ripple sharply: “Is it really true that your kind always reverts to having legs at death?”

“It is true of all our kind in this river. I have seen it often enough; I ought to know.” The bitter hatred in her glared suddenly at Prince Mark, as if he had been Black Pearl’s killer. “We are allowed only a few years of life at best.”

“I am sorry.” Yambu’s voice was kind and soft. “How did you come to find the body?”

Coaxed by Lady Yambu, Soft Ripple explained how she had come to make the discovery.

“I have been worried about Pearl for some time, and yesterday I followed her to see where she was going. I saw her start to struggle up the shallow creek here, and I wondered what her goal could possibly be. She was swimming and floundering her way upstream toward the place where the hermit is said to live. I became very worried, and thought of following her even there, but then I gave up that idea, because I thought it was really crazy for a mermaid to try to ascend such a stream.

“So I waited in the river nearby for her to come down again. After a long time, hours, a demon came roaring through the air, and I was terrified. I heard a screaming inhuman sound, and I saw a mysterious and ugly shadow hurtling across the sky. I could see it even from under the water, and I could feel the sickness that the creature brought with it. I wanted to hide, because I thought that the treacherous magician might have called a demon up to kill me—but it wasn’t me that the thing was after.”

“What treacherous magician?”

The mermaid spat the words. “Cosmo Malolo is the name he’s known by in the world.”

Bonar, shocked, demanded: “Cosmo is still alive?”

Soft Ripple ignored the clan leader’s question. She said: “I didn’t dare to come back here until this morning. I hadn’t had any contact with Pearl all night, and I was more worried than ever. I looked for her, and I found her here—like this.”

Gesner until now had been listening to the mermaid’s story in silence. Now he said sharply: “Let me see that amulet that you are wearing.”

Soft Ripple raised a pale hand to the chain around her throat. “I took it from Black Pearl’s body. What’s wrong with that? She was my friend.”

Other people in both boats spoke to her more softly and courteously, asking about the amulet. At last she said: “Many of the girls in the river wear ornaments around their necks. Some wear trinkets that they find along the bottom of the river. Some are given baubles by fishermen, because the men hope that the mermaids can send them good luck in return—I don’t think it ever really works that way. And some of us are given presents by our families who live on land.”

Gesner asked: “But do men ever give you these? I mean, as they might give presents to a girl with legs?”

“Lacking legs and what’s between them,” the girl said simply, “we have no men. What man would want one who can never truly be a woman? We mermaids have only each other, and our short lives to be endured.” She turned to Zoltan and flared up at him: “Why do you weep for her?” It seemed really to puzzle her that a man with legs should do so. “It is we who are still alive who are unlucky. What are you doing? Why do you want to put her body in the boat? Let her go down the river like a dead fish, and be forgotten, the way the rest of us are going.”

“The point about the amulet she wears,” said Gesner, “is that I can recognize cousin Cosmo’s magical sign on it.”

Soft Ripple stared at him. When his words had penetrated, she tore the amulet from her neck with fear and loathing, and threw it away into the river. “I never thought that it came from him!” she cried.

Zoltan was sitting now with his head down, not really paying attention to the others.

Mark reached from the boat and caught the raging girl by the hair. “There’ll be time later to have a tantrum,” he said, in a new and harder voice. “If you can tell me where the Sword is now, do so.”

“You are wearing it at your side.” But Soft Ripple said this sullenly, not as if she really believed it.

The prince released his grip. “I wear its fellow, which has a different power, and a different mark that Vulcan put on it.”

“What power?” It was hard to tell how seriously the question was intended.

“That of cutting stone, swiftly and easily. Ask this Malolo chief here how I cut my way into his stronghold.” And the prince’s hand touched the hilt of the Sword he wore.

“Indeed.” The mermaid flirted for a moment completely beneath the surface, and up again, much as a wholly human swimmer might have done.

Then, facing the prince again, she asked: “You want Farslayer to deal with your enemies, do you?”

“Yes. Especially I want to keep them from getting it. And they are your enemies as well, whether you know it or not. Chief among them is the wizard who held Black Pearl in thrall when she was far upstream.”

“Very well. I know where the Sword Farslayer is now, and I will tell you.”

For a moment there was silence, the people in both boats questioning whether they had heard her words aright. Then everyone burst out with questions.

The mermaid hushed them all with a small raised hand. “I know where it is because I saw the demon hide it, yesterday. I think he may have taken it from Black Pearl, though I don’t know where she got it—but I did see the demon with a Sword. He hid it hastily. He knew that I was watching him, and he would have killed me, too. Except that there was something else he wanted to do, something he thought even more important than killing me to keep me quiet.”

“What else?”

Soft Ripple looked at Prince Mark. “He wanted to go to you. You were sitting in a boat, a boat smaller than either of these, out near the middle of the river, with some of these same people with you. So desperate was the demon to confront you that he would not even pause to kill me first. Someday perhaps he will return and find me and kill me—but I will first tell you where the Sword is hidden.”

“Where?”

“Right where he put it. Far underwater, in the deepest channel, not far from Magicians’ Island.”

“Take me to that Sword now. If you help me to get it, I swear by Ardneh I’ll do my best to see that every mermaid in this river is given her legs again. I do not think that is impossible.”

Soft Ripple looked at the prince in silence. Then she said, “Follow me,” and turned and swam away.

Black Pearl’s body had already been hoisted aboard one of the boats, and decently covered with a canvas sail.

* * *

Soft Ripple stopped, swimming in place, at a spot where the current was swift, within twenty meters or so of Magicians’ Island. The oarsmen in both boats worked steadily to hold their craft beside her.

She said: “The Sword you seek is approximately straight below me. If any of you have the strength of a demon, and can swim like a mermaid, come down with me, and move away the rock the demon placed atop his prize to hold it safe. That rock is more than I, or a hundred like me, could move a centimeter.”

Bonar was ready in a moment with the beginning of a plan to move the rock with ropes and many boats, and the help of other mermaids.

Mark instead unsheathed the Sword he was wearing at his belt.

Zoltan had by now recovered a little from the first shock of Black Pearl’s death. “Give Stonecutter to me,” he told his uncle, “and I’ll dive with Soft Ripple, and cut up the rock. I’m a strong swimmer.”

Mark, looking at him, thought that Zoltan at this moment was also somewhat reckless of his own life. “No,” said Mark.

“Why not? Cutting the stone will be easy.”

The mermaid was almost laughing at both of them. “No, you stay in the boat. All of you. Please, or I will have to pull you up out of the water as well. The Sword you want to find lies much too deep, and the current down there is far too swift and cold for anyone with legs to swim in it.”

Then she held out her hands to Mark for Stonecutter. “Give me the Sword you wear, and I will dive alone and get the other one for you. If I can chop the boulder into little bits as easily as he says, then the rest will be easy, too.”

Mark hesitated just noticeably. But then he handed over the Sword of Siege.

The mermaid smiled at him, and let Stonecutter’s weight bear her down below the surface.

Time passed, slowly and intensely. The boats maintained their positions. Mark wished that he had started counting, and wondered if anyone else had. So far, he thought, no more time had passed than a skillful, breathing human diver might require to maintain herself underwater. Or not much more—

Suddenly the water erupted, revealing the head and shoulders and arms of Soft Ripple. She was tailing water strongly in the swift current, keeping herself in position to hold up a naked, gleaming Sword. On her two raised hands the mermaid offered the weapon up to Mark.

He took it from her carefully and turned the hilt to see its symbol. The Sword was Stonecutter.

Soft Ripple said: “The other one is free now. But I can carry only one up to the surface at a time.”

With a flick of her tail, she dove again.

Almost absently Mark wiped dry the Sword of Siege upon his sleeve, and slowly he resheathed it. Everyone was watching the water once again, and again some were counting silently.

Ben suddenly snarled out an oath and pointed. The mermaid had reappeared, holding another Sword. But this time she was at the distance of the Isle of Magicians, where she had leaped out of the water almost like a seal, to sit upon a low, wet rock.