Kavin's World

David Mason

Kavin’s World

A LANCER BOOK • 1969

One

My name is Kavin Hostan; once I might have added Prince of Dorada, but the name of Dorada is no more. At any rate, that title, unlike a few others I’ve received since, I was born with, so I hold it of slight interest to anyone except myself.

Since Dorada is nearly forgotten now, it may be a good thing to set down a little about that land, and how it ended, for the benefit of later historians. Historians, I’ve noticed, take a deep interest in such matters.

Dorada was a small place among the kingdoms of men, a wide green valley that led upward between two high ranges of mountains. At one end was the Southern Sea, and at the landward end a rising flight of mountain that led into the lands called the Empty Places. (But they were not at all empty, as we of Dorada learned too late.)

We were, to some extent, cut off from commerce with the civilized lands to the west, but we were not entirely in darkness. Our ancestors had been settlers from the lands of Meryon, and we spoke that language; also, we still held by the Three and the Nine in matters of religion, although the newer religions had long ago come into Meryon from the west. Of course, there had been a few missionaries from time to time, but they had made no real progress. We were always a conservative folk.

At the seaward end of Dorada, there was a good harbor and a town called Astorin, where a strong castle was the principal hold of my ancestors. Originally the castle had been built as a fortification against occasional raids by pirates of the Southern Islands. Now, in my own time, such raids were only an old myth, and the sea robbers had learned to seek easier work.

Above the town of Astorin, the river Asto wound through a fair land of farms and villages which extended back for nearly forty miles to the first rising edges of the mountains. On their slopes there were good pasture lands, and many sheep grazed. On a crag at the first falls of the river Asto was a small fortress called Granorek, which was the only other truly strong-walled place within the kingdom. You will see from this how unguarded our land was.

In Astorin itself, however, there were strong ships, always kept ready for sea, and sometimes sent to sea for one sort of voyage or another. Our ships were our greatest pride, and since our ancient enemies had always come from the sea, we thought of ships as our principal wall of defense. Our warships went with our traders, to carry our wool and fish north to other cities along the coasts, and it was not very often that any sea crow would seek combat with a Doradan. Our warships were long and narrow, beaked, two-masted and rigged with the lateen sail; uncomfortable ships to ride, but fast, and handy to the wind as any ever seen. There were forty oars to a ship, three men to an oar, trained men all and no slaves. Each ship carried a crew of marines, and the oarsmen themselves were free fighting men, so these vessels were not easy foes to meet.

Our trading ships were smaller, usually handled under sail rather than oars; and smaller yet were our fishing craft, but very numerous, for we used all that part of the Southern Sea as our own.

As I said, in those days we kept to many customs now out of fashion, so that Dorada’s rulers never called themselves kings in the modern way. The old way of the Three still held; the Maiden priestess selected one of the
family
of Hostans to rule as Prince, and took him to herself, thus becoming the Second of the Three, the Bride and Mother. Naturally, her children went to the temple, the daughters to become priestesses, the sons… well, there were no grown male offspring, naturally. When the Prince’s time came, she took him, and was then the Third One.

My uncle, the great Hogir Hostan, was a wise and good man, and a beloved prince. He had few causes to show bravery during his reign, only a sea fight or two, and one small campaign in aid of the King of Corin to the west, to whom Hogir owed a friend-deed. But Corin’s war was over before much blood was spilt, and Hogir returned, his armor scarcely scratched.

He himself was not fond of war, although our tradition made it necessary for
all of the
house of Hostan to be as well trained in the arts of killing as possible. But despite his lack of taste for war, he did well when put upon. In fact, it was Prince Hogir who first brought experts in the use of gunpowder and cannon into Dorada, and Doradan ships were the first to use such newfangled toys.

I remember well the first time I saw and smelled the new weapons. I was no more than ten at the time, and the sound of the great gun was enough to make me near lose control of my bowels. But I held on bravely, I remember, although I’m told I turned a bit green.

But such things did not change our ways much. We still practiced with our well-tested weapons, as we always had; the short horn bow, the lance, and the fine swords so well made by our own smiths, from the iron of our own hills. Doradan steel was the best, and the long, edged, our ancient and best weapon.

As a boy, I lived with my clan kin in the great house on Upper Tergo, where the distant tower of Granorek to the north was just visible on a clear day. Our clan held villages of farm folk, and a ridge where silver was found, so that we had jewelers among us. My uncle Hogir came often to Upper Tergo, and took great interest in my education, because he had determined that I would follow him; and his influence in the matter had weight. Another uncle, Lord Malvi, called the second man in the principality, had charge of much of my education, mostly in the matters in which he was greatly skilled. He was probably the best swordsman in the lands of men, and certainly the best in the kingdom, and he endeavored to teach me everything he knew; not only of the longsword, but of weapons of other nations, of which he had a vast collection. There were the hooked and devilish slashers of the Kuri folk, and the thin blades in favor in the farther west, the ax, the mace… he schooled me in the use of all of these.

Under his chief steward, a foreigner named Tenchi, I learned to ride reasonably well though never with anything approaching Tenchi’s skill. Tenchi was a flat-faced, sallow-skinned man, short and black-haired, who had wandered down into the valley from the far north many years before. His folk, he said, were the best riders on earth, and he most certainly was the best I had ever seen. And one Vennar, Captain of Archers, taught me the use of the bow, so that I became good enough to be one of his own bowmen, as he himself told me.

But most of all, I loved ships and the sea. Whenever I could, from my earliest youth, I managed to sail with the fisher folk, and a few times aboard ships of war. In this work, I learned all I could, eagerly; I made innumerable models, and later, in my teens, managed to acquire a real vessel of my own.
But of that, more later.

While my uncle, Prince Hogir, approved well enough of such learning, he had much more that he wished me to know. In his house in Astorin he possessed a great library, books in half a dozen tongues or more, bought or taken from all parts of the world. He maintained several scholars, some skilled in yet other tongues, and he himself learned as many as he could find teachers for.

During his life, word of
Hogir’s liking
for learning spread, and every so often a shaggy scholar or an odorous alchemist would turn up in Astorin to be royally treated and added to the payroll. Some were outright charlatans, but Uncle Hogir was no fool, and those didn’t last long. Some, however, were true scholars, or at least good mechanics, such as the one who built our first great guns. Unfortunately, he lost his life through a small error in casting, but not before he had taught us much. He was, again unfortunately, a member of the Christian sect, and I must assume, from what little I know of their teachings, that he went to their bad place, since he died without the aid of one of their priests.

Such matters of mechanics and craft fascinated my uncle, who often said he wished he had been born a member of the smith’s guild. But there were other crafts he taught me himself. He spoke to me, very often, of the arts of princecraft, of the management of matters of state, both in large matters and in small. A prince who could not say how his folk made their living was a fool, he would say. He read me harsh lessons from scrolls of history, the strange and often tragic matter of the past, and I listened eagerly, that I might not repeat the errors of princes before me. At last, when I was fifteen Hogir brought me to the Mystery itself, and stood sponsor for me in my initiation into that high matter (in which princes and smiths are equal, as I learned). And, since I was now
initiate
, he permitted me to delve somewhat into the Arts Magickal, under one Thuramon, a wise man who said he came from Laquel. (I say it this way because I doubted the tale.)

Thuramon was a fat man, very jolly, seemingly of middle age. However, he had lived in Astorin for nearly sixty years, and had arrived there looking quite the same as he did now. So that about his real age there might be some question. But he was a hard man from whom to extract straight answers. I asked him once about the matter of his age; and he laughed, and said that he would instruct me in that art when I was old enough to require it. And he added that in any case, princes should never be allowed to live past the normal span, since both their folk and the Goddess herself was like to tire of seeing their faces.

Under Thuramon I was not a great student, although I did my best. I learned, with difficulty, the ancient and iron laws which govern the Great Art, and something of its history. I learned also a few of the various small things which an ordinary mortal may do, spells which might be cast, and defenses against other spells; most simple witchwork. He taught me also something of herbs, of medical matters and such useful branches, and of the arts of divination by means of the black pool, by the nine stones, and by signs of nature.

But I learned also that a true master of the art is born, not made, and that rarely and by the grace of the Goddess. And that of those born, few survive the hard and dangerous road to full mastery: some weaken under the needed
training,
some make such fatal errors along the way as admit of no return. And some of course, are slain in the constant combats in the art which magicians greatly enjoy. For the practice of that art is not for the purpose of merely astonishing ordinary men; it is for such high purposes as few can understand, and is truly an art, in that it is practiced for its own sake.

When I was seventeen, I became the victim of two separate love affairs at once. One was a passion for a lovely young wench who was the daughter of a silverworker in one of our hamlets. I think her name was Jora, though I’m no longer sure. I pursued her, hotly and vainly, through seven summer weeks, and was seven times rejected, since she was a little older and a good deal wiser than I.

The other was a love for a ship, the most beautiful hull I had ever seen. I cast eyes on that ship while mooning after Jora on the banks of the river, and if I had been offered a choice of possessing one or the other, I would have died on the spot of indecision. Luckily, I did not have that choice. Jora made it all too clear that I would not have her, but the ship—that I swore I would have. And as I struggled for the one, I forgot the other.

When I saw the ship first, she had been drawn up on a sand shore, where there was a well-known workshop owned by Belagin, one of our most famed builders of ships. She was a long, sweetly rounded hull of some odd black wood, sheathed in flaking remnants of copper; she measured about sixteen manlengths. Her masts were still in, and she carried a queer rig that looked as if it might resemble a kind of bird’s wing when sail was up; of the two masts, one was far forward and the other, much taller, centered.

There was something about the ship that drew me like a magnet. I went to Belagin at once to ask him about it,

“Well, young lord,” he said, scratching his fair beard, “you’d be best off not to touch that hull.
She was found, she was.
Derelict, with dead men in her scuppers; they say two of ‘em were dead of wounds, as if they’d killed each other, and five more looked as though some disease slew them. The fisherman that towed her here didn’t like the look of her. When he’d taken a few things he found aboard, tools, gewgaws, and such, he brought her up here to me, since he’s owed me a bit for repair work. I took her for the money he owed, no great amount, and I’m thinking to break her up for the wood and metal.”

“Break her!” I was as shocked as if he’d suggested slaughtering the girl Jora.

I talked him out of it at last. Not being of age, I had no money of my own, but I went to Uncle Hogir as fast as horse could carry me. He had heard of the find, though he had not seen it, and he rode back with me to look at it.

“Truly strange,” Prince Hogir said, as we climbed aboard together. Standing on the smooth white deck, he stared about him, his brows knit in deep thought.

After a while, he silently moved toward the after cabin, and I followed him inside.

Here was a fine cabin indeed, though water and weather had entered. Glass still remained in the stern-windows, remarkably fine glass too. A curiously made metal lamp, and a few other pieces of metal here and there, had survived the fisherman-salvagers.

But everywhere, in the great cabin itself with its table and bunkspaces, in the smaller cabins, and in the steersman’s shelter above, there was marvelous and strange workmanship. Some of the woods were unfamiliar, but every part of the work had been done with craft and care; in many places there were old carvings of plants and beasts, all lovingly done.

“This was no fisherman’s craft,” Uncle Hogir said. “I wonder most what nation… I thought I could guess, since I’ve seen many a ship from distant parts. But there’s something about this one… let’s search farther.”

Forward, there were bunks for a dozen
seamen,
all empty now of any sign of what kind of men had used them. The salvager had stripped away most of the fine anchor chain and presumably the anchor itself; but he had not disturbed the rolls of furled sail that lay disarrayed along the deck.